Mr. Chamberlain addressed a private meeting of the Executive Committee
of the National Radical Union on Thursday at the Grand Hotel, Birmingham, arguing that the time had come for Liberal Unionists to withdraw from the Liberal Association of Birmingham, in which they now possess no adequate representation at all, and to organise a local Liberal Unionist Association of their own. As a result of the elections of a few weeks ago, in only two of the divisional councils of the Liberal Association can the Unionists now claim a majority, and yet they are so numerous that Mr. Chamberlain entirely denies that they ought to be in the helpless position they really occupy. At the Parliamentary polls the Unionists hold their majority, and he believes that their defeat in these local elections was due to votes secured at sparsely attended meetings, "into which their opponents had imported bodies of adherents, many of whom were non-Liberals, non-voters, or under age, and some of whom had been induced to attend by means which he would not describe, but would only say of them that they were non-political." We do not know whether these charges can be sustained or not, but we feel sure that even if the Liberal Unionists had held their ground successfully in the
Birmingham Liberal Association, the Gladstonians would have had to secede, as Mr. Chamberlain now sees that the Unionists must secede. Mr. Chamberlain's proposals for founding a Birmingham Liberal Unionist Association were carried with great enthusiasm.
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