62 Facts About Arthur Balfour

Arthur Balfour opposed Irish Home Rule, saying there could be no half-way house between Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom or becoming independent.

Arthur Balfour secured the Entente Cordiale with France, an alliance that ended centuries of intermittent conflict between the two states and their predecessors.

Arthur Balfour cautiously embraced imperial preference as championed by Joseph Chamberlain, but resignations from the Cabinet over the abandonment of free trade left his party divided.

Arthur Balfour suffered from public anger at the later stages of the Boer War and the importation of Chinese labour to South Africa.

Arthur Balfour resigned as prime minister in December 1905 and the following month the Conservatives suffered a landslide defeat at the 1906 election, in which he lost his own seat.

Arthur Balfour soon re-entered Parliament and continued to serve as Leader of the Opposition throughout the crisis over Lloyd George's 1909 budget, the narrow loss of two further General Elections in 1910, and the passage of the Parliament Act 1911.

Arthur Balfour returned as First Lord of the Admiralty in Asquith's Coalition Government.

Arthur Balfour was frequently left out of the inner workings of foreign policy, although the Balfour Declaration on a Jewish homeland bore his name.

Arthur Balfour continued to serve in senior positions throughout the 1920s, and died on 19 March 1930 aged 81, having spent a vast inherited fortune.

Arthur Balfour was born at Whittingehame House, East Lothian, Scotland, the eldest son of James Maitland Balfour and Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil.

Arthur Balfour's 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.

Arthur Balfour's godfather was the Duke of Wellington, after whom he was named.

Arthur Balfour 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, and Eton College, where he studied with the influential master, William Johnson Cory.

Arthur Balfour then went up to the University of Cambridge, where he read moral sciences at Trinity College, graduating with a second-class honours degree.

Arthur Balfour met his cousin May Lyttelton in 1870 when she was 19.

Arthur Balfour died of typhus on Palm Sunday, 21 March 1875; Balfour arranged for an emerald ring to be buried in her coffin.

Arthur Balfour visited her only once during her serious three-month illness, and was accepting social invitations again within a month of her death.

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

In 1874 Arthur Balfour was elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Hertford until 1885.

Arthur Balfour 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.

Biographer Sydney Zebel suggested that Arthur Balfour has appeared an amateur or dabbler in public affairs, devoid of ambition and indifferent to policy issues.

Arthur Balfour's 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.

Arthur Balfour maintained cordial relationships with Disraeli, Gladstone and other national leaders.

Arthur Balfour was for a time politically associated with Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and John Gorst.

Arthur Balfour helped the poor by creating the Congested Districts Board for Ireland in 1890.

Arthur Balfour downplayed the factor of Irish nationalism, arguing that the real issues were economic.

Arthur Balfour's solution was to keep selling land and in 1887 lowering rents to match the lower prices, and protected more tenants against eviction by their landlords.

Arthur Balfour's leadership of the House was marked by firmness in the suppression of obstruction, yet there was a slight revival of the criticisms of 1896.

Arthur 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.

Arthur Balfour resigned as prime minister in December 1905, hoping the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman would be unable to form a strong government.

Only 157 Conservatives were returned to the Commons, at least two-thirds followers of Chamberlain, who chaired the Conservative MPs until Arthur Balfour won a safe seat in the City of London.

Likerwise Liberals energized the Nonconformists when they attacked Arthur Balfour's Licensing Act 1904 which paid pub owners to close down.

Arthur Balfour argued that tariff reform would revive a flagging British economy, strengthen imperial ties with the dominions and the colonies, and produce a positive programme that would facilitate reelection.

Arthur Balfour was vehemently opposed by Conservative free traders who denounced the proposal as economically fallacious, and open to the charge of raising food prices in Britain.

Arthur Balfour tried to forestall disruption by removing key ministers on each side, and offering a much narrower tariff programme.

Arthur Balfour argued that he was "not convinced the majority of women actually wanted the vote", in 1907.

Arthur Balfour was reminded by Lytton of a speech he made in 1892, namely that this question "will arise again, menacing and ripe for resolution", she asked him to meet WSPU leader, Christabel Pankhurst, after a series of hunger strikes and suffering by imprisoned suffragettes in 1907.

Arthur Balfour tried and failed again to get his open support in parliament for women's cause in the 1910 private member's Conciliation Bill.

Arthur Balfour voted for the bill in the end but not for its progress to the Grand Committee, preventing it becoming law, and extending the activist campaigns as a result again.

Arthur Balfour created and chaired the Committee of Imperial Defence, which provided better long-term coordinated planning between the Army and Navy.

Arthur 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.

Arthur Balfour remained important in the party and when the Unionists joined Asquith's coalition government in May 1915, Arthur Balfour succeeded Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Arthur Balfour resigned as foreign secretary following the Versailles Conference in 1919, but continued in the government as Lord President of the Council.

Arthur Balfour put forward a proposal for the international settlement of war debts and reparations, but it was not accepted.

On 5 May 1922, Arthur Balfour was created Earl of Arthur Balfour and Viscount Traprain, of Whittingehame, in the county of Haddington.

Arthur Balfour's 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.

Arthur 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.

Lord Arthur Balfour had generally good health until 1928 and remained until then a regular tennis player.

Arthur Balfour died at his brother Gerald's home, Fishers Hill House in Hook Heath, Woking, on 19 March 1930.

Arthur Balfour was considered a dilettante by his colleagues; regardless, Lord Salisbury gave increasingly powerful posts in his government to his nephew.

Arthur Balfour has said nothing, written nothing, done nothing, which lives in the heart of his countrymen.

Arthur Balfour 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.

Arthur Balfour combined a strong emphasis on law and order with measures aimed at reforming the landowning system and developing Ireland's backward rural economy.

Arthur Balfour was interested in the study of dialects and donated money to Joseph Wright's work on The English Dialect Dictionary.

Arthur Balfour was a fan of football and supported Manchester City FC.

Arthur 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.

Arthur Balfour was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, a society studying psychic and paranormal phenomena, and was its president from 1892 to 1894.

In 1906, Arthur Balfour was alone in arguing against that the disenfranchisement of the blacks in South Africa was immoral, during a House of Commons debate.

Arthur Balfour had wrote in 1919 in his introduction to Nahum Sokolow's History of Zionism, the Zionist movement would:.

Arthur Balfour's 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.

Arthur Balfour 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.