The letter itself was intended to meet the demands of honour by appearing to assert his solidarity with his free-trade colleagues. What at first sounded like an assertion of loyalty was really preparation for abandoning his friends. ‘If I am acting under any misapprehension it was shared by others who after consultation with me have taken more prompt action than I did … I could not honourably reconsider my position in any way without further communication with them.’17 The Duke was desperate to find grounds for reconsideration – or to have the Prime Minister find them for him. Balfour decided that another meeting was necessary if his objectives were to be achieved.
Before his success could be confirmed he had work to do. Lord George Hamilton, Ritchie and Balfour of Burleigh were notified that their resignations had been accepted. Chamberlain decided, or agreed, to make his resignation public at the same time and to make equally plain that he remained in general support of the government. Balfour drafted a telegram to the King to tell His Majesty that he had lost his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for India, Secretary of State for Scotland and Colonial Secretary on the same afternoon. He thought it prudent to add that he was ‘uncertain about the attitude of the Duke of Devonshire’.18 On the next day he called on the Duke at Devonshire House (itself a sign of the wish to conciliate) and told him that Chamberlain had definitely gone. Devonshire, in a fine show of loyalty, replied that if he was asked to reconsider his position, ‘the natural course would be to ask [the Prime Minister] to extend a similar invitation to the other ministers’. That the Prime Minister declined to do. The Duke, having made his token gesture, then ‘consented to withdraw [his] resignation’.19 Victor Cavendish recorded his amazement and anxiety. ‘Uncle Cav induced to stay in at last moment. It all came as a great surprise. Impossible fully to judge what the result will be. Probably there will be an election soon.’20
The Duke of Devonshire’s letter of explanation to Charles Ritchie was a model of self-justification. ‘I have … seen Balfour and am able now to tell you of what I think you will agree with me is a fundamental alteration … To my astonishment he informed me last night of the probability, and has today assured me of the certainty, of Chamberlain’s resignation. This wholly unexpected result has led me to reconsider the decision which I formed.’ Not surprisingly, Ritchie was outraged. Lord George Hamilton and Balfour of Burleigh reacted with more aristocratic detachment and declared that they had no cause for complaint. But Lord James of Hereford (Leader of the Liberal Unionists and outside the Cabinet) wrote to tell the Duke, ‘Your agreement to become a supporter of Balfour’s Protectionist Views has caused me as much sadness as surprise.’21
Ritchie himself waited twenty-four hours before he wrote his reply.
Goschen and Beach* came to see me … to ask how it happened that I sent in my resignation when you remained, it having been impressed upon me, as I think I told you, that it was most essential that we should act together. I am, of course, obliged to tell them what took place, namely that we separated on the Tuesday with the understanding that all our resignations were to go in that night with the proviso (on your part) that Balfour wished to see you before you took your final step. You, however, said that there was no chance of his altering your determination.22
The Duke of Devonshire replied that he had no recollection of ‘any understanding that we should all act together’,23 but Lord George Hamilton endorsed Ritchie’s view. ‘I clearly understood that we were all acting together and that, in recognition of this co-operation, the Duke (on behalf of us four) conveyed our resignation to the Prime Minister.’24
Even as the bitter correspondence continued, Balfour must have believed that he had achieved his objective. G. E. Buckle, the editor of The Times, was an ardent supporter of the government, but, even allowing for the prejudices of a partisan, his editorial seemed to do more than set out the details of the Prime Minister’s devious triumph. ‘While Mr Balfour is backed by the Duke of Devonshire and the rest of the Ministry, except the Cobdenite seceders, and while he has Mr Chamberlain’s loyal and independent support, the reconstruction of the Cabinet need not be expected to involve very serious difficulties.’25 Buckle was wrong.
The King had asked to be consulted before the resignations were announced and the Prime Minister had replied to the request with an apology which was expanded by a barely credible explanation. News of the royal request had not reached Downing Street until after the announcement had been made. Anxious not to offend His Majesty a second time, Balfour asked ‘permission to approach Lord Milner for the Colonial Office’. The King gave his enthusiastic agreement. Milner, still in his post as the High Commissioner for South Africa, was a hero of imperialistic England. To the consternation of both the King and the Prime Minister, he declined. The King, deeply offended by Milner’s rejection of what he regarded as a royal command, told Balfour, ‘When a public servant of the Crown is asked by the Prime Minister to undertake a duty which the latter considers him well qualified to fill, it is in the King’s opinion decidedly wrong of him to decline it’. He added, in a note of intentional (though meaningless) menace, ‘The King will not forget now or in the future.’26 No doubt Balfour faced the prospect of Milner’s future punishment with his usual equanimity, but he must have been at least irritated by the King’s consequent determination to interfere in what was left of the reshuffle. Alfred Lyttelton was accepted, after some argument, as the new Colonial Secretary, but the suggestion that Arnold Foster should become Secretary of State for India the King rejected outright. Edward VII, irked by Balfour’s failure to consult him about the resignations, was determined to exercise his full constitutional rights before endorsing the replacements. The tedious business of filling the gaps and placating the King had not been completed by the time that the National Union of Conservative Associations assembled for its annual meeting.
