Arthur Balfour

Whittingehame House

Arthur Balfour was born at Whittingehame House, 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, as was his grandfather James; 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 of the 3rd Marquess, the future prime minister.[4] His godfather was the Duke of Wellington, after whom he was named.[5] He was the eldest son, third of eight children, and had four brothers and three sisters. Arthur Balfour was educated at Grange Preparatory School at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (1859–1861), and Eton College (1861–1866), where he studied with the influential master, William Johnson Cory. He then went up to the University of Cambridge, where he read moral sciences at Trinity College (1866–1869),[6] graduating with a second-class honours degree.[7] His younger brother was the Cambridge embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour (1851–1882).[8]

Balfour met his cousin May Lyttelton in 1870 when she was 19. After her two previous serious suitors had died, Balfour is said to have declared his love for her in December 1874. She died of typhus on Palm Sunday, 21 March 1875; Balfour arranged for an emerald ring to be buried in her coffin. Lavinia Talbot, May's older sister, believed that an engagement had been imminent, but her recollections of Balfour's distress (he was "staggered") were not written down until thirty years later.[9]^: 29–33

Historian R. J. Q. Adams points out that May's letters discuss her love life in detail, but contain no evidence that she was in love with Balfour, nor that he had spoken to her of marriage. He visited her only once during her serious three-month illness, and was soon accepting social invitations again within a month of her death. Adams suggests that, although he may simply have been too shy to express his feelings fully, Balfour may also have encouraged tales of his youthful tragedy as a convenient cover for his disinclination to marry; the matter cannot be conclusively proven.[9]^: 29–33

In later years mediums claimed to pass on messages from her – see the "Cross-Correspondences".[10][11]

Balfour remained a lifelong bachelor. Margot Tennant (later Margot Asquith) wished to marry him, but Balfour said: "No, that is not so. I rather think of having a career of my own."[5] His household was maintained by his unmarried sister, Alice. In middle age, Balfour had a 40-year friendship with Mary Charteris (née Wyndham), Lady Elcho, later Countess of Wemyss and March.[12]

Although one biographer writes that "it is difficult to say how far the relationship went", her letters suggest they may have become lovers in 1887 and may have engaged in sado-masochism,[9]^: 47 a claim echoed by A. N. Wilson.[11] Another biographer believes 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 was seen as he replied to a message while drying himself after his bath, Lord Beaverbrook's claim that he was "a hermaphrodite" whom no-one saw naked.[13]

Balfour was a leading member of the social and intellectual group The Souls.

Balfour early in his career

In 1874 Balfour was elected Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Hertford until 1885. From 1885 to 1906 he served as the Member of Parliament for Manchester East. In spring 1878, he became private secretary to his uncle Lord Salisbury. He accompanied Salisbury (then foreign secretary) 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 he might make a reputation as a philosopher.[14][7]

Balfour divided his time between politics and academic pursuits. Biographer Sydney Zebel suggested that Balfour continued to appear an amateur or dabbler in public affairs, devoid of ambition and indifferent to policy issues. However, in fact he actually made a dramatic transition to a deeply involved politician. His assets, according to Zebel, included a strong ambition that he kept hidden, shrewd political judgment, a knack for negotiation, a taste for intrigue, and care to avoid factionalism. Most importantly, he deepened his close ties with his uncle Lord Salisbury. He also maintained cordial relationships with Disraeli, Gladstone and other national leaders.[15]^: 27

Released from his duties as private secretary by the 1880 general election, he began to take more 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 leader Lord Randolph Churchill's free criticism of Sir Stafford Northcote, Lord Cross and other prominent members of the Conservative "old gang".[15]^: 28–44[16]

With Lord Salisbury's resignation on 11 July 1902, Balfour succeeded him as prime minister, with the approval of all the Unionist party. The new prime minister came into power practically at the same moment as the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra and the end of the South African War.[7] The Liberal party was still disorganised over the Boers.[26]

In foreign affairs, Balfour and his foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne, improved relations with France, culminating in the Entente Cordiale of 1904. The period also saw the Russo-Japanese War, when Britain, an ally of the Japanese, came close to war with Russia after the Dogger Bank incident. On the whole, Balfour left the conduct of foreign policy to Lansdowne, being busy himself with domestic problems.[15]

Balfour, who had known Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann since 1906, opposed Russian mistreatment of Jews and increasingly supported Zionism as a programme for European Jews to settle in Palestine.[27] However, in 1905 he supported the Aliens Act 1905, one of whose main objectives was to control and restrict Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe.[28][29]

