Chamberlain had indulged when out of office. Eventually it was the
Liberal and not the Unionist party that carried an Old Age Pensions
scheme through parliament, during the 1908 session, when Mr Chamberlain
was _hors de combat_.

From January 1896 (the date of the Jameson Raid) onwards South Africa
demanded the chief attention of the colonial secretary (see SOUTH
AFRICA, and for details TRANSVAAL). In his negotiations with President
Kruger one masterful temperament was pitted against another. Mr
Chamberlain had a very difficult part to play, in a situation dominated
by suspicion on both sides, and while he firmly insisted on the rights
of Great Britain and of British subjects in the Transvaal, he was the
continual object of Radical criticism at home. Never has a statesman's
personality been more bitterly associated by his political opponents
with the developments they deplored. Attempts were even made to ascribe
financial motives to Mr Chamberlain's actions, and the political
atmosphere was thick with suspicion and scandal. The report of the
Commons committee (July 1897) definitely acquitted both Mr Chamberlain
and the colonial office of any privity in the Jameson Raid, but Mr
Chamberlain's detractors continued to assert the contrary. Opposition
hostility reached such a pitch that in 1899 there was hardly an act of
the cabinet during the negotiations with President Kruger which was not
attributed to the personal malignity and unscrupulousness of the
colonial secretary. The elections of 1900 (when he was again returned,
unopposed, for West Birmingham) turned upon the individuality of a
single minister more than any since the days of Mr Gladstone's
ascendancy, and Mr Chamberlain, never conspicuous for inclination to
turn his other cheek to the smiter, was not slow to return the blows
with interest.

Apart from South Africa, his most important work at this time was the
successful passing of the Australian Commonwealth Act (1900), in which
both tact and firmness were needed to settle certain differences between
the imperial government and the colonial delegates.

Mr Chamberlain's tenure of the office of colonial secretary between 1895
and 1900 must always be regarded as a turning-point in the history of
the relations between the British colonies and the mother country. His
accession to office was marked by speeches breathing a new spirit of
imperial consolidation, embodied either in suggestions for commercial
union or i