Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/105

 His remarkable self-possession, his detractors in Parliament have been pleased to call overweening self-confidence. It is really nothing of the kind. There are more parliaments than that mongrel thing which assembles at St. Stephen's to do little but mischief. Is there not the town council of Birmingham, the threshold of which it is as difficult for a Tory to pass as for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? and has not Mr. Chamberlain for years sat princeps inter pares in that Radical Witanagemot, playing the part of a terrestrial Providence to an entire community? If Parliament could be constituted as the town council of Birmingham is constituted, then Mr. Chamberlain might begin to respect it. As it is, he feels that it is below rather than above the level of his experience. The parliamentary machine is vaster than the municipal; but its mechanism is less perfect, and the results are every way less satisfactory. If he were asked whether the town council of Birmingham could not manage the affairs of the nation better than the entire paraphernalia of Queen, Lords, and Commons, I have little doubt what his answer would be; and I am not at all sure that he would be wrong.

Parliament has, in fact, reached an unparalleled state of incompetency and inertia: and it is only men like Mr. Chamberlain, who come to it with fresh eyes and with an undoubted capacity for the conduct of affairs, that are able to estimate its performances at their true value. Mr. Chamberlain has shown himself to be what I may call a great municipal statesman; and, being so, he has perpetually before him a valuable standard of comparison, such as is not possessed in an equal degree by any other member of Parliament. No one else