Mr Balfour's Poodle

by Roy Jenkins

  2 A great number of Conservative members had one foot in each of these two categories. They held a commission for a few years, and then retired to live as country gentlemen. In these cases, a member is not categorised as a ‘service officer’ unless he had held a regular commission for ten years or more.

  1 A detailed comparison between the results of 1906 and those of 1945 is given in appendix A.

  1 Six years later this was made one of the counts for his impeachment, a still worse fate than that suffered by the 1st Earl of Oxford of the third Creation.

  1 Its rejection had been moved by the normally Whig Lord Monteagle.

  1 Hartington, whose marquessate was a courtesy title and not a peerage.

  1 The extent to which Liberal Unionism was a revolt of the Whig magnates in defence of the position of the landlord in Ireland and elsewhere (as well as of Birmingham businessmen against Little Englandism) is indicated by the fact that these 124 included no less than seven dukes (as against sixteen Tory dukes and a solitary, but not very inspiring, Liberal representative in the shape of the Duke of Manchester). Liberal Unionism was also popular amongst the episcopate; of eleven bishops who chose to wear party labels, four, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, called themselves Liberal Unionists.

  2 1772–1853. Lord Chancellor in Tory Governments between 1827 and 1846.

  1 The 2nd Marquess, 1789–1868.

  2 The newly-succeeded 3rd Marquess, 1830–1903, who was later three times Prime Minister.

  3 ‘Avowedly to regulate that assembly (the House of Lords),’ Disraeli wrote to Lord Stanhope, ‘by the prejudices, or convictions, of the University of Oxford, cannot be wise.’ (Moneypenny & Buckle, Disraeli, vol. v, pp. 124–5.)

  1 Its objects have been described more fully by Asquith as ‘to put an end to the dual system created by the Act of 1902; to secure that every school maintained out of rates and taxes should be under the exclusive management and control of the representative local Authority; to abolish religious tests and the obligation to give denominational teaching, in the case of all teachers appointed by the Authority, and paid out of public funds; to permit “Cowper-Temple” teaching in the “provided” schools; and in the “transferred” schools to give facilities for special denominational instruction, but not by the regular teachers’. (Earl of Oxford: Fifty Years of Parliament, vol. II, p. 43.)

  1 Not a markedly moderate selection.

  1 Member for West Ham (North). Later Parliamentary Secretary, Local Government Board, 1908–9. Under-Secretary, Home Office, 1909–12. Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1912–14, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (and a member of the Cabinet), 1914–15. His High Anglican views made him unhappy about the Bill, but, unlike his Roman Catholic colleague Hilaire Belloc, not to the extent of causing him to withhold his vote.

  1 Their interest in the primacy of the Commons was greater than their dislike of the bill.

  2 The 8th Duke, who achieved his political fame as Lord Hartington.

  3 1838–1906. Formerly C. T. Ritchie, Conservative member for Croydon. President of the Board of Trade, 1895–1900. Home Secretary, 1900–2. Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1902–3.

  4 1837–1916. Formerly Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. Conservative member for Gloucestershire, East, 1864–85, and Bristol, West, 1885–1905. Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1885–86 and 1895–1902.

  5 1828–1911. Formerly Sir Henry James. Solicitor-General, 1873. Attorney-General, 1873–74 and 1880–85. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1895–1902.

  6 Randall Thomas Davidson, 1848–1930. Bishop of Rochester, 1891–95, and of Winchester, 1895–1903, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1903–28. Created 1st Lord Davidson, 1928.

  7 1847–1911. Frederick Archibald Vaughan Campbell, 3rd Earl of Cawdor. Conservative member for Carmarthenshire, 1874–85. First Lord of the Admiralty, 1905. Chairman of the Great Western Railway.

  1 Lord St. Aldwyn, whose moderation deserted him on this occasion.

  1 1857–1942. Thomas Wodehouse Leigh. 2nd Lord Newton. Conservative member for Newton division of Lancashire, 1880–86. Paymaster-General, 1915–16.

  1 1823–1921. Formerly Sir Hardinge Gifford. Lord Chancellor, 1895–1905. A man who must surely hold the record for rapid changes of electoral fortune. In 1874 he stood for Launceston and received one vote. In 1877 he was elected unopposed for the same constituency.

