The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1898-10-15

| met i'm 1850 and became the author Of
| Tn" bankruptcy act, now the law OF
| England. He remained with Gladstone
until 1856, when, i'm a division of sent-
ment with the grand old man over
| home rule, he resigned and opposed him
politically forever after lie was a
member Of the fishery commission sent
| to the United states i'm 1858 and Sccre-
tary Of state under Salisbury. He be-
came leader of the liberal l-unionlst par
| " after the retirement of Lord Hart
| inGton. In 1888 he married Miss Mary
! EndiCOtt daughter of Grover CleVe-
lands first secretary of war. She is
his third wife and he has a son 10y his
| first wife older than her.
In his early years Mr.. Chamberlain
was a socialist, drifting with that into
| what is termed radical English poll
tics. Since 1856 he has grown more con-
servativc. shown preference for inn
perialism and unfication of all the in
tcrests of the empire. The changes in
his opinions on questions of this char
| acter are no more remarka hle than
those which took place in the political
| evolution of CASTELAR, of Spain. But
through all his career Mr. Chamber
show that he kept in touch with the
British public and that what he said
was not mere opinion of his own.
Better than any living man i'm England
today he knows the strength and the
weakness of his nation. A terrible deal
er in facts, he is not the kind of man
to blind himself to conditions surround
ing England which make it absolutely
necessary that her career of splendid
isolation" should come To an end He
recognizes, as many others do. that
continental Europe has but one hope
the humiliation of Great Britain-and
that Great Britain in the end can only
prevent that by an alliance with the
United States. He meant that when
he said:
II would go so far as to say that,
terrible as war may he. even war it.
self would he Cheaply purchased if in
a great and noble cause the stars and
stripes and the union jack should
wave together over an Anglo-SaXOn
alliance"
\ great many people call that clap
trap and J. ID. O'Connel of the treas
ury department has written a furious
article in which he demonstrates to his
own satisfaction that the American
people are not of Anglo-SaXon stock
and that such a thing as an Anglo
Saxon alliance is an impossibility. His
demonstration is to the effect that the
English" sO-Called, were properly
never a race. but Il conGlomeratiOn Of
races, and that the English people at
large are really of Celtic origin and
that the American people are a COM
binatiOn Of the TeutOns and the Celts.
In dersOn of Mr.. Chamberlain ne
writes
| Tho SaXOnS were a low German tribe
that dwelt at and near the mouth of
the Elbe about 1000 years ago. How
they happened to get there nobody
knows, hut from the coldnes of their
blood and the sluggishness Of their
brain | opine that they evoluted from
the oyster. Charlemagne conquered
their country, showed the Christian re-
liGiOn down their goodies with the
business end of a club and persuaded
them to take a bath. The SaXons ap-
pear to have never been worth much
in either peace or war. In England
they amalgamated with the Goths,
Frisians, Danes, SouweGians, Sean
dinavians. Morse pirates, Normans,
Kelts, and the riff-raff thugs and
thieves who had left the continent for
the continents good. Your trueborn
Englishman is an chronological ollapor-
rida composed of the bobtail and rag
tail of all Gods universe.
This will not disturb Mr.. Chamber
lain at all. He probably would as leave
substitute for AnglO-SaXon the words
English for that is what he
meant, and that is why Madrid jour-
nails fairly frothed when the report of
his speech reached them. He is business
all over. and his speech meant business
for England A man who could COM
pei his adopted town to purchase gas
; works with a present capital value of
Sll 100000 and an annual profit of $50.
600, at the same time reducing the cost
Of gas to the people shilling, is
dreadfully in earnest wherever you
take him. He did the same thing with
the birmingham WaterwOrks. now val
uCd at 81, 100000, and which have re-
duced water rates $4,000 per year for
the consumers He bought the central
slums" of Birmingham for $S,OOO,O 900
and constructed Corporation street out
of them. When the leases there fall. in
,, some fifty years hence. Birmingham
| VIII De the llCneSt CIVIC corpora ton in
, the world. Today, thanks to Mr.
Chamberlain, the tax rates Of Brming-
! ham are less than they We're fifty years
ago, and the total charge is rather
more than 20 shillings per head of pop
, ulatiOn or one-ffth of the charge of the
| local administration of Boston. OF
course, all this work smacks of radi.
cal republicanism, and rightly so. anG
, | continental Europe fears republican.
\ ism as much today as it did NapeOleOr
, ! a century ago. MonarChs Of Germany
Austria, Spain have no regard for such
an utterance as this from Chamber,
: lain:
! u am confident in the capacity of 2
l wise government resting upon the rep,
Z resentation of the whole people to dc
something to add to the sum of human
I | happiness, to smooth the way for mis-.
fortune and poverty. We are told thai
this country England) is the paradise
of the rich. 1t should be our duty tC