The budget was certain to show a surplus and taxation could be remitted. Yet as events proved, it was the budget that would sow dissension, override other legislative concerns and signal a new political movement. Charles Thomson Ritchie's remission of the shilling import-duty on corn led to Joseph Chamberlain's crusade in favour of tariff reform. These were taxes on imported goods with trade preference given to the Empire, to protect British industry from competition, strengthen the Empire in the face of growing German and American economic power, and provide revenue, other than raising taxes, for the social welfare legislation. As the session proceeded, the rift grew in the Unionist ranks.[26] Tariff reform was popular with Unionist supporters, but the threat of higher prices for food imports made the policy an electoral albatross. Hoping to split the difference between the free traders and tariff reformers in his cabinet and party, Balfour favoured retaliatory tariffs to punish others who had tariffs against the British, in the hope of encouraging global free trade. This was not sufficient for either the free traders or the extreme tariff reformers in government. With Balfour's agreement, Chamberlain resigned from the Cabinet in late 1903 to campaign for tariff reform. At the same time, Balfour tried to balance the two factions by accepting the resignation of three free-trading ministers, including Chancellor Ritchie, 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 weak. By 1905 few Unionist MPs were still free traders (Winston Churchill crossed to the Liberals in 1904 when threatened with deselection at Oldham), but Balfour's act had drained his authority within the government.[15]

Balfour resigned as prime minister in December 1905, hoping the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman would be unable to form a strong government. This was dashed when Campbell-Bannerman faced down an attempt ("The Relugas Compact") to "kick him upstairs" to the House of Lords. The Conservatives were defeated by the Liberals at the general election the following January (in terms of MPs, a Liberal landslide), with Balfour losing his seat at Manchester East to Thomas Gardner Horridge, a solicitor and King's Counsel. Only 157 Conservatives were returned to the Commons, at least two-thirds followers of Chamberlain, who chaired the Conservative MPs until Balfour won a by-election for a safe seat in the City of London.[30]

Painting by John Singer Sargent, 1908

Balfour caricatured by Vanity Fair, 1910

Balfour and Winston Churchill in 1911

After the general election of 1906 Balfour remained party leader, his position strengthened by Joseph Chamberlain's absence from the House of Commons after his stroke in July 1906, but he was unable to make much headway against the huge Liberal majority in the Commons. An early attempt to score a debating triumph over the government, made in Balfour's usual abstruse, theoretical style, saw Campbell-Bannerman respond with: "Enough of this foolery," to the delight of his supporters. Balfour made the controversial decision, with Lord Lansdowne, to use the heavily Unionist House of Lords as a check on the political programme and legislation of the Liberal party in the Commons. Legislation was vetoed or altered by amendments between 1906 and 1909, leading David Lloyd George to remark that the Lords was "the right hon. Gentleman's poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to. And we are told that this is a great revising Chamber, the safeguard of liberty in the country."[48] The issue was forced by the Liberals with Lloyd George's People's Budget, provoking the constitutional crisis that led to the Parliament Act 1911, which limited the Lords to delaying bills for up to two years. After the Unionists lost 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, to prevent mass creation of Liberal peers by the new King, George V. The exhausted Balfour resigned as party leader after the crisis, and was succeeded in late 1911 by Bonar Law.[15]

Balfour remained important in the party, however, and when the Unionists joined Asquith's coalition government in May 1915, Balfour succeeded Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty. When Asquith's government collapsed in December 1916, Balfour, who seemed a potential successor to the premiership, became foreign secretary in Lloyd George's new administration, but not in the small War Cabinet, and was frequently left out of inner workings of government. Balfour's service as foreign secretary was notable for the Balfour Mission, a crucial alliance-building visit to the US in April 1917, and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a letter to Lord Rothschild affirming the government's support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire.[49]

Balfour resigned as foreign secretary following the Versailles Conference in 1919, but continued in the government (and the Cabinet after normal peacetime political arrangements resumed) as Lord President of the Council. In 1921–22 he represented the British Empire at the Washington Naval Conference and during summer 1922 stood in for the foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, who was ill. He put forward a proposal for the international settlement of war debts and reparations (the Balfour Note), but it was not accepted.[15]

On 5 May 1922, Balfour was created Earl of Balfour and Viscount Traprain, of Whittingehame, in the county of Haddington.[50] In October 1922 he, with most of the Conservative leadership, resigned with Lloyd George's government following the Carlton Club meeting, a Conservative back-bench revolt against continuance of the coalition. Bonar Law became prime minister. Like many Coalition leaders, he did not hold office in the Conservative governments of 1922–1924, but as an elder statesman, he was consulted by the King in the choice of Stanley Baldwin as Bonar Law's successor as Conservative leader in May 1923. His advice was strongly in favour of Baldwin, ostensibly due to Baldwin's being an MP but in reality motivated by his personal dislike of Curzon. Later that evening, he met a mutual friend who asked 'Will dear George be chosen?' to which he replied with "feline Balfourian satisfaction," "No, dear George will not." His hostess replied, "Oh, I am so sorry to hear that. He will be terribly disappointed." Balfour retorted, "Oh, I don't know. After all, even if he has lost the hope of glory he still possesses the means of Grace."[51]

