Mr. Chamberlain delivered what every one expected to be his
great speech at the Guildhall on Tuesday afternoon to an audience which, though interested and in part favourable, was not enthusiastic. We have perhaps said enough of the speech elsewhere, but may record here that it was not one of his greatest speeches. The concluding peroration urging closer union with the Colonies was a fine one, but the body of the speech came from a jaded mind. The old assertions, the old arguments, the old proposals, were repeated once more, with no new flavour even in their diction. Mr. Chamberlain thought wealth a contemptible thing, and one not to be proud of; but all through his speech ran the other thought that our trade was declining, that it would continue to decline, and that when this process had reached a certain point the end would arrive. In other words, he seeks through his own methods first of all for wealth. His only proof of decline, for he admitted that the country was prosperous, was that some other countries—he excepted France—were advancing more rapidly than our- selves. Perhaps the most pregnant sentence in his speech is one in which he intimated that those countries owed their advance to Protection, and to the wisdom of their rulers, who made Protection heavy enough to be effective. That seems to suggest, what we should be inclined to anticipate, that the tariff to be drawn up by his Tariff Commission will propose much heavier taxation on imports than is as yet anticipated.
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