MR. CHAMBERLAIN.
MB. CHAMBERLAIN is a great statesman and a great patriot, and the Empire owes him a debt of gratitude that must never be forgotten, but he has one memorable defect. He does not realise that things cannot be and not be at the same time. It is a common defect in the politician, but usually it is linked with a certain feeble- ness of grasp and weakness of purpose. In Mr. Chamber- lain there are no such balancing drawbacks. His strength of will, his eagerness, his alertness, all combine to exag- gerate the defect. Sleepy, inert men may think that things can be and not be at the same time, but they do not attempt to bring the matter to the test. They drift and let drift. A man like Mr. Chamberlain insists on forcing the pace. Once imbued with an idea, he will not rest till he has brought it to the front. He has no doubts about any scheme he has taken up, but believes in it passionately. He never stops to inquire whether after all the foundation of his plan inay not be a paradox. He is sure it is set firm on the rock. He may invite criticism, for he is so keen about his scheme that he wishes to improve it in every possible way. But though he likes criticism which will prove useful and helpful in construction, he will not brook opposition if the opposition is real, and so essentially destructive. This determination to push matters through, this intense belief in any project he takes up, is in many ways most admirable. We feel that Mr. Chamberlain really cares. His is no flabby, half-hearted approval, but a real enthusiasm, and when his cause is a sound one, as we gladly and gratefully admit that it is in nine cases out of ten, the nation reaps the benefit. When, however, he has, as in the present case, built his scheme on a paradox— the paradox that things can be and not be at the same time, that you can combine at one and the same time the • advantages of Free-trade and Protection, and that you can let the Colonies and the Mother-country each and all have a free hand fiscally, and yet bind them by a system of preferential duties—Mr. Chamberlain's magnificent driving powers are a source of danger to the nation. He climbs on to the box, seizes the reins in his firm and steady grasp, calls to the helpers to let go, and with a crack of the whip and a splendid blast from the post-horn the Imperial mail starts off amid the plaudits of the crowd, sometimes quite in the right direction, but sometimes, too, down one of "those roads that lead nowhere," or actually over a precipice. It is always magnificent, but, alas! it is not always sound coa,chmanship.
As may be supposed, the more sober portion of the com- munity are filled with dire dismay when they see, as in the present instance, the gallant coachman and the national coach setting out along a road. that ends in a precipice. But though they are alarmed, and have cause to be alarmed, they still are able to take heart from former experiences. They know that in spite of all remonstrances the coach will be galloped to the very edge of the abyss, but that when just at the edge the splendid nerve and splendid powers of driving possessed by the coachman will avail to extricate himself and his charge from the difficulties in which his rashness has plated them. Just before it is too late he will contrive to turn the coach round, and the team, safe if somewhat depressed, will be brought back, and we shall all be praising the skill of the man who could manage to get so well out of so bad a scrape. To drop our metaphor, Mr. Chamberlain, though so rash in thought and in abstract conclusions, always shows a wonderful ability as soon as he is brought face to face with a, practical and concrete situation. When it comes to definite action he is seldom at fault. Facts, when once he can get really in touch with them, seem to inspire him to do the right thing. He is, no doubt, "for thought too rash," but happily he is not "for action too refined. His reason is perpetually leading him wrong, but if he can only arrive at a concrete situation his instinct keeps him straight. Before the Home-rule split actually took place Mr. Chamberlain, as we all know, indulged in the most dangerous and delusive ideas as to a scheme for Provincial Councils, which was to be- and not be Home-rule at one and the same time. With. the notion that his power and energy could force the two incompatibles to fuse, he light-heartedly entered Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet. But when Mr. Gladstone's Home- rule Bill was actually- drawn, and Mr. Chamberlain was face to face with the facts, he saw things as they really were, and saved the situation by his resignation. . Yet strangely enough he had not learned the lesson that paradoxes make bad foundations. The very next year he was willing and eager to enter on a round-table Conference which was, in plain words, to draw up a plan under which oil and water should mix, and should allow the maintenance of the Union to be and not be at the same time. Here again, however, his strong common-sense when confronted with actual facts saved him, and he left the round-table Confer- ence a firmer Unionist than ever. Take another example of Mr. Chamberlain's difficulty in realising that things cannot be and not be at the same time,—his virtual proposal for an alliance between Britain, Germany, and the United States. The thing from the first moment it was proposed was an impossibility. That we could form, if not an alliance in name with America, yet an understanding based on a com- munity of interest and on kinship, was clear enough. That either we or the United States, or both, could be in alliance with Germany—though no doubt we could both be on terms of peace and friendship with her—was a capital example of his belief that things can be and not be at the same time. But though Mr. Chamberlain trotted his team up to the edge of the precipice, he turned round in time, and, now we venture to think that no statesman is more convinced than himself that the foreign policy of the Kaiser and our own foreign policy are in no sense compatible. Yet another example. Whether Mr. Chamberlain ever personally favoured the suspension of the Cape Constitution we do not know ; but at any rate he allowed the question to be mooted in South Africa, and did not the moment it was suggested place his veto on it. That he did not impose that veto was, at any rate, a sign that he did not realise that here again he was acting on his belief that things can be and not be at the same time. Yet the moment the proposal came within the sphere of immediate political action Mr. Chamberlain realised the danger impending, and in one of the ablest of modern State papers put an end to the rash and ill-considered scheme.
