(L. J. S.)
CHAMBA, a native state of India, within the Punjab, amid the Himalayas, and lying on the southern border of Kashmir. It has an area of 3216 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 127,834. The sanatorium of Dalhousie, though within the state, is attached to the district of Gurdaspur. Chamba is entirely mountainous; in the east and north, and in the centre, are snowy ranges. The valleys in the west and south are fertile. The chief rivers are the Chandra and Ravi. The country is much in favour with sportsmen. The principal crops are rice, maize and millet. Mineral ores of various kinds are known, but unworked. Trade is chiefly in forest produce. The capital of the state is Chamba (pop. 6000), situated above the gorge of the Ravi. External communications are entirely by road. The state was founded in the 6th century, and, though sometimes nominally subject to Kashmir and afterwards tributary to the Mogul empire, always practically maintained its independence. Its chronicles are preserved in a series of inscriptions, mostly engraved on copper. It first came under British influence in 1846, when it was declared independent of Kashmir. The line of the rajas of Chamba was founded in the 6th century A.D. by Marut, of an ancient family of Rajputs. In 1904 Bhuri Singh, K.C.S.I., C.I.E., an enlightened and capable ruler, succeeded.
CHAMBAL, a river of India, one of the principal tributaries of the Jumna. Rising amid the summits of the Vindhya mountains in Malwa, it flows north, and after being joined by the Chambla and Sipra, passes through the gorges of the Mokandarra hills. After receiving the waters of the Kali-Sind, Parbati and Banas, its principal confluents, the Chambal becomes a great river, enters the British district of Etawah, and joins the Jumna 40 m. below Etawah town, its total length being 650 m.
CHAMBERLAIN, JOSEPH (1836- ), British statesman, third son of Joseph Chamberlain, master of the Cordwainers’ Company, was born at Camberwell Grove, London, on the 8th of July 1836. His father was a well-to-do man of business, a Unitarian in religion and a Liberal in politics. Young Chamberlain was educated at Canonbury from 1845 to 1850, and at University College school, London, from 1850 to 1852. After two years in his father’s office in London, he was sent to Birmingham to join his cousin Joseph Nettlefold in a screw business in which his father had an interest; and by degrees, largely owing to his own intelligent management, this business became very successful. Nettlefold & Chamberlain employed new methods of attracting customers, and judiciously amalgamated rival firms with their own so as to reduce competition, with the result that in 1874, after twenty-two years of commercial life, Mr Chamberlain was able to retire with an ample fortune. Meanwhile he had in 1861 married his first wife, Miss Harriet Kenrick (she died in 1863), and had gradually come to take an increasingly important part in the municipal and political life of Birmingham. He was a constant speaker at the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society; and when in 1868 the Birmingham Liberal Association was reorganized, he became one of its leading members. In 1869 he was elected chairman of the executive council of the new National Education League, the outcome of Mr George Dixon’s movement for promoting the education of the children of the lower classes by paying their school fees, and agitating for more accommodation and a better national system. In the same year he was elected a member of the town council, and married his second wife—a cousin of his first—Miss Florence Kenrick (d. 1875).
In 1870 he was elected a member of the first school board for Birmingham; and for the next six years, and especially after 1873, when he became leader of a majority and chairman, he actively championed the Nonconformist opposition to denominationalism. He was then regarded as a Republican—the term signifying rather that he held advanced Radical opinions, which were construed by average men in the light of the current political developments in France, than that he really favoured Republican institutions. His programme was “free Church, free land, free schools, free labour.” At the general election of 1874 he stood as a parliamentary candidate for Sheffield, but without success. Between 1869 and 1873 he was a prominent advocate in the Birmingham town council of the gospel of municipal reform preached by Mr Dawson, Dr Dale and Mr Bunce (of the Birmingham. Post); and in 1873 his party obtained a majority, and he was elected mayor, an office he retained until June 1876. As mayor he had to receive the prince and princess of Wales on their visit in June 1874, an occasion which excited some curiosity because of his reputation as a Republican; but those who looked for an exhibition of bad taste were disappointed, and the behaviour of the Radical mayor satisfied the requirements alike of The Times and of Punch.
