On Tuesday night Mr. Austen Chamberlain, speaking at a Liberal
Unionist dinner and making a plea for Unionist unity, declared that " he was led to make these remarks because he saw that a speech of his, made a little time ago, was inter- preted by a Unionist, but Free-food, critic as indicating his desire to drive out of the Unionist Party all who did not agree with him on that particular question. He had never said any- thing to justify that interpretation." As we are no doubt the Unionist critic alluded to, we must hasten to express our satis- faction that Mr. Austen Chamberlain was misunderstood by us, and that in reality he is for union among Unionists. We are bound to say, however, that the speech of March 25th, which was what we had in mind when we wrote, was, to say the least of it, peculiarly liable to misunderstanding. Here are Mr. Austen Chamberlain's words :—" He thought it was time to ask, in view of the President's [Duke of Devonshire's] speech at the meeting of the [Unionist Free Trade] Club, whether those gentlemen still desired to maintain their connexion with the Unionist Party and whether they were still Unionists in anything but name." We may add that in quoting this passage our object is by no means to convict Mr, Austen Chamberlain of inconsistency, but merely to show that we were not guilty of an unjustifiable attack upon him.
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