Joseph Chamberlain

We are all of us taxed, and taxed heavily. Is that a system of forced labour? To say that because we put a tax on the native therefore he is reduced to a condition of servitude and of forced labour is, to my mind, absolutely ridiculous. It …

The day of small nations has passed away; the day of Empires has come.

Banking is not the creator of our prosperity, but is the creation of it. It is not the cause of our wealth, but is the consequence of our wealth; and if the industrial energy and development which has been going on for so many years in …

London is the clearing-house of the world.

While our investments abroad may provide a sufficient return to the capitalists...they tend directly to a transfer of employment from this country to our rivals & competitors.

What Washington did for the United States of America, when he made what is in itself a self-contained and self-sufficient empire of some 80 millions of souls, what Bismarck did for Germany when he united between 50 and 60 millions of …

if when they make you this offer you reject it or treat it with scorn you may do an injury which will be irreparable, and, whatever you yourselves may feel in after life, be sure that your descendants will scorn and denounce the cowardly …

Sugar has gone, silk has gone, iron is threatened, wool is threatened, cotton will go! How long are you going to stand it? At the present moment these industries, and the working men who depend upon them, are like sheep in a field.

What about the working men? What about the class that depends upon having work in order to earn wages or subsistence at all? They cannot do without the work; and yet the work will go if it is not produced in this country. This is the state …

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.

We must either draw closer together or we shall drift apart

Our Imperial trade is absolutely essential to our prosperity at the present time

Our existence as a nation depends upon our manufacturing capacity and production

We have to consolidate the British race

[It was] better to keep the employment in this country even though the workmen (and everyone else) had to pay a little more for the articles manufactured at home than for those coming from abroad, where wages may be lower and the condition …

In the terms of peace it was promised that education in Dutch should be given to the children of parents who desired it. This promise would be kept.

The terms of peace at Vereeniging were the charter of the Boer nation. They had every right to call upon the British to fulfil them in spirit and letter. If, in any respect, they thought these terms had not been, or would not be, carried …

The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of its fate.

Justification of union is that a bundle is stronger than the sticks which compose it, but, if the whole strain is to be thrown upon one stick, there is very little advantage in any attempt to put them into a bundle.

The days are for great Empires and not for little States. The question for this generation is whether we are to be numbered among the great Empires or the little States.

I believe that the men of Yorkshire will not forget the words of the Mayor of Mafeking that "A seat lost to the Unionist Government is a seat gained by the Boers."

Let it be our endeavour, let it be our task, to keep alight the torch of imperial patriotism, to hold fast the affection and the confidence of our kinsmen across the seas; so that in every vicissitude of fortune the British Empire may …

You can not have omelettes without breaking eggs

The establishment of commercial union throughout the Empire would not only be the first step, but the main step, the decisive step towards the realization of the most inspiring idea that has ever entered into the minds of British statesmen.