Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the Chairman of the Executive Com- mittee
of the Birmingham Education League, Mayor of Birming- ham, Chairman of the Birmingham School Board, and last, not least, author of the punning Radical programme, "free schools, free labour, free land, and a free Church," made a clever speech on Thursday to those Sheffield supporters who are bringing him forward as a candidate for Sheffield at the general election. Ile professed himself an "advanced Liberal" in the sense of wishing to use all possible opportunities "to advance his Liberalism, and not as some politicians did, to use his Liberalism to advance himself." He sneered at the Liberalism of office-seekers as reminding him of "an American road of which he had heard, emigrate ; sneered at the Tories as offering to be lavish "with the kidn the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table," but as refusing the Russia, people any share in the preparation of the meal ; and then went on to declare for "universal suffrage," equal electoral districts, and the aforesaid programme of "free schools, free labour, free land, and a Free Church." On the subject of free land he was not very lucid, and on that of free schools very far indeed from convincing. But his speech was very clever, and unquestionably very " advanced" in the Radical sense. For our own parts, we believe universal suffrage has answered well nowhere, not in the United States, where one hears of nothing but its evils ; not in France, where everyone feels that regress is dangerous and impossible, and yet that regress in this respect, were it pos- sible, might soothe a panic which prevents progress in other directions. Mr. Chamberlain measures the " advance- ment " of Liberalism by quite too external tests. What you want in the suffrage, is to get at the centre of gravity, so to say, of a people's wishes, not at their most headlong elements :—and household suffrage secures the one without the other.
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