In this contrast between the earlier and the later parts of the political career the malevolent critic, no doubt, found the materials for his comparison between Rabagas and Mr. Chamberlain. For there can be no denying that Mr. Chamberlain began his public life as an eloquent, an unsparing, and apparently a convinced champion of democracy against the aristocracy, the privileged orders, and the Conservative party, and that he is now a leading member of a Conservative Government, and goes further than most of his colleagues would be likely to go in his hostility to Radical measures and to Radical men. Moreover, Mr. Chamberlain, who during the earlier part of his public life belonged to the party most strenuously opposed to all unnecessary wars, and especially wars which had annexation for their object, has been the chief Ministerial promoter of the late war in South Africa, a war which had for its object the subjugation of two independent republics in order to bring them under the Imperial flag of England. No one, therefore, could have been much surprised when the unfriendly critic fancied that he could discover at least a certain superficial resemblance between the career of Rabagas and the career of Mr. Chamberlain. I have been a close observer of much of Mr. Chamberlain's public life, and for some time we were thrown a good deal into Parliamentary and political association. He came into the House of Commons not very long before I had the honor of obtaining a seat there, and his fame had preceded him so far that his entrance into Parliament was looked upon by everybody as a coming event, in the days when he had not yet been elected to represent the constituency of Birmingham. Birmingham was at that time one of the most thoroughly Radical cities in England. John Bright once said that as the sea, wherever you dip a cup into it, will be found to be salt, so the constituency of Birmingham, wherever you test it, will be found to be Radical. Birmingham could claim the merit of being one of the best organized municipalities in England. Its popular educational institutions were excellent; its free libraries might have won the admiration of a citizen of Boston, Massachusetts; its police arrangements were efficient; its sanitation might well have been the envy of London, and the general intelligence of its citizens was of the highest order. Now, it was in this enlightened, progressive, and capable community that Mr. Chamberlain won his first fame. He is not a Birmingham man by birth. He was, I believe, born and brought up on the south side of London, and was educated at University College School, London. But at an early age he settled in Birmingham, and became a member of his father's manufacturing firm there. Very soon he rose to great distinction as a public speaker and as a member of the local corporation, and three times was elected chief magistrate of Birmingham. We began soon to hear a great deal of him in London. It must have been