Almost two weeks had passed since the resignation of the free traders and the recriminations which had followed the Duke of Devonshire’s decision to remain, when, on 1 October 1903, the National Union met in Sheffield. It was clear from the start that supporters of Chamberlain and ‘imperial preference’ made up a majority of the audience. Perhaps that is why Balfour took as the theme of the eve of congress address his Economic Notes on Insular Free Trade. The Duke of Devonshire listened to the speech with mounting anxiety. Two days earlier, he had shown Lord Derby the letter which he had received from Ritchie and complained, ‘To think that I have gone through all my life and then at the end of it to have those sort of allegations thrown at my head.’27 He was looking for an excuse to clear his conscience and redeem his good name. The speech was slightly more enthusiastic about a retaliatory tariff than Balfour’s address to the Cabinet of 14 September had been. The pretext had been provided. Devonshire resigned from the government, and a ministerial career, which had begun forty years before, was over.
It is impossible not to feel some sympathy for the old man, but there is little doubt that he deserved to take a share of the blame for the fiasco which followed. The chief culprit was Balfour. His apologists, led by Winston Churchill, insisted that he had written to the Duke of Devonshire as soon as he knew of Chamberlain’s definite intention to resign and that the Duke, out at dinner without the key to the red Cabinet box in which the letter was sent, had only himself to blame for being overtaken by events. Balfour himself never made such a claim. Indeed, in his letter of reconciliation to Devonshire (written years later) he got very near to admitting that he had chosen to divide the free traders in order to rule a protectionist Cabinet: ‘I regarded them [Ritchie and Hamilton] … as having practically severed their connection with the Fiscal Reform Cabinet. I regarded you as still potentially a member of it and I was therefore quite prepared to discuss with you what I should certainly have never discussed with them.’28
In what he must have prided himself was an admirable understatement of Balfour’s guilt, the Duke of Devonshire admitted that he ‘shared the feeling that the Prime Minister’s ingen
uity is open to criticism’.29 But the Prime Minister was only able to achieve his objective because Devonshire was so willing to be tricked – if, as a result, he could retain both the leadership of the House of Lords and the undiminished respect of his colleagues.
After the failure of his strategies, Balfour’s contempt for the Duke of Devonshire was boundless. On receiving the resignation letter which he had done so much to avoid, he dictated an angry reply – as he explained, to emphasise his fury – ‘before [he] had even had his bath’.30 The report he made to the King suggests that his mood did not change during the rest of the day. ‘The Duke of Devonshire’s conduct has been pitiable. Nor is it possible to excuse, or even understand, his vacillations without remembering that he has, without doubt, put himself somehow in the power of Mr Ritchie and his friends. He is forced to behave badly to me, lest he should be publicly taxed with behaving badly to them.’31 Nor did his opinion alter with the years, though by 1910 he chose to diminish the Duke’s reputation with mock sympathy, not open assault. ‘Dear Devonshire! … It was all a muddle. He got himself into such a position that he had to behave badly to someone – and there it was! But it never made the slightest difference to my love for him.’32
It seems unlikely that the Prime Minister exhibited even mock sympathy for the old Duke in the immediate aftermath of his protracted resignation. Devonshire had left the government in a shambles. Austen Chamberlain became Chancellor of the Exchequer – a far more senior office than any ministry his father had ever occupied – and Hugh Arnold Forster (despite the King’s reservations) went to the War Office. But the Unionists were still deeply divided over tariff reform and the resignations had, as always, added personal bitterness to profoundly held conviction. Naturally enough, the Liberal Party set out to exploit the divisions.
The 1904 Parliament opened on 8 January. The Opposition proposed an amendment to ‘the Loyal Address’ which explicitly condemned ‘food taxes’. Arthur Balfour was in bed with ‘a feverish cold’. That accounted for only one of the absentees from the government lobby. The Unionists’ nominal majority in the House of Commons was one hundred and thirty-four. On the food tax vote it fell to fifty-one. The government was on the point of collapse and Balfour was advised by John Sandars, his long-standing private secretary and indispensable confidant, that the road to survival led from South Yorkshire. The government might be rallied round ‘the Sheffield Policy’ of applying tariffs to those countries which discriminated against British exports. By adding that the taxes should not be imposed on food imports – and emphasising that he accepted that other