Arthur Balfour

The Rt Hon. Arthur Balfour
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Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 11 July, 1902 – 5 December, 1905
Preceded by	The Marquess of Salisbury
Succeeded by	Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Born	25 July, 1848 Whittingehame, East Lothian, Scotland
Died	19 March 1930 Woking, Surrey
Political party	Conservative

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC (25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) was a British statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 until 1905. He was one of the more intellectual prime ministers of the 20th century, and is perhaps best remembered as author of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising a homeland for the Jewish people.

Early life

The eldest son of James Maitland Balfour of Whittingehame, East Lothian, Scotland, and of Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil, Arthur Balfour was born at Whittingehame. He was educated at Eton (1861-1866) and Trinity College, Cambridge (1866-1869), where he received a Second-Class Honours Degree. Distraught at the death of his cousin May Lyttleton in 1875, whom he had hoped to marry, he would be a lifelong bachelor.

In 1874 he was electd Conservative MP for Hertford and represented that constituency until 1885. In the spring of 1878 Balfour became Private Secretary to his uncle, Lord Salisbury. In that capacity he accompanied Salisbury to the Congress of Berlin and gained his first experience in international politics in connection with the settlement of the Russo-Turkish conflict. At the same time he became known in the world of letters; the academic subtlety and literary achievement of his Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879) suggested that he might make a reputation for himself as a philosopher.

Balfour divided his time between the political arena and the academyy. Released from his duties as private secretary by the general election of 1880, he began to take a more active part in parliamentary affairs. He was for a time politically associated with Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and John Gorst. This quartet became known as the "Fourth Party" and gained notoriety for the leader Lord Randolph Churchill's free criticism of Sir Stafford Northcote, Lord Cross and other prominent members of the "old gang". Balfour was thought to be merely amusing himself with politics at the time. Members looked on him merely as a young member of the governing classes who remained in the House because it was the proper thing for a man of family to do.^{[citation needed]}

Balfour's service in Lord Salisbury's governments

Lord Salisbury disagreed, and made Balfour President of the Local Government Board in 1885 and later Secretary for Scotland in 1886, with a seat in the cabinet. These offices, while having few opportunities for distinction, served as a sort of apprenticeship for Balfour. In early 1887 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, resigned because of illness and Salisbury appointed his nephew in his place. The selection took the political world by surprise, and was much criticized, possibly leading to the British phrase "Bob's your uncle!". Balfour surprised his critics by his ruthless enforcement of the Crimes Act, earning the nickname "Bloody Balfour". Balfour's skill for steady administration did much to dispel his reputation as a public lightweight.

In Parliament he resisted any overtures to the Irish Parliamentary Party on Home Rule, and strongly encouraged Unionist activism in Ireland. Balfour also broadened the basis of material prosperity to the less well off by creating the Congested Districts Board in 1890. It was during this time (1886-1892) that he sharpened his gift of oratory and gained a reputation as one of the most effective public speakers of the age. Impressive in matter rather than in delivery, and seldom rising to the level of eloquence as had Bright and Gladstone, his speeches were logical and convincing, and delighted an ever wider audience.

On the death of W.H. Smith in 1891, Balfour became First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Commons. After the fall of the government in 1892 he spent three years as Leader of the Opposition. On the return of the Conservatives to power in 1895, he resumed the leadership of the House. His management of the abortive education proposals of 1896 were thought to show a disinclination for the continuous drudgery of parliamentary management. Yet he had the satisfaction of seeing a bill pass providing Ireland with an improved system of local government, and took an active role in the debates on the various foreign and domestic questions that came before parliament between 1895 to 1900.

During the illness of Lord Salisbury in 1898, and again in Lord Salisbury's absence abroad, Balfour was put in charge of the Foreign Office, and it was his job to conduct the critical negotiations with Russia on the question of railways in North China. As a member of the cabinet responsible for the Transvaal negotiations in 1899, he bore his full share of controversy, and when the war began disastrously, he was the first to realize the need to put the full military strength of the country into the field. His leadership of the House of Commons was marked by considerable firmness in the suppression of obstruction, yet there was a slight revival of the criticisms of 1896. However, it should be noted that Balfour's inability to get the maximum amount of work out of the House was largely due to the situation in South Africa, a crisis that absorbed the intellectual energies of the House and of the United Kingdom as a whole.^{[citation needed]}

Balfour as Prime Minister

On Lord Salisbury's resignation on 11 July 1902, Balfour succeeded him as Prime Minister, with the approval of all sections of the Unionist party. The new Prime Minister came into power practically at the same moment as the coronation of Edward VII and the end of the South African War. For a while no cloud appeared on the horizon. The Liberal party was still disorganized over their attitude towards the Boers. The two chief items of the ministerial parliamentary program were the extension of the new Education Act to London and the Irish Land Purchase Act, by which the British exchequer would advance the capital for enabling the tenants in Ireland to buy out the landlords. A notable achievement of Balfour's government was the establishment of the Committee on Imperial Defence.

