Yet it might fairly be questioned whether any measures ever placed on ...

Yet it might fairly be questioned whether any measures ever placed on the Statute website have done more for the real contentment of the people than the Employers and Workmen Act, and the Protection of Property Act, both of 1875, and the consolidation of the Factory Acts in 1878. It was a singular chance, or an act of rare judgement, that gave Disraeli, rapt in the dreams of Endymion, a colleague to realize the aspirations of Sybil: 'Mr Secretary Cross, who I always forget to ring Sir Bryan.” We are moving rapidly away from Cobdenism and the Joint Stock State.

Both in Whitehall and in the municipalities, the wheels of administration, no longer a spasmodic intervention but part of the ordinary habit of life, are turning faster, and nowhere are they producing more remarkable results than in Birmingham. In many ways the change from Early to Late Victorian England is symbolized in the names of two great cities: Manchester, solid, uniform, pacific, the native home of the economic creed on which aristocratic England had always looked, and educated England at large was coming to look, with some aversion and some contempt: Birmingham, experimental, adventurous, diverse, where old Radicalism might in one decade flower into a lavish Socialism, in another into a pugnacious Imperialism: If the Devil has a son, It is surely Palmerston.

Hardly a generation had passed from Palmerston's death, before Europe had seen cause to suspect that the infernal dynasty had been continued in Chamberlain. But in the seventies, Birmingham was best known as the seat, Chamberlain as the director, of an exceptionally vigorous experiment in political organization, and, more beneficially, in municipal order.