Mr. Chamberlain was the principal guest of the Birmingham Jewellers'
and Silversmiths' Association on Monday, and spoke for an hour on Imperial policy. Dealing with the charge of unpreparedness in connection with the war, Mr. Chamberlain said it was not wholly accurate. He preferred to say that the Government were insufficiently prepared, and that, like all their advisers, they had underestimated the greatness of the task. The check now felt in the revived prosperity of the two new Colonies Mr. Chamberlain believed to be only tem- porary, but he refrained from mentioning Chinese labour. As regarded the Colonies, he repeated the advice he gave his hearers on a former occasion,—viz., to take them into our counsels. Sir Oliver Lodge had charged him with being a visionary, and he pleaded guilty. "I dream dreams of Empire. My waking thoughts are taken up with it." He saw two alternatives before him,—the decline of Britain from a first to a fifth rate Power, from a planet to an asteroid ; or its renewed and reinvigorated youth as the most important part of the Empire. The policy which he proposed was, in his view, not only calcu- lated to promote the unity of the Empire, but was also most likely to conduce to internal prosperity. Mr. Chamberlain then dealt with the condition of our export trade with pro- tected countries, asserting that "nothing now goes to those foreign countries except items, odds and ends of articles which have some special ground of preference."
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