example in his own life, and she could not rise superior to her disappointment.

Moreover, their position towards the world was an essentially false and unstable basis for the realization of his generous but chimerical ideal. They were both bound hand and foot-as we all are- by the conditions in which they lived. Three hundred years later, like Thais, like Pelagia, she might have become, as Plessis says, "a Christian or a saint." But Cynthia belonged to the Augustan Age, and Propertius had only wanted to make her an honest woman. Alas, that was impossible.

Johns Hopkins University.

KIRBY FLOWER SMITH.

JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN AND TARIFF REFORM

It is now a little over thirteen years since that fifteenth of May 1903 when Mr. Chamberlain startled the readers of the breakfast papers by his announcement of a new political and economic creed, that Britain should adopt such a tariff as would enable her to offer a preference to her colonies and retaliate against the discriminatory tariffs of other countries. Few announcementsunless that of Peel's conversion to the repeal of the corn laws— have proved so great a political sensation, none has cut a deeper furrow across the political levels of the time.

To explain how Mr. Chamberlain came to take up this cause is the purpose of this paper, to trace the course of the movement from its inception in 1903 to its seeming abandonment in 1913, and to analyze the effects of that movement upon the general course of English politics at home and abroad. How it alarmed Germany, how it reunited the Liberal Party, how it hurried on social-democratic legislation, and, by drawing attention to colonial problems, gave momentum to the movement for colonial defence, to show these consequences may serve to interpret the abstract and brief chronicles of our time. Already the war has made the story of the Chamberlain programme seem a far-off thing out of past history. But with the plans for commercial retaliation recently devised by the Allies, and with the growing bitterness engendered of the war, it is unsafe to say how soon Mr. Chamberlain's plan may be requickened and realized. Whether that happens or not, the narrative of its course deserves telling and comment.

As everybody knows, Mr. Chamberlain entered politics an advanced radical. As mayor of Birmingham he got himself suspected of dangerous social ideas; as a young member of Parliament he became identified with radical policies abhorrent not only to the Conservatives but to the large Whig element in the Liberal Party. From that time until his shift of party position in 1885 he remained an extremist; he supported franchise reform up to the hilt; he believed in manhood suffrage, in progressive taxation, and in the improvement of laborers' cottages;

he talked of reforms of land tenure and of the compulsory purchase of land for cottages. Indeed, he was a sort of John the Baptist to Lloyd George, and he was a good thirty years ahead of the Welsh reformer. He was not only a social reformer, but what he himself would have later styled a "Little-Englander"; he had no sympathy with Lord Beaconsfield, and decried the "vulgar patriotism of the music halls." It was on Home Rule that Mr. Chamberlain broke with his party and carried with him the group who became known as Liberal Unionists. As a Liberal Unionist and at length a Unionist he continued to press policies of social reform until 1895, when he became Secretary for Colonies. In that office his mind with its facility for kindling to new interests turned to the question of imperial unity. Under the intensity of his new zeal for commercial union the earlier radicalism gradually withered. The social reformer disappeared from the screen and the outlines of an imperialist statesman began to grow clear. "The greatest common obligation of Britain and her colonies," he declared, "was imperial defence," the greatest interest was imperial trade. "Imperial defence is only another name for the protection of imperial commerce," and both deserved consideration by a Council of the Empire. "We have a great example before us in the creation of the German Empire. . . . It commenced with the union of two states which now form the great Empire in a commercial Zollverein. Gradually national objects and interests were introduced. . . . . It developed until it became a bond of unity and the basis of the German Empire." Thus Mr. Chamberlain was drawing lessons from German history, and was fastening his faith in the solidarity of economic ties. Little Englanders had now become anathema. He had come a long way; he had entirely shifted his interest, but he was not yet ready to take up with the policy that was later to be attached to his name. He was explicit in stating that Britain could not offer any preferential arrangement to her colonies. "The foreign trade of this country is so large and the foreign trade of the colonies is comparatively so small." If on occasion he played with the idea of a great British customs union that would have meant a partial relinquishment of English free trade, he did no more than play with it.

Whatever his drift of mind, he stood sturdily by free trade-until his announcement of 1903.

To understand how he came to change in that year, it is necessary to review briefly the progress of the movement for colonial preference. It is first heard of in recent times at the Colonial Conference of 1887 when Mr. Hofmeyr from the Cape proposed that a general tariff of 2 per cent should be imposed upon all goods coming from outside Great Britain and her colonies. The plan for some such customs union was brought up at various meetings of Chambers of Commerce during the next few years, but did not win significant recognition until the Colonial Conference held at Ottawa in 1894. That Conference expressed an opinion in favor of a preferential arrangement between Great Britain and her colonies. It resolved further that until Great Britain should see her way clear to joining in such an arrangement it was desirable that the colonies should go ahead with it on their own account, a resolution that had no immediate outcome save in Canada. The Dominion, which in 1894 had reduced the tariff on over 600 articles, in 1897 gave British goods a preference of 25 per cent and in 1900 raised that preference to 33 per cent. This step was the work of the Liberal Party in Canada, and was dictated by two considerations, a desire to lessen the general burden of the tariff, and a wish to meet the criticism that the Liberal Party was unfriendly to England. What had been the attitude of Mr. Chamberlain towards this movement? Mr. Chamberlain had long been a consistent free-trader; he had declared that any tariff spelled destruction to the poor man; at a later time, when the remission of the sugar bounties had been broached, he was careful to show that the effect of such a measure would be to put a tax of something over a million pounds a year on the working classes in order to give that sum to the West Indian planters. When he became Secretary for Colonies and an advocate of commercial union, he remained, though now and again leaning towards some preferential arrangement, a believer in free trade for England.

What led to his change of position? The causes may be summarized under five headings: the discontent in his own part of

England due to the decline of trade; the Sugar Convention of 1902; Germany's retaliation against Canada for her preference to England; the wheat tariff of 1902; and the Colonial Conference of that same year.

Mr. Chamberlain had lived all his life in Birmingham; he had been in business there. He had seen the iron and steel trade falling off. The United States and Germany were outstripping England in iron and steel manufacture; they were outstripping her in other manufactures, and the whole of north England was feeling the effect. That much-revered character, the hard-headed business man, was ready for that simplest explanation,-German and American tariffs and English free trade; he was to find in Mr. Chamberlain a willing spokesman.

The influence of the Sugar Convention deserves mention. For half a century the nations of Europe had been giving heavy bounties for the protection of beet sugar. Bestowed at first to encourage an agricultural industry, those bounties had developed the production of sugar to a point beyond the needs of the manufacturing nations. It became necessary to find an export trade and, with all the markets in neighboring nations shut off by tariffs, Great Britain was the only large outlet. The surplus

sugar of Europe was thrown upon the English market at prices so low that the British West Indian planters found it wellnigh impossible to compete. The British government, unable to make any adjustment with the continental powers, finally threatened in 1902 to put up a tariff equivalent to the bounties upon European sugar. In the Brussels Sugar Convention the bounties were withdrawn, and in consequence the price of sugar was lifted to a point where the West Indian planters had a chance in the market. The significance of the series of events was twofold: it afforded proof of the possible value of retaliation or threatened retaliation, and it offered practical illustration of the policy of assisting colonies at the expense of the mother country.

The negotiations with Germany over Canadian tariffs undoubtedly had a bearing on Mr. Chamberlain's change of position. The Canadian government, before it gave a preference to British products, asked to be relieved from the treaty of 1865