Joseph Chamberlain, Radical
By LORD EL-STACE PERCY.
The Life of Joseph Chamberlain. Vol. 1. 1836-1885. By J. L. Garvin. (Macmillan. 21s.) POLITICAL biography is a dangerous trade. Nothing fades more quickly than, so to speak, the foliage of statesmanship— the Parliamentary situations, the platform campaigns, letters between colleagues and conversations between chanceries, the mountains of labour that go to the making of one legislative or diplomatic mouse. Yet the foliage fades long before it falls ; it is usually only the next generation but one that can see the wood for the trees. Our fathers' politics are less intelligible to us than our grandfathers', and the lag has been immensely accentuated by the War. Few recent biographers seem to have realized how irritating to the political mind of to-day is the record of pre-War controversies.
The highest praise that can be given to the first volume of Mr. Garvin's great work is, perhaps, that, for all its length, it gives the impression of starkness. True, he has been fortunate both in his period and in his hero. The story opens nearly a century ago, and closes nearly fifty years ago. the realities of that period have begun to emerge. To the contemporary mind, education in 1870 stands out as an issue, while in 1902 it seems little more than a fracas ; the " three F's " (Free Seh)ols, Free Church, z:nd Free Land), and the " Radical Programme " were ideas, the 1909 Budget an improvisat ion. In these realities Joseph Chamberlain is, moreover, inevitably the central figure ; the period and the hero cannot help visualizing each other. But, with all these advantages, Mr. Garvin's story owes much to his art. In other pages, we may poke fun at his fancy for putting the world at the crossroads every Sunday morning, but his virtue as a historian is that he has an eye for events. He knows that things happen ; that they do not merely grow: Mr. Chesterton was once moved to ask, " is there no steepness in the stairs of hell ? " ; and, without bringing hell or heaven into the question, there is a slithering quality in most bio- graphies, as if a man or a nation was never faced by a choice of made an opportunity. Here, however, we feel the steep-. Ness of the stairs—each step a block of real issues and deliberately chosen work.
• At first the story can only slope, for politically Chamberlain deVeloped late ; but even here Mr. Garvin brings out, what Will be new to many readers of to-day, the practical interest! in education which fired him explosively into public life any thirty-four. Thereafter, the steps are clearly marked echication, municipal politics and the mayoralty, the House pf Commons, party organization and the caucus, the Cabinet, the Board of Trade, Ireland, the franchise, the Radical Programme. Each step has its crowd of incidents and Mr. Garvin's research throws new light on them, but they are not allowed to obscure events or to distract attention from the march of the narrative.
But the real test of a biography of Joseph Chamberlain is, perhaps, a rather different one. He was not, one feels, a great originator. Even in municipal politics Birminghani followed other cities.: He had not-even 'One suspects; that
natural instinct for policy which enables the great statesman to move surely from the first, even in an unfamiliar atmosphere. Both in imperial and in foreign affairs we scent to see him stumbling, at first, and groping. He had supreme executive abilities,_ but such abilities, even when equally at home in business development, public administration and party management, do not make a statesman.. If that had been all, one would be left to regret that a great organizer should have so largely given up to the 'frustrations and futilities of national politics what was meant for the practical reconstruction of community life.
From one point of view, this book is a damning picture of administrative genius losing itself in the sands of Parliamentary democracy. But there was some- thing more. " Talking to Chamberlain, when I remember him first," said a contemporary once, " was like talking to a thunderstorm." The one great task of Chamber- lain's biographer is to bring out that quality, and Mr. Garvin's real achievement is that he does, on the whole, bring it out. He shows its origin in experienced understanding of the ordinary man's needs, transmuted to passionate power, but power harnessed. to swing the hammer of an intensely practical mind. He shows its result in a peculiar capacity for focussing practical problems, for mobilizing opinion instead of merely rousing it. The impression is built up throughout the book, and is driven home towards the end in a passage of fine English, from which a few words at least must be quoted : " These speeches have structure and proportion. They have style, if style is a fine unity of expression unmarred by mannerisms in detail. . . . Yet with this severity of restraint he is not cold ; it is a sort of incandescent. economy. ... • And in one respect at least -. . . he has genius. It is a genius of incitement exercised, not by expansive utterance, but by controlled passion' . . the suggestion of concentrated tem- perament, the hint of danger in the underswell of his delivery."
This is an unfinished story, but the tragedy is that we know it will never be finished. In 1885 Chamberlain the Radical, with the franchise won and his social programthe launched. stands, not at the beginning of a chapter, but at its close. He will leave his task to others, but to hone who have both the fire and the forged vessel to contain it. Never surely. has there 'been a more impressive instance of a Man being girt by others ancrearried whither he would not. We see already the crowding in of seeming aecidenti which will block his path : Pamelrs entanglements and 'Gordon's death and " Gladstone's innate desire in his seventy-sixth year to continue and prevail." A nation which has been flooded by reform when it might have been reconstructed by it may well indulge a futile regret ; but it is more significant to remember that one of the " three F's " still remains wholly unfulfilled. " 'want to increase the productionof the land and' I want'to Multiply small owners and tenants." In that field Chamberlains succession is still vacant ; how long will it remain so
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