Joseph Chamberlain and the Genesis of Tariff Reform

Abstract

This paper is concerned solely with the genesis of the 1903 Tariff Reform Movement. Why did a veteran, realistic politician like Joseph Chamberlain challenge Britain's long-sacrosanct free trade policy? What political, economic, social, or other factors influenced him to make his decision? Was he really the originator of the program which he championed? What empirical lessons can be learned about the methodology and rationale of political decision making? The existing scholarly works dealing with the Chamberlain agitation, although exceedingly numerous, provide no really satisfactory answers to these questions. Thus a fresh appraisal of the origins of the Tariff Reform Movement seems clearly warranted.

I

The Liberal journalist-statesman John Morley, who became acquainted with Chamberlain in 1873, is reported as once saying that his friend's faith in the free trade policy was always “only skindeep.” Chamberlain himself said that he was first shaken in his free trade beliefs in 1881 when, as President of the Board of Trade in the second Gladstone Government, he was asked to reply to a protectionist speech by a then-obscure Conservative M.P. named C. T. Ritchie. Contrary to Chamberlain and Morley, however, one of the Birmingham leader's official biographers states that he has found no indication that his hero entertained any fiscal heresies prior to the winter of 1902-03; and though the date he gives may be disputed, the view that Chamberlain was a late convert to protection is substantiated by considerable evidence. Chamberlain's reply to Ritchie, despite his later admission of doubt, reveals no misgivings about the free trade credo.