  1 Augustine Birrell himself described it as a ‘little, modest, shy, humble effort to give administrative powers to the Irish people’.

  1 It was met, and the achievement has only once since been repeated.

  2 In the event the English bill escaped largely unscathed, the Irish bill was substantially amended and weakened, and the two Scottish bills were wrecked.

  1 Balfour’s attitude was well reflected by his biographer, who summed up this debate with the blandly condescending statement that ‘the Liberal Party were by this time suffering from a sort of “persecution mania” on the subject of the House of Lords’. (See Blanche E. C. Dugdale: Arthur James Balfour, vol. ii, p. 28.)

  2 After a speech at Oxford in December, 1906, in which Lloyd George had demanded to know whether the country ‘was to be governed by the King and the peers or by the King and the people’ a remonstrance from Buckingham Palace against the use of the Sovereign’s name provoked the pleasantly ingenious, if unconvincing, excuse from Lloyd George that ‘he would have considered it would be disrespectful to speak of either the “the peers” or “the people” alone, omitting the reference to the supreme Head of the State’. (See Spender’s Life of Campbell-Bannerman, vol. II, pp. 313–15.) The Chancellor of the Exchequer might have considered referring His Majesty to the precedent set by Lord Grey when, on May 17, 1832, he spoke of the dangers of ‘a majority of this House (the House of Lords) … opposing the declared and decided wishes both of the Crown and the people’.

  3 The ability of the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies to secure for himself a place as a Government spokesman in a debate on a major constitutional issue is both a tribute to his own confident energy and an indication of the less rigid ‘departmentalism’ of those days.

  1 Except, perhaps, for the indirect effect of creating a vacancy at the Exchequer and a new Chancellor to introduce the Budget of 1909.

  2 In September, 1905, Asquith, Grey, and Haldane, who were all staying in Scotland, met at Relugas, where Grey had a fishing cottage, and agreed that, when a Liberal Government was formed, they would only serve if Campbell-Bannerman left the leadership in the Commons to Asquith and gave Haldane the Woolsack. What happened in the event has already been related.

  1 1863–1943. Liberal member for Monmouthshire, North, 1895–1918. Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1905–7. President of the Board of Education, 1907–8. First Lord of the Admiralty, 1908–11. Home Secretary, 1911–15. Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1915–16.

  2 Morley, shortly before the Government changes, had told Asquith that ‘I suppose … I have a claim from seniority of service for your place at the Exchequer, but I don’t know that I have any special aptitude for it under present prospects….’ (Morley: Recollections, vol. II, p. 251.) It is interesting to speculate what would have transpired had he pressed the claim, for Asquith comments on the incident in his own Fifty Years of Parliament (vol. 11, pp. 52–3) without indicating that he regarded it as in any way outrageous. Morley by this time, as he made clear in many conversations with his Clerk at the Privy Council Office (see Sir Almeric Fitzroy: Memoirs, vol. III, passim), was anxious to be thought of as a little above the battle and too intelligent not to see all sides of a case. It is consequently difficult to believe that much in the way of adventurous Budgets would have emanated from his Chancellorship, particularly as he was never a social reform radical.

  3 A Royal suggestion that the subsequent surrendering and receiving of Seals of Office by the whole Cabinet should be carried out at the halfway house of the Hotel Crillon in Paris was tactfully overruled.

  1 Lord Salisbury expressed
his scepticism that the measure was a remedy for intemperance by remarking that he felt no more inclined to sleepiness at Hatfield, where there were more than fifty bedrooms, that at a seaside villa with perhaps a dozen. (See Lord Oxford’s Fifty Years of Parliament, vol. II, p. 59n.)

  2 Lord Lansdowne at this time saw little but vindictiveness in the Government’s policy, not only on licensing, but with regard to education, land, the House of Lords and almost everything else. (See Newton, op. cit., pp. 366–7.) But those who wish to make omelettes can always be accused of being vindictive to the eggs.

  1 1841–1917. Evelyn Baring. Created 1st Earl of Cromer, 1901. Agent and Consul-General in Egypt, 1883–1907.

  2 1854–1925. Alfred Milner. Created 1st Viscount Milner, 1902. Chairman, Board of Inland Revenue, 1892–97. High Commissioner for South Africa, 1897–1905. Member of War Cabinet, 1916–18. Secretary of State for War, 1918–19. Secretary of State for Colonies, 1919–21.

