Arthur Balfour

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Arthur Balfour bigraphy, stories - Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Arthur Balfour : biography

25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL ( 25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) was a British Conservative politician and statesman. He served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from July 1902 to December 1905, and was later Foreign Secretary in 1916–1919.

Born in Scotland and educated as a philosopher, Balfour first entered parliament in the 1874 general election. At first seen as something of a dilettante, he attained prominence as Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1887–1891. In this post, he authored the Perpetual Crimes Act (1887) (or Coercion Act) aimed at the prevention of boycotting, intimidation and unlawful assembly in Ireland during the Irish Land War.

Balfour succeeded his uncle Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader in July 1902 (Balfour had been Conservative leader in the House of Commons since 1891). As Prime Minister, Balfour oversaw such events as the Entente Cordiale, but his party was split over tariff reform and in December 1905 he relinquished power to the Liberals. The general election the following January was a disaster for the Conservatives and their Liberal Unionist allies, left with a mere 157 seats in Parliament. Balfour himself lost his Manchester East seat and was rushed back to parliament in a by-election for the City of London constituency. He continued as Leader of the Opposition throughout the crisis over the Lloyd George People’s Budget and the Parliament Act of 1911, but after failing to win either of the two General Elections in 1910 he resigned as leader in November 1911.

He returned to the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty in the coalition government formed in May 1915, then in David Lloyd George’s coalition government he was Foreign Secretary (1916–1919). In this post, he authored the Balfour Declaration of 1917, supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and for which his name perhaps remains best known today. Balfour received an Earldom in 1922. In the late 1920s he served as an elder statesman in the second government of Stanley Baldwin.

Background and early career

Arthur Balfour was born at Whittingehame, East Lothian, Scotland, the eldest son of James Maitland Balfour (1820–1856) and Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil (1825-1872). His father was a Scottish MP; his mother, a member of the Cecil family descended from Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, was the daughter of the 2nd Marquess of Salisbury and a sister to the 3rd Marquess, the future Prime Minister. His godfather was the Duke of Wellington, after whom he was named.Tuchman, The Proud Tower, p. 46. He was the eldest son, the third of eight children, and had four brothers and three sisters. Arthur Balfour had his early education at the Grange preparatory school in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (1859–1861), and Eton (1861–1866), where he studied with the influential Master William Johnson Cory. He then went on to the University of Cambridge, where he read moral sciences at Trinity College (1866–1869), graduating with a second-class honours degree. His younger brother was the renowned Cambridge embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour (1851–1882).

Although he coined the saying, "Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all", Balfour was distraught at the early death from typhus in 1875 of his cousin May Lyttelton, whom he had hoped to marry: later in life he was to receive a series of messages from mediums, claiming to pass on messages from her, known as the "Palm Sunday Case". Balfour remained a bachelor for the rest of his life, his serious intention to marry never renewed. Margot Tennant (later Margot Asquith) had wished to marry him, but on being queried about this he replied: "No, that is not so. I rather think of having a career of my own." His household was maintained by his unmarried sister Alice. In middle age Balfour had a forty-year long friendship with Mary Charteris (née Wyndham), Lady Elcho, later Countess of Wemyss and March. Although one biographer writes that "it is difficult to say how far the relationship went" evidence from her letters suggests that they may have become lovers in 1887 and may have engaged in some form of sado-masochism,Adams, Balfour, The Last Grandee, p. 47. a claim echoed by A. N. Wilson. Another biographer believes that they had "no direct physical relationship", although he dismisses as unlikely suggestions that Balfour was homosexual, or, in view of a time during the Boer War when he replied to an important message whilst drying himself after his bath, Lord Beaverbrook’s famous claim that he was "a hermaphrodite" whom no-one ever saw naked.Mackay, Balfour, Intellectual Statesman, p. 8.