Mr. Chamberlain on Thursday delivered a speech to his con-
stituents of West Birmingham, important mainly for his earnest reiteration of his Unionist sympathies. He commenced by denying the foolish report that he had accepted a mission to Washington in order to shirk the struggle at home, and he ended with an eloquent defence of the Government for taking measures for the security of liberty and law. If any section of the Irish people desire farther reforms, or even great consti- tutional changes, the English people will consider them fairly and favourably, "but they will never yield one jot, they will never bate one hair's-breadth, to the noisy threats of a clamorous and disloyal faction." "History tells us how, in the time of the Spanish Armada, all differences were hushed and all contentions silenced, while all classes and all sects and all opinions of the people united against the common foe. Our danger is greater than theirs, for our enemy is within our gates, and our foes are they of our own household ; but all the more it is our duty to join with every honest man and with every loyal citizen to resist to the last the attacks which still threaten the strength and the influence, and even the existence, of our own country!' Those sentences do not sound as if the speaker doubted of his course, or were prepared for an alliance with "the foe within our gates," nor does the prediction which he confidently ventured that the agitation which has thrown us so far back will shortly collapse.