  3 1849–1921. Alexander Hugh Bruce. 6th Lord Balfour of Burleigh. Secretary for Scotland, 1895–1903.

  4 1876–1947. 2nd Earl. Succeeded, 1891. Governor of Bengal, 1922–27. Acting Viceroy, 1925.

  5 1846–1935. Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1882–85 and 1905–8. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1908–9. Second son of the 4th Marquess of Lansdowne, a brother of the Unionist leader in the Lords, and one of the few Whigs still in the Liberal Party.

  1 Asquith wrote to his wife on February 20, saying: ‘The economists are in a state of wild alarm, and Winston and Ll. G. by their combined machinations have got the bulk of the Liberal press into the same camp.… They (the two) go about darkly hinting at resignation (which is bluff) and there will in any case be a lot of steam let off, and at any rate a temporary revival of the old pro-Boer animus. I am able to keep a fairly cool head amidst it all, but there are moments when I am disposed summarily to cashier them both.’ (J. A Spender and Cyril Asquith: Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford an Asquith, vol. I, p. 254.)

  1 1871–1946. Arthur Ponsonby, later 1st Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede subsequently joined the Labour Party and became Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, etc.

  2 This, together with other back-bench Liberal revolts which were carried as far as the division lobby, as, for instance, on the Army Estimates, is a good indication of the low state of morale of the Government’s supporters at the time.

  1 1864–1926. Unionist Member for Tynemouth, 1900–6, Stepney, 1907–10, and East Worcestershire, 1914–18.

  2 The substance of which is completely denied by Lloyd George’s subsequent conduct of the bill.

  3 On the assumption that the clause was one of some importance; if it were not, then the story loses all point, as the Chancellor would certainly not have dealt with the matter to which it referred in opening his Budget.

  1 This anticipated decline was due to a fall-off in industrial activity, and it is a striking indication of the limited role which a Budget and a Chancellor of the Exchequer played in those days that Lloyd George was able to refer to this circumstance—‘a year of exceptionally bad trade’—as one of the objective factors in the situation, for which he had no direct responsibility. There was no attempt to explain it away, or to suggest how its recurrence might be prevented. He might have been talking of the effect of a wet season upon the harvest.

  1 On the first two points concessions were made at the committee stage.

  1 One of his principal objections to the land taxes was that they might injure market gardening.

  1 1854–1924. Created 1st Viscount Long of Wraxall, 1921. Conservative member for Wiltshire, North, 1880–85, Devizes, 1885–92, Liverpool, West Derby, 1892–1900, Bristol, South, 1900–6, Dublin, South, 1906–10, Strand, 1910–18, and Westminster, St. George’s, 1918–21. President of the Board of Agriculture, 1895–1900. President of the Local Government Board, 1900–5 and 1915–16. Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1905. Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1916–18. First Lord of the Admiralty, 1918–21.

  1 Philip Snowden had previously advocated a Budget very much on Lloyd George’s lines. (See R. C. K. Ensor: England, 1870–1914, p. 415.)

  2 1851–1918. Nationalist member for Wexford, North, 1885–91, and for Waterford, 1891–1918. Chairman of Irish Parliamentary Party, 1900–18.

  3 On second reading they voted with the Opposition, and on third reading they abstained, a curious proceeding in view of their agreement in principle and their strong objection in detail.

  1 It was then customary for the Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer or whoever was the principal Minister on the Treasury bench to ‘rise in his place and claim to move that the question be now put’, and not leave this to the Government Chief Whip, as is now the practice.

  1 It was on this occasion that an Opposition member raised objection to the presence ‘in his pyjamas’ of Mr. Churchill, who was wearing these garments, apparently beneath some other clothing, in order that he might sleep more easily between divisions.

  1 Sufficiently so, at any rate, to produce on August 25 the almost unbelievable tedium of twenty-three divisions immediately following each other, and occupying the whole time from 9 pm until after midnight. The Finance Bill never subjected members to quite this form of torture.

  1 Charles Hobhouse. 1862–1941. Member for East Wiltshire, 1892–95. and Bristol, East, 1900–18. Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1908–11. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1911–14. Postmaster-General, 1914–15. Succeeded his father as 4th Baronet, 1916.

