ent of social
and industrial London, with Sir Robert Herbert as chairman, and
Professor W.A.S. Hewins as secretary. The name of "Tariff Commission,"
given to this voluntary and unofficial body, was a good deal criticized,
but though flouted by the political free-traders it set to work in
earnest, and accumulated a mass of evidence as to the real facts of
trade, which promised to be invaluable to economic inquirers. On January
18th, 1904, Mr Chamberlain ended his series of speeches by a great
meeting at the Guildhall, in the city of London, the key-note being his
exhortation to his audience to "think imperially."

All this activity on Mr Chamberlain's part represented a great physical
and intellectual feat on the part of a man now sixty-seven years of age;
but his bodily vigour and comparatively youthful appearance were
essential features of his personality. Nothing like this campaign had
been known in the political world since Mr Gladstone's Midlothian days;
and it produced a great public impression, stirring up both supporters
and opponents. Free-trade unionists like Lord Goschen and Lord Hugh
Cecil, and the Liberal leaders--for whom Mr Asquith became the principal
spokesman, though Lord Rosebery's criticisms also had considerable
weight--found new matter in Mr Chamberlain's speeches for their
contention that any radical change in the traditional English fiscal
policy, established now for sixty years, would only result in evil. The
broad fact remained that while Mr Chamberlain's activity gathered round
him the bulk of the Unionist members and an enthusiastic band of
economic sympathizers, the country as a whole remained apathetic and
unconvinced. One reason was the intellectual difficulty of the subject
and the double-faced character of all arguments from statistics, which
were either incomprehensible or disputable; another was the fact that
substantially this was a political movement, and that tariff reform was,
after all, only one in a complexity of political issues, most of which
during this period were being interpreted by the electorate in a sense
hostile to the Unionist party. Mr Chamberlain had relied on his personal
influence, which from 1895 to 1902 had been supreme; but his own
resignation, and the course of events, had since 1903 made his
personality less authoritative, and new interests--such as the
opposition to the Education Act, to the heavy taxation, and to Chinese
labour in the Transvaal, and indignati