On Monday, Mr. Chamberlain made one of his most effective
speeches, in an out-of-the-way district of Birmingham,—a school- room at Little Heath. After pointing out how the Conservatives made a great show of domestic reforms at the opening of the Session, but how many of their legislative eggs are either addled, or turn out in the end to have produced geese when they professed to be the eggs of swans, he gave a very happy illustration of the Conservative dread of Mr. Gladstone :—" I was talking to a friend the other day, and he told me that he had been speaking to a Birmingham merchant, who happens to be a Conservative ; and this gentleman had been complaining of Mr. Gladstone, of his restless spirit and the con- fusion into which he had thrown the country ; and my friend at last asked him, 'Supposing, when you have got to your club to- day, you should hear that the Tory Government had resigned office, and that the Queen had sent for Mr. Gladstone,—what would you do?' Well,' said the merchant, 'to tell you the truth, I should buy all the copper I could lay my hands upon, and wait for the rise." Mr. Chamberlain was also very amusing in his vindication of the consistency of Lord Beaconsfield. The Prime Minister, he said, had, by his own confession, secured the independence and integrity of the Turkish Empire, by giving up Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria, and taking Cyprus for himself. It was not, then, very surprising that he should propose to maintain the independence and integrity of Afghani- stan, by invading that country and occupying its chief cities. To the present House of Commons, Mr. Chamberlain wished a short shrift and no mercy. When it descended to the tomb, "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung," the time for the nation to take its destiny out of the hands of the present dangerous and mischievous Government would have come.
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