  2 On the day after the bill received its third reading, Lloyd George gave a dinner to those of his colleagues who had assisted him in the House. The division records of those who attended were printed, a little invidiously perhaps, on the menu cards. (See Margot Asquith, Autobiography, vol. II, p. 123.) Of those present, only the Chief Whip and the Solicitor-General bettered the record of the Chancellor. Mr. Churchill, despite the pyjama incident, was bottom; but the Prime Minister, who voted in 202 divisions, was only a little above him.

  1 Under the Standing Orders of the House a motion for the closure is not effectively carried unless there are at least 100 members voting in the ‘Aye’ lobby.

  1 Speech at a luncheon given by the Land and Housing Reform Joint Committee. (See Annual Register for 1909, p. 146.).

  1 This was replaced by shilling subscriptions from a number of Liberal members of Parliament.

  2 They perhaps contrasted the behaviour of these magnates with the ‘silence and dignity’ with which, Mr. Churchill had declared (Edinburgh: July 17), the working classes were paying their share of the new taxation.

  3 William Joynson-Hicks. 1865–1932. Later 1st Viscount Brentford, Unionist member for N.W. Manchester, 1908–10, Brentford, 1911–18, and Twickenham, 1918–29. Home Secretary, 1924–28.

  1 In some newspapers this was apparently misprinted as ‘without mincing’, and provoked Mr. Churchill to engage in an involved controversy as to whether or not Lord Lansdowne would have to ‘eat his mince’.

  1 Sir George Doughty. 1854–1914. Liberal Unionist member for Grimsby, 1895-January, 1910 and December, 1910–14.

  1 What was in his mind was that, if the Lords would accept the Budget, the Government should agree to a January dissolution. Asquith stressed the practical disadvantages of such a course—it would not be attractive to either party and would be likely to produce a parliamentary stalemate—and succeeded by this method in turning the King’s mind away from it. He might well have added that to have conceded a dissolution at the point of their lordships’ pistol would have been to give away the whole principle which was at issue.

  2 In the outcome the feeling in favour of rejection was so strong that a meeting was held to be unnecessary.

  1 1831–1907. George Joachim Goschen. Created 1st Viscount Goschen, 1900. First Lord of the Admiralty, 1871–74 and 1895–1902. Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1887–92.

&nbs
p; 2 The attitude which both of them would have taken is well summed up by Goschen’s remark: ‘The Duke of Devonshire is like myself, a moderate man—a violently moderate man!’

  1 Except for one or two, like St. Aldwyn, who deliberately absented themselves.

  2 George Nathaniel Curzon, 1859–1929, later 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston. Eldest son of Lord Scarsdale. Conservative member for South-port, 1886–98. Viceroy of India, 1898–1905. Lord Privy Seal, 1915. Lord President of the Council and member of War Cabinet, 1916–19. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1919–24. Given an Irish peerage, 1898, and became an Irish representative peer, 1908. Created an Earl, 1911, and a Marquess, 1921.

  1 1864–1945. Cosmo Gordon Lang. Archbishop of York, 1908–28, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1928–42. Created 1st Lord Lang of Lambeth. 1942.

  1 Who was in the minority? Was it only Mr. Churchill, who is recorded as saying that ‘his hope and prayer was that they (the peers) would throw out the bill, as it would save the Government from certain defeat if the elections were put off’? (Wilfred Scawen Blunt: My Diaries, p. 689.) Or were there others too?

  1 Speech at a National Liberal Club Luncheon on December 3.

  2 This may have been partly due to the organisers’ selection of the wrong night.

  3 1837–1924. Francis Knollys. Created 1st Lord Knollys of Caversham, 1902. Private secretary to King Edward VII as Prince of Wales, 1870–1901, and as King, 1901–10. Joint private secretary to King George V, 1910–13.

  1 He developed pulmonary catarrh, which prevented his participation in the election campaign until the beginning of January.

  2 A few weeks before, Mr. Churchill had been dog-whipped at Bristol, and a few days afterwards the Chancellor of the Exchequer was to be locked into his car, outside the Queen’s Hall, by and with a militant young female, who lectured him for some time before he was able to escape. Even at the Albert Hall meeting immunity was only secured by extricating one woman from the organ shortly before the commencement, and by preventing another, who was disguised as a telegraph boy, from entering during the Prime Minister’s speech.