The budget was certain to show a surplus and taxation could be remitted. As events proved, it was the budget that would sow dissension, override all other legislative problems of the session, and bring a new political movement into being. Ritchie's remission of the shilling import-duty on corn led to Chamberlain's crusade in favor of tariff reform (taxes on imported goods, to protect British industry from competition) and colonial preference, and as the session proceded the rift grew in the Unionist ranks. Tariff Reform proved popular with Unionist supporters, but the threat of dearer food imports made the policy an electoral albatross.

The debate over Imperial Preference and the subsequent split of the Conservative-Unionist Party dominated the three years of Balfour's premiership. With Balfour's connivance, Chamberlain resigned from the Cabinet (although his son Austen replaced Ritchie as Chancellor of the Exchequer) to stump the country in favour of Tariff Reform. At the same time, Balfour tried to balance this by accepting the resignation of three free-trading ministers, but the almost simultaneous resignation of the free-trader Duke of Devonshire (who as Lord Hartington had been the Liberal Unionist leader of the 1880s) left Balfour's Cabinet looking weak. By 1905 relatively few Unionist MPs were still free traders (the young Winston Churchill crossed over to the Liberals in 1904 when threatened with deselection at Oldham), but Balfour's long balancing act had drained his authority.

Balfour eventually resigned as Prime Minister in December of 1905, hoping in vain that the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman would be unable to form a strong government. These hopes were dashed when Campbell-Bannerman faced down an attempt (the "Relugas Compact") to kick him upstairs to the House of Lords. The Conservatives were soundly defeated by the Liberals at the general election the following January, Balfour himself losing his seat at Manchester East. Only 157 Conservatives were returned to the House of Commons, at least two-thirds of them followers of Chamberlain, who briefly chaired the Conservative MPs until Balfour won another seat.

Later career

After the disaster of 1906 Balfour remained party leader, his position strengthened by Joseph Chamberlain's removal from active politics after his stroke in July 1906, but was unable to make much headway against the huge Liberal majority in the House of Commons: an early attempt to score a debating triumph over the government was memorably crushed by Campbell-Bannerman with the words: "Enough of this foolery". Balfour made the controversial decision, with Lord Lansdowne, to use the heavily Unionist House of Lords as an active check on the Liberal party. Numerous pieces of reforming legislation were vetoed or altered by amendments between 1906 and 1909, leading David Lloyd George to remark that the Lords had become "not the watchdog of the Constitution, but Mr. Balfour's poodle." The issue was eventually forced by the Liberals with Lloyd George's so-called People's Budget, provoking the constitutional crisis that eventually led to the Parliament Act of 1911, which at last opened the door to Irish Home Rule by replacing the Lords' veto with a power to delay bills for two years. After the Unionists had failed to win an electoral mandate at either of the General Elections of 1910 (despite softening the Tariff Reform policy with Balfour's promise of a referendum on food taxes), the Unionist peers split to allow the Parliament Act to pass the House of Lords, in order to prevent a mass-creation of Liberal peers by the new King, George V. Exhausted, Balfour resigned as party leader after the crisis, and was succeeded by Andrew Bonar Law.

He remained an important figure within the party, however, and when the Unionists joined Asquith's coalition government in May 1915, Balfour succeeded Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty. When Asquith's government collapsed in December, 1916, Balfour became Foreign Secretary in Lloyd George's new administration, but was not actually included in the small War Cabinet, and was frequently left out of the inner workings of the government. Balfour's service as Foreign Secretary was most notable for the issuance of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a letter to Lord Rothschild promising the Jews a "national home" in Palestine. Balfour resigned as Foreign Secretary following the Versailles Conference in 1919, but continued on in the government (and now, the Cabinet, normal arrangements having been resumed in peacetime) as Lord President of the Council until 1922, when he, along with most of the Conservative leadership, resigned with Lloyd George's government following the Conservative back-bench revolt that put Law into office.