Balfour was not initially included in Baldwin's second government in 1924, but in 1925, he returned to the Cabinet, in place of the late Lord Curzon as Lord President of the Council, until the government ended in 1929. With 28 years of government service, Balfour had one of the longest ministerial careers in modern British politics, second only to Winston Churchill.[52]

Balfour in Mandatory Palestine with Vera and Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and others in 1925

Lord Balfour had generally good health until 1928 and remained until then a regular tennis player. Four years previously he had been the first president of the International Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain. At the end of 1928, most of his teeth were removed and he suffered the unremitting circulatory trouble which ended his life. Before that, he had suffered occasional phlebitis and, by late 1929, he was immobilised by it. Following a visit from Chaim Weizmann, Balfour died at his brother Gerald's home, Fishers Hill House in Hook Heath, Woking, where he had lived since January 1929, on 19 March 1930. At his request a public funeral was declined, and he was buried on 22 March beside members of his family at Whittingehame in a Church of Scotland service although he also belonged to the Church of England. By special remainder, his title passed to his brother Gerald.[53]

His obituaries in The Times, The Guardian and the Daily Herald did not mention the declaration for which he is most famous outside Britain.[54]

Portrait by Philip de László, 1908

Early in Balfour's career he was thought to be merely amusing himself with politics, and it was regarded as doubtful whether his health could withstand the severity of English winters. He was considered a dilettante by his colleagues; regardless, Lord Salisbury gave increasingly powerful posts in his government to his nephew.[18]

Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary:

A man of extraordinary grace of mind and body, delighting in all that is beautiful and distinguished––music, literature, philosophy, religious feeling and moral disinterestedness, aloof from all the greed and crying of common human nature. But a strange paradox as Prime Minister of a great empire! I doubt whether even foreign affairs interest him. For all economic and social questions I gather he has an utter loathing, while the machinery of government and administration would seem to him a disagreeable irrelevance.[55]

Balfour developed a manner known to friends as the Balfourian manner. Harold Begbie, a journalist, attacked him for what Begbie considered Balfour's self-obsession:

This Balfourian manner...an attitude of mind—an attitude of convinced superiority which insists in the first place on complete detachment from the enthusiasms of the human race, and in the second place on keeping the vulgar world at arm's length....To Mr. Arthur Balfour this studied attitude of aloofness has been fatal, both to his character and to his career. He has said nothing, written nothing, done nothing, which lives in the heart of his countrymen....the charming, gracious, and cultured Mr. Balfour is the most egotistical of men, and a man who would make almost any sacrifice to remain in office.[56]

However, Graham Goodlad argued to the contrary:

Balfour's air of detachment was a pose. He was sincere in his conservatism, mistrusting radical political and social change and believing deeply in the Union with Ireland, the Empire and the superiority of the British race....Those who dismissed him as a languid dilettante were wide of the mark. As Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891 he manifested an unflinching commitment to the maintenance of British authority in the face of popular protest. He combined a strong emphasis on law and order with measures aimed at reforming the landowning system and developing Ireland's backward rural economy.[39]

Churchill compared Balfour to H. H. Asquith: "The difference between Balfour and Asquith is that Arthur is wicked and moral, while Asquith is good and immoral." Balfour said of himself, "I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained."[57]

Balfour was interested in the study of dialects and donated money to Joseph Wright's work on The English Dialect Dictionary. Wright wrote in the preface to the first volume that the project would have been "in vain" had he not received the donation from Balfour.[58]

Balfour was into the 1920s a keen player both of lawn tennis and of golf. In the latter sport, he had a handicap of eight at the time he was Prime Minister, he won the Parliamentary Handicap between members of parliament in 1894, 1897 and 1910, and served as captain both of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in 1894 and the newly founded Lye club in 1895.[59] Balfour was a patron of Manchester City F.C.[60] He was also a keen motorist and received, as an 80th birthday present, a Rolls-Royce from both Houses of Parliament.[53]

As a philosopher, Balfour formulated the basis for the evolutionary argument against naturalism. Balfour argued the Darwinian premise of selection for reproductive fitness cast doubt on scientific naturalism, because human cognitive facilities that would accurately perceive truth could be less advantageous than adaptation for evolutionarily useful illusions.[61]

As he says:

[There is] no distinction to be drawn between the development of reason and that of any other faculty, physiological or psychical, by which the interests of the individual or the race are promoted. From the humblest form of nervous irritation at the one end of the scale, to the reasoning capacity of the most advanced races at the other, everything without exception (sensation, instinct, desire, volition) has been produced directly or indirectly, by natural causes acting for the most part on strictly utilitarian principles. Convenience, not knowledge, therefore, has been the main end to which this process has tended.