The new proposals of Mr. Chamberlain for revolution- ising the fiscal and political policy of the Empire constitute the crowning example. If ever a scheme was based on the delusion that things can be and not be at the same time, it is the proposal for some system of preferential duties within the Empire under which we are to remain Free- traders and the Colonies are to remain Protectionists, and everybody is to make his own tariff, while at the same time we are all to be somehow united in the bonds of a preferential or differential tariff. Depend upon it, this gigantic paradox, after inflaming the minds of half the people of the Empire and raising false hopes from the tropics to the Pole, will burst and collapse like an ill-filled balloon. Mr. Chamberlain as soon as he sits down to construct his tariff, or, rather, to discuss his tariff in detail with the representatives of the Colonies—for we should not be surprised if, with his usual alertness and energy, he had already con- structed a preferential tariff—will discover a thousand practical difficulties, and will realise that his scheme is impossible. Then, like the sensible, businesslike man that he is, he will no doubt turn round, drop the scheme of preferential tariffs, and give his attention to some other Imperial need. Curiously enough, the country will not be angry with him, in spite of his having taken a wrong path and shown so headstrong a determination to go down it regardless of all warnings. And the country will be right. Beyond question Mr. Chamberlain runs great risks and does a good deal of harm by these sudden fits and starts of policy; but still, he is a man, and a man, too, who 18 fearless and strong, even if he is rash and headstrong and too much inclined to trust to foundations of paradox. After all, if a politician is a man there is always hope. He can be kept in order and controlled by public opinion even when most rash. When a politician has no manliness in him he suffers from a defect which can never be made good. Happily both our leading Unionist statesmen possess this quality of manliness. Mr. Balfour has defects of his own which we have never been willing to gloze over or conceal, but he too is a man, and. when roused by the stimulus of great events, as during the late war, he has shown himself not only capable of patriotic devotion, but what is far rarer and far more valuable, of true serenity and steadfastness of mind. Thus Mr. Chamberlain will survive, and rightly survive, even this new and astounding example he has given us of his belief that things can be and not be at the same time if only they are a little way off. Zollvereins and prefer- ential duties and taxes on the food of the people in the alleged interest of "real Free-trade" will go the way of all such chimeras; but Mr. Chamberlain will remain to do good practical work for the Empire. We shall have, no doubt, a few more speeches and a few more leading articles, but by this time next year the Zollverein idea will be as much a thing of the . past as the proposal for a German alliance.
We have dwelt above on Mr. Chamberlain's defects as a stataawiap, for they are in the ascendant for the moment, But let no one think that we are blind to his splendid ser- vices to the Empire, or that we do not realise that the great things he has done far outweigh the rash things be has tried to do. But because we are proud of Mr. Chamberlain as a great English statesman, and. are grateful for his public services, we are not going to be silent in slavish adoration when we see him intent on a mad exploit like that he has just embarked. upon. In his present mood even the respect his great services demand shall not pre- vent him hearing the truth from those who admire his per- sonality and acknowledge his great work for the nation.
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