In 1922 Balfour was created Earl of Balfour but like many of the Coalition leaders did not hold office in the Conservative governments of 1922-4, although as an elder statesman he was consulted as to the choice of Baldwin as Bonar Law's successor as Conservative leader in May 1923. When asked by a lady whether "dear George" (the much more experienced Lord Curzon) would be chosen, he is said to have replied "No, dear George will not."

Balfour was again not initially included in Stanley Baldwin's second government in 1924, but in 1925 he once again returned to the Cabinet, serving in place of the late Lord Curzon as Lord President of the Council until the government ended in 1929. Balfour died in 1930.

Lord Balfour's estate was probated £76,433 5s. 2d. on August 27, 1930.

Writings and academic achievements

Balfour's writings include:

• Essays and Addresses (1893).
• The Foundations of Belief, being Notes introductory to the Study of Theology (1895).
• Questionings on Criticism and Beauty (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1909), based on his 1909 Romanes Lecture.
• Theism and Humanism (1915), based on his first series of Gifford Lectures given in 1914 and is still in print. In 1962, Oxford writer C. S. Lewis told Christian Century that Theism and Humanism was one of the ten books that most influenced his thought.
• Theism and Thought (1923) based on the second in his Gifford Lectures, which were given in 1922.

He was made LL.D. of the University of Edinburgh in 1881; of the University of St Andrews in 1885; of Cambridge University in 1888; of Dublin and Glasgow Universities in 1891; lord rector of St Andrews University in 1886; of Glasgow University in 1890; chancellor of Edinburgh University in 1891; member of the senate London University in 1888; and DCL of Oxford University in 1891. He was president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1904, and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1888. He was known from early life as a cultured musician, and became an enthusiastic golf player, having been captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in 1894-1895. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1914 to 1915.

Arthur Balfour's Government, July 1902-December 1905

Arms of Arthur Balfour

• Arthur Balfour - First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Commons
• Lord Halsbury - Lord Chancellor
• The Duke of Devonshire - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords
• Lord Londonderry - Lord Privy Seal and President of the Board of Education
• Aretas Akers-Douglas - Secretary of State for the Home Department
• Lord Lansdowne - Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
• Joseph Chamberlain - Secretary of State for the Colonies
• St John Brodrick - Secretary of State for War
• Lord George Hamilton - Secretary of State for India
• Lord Selborne - First Lord of the Admiralty
• Charles Thomson Ritchie - Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Gerald Balfour - President of the Board of Trade
• Sir William Hood Walrond - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
• Lord Balfour of Burleigh - Secretary for Scotland
• George Wyndham - Chief Secretary for Ireland
• Walter Hume Long - President of the Local Government Board
• Robert William Hanbury - President of the Board of Agriculture
• Lord Ashbourne - Lord Chancellor of Ireland
• Lord Windsor - First Commissioner of Public Works
• Austen Chamberlain - Postmaster-General

Changes

• May 1903 - Lord Onslow succeeds R.W. Hanbury at the Board of Agriculture.
• September-October 1903 - Lord Londonderry succeeds the Duke of Devonshire as Lord President, while remaining also President of the Board of Education. Lord Lansdowne succeeds Devonshire as Leader of the House of Lords, remaining also Foreign Secretary. Lord Salisbury succeeds Londonderry as Lord Privy Seal. Austen Chamberlain succeeds Ritchie at the Exchequer. Chamberlain's successor as Postmaster-General is not in the Cabinet. Alfred Lyttelton succeeds Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary. St John Brodrick succeeds Lord George Hamilton as Secretary for India. Hugh Arnold-Forster succeeds Brodrick as Secretary for War. Andrew Graham-Murray succeeds Lord Balfour of Burleigh as Secretary for Scotland.
• March 1905 - Walter Hume Long succeeds George Wyndham as Irish Secretary. Gerald Balfour succeeds Long at the Local Government Board. Lord Salisbury, remaining Lord Privy Seal, succeeds Balfour at the Board of Trade. Lord Cawdor succeeds Lord Selborne at the Admiralty. Ailwyn Fellowes succeeds Lord Onslow at the Board of Agriculture.

References

Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006)

Succession

Source

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Further reading

• Piers Brendon, Eminent Edwardians (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980) ISBN 0-395-29195-X

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