— Arthur Balfour[62]

He was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, a society studying psychic and paranormal phenomena, and was its president from 1892 to 1894.[63] In 1914, he delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow,[64] which formed the basis for his book Theism and Humanism (1915).[65]

Portrait by Walter Stoneman, 1921

After the First World War, when there was controversy over the style of headstone proposed for use on British war graves being taken on by the Imperial War Graves Commission, Balfour submitted a design for a cruciform headstone.[68] At an exhibition in August 1919, it drew many criticisms; the commission's principal architect, Sir John Burnet said that Balfour's cross, if used in large numbers in cemeteries, would create a criss-cross visual effect, destroying any sense of "restful diginity"; Edwin Lutyens called it "extraordinarily ugly", and its shape was variously described as resembling a shooting target or bottle.[68] His design was not accepted but the Commission offered him a second chance to submit another design which he did not take up, having been refused once.[68]^: 49 After a further exhibition in the House of Commons, the "Balfour cross" was ultimately rejected in favour of the standard headstone the Commission permanently adopted because the latter offered more space for inscriptions and service emblems.[68]^: 50

Balfour occasionally appears in popular culture.[36]

• Balfour was the subject of two parody novels based on Alice in Wonderland, Clara in Blunderland (1902) and Lost in Blunderland (1903), which appeared under the pseudonym Caroline Lewis; one of the co-authors was Harold Begbie.[69][70]
• The character Arthur Balfour plays a supporting, off-screen role in Upstairs, Downstairs, promoting the family patriarch, Richard Bellamy, to the position of Civil Lord of the Admiralty.
• Balfour was portrayed by Adrian Ropes in the 1974 Thames TV production Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill.
• Balfour was portrayed by Lyndon Brook in the 1975 ATV production Edward the Seventh.
• A fictionalised version of Arthur Balfour (identified as "Mr. Balfour") appears as British prime minister in the science fiction romance The Angel of the Revolution by George Griffith, published in 1893 (when Balfour was still in opposition) but set in an imagined near future of 1903–1905.
• The indecisive Balfour (identified as "Halfan Halfour") appears in "Ministers of Grace", a satirical short story by Saki in which he, and other leading politicians including Quinston, are changed into animals appropriate to their characters.

Balfour's premiership from July 1902 to December 1905 is unusual among modern prime ministers because it did not mark the culmination of his political career. Instead, it was merely an episode in a long life of public service, and he quickly recovered from the setbacks of his chequered premiership. He continued to serve in government for nearly a quarter of a century after leaving 10 Downing Street, despite being forced from the leadership of his party.[71]

Balfour's reputation among historians is mixed. There is agreement about his achievements, as represented by G. M. Trevelyan:

As the prime author of the Education Act, the Licensing Act, Irish Land Purchase and the Committee of Imperial Defence, Balfour has a strong claim to be numbered among the successful Prime Ministers.[72]

But Trevelyan admits that, "owing to the portentous character of the electoral catastrophe of 1906 that claim is not always been allowed; yet Balfour had done great things on his own initiative and by his own strength of character."[73] John L. Gordon pays more attention to the defeats he suffered, stating:

Although Balfour's achievements during his brief prime ministry are noteworthy... he is usually seen as an ineffective leader. He was unable to prevent a split in his party over trade policy, and the Unionist-Conservatives suffered a massive defeat in the election of January 1906. Failing to lead his party to victory in the two general elections of 1910, he resigned as leader in 1911.[74]

Memorials

1967 Israel stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration

Balfouria, a moshav in northern Israel, along with many streets in Israel, are named after him. The town of Balfour in Mpumalanga, South Africa, was named after him.[75] A portrait of Balfour by Philip de Laszlo is in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge.[76]

The Lord Balfour Hotel, an Art Deco hotel on Ocean Drive in the South Beach neighbourhood of Miami Beach, Florida, is named after him.

Honorary degrees

Honorary degrees conferred on Arthur Balfour, by country

Country	Date	School	Degree
England	1909	University of Liverpool	Doctor of Laws (LL.D)[85]
England	1912	University of Sheffield	Doctor of Laws (LL.D)[86]
Canada	1917	University of Toronto	Doctor of Laws (LL.D)[87]
Wales	1921	University of Wales	Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.)
England	1924	University of Leeds	Doctor of Laws (LL.D)[88]

• Balfour Declaration
• Balfour Declaration of 1926
• Palm Sunday Case

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour.

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Arthur Balfour

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Arthur Balfour
• More about Arthur James Balfour on the Downing Street website.
• Portraits of Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Works by or about Arthur Balfour at Internet Archive
• Works by Arthur Balfour at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Spikily, Samir: Balfour, Arthur James Balfour, Earl of, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
• Works of Arthur Balfour at the National Library of Portugal