Mr. Chamberlain, in presiding at a meeting of the Com-
mittee of the Birmingham Liberal Unionist Association on Wednesday night, mentioned that some of his old friends amongst the Gladstonians have quite recently reopened com- munications with him, and have admitted that the Liberal Unionists were right, but have drawn the rather odd inference that there is no longer any reason why the Liberal Party should be divided. To which Mr. Chamberlain replies very justly that Mr. Gladstone has made no such admission, and notoriously clings to " the fond desire of his old age,"—and further, that in adopting Home-rule, the Glad- stonians have associated themselves with such strange and wild Radical allies, that the Liberal Party is by no means what it was, even if the Home-rule element in its programme were to disappear. Mr. Chamberlain himself, indeed, took the somewhat sanguine view that there is not "one single man of sense on the Gladstonian side who at this moment believes that Home-rule is a question any longer of practical politics." None the less the formation of a new National Party of progressive views seems to Mr. Chamberlain the great question of the hour. We cannot go back to the Gladstonians, and only the soberest of the Glad- stonians will come over to us. What is needed is to cement and give a deeper foundation to the alliance into which the Liberal Unionists and Conservatives have been forced, and with this view Mr. Chamberlain is very wisely forming in Birmingham a joint committee of Liberal Unionists and Conservatives for the purpose of conferring together on the political questions of the hour. He proposes, too, as soon as may be, to effect a rapprochement (for which the time seems as yet not quite ripe) on municipal questions, between the Conservatives and the Liberal Unionists.
Previous page
