What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are ca… - Joseph Chamberlain

You are invited to share the privileges and glories of the Empire which is yours as well as ours, and was made by your forefathers as well as ours; and you are also asked to share the burdens of Empire. If I have ever been in any doubt as to what answer you would give it has been removed by my experiences since I have been in South Africa. There is a small minority in the United Kingdom and elsewhere which is apt in great questions of policy to haggle about the cost. A conception of empire will not be gained if treated in a huckstering spirit. (Loud cheers.) The Empire is a great and priceless possession which we cannot weigh in the balances, putting so much empire against so much gold. My opinion is that the peoples of the Colonies will resent any imputation on their loyalty to this great ideal, and will feel no sacrifice too great to maintain their fundamental position. A Canadian statesman has said that the British are now one people, animated by one spirit, and that they shall in future stand shoulder to shoulder in support of their common interests and common rights. (Cheers.) That is the tone in which the matter should be treated. I call on all the colonies to sustain it to the end. If this be achieved I venture to predict that the British Empire, standing four-square to all the winds that blow, will carry down the distant ages these ideals of humanity, justice, and freedom on which they have been based.

The Colonies are prepared to meet us. In return for a very moderate preference they will give us a substantial advantage. They will give us, in the first place—I believe they will reserve to us the trade which we already enjoy. They will arrange for tariffs in the future in order not to start industries in competition with those which are already in existence in the mother country... But they will do a great deal more for you. This is certain. Not only will they enable you to retain the trade which you have, but they are ready to give you preference to all the trade which is now done with them by foreign competitors...We must either draw closer together or we shall drift apart... It is, I believe, absolutely impossible for you to maintain in the long run your present loose and indefinable relations and preserve these Colonies parts of the Empire...Can we invent a tie which must be a practical one, which will prevent separation...I say that it is only by commercial union, reciprocal preference, that you can lay the foundations of the confederation of the Empire to which we all look forward as a brilliant possibility.

He is face to face with the whole population of England and Scotland, reinforced as it will be by at least one-fifth of the population of Ireland itself, and to threaten 32 millions of people with the vengeance of four millions is a rhetorical artifice which is altogether unworthy of Mr. Parnell's power and influence. (Hear, hear.) But it is said by him that justice requires that we should concede to Irishmen an absolute right to self-government. I would reply that that is a right which must be considered in relation to the security and welfare of the other countries in juxtaposition to which Ireland is placed, and with whose interests hers are indissolubly linked. I cannot admit that five millions of Irishmen have any greater inherent right to govern themselves without regard to the rest of the community than would the five millions of persons who inhabit the metropolis.