Mr. Chamberlain, speaking at Birmingham on Friday, the 16th inst.,
dealt in trenchant style with Lord Rosebery's attack on Liberal Unionism as involving too little Liberalism and too much Unionism. In a powerful vindication of the Education Bill Mr. Chamberlain declared that had the Government been guided by purely party interests they would never have touched this thorny problem. But to have refused would have been to neglect a great national duty. He contended that it was an honest attempt to deal with a state of things that constituted a national weakness and a national danger. The only alterna- tives were,—(1) to adopt the system of secularism as tried for six years by the Birmingham School Board, and abandoned at the instance of the Nonconformists; (2) to adopt and continue the Compromise of 1870. What the Government had decided to do was to develop the latter scheme by bringing about a better organisation of all education, by extending the representative control of secular education, and by providing equality of treatment for all children.
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