Mr. Chamberlain made on Wednesday in the Birmingham Town Hall
what we believe to have been the speech of his life. Nothing approaching it in merit has been uttered against the present Home-rule Bill. It occupies only two-and-a-half columns in the Times, the report there being a model of scientific condensation ; but it is hardly possible, even for a Gladstonia,n, to read it and remain a believer in this Bill, against which, rather than against Home-rule in the abstract, it is steadily directed. Every sentence is an epigram, and every epigram a solid argument. We have tried to condense it elsewhere ; but we may mention here that Mr. Chamberlain spoke out clearly against federation of any kind as inconsistent with the government of a scattered Empire. "We cannot exist as we have existed in the past, as we exist at present, if we disperse the unity of Parliament, if we disperse the power of the Executive, if we disperse the responsibility which now rests on the Imperial Parliament. That is our position. It may please Mr. Gladstone in a spirit of abasement, it may please him as a conscience-smitten penitent, to wrap himself round in a white sheet and proclaim to the civilised world the injury which England has done to Ireland, to offer to break off a piece of our Imperial structure, and to hand it over to the Nationalists as an atoning gift. But we, the responsible citizens of to-day, are conscious of no such guilt. We will take part in no such ceremony of surrender." If English electors could but read speeches with full comprehension, this Bill would be defeated even on the second reading.
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