The period of his mayoralty was one of historic importance in the growth of modern Birmingham. New municipal buildings were erected, Highgate Park was opened as a place of recreation, the free library and art gallery were developed. But the great work carried through by Mr Chamberlain for Birmingham was the municipalization of the supply of gas and water, and the improvement scheme by which slums were cleared away and forty acres laid out in new streets and open spaces. The prosperity of modern Birmingham dates from 1875 and 1876, when these admirably administered reforms were initiated, and by his share in them Mr Chamberlain became not only one of its most popular citizens but also a man of mark outside. An orator of a business-like, straightforward type, cool and hard-hitting, his spare figure, incisive features and single eye-glass soon made him a favourite subject for the caricaturist; and in later life his aggressive personality, and the peculiarly irritating effect it had on his opponents, made his actions and speeches the object of more controversy than was the lot of any other politician of his time. His hobby for orchid-growing at his house “Highbury” near Birmingham also became famous. In private life his loyalty to his friends, and his “genius for friendship” (as John Morley said) made a curious contrast to his capacity for arousing the bitterest political hostility. It may be added here that the interest taken by him in Birmingham remained undiminished during his life, and he was largely instrumental in starting the Birmingham University (1900), of which he became chancellor. His connexion with Birmingham University was indeed peculiarly appropriate to his character as a man of business; but in spite of his representing a departure among men of the front rank in politics from the “Eton and Oxford” type, his general culture sometimes surprised those who did not know him. In later life Oxford and Cambridge gave him their doctors’ degrees; and in 1897 he was made lord rector of Glasgow University (delivering an address on “Patriotism” at his installation).
In 1876 Mr Dixon resigned his seat in parliament, and Mr Chamberlain was returned for Birmingham in his place unopposed, as John Bright’s colleague. He made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on the 4th of August 1876, on Lord Sandon’s Education Bill. At this period, too, he paid much attention to the question of licensing reform, and in 1876 he examined the Gothenburg system in Sweden, and advocated a solution of the problem in England on similar lines. During 1877 the new federation of Liberal Associations which became known as the “Caucus” was started under Mr Chamberlain’s influence in Birmingham—its secretary, Mr Schnadhorst, quickly making himself felt as a wire-puller of exceptional ability; and the new organization had a remarkable effect in putting life into the Liberal party, which since Mr Gladstone’s retirement in 1874 had been much in need of a stimulus. When the general election came in 1880, Mr Schnadhorst’s powers were demonstrated in the successes won under his auspices. The Liberal party numbered 349, against 243 Conservatives and 60 Irish Nationalists; and the Radical section of the Liberal party, led by Mr Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, was recognized by Mr Gladstone by his inclusion of the former in his cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, and the appointment of the latter as under secretary for foreign affairs. In his new capacity Mr Chamberlain was responsible for carrying such important measures as the Bankruptcy Act 1883, and the Patents Act. Another bill which he had much at heart, on merchant shipping, had to be abandoned, and a royal commission substituted, but the subsequent legislation in 1888-1894 owed much to his efforts. The Franchise Act of 1884 was also one in which he took a leading part as a champion of the opinions of the labouring class. At this time he took the current advanced Radical views of both Irish and foreign policy, hating “coercion,” disliking the occupation of Egypt, and prominently defending the Transvaal settlement after Majuba. Both before and after the defeat of Mr Gladstone’s government on the Budget in June 1885, he associated himself with what was known as the “Unauthorized Programme,” i.e. free education, small holdings, graduated taxation and local government. In June 1885 he made a speech at Birmingham, treating the reforms just mentioned as the “ransom” that property must pay to society for the security it enjoys—for which Lord Iddesleigh called him “Jack Cade”; and he continually urged the Liberal party to take up these Radical measures. At the general election of November 1885 Mr Chamberlain was returned for West Birmingham. The Liberal strength generally was, however, reduced