CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH, an Eng lish statesman, born in London in July, 1836. He was educated at University College School, and entered his father's screw factory at Birmingham, from which, however, he retired in 1874. He had by this time acquired considerable :celebrity as a Radical politician. In 1868 he was appointed a member of the Bir mingham town-council, was mayor of Birmingham from 1873 to 1876, and chairman of the Birmingham school board from 1874 to 1876. After unsuc cessfully contesting Sheffield against Mr. Roebuck in 1874, he was returned for Birmingham without opposition in June, 1876. He soon made his mark in Parlia ment, and on the return of the Liberals to power in 1880 he was appointed presi dent of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the cabinet. To Mr. Chamberlain's exertions was due the passing of the Bankruptcy Bill, but his efforts to amend the merchant shipping acts were unsuc cessful. Meanwhile his influence was increasing rapidly outside the House; he came to be regarded as the leader of the extreme Radical party. During the last hours of Mr. Gladstone's government he was understood to be opposed to the re newal of the Irish Crimes Act ; and dur ing the general election of 1886 he was most severe in his strictures on the mod erate Liberals, and produced an "unau thorized" program (in opposition to that of Mr. Gladstone), which included the re ad:ustment of taxation, free schools, and the creation of allotments by compulsory purchase. He was returned by the west ern division of Birmingham. On Feb. 1, 1886, he became president of the Local Government Board, but resigned on March 26, because of his strong objec tions to Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule meas ures for Ireland, and after the "Round Table" conference had failed to reunite the Liberal party he assumed an atti tude of uncompromising hostility to his old leader's new policy, and was bitterly assailed by Home Rulers as a renegade.
Ho became leader of the Liberal-Union ists when the Duke of Devonshire went to the Upper House. Lord Salisbury sent him to Washington as commissioner on the Canadian fishery dispute, and in 1895 he was made Colonial minister in the Unionist Cabinet. As such he had, besides sharing the responsibilities of his col leagues, to face the troubles in South Africa, and to cherish closer fellow-feel ing with the Colonies, as by welcoming the colonial ministers and colonial troops to London at the queen's "Diamond Jubi lee" (1897), and by concessions to Cana dian commercial autonomy. He carried the Australian Federation measure in Parliament (1900), and later had to face opposition from within the Liberal party. rn 1903 he brought forward proposals for a system of preferential tariffs with the Colonies and advocated the imposition of a tax on foreign goods. He resigned from the Cabinet in 1903 in order to ad vocate these proposals. He reorganized the Liberal-Unionist party in 1904 as a tariff-reform party. The party was de feated in 1906, but Chamberlain was re elected to the House of Commons. Ill health prevented active participation in politics after 1906, but he continued as P member of the House until 1914, in whirl year he died. In 1888 he was married to Mary, daughter of William C. Endicott, Secretary of War in President Cleve land's first administration.