Mr. Chamberlain made an interesting speech yesterday week at a
banquet of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, though to our mind he did pile it up, as the Yankees say, "a little too mountainous" when he declared it "not too much to say that commerce is the greatest of all political interests." How vigorously Mr. Chamberlain in his old debating-society days would have confuted that proposition, and would have demonstrated to those delighted Radicals who wanted to spend their last seven pounds on "buying a Tory," that liberty is a political interest far more momentous than even the
busiest commerce That Government, he declared to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce in the enthusiasm of the moment, "deserves most the popular approval which does most to increase our trade and to settle it on a firm foundation." Would he then prefer Sir Robert Peel's Government which repealed the Corn-laws, to Lord Grey's Government which carried the Reform Bill ? He showed, however, that after acquiring new territory in Africa or elsewhere, it is our first duty to develop it, and he pointed out how far more just to all the rest of the world is England's Colonial system, which shares all the advantages of her Colonial possessions with foreign countries instead of assert- ing and protecting England's monopoly in these advantages. He examined carefully the alleged inroad of Germany on our trade, and showed that though neither English nor German commerce has recently advanced by leaps and bounds, England's has advanced as much as Germany's absolutely,— though not relatively to what it was ten years ago,—for the very good reason that Germany's was then almost in its infancy. Nevertheless he admitted frankly that England must look to her laurels, and especially must take more pains to consult the special wants, and study the special improvements, which
her customers regard as the most urgently demanded by her foreign customers.
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