in issuing leaflets and in work at
by-elections. Discussion proceeded hotly on the merits of a preferential
tariff, and on August 15th a manifesto appeared against it signed by
fourteen professors or lecturers on political economy, including Mr
Leonard Courtney, Professor Edgeworth, Professor Marshall, Professor
Bastable, Professor Smart, Professor J.S. Nicholson, Professor Conner,
Mr Bowley, Mr E. Cannan and Mr L.R. Phelps,--men of admitted competence,
yet, after all, of no higher authority than the economists supporting Mr
Chamberlain, such as Dr Cunningham and Professor Ashley.

Meanwhile, the death of Lord Salisbury (August 22) removed a weighty
figure from the councils of the Unionist party. The cabinet met several
times at the beginning of September, and the question of their attitude
towards the fiscal problem became acute. The public had its first
intimation of impending events in the appearance on September 16th of Mr
Balfour's _Economic Notes on Insular Free Trade_, which had been
previously circulated as a cabinet memorandum. The next day appeared the
Board of Trade Fiscal Blue-book. And on the 18th the resignations were
announced, not only of the more rigid free-traders in the cabinet, Mr
Ritchie and Lord George Hamilton, but also of Mr Chamberlain. Letters in
cordial terms were published, which had passed between Mr Chamberlain
(September 9) and Mr Balfour (September 16). Mr Chamberlain pointed out
that he was committed to a preferential scheme involving new duties on
food, and could not remain in the government without prejudice while it
was excluded from the party programme; remaining loyal to Mr Balfour and
his general objects, he could best promote this course from outside, and
he suggested that the government might confine its policy to the
"assertion of our freedom in the case of all commercial relations with
foreign countries." Mr Balfour, while reluctantly admitting the
necessity of Mr Chamberlain's taking a freer hand, expressed his
agreement in the desirability of a closer fiscal union with the
colonies, but questioned the immediate practicability of any scheme; he
was willing to adopt fiscal reform so far as it covered retaliatory
duties, but thought that the exclusion of taxation of food from the
party programme was in existing circumstances necessary, so long as
public opinion was not ripe. At the same time he welcomed the fact that
Mr Chamberlain's son, Mr Austen Chamberlain, was ready to rema