to 335 members, though the Radical section held their own; and the Irish vote became necessary to Mr Gladstone if he was to command a majority. In December it was stated that Mr Gladstone intended to propose Home Rule for Ireland, and in January Lord Salisbury’s ministry was defeated on the Address, on an amendment moved by Mr Chamberlain’s Birmingham henchman, Mr Jesse Collings (b. 1831), embodying the “three acres and a cow” of the Radical programme. Unlike Lord Hartington (afterwards duke of Devonshire) and other Liberals, who declined to join Mr Gladstone in view of the altered attitude he was adopting towards Ireland, Mr Chamberlain entered the cabinet as president of the Local Government Board (with Mr Jesse Collings as parliamentary secretary), but on the 15th of March 1886 he resigned, explaining in the House of Commons (8th April) that, while he had always been in favour of the largest possible extension of local government to Ireland consistently with the integrity of the empire and the supremacy of parliament, and had therefore joined Mr Gladstone when he believed that this was what was intended, he was unable to consider that the scheme communicated by Mr Gladstone to his colleagues maintained those limitations. At the same time he was not irreconcilable, and he invited Mr Gladstone even then to modify his bill so as to remove the objections made to it. This indecisive attitude did not last long, and the split in the party rapidly widened. At Birmingham Mr Chamberlain was supported by the “Two Thousand,” but deserted by the “Caucus” and Mr Schnadhorst. In May the Radicals who followed Mr Bright and Mr Chamberlain, and the Whigs who took their cue from Lord Hartington, decided to vote against the second reading of the Home Rule Bill, instead of allowing it to be taken and then pressing for modifications in committee, and on 7th June the bill was defeated by 343 to 313, 94 Liberal Unionists—as they were generally called—voting against the government. Mr Chamberlain was the object of the bitterest attacks from the Gladstonians for his share in this result; he was stigmatized as “Judas,” and open war was proclaimed by the Home Rulers against the “dissentient Liberals”—the description used by Mr Gladstone. The general election, however, returned to parliament 316 Conservatives, 78 Liberal Unionists, and only 276 Gladstonians and Nationalists, Birmingham returning seven Unionist members. When the House met in August, it was decided by the Liberal Unionists, under Lord Hartington’s leadership, that their policy henceforth was essentially to combine with the Tories to keep Mr Gladstone out. The old Liberal feeling still prevailing among them was too strong, however, for their leaders to take office in a coalition ministry. It was enough for them to be able to tie down the Conservative government to such measures as were not offensive to Liberal Unionist principles. It still seemed possible, moreover, that the Gladstonians might be brought to modify their Home Rule proposals, and in January 1887 a Round Table conference (suggested by Mr Chamberlain) was held between Mr Chamberlain, Sir G. Trevelyan, Sir William Harcourt, Mr Morley and Lord Herschell. But no rapprochement was effected, and reconciliation became daily more and more difficult. The influence of Liberal Unionist views upon the domestic legislation of the government was steadily bringing about a more complete union in the Unionist party, and destroying the old lines of political cleavage. Before 1892 Mr Chamberlain had the satisfaction of seeing Lord Salisbury’s ministry pass such important acts, from a progressive point of view, as those dealing with Coal Mines Regulation, Allotments, County Councils, Housing of the Working Classes, Free Education and Agricultural Holdings, besides Irish legislation like the Ashbourne Act, the Land Act of 1891, and the Light Railways and Congested Districts Acts. In October 1887 Mr Chamberlain, Sir L. Sackville West and Sir Charles Tupper were selected by the government as British plenipotentiaries to discuss with the United States the Canadian fisheries dispute, and a treaty was arranged by them at Washington on the 15th of February 1888. The Senate refused to ratify it; but a protocol provided for a modus vivendi pending ratification, giving American fishing vessels similar advantages to those contemplated in the treaty; and on the whole Mr Chamberlain’s mission to America was accepted as a successful one in maintaining satisfactory relations with the United States. He returned to England in March 1888, and was presented with the freedom of the borough of Birmingham. The visit also resulted, in November 1888, in his marriage with his third wife, Miss Endicott, daughter of the United States secretary of war in President Cleveland’s first administration.