Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/106

 stands exactly on the same political plane; and no one in so brief a space—it is scarcely ten years since he made his first speech in support of Mr. Dixon's candidature for Birmingham—ever contrived to attach to himself a more numerous and respectable following in the country.

Mr. Chamberlain was born in London in July, 1836. He is consequently in his forty-fourth year; but in appearance he is more like a man of thirty-four than of forty-four. The Chamberlains were originally a family of Wiltshire yeomanry, settled at Shrivenham; but, for a hundred years previous to the removal of the late Mr. Chamberlain to Birmingham, they had carried on, from father to son, on the same spot in Milk Street, Cheapside, and under the same name, an extensive business as leather-merchants and shoe-manufacturers. In religion the family was Unitarian, and almost, as a matter of course, Radical in politics. "Take a thorn-bush," said the once renowned Abd-el-Kader, "and sprinkle it for a whole year with water: it will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will always produce dates." And so it was with Mr. Chamberlain. He was not left without culture; for a Unitarian upbringing is generally an education in itself: but for one that has since evinced so marked a capacity for literary expression, both spoken and written, his scholastic training appears to have been but meagre. He was, indeed, a pupil of University College School for some time; but at the early age of sixteen he was put to business.

In his eighteenth j^ear his father became one of the partners of the great screw-manufacturing firm of Nettlefold & Chamberlain at Birmingham, and thither the