NEWS OF THE WEEK.
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WITHOUT question the event of the week has been the final, and, we believe, except in time of war, irrevocable relief of the bread of the people from taxation ; and the challenge which Mr. Chamberlain has thrown down to all Free- trade Imperialists,—and also, be it said, to his own colleagues. We must deal with the complicated politico-psychological problem thus created chronologically ; but before we do so we must enter a caveat against a notion, which we not only do not share personally, but are certain is untrue, that Mr. Chamberlain's intention was to injure and undermine his colleagues. Such tactics are foreign to his nature, and in spite of party recriminations, we make bold to assert that Mr.. Chamberlain is no self-seeking intriguer. What has led him into this apparent attack on his own colleagues is that habit of occasionally imagining that things can be and not be at the same time which we have analysed at length elsewhere. His speech at Birmingham was the crowning example, both on the question of Imperialism and Free-trade, and also as regards the solidarity of the Cabinet. He clearly thought, and with his matchless powers of persuasion in- duced his chief for the moment to think so too, that there was nothing incompatible or inconsistent in the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer facing an angry mob of Protectionists in London and declaring that the Corn-tax should not be reimposed, while he was preaching Protec- tionist Imperialism in Birmingham,—a system the first step in which must be a Corn-duty with a Protectionist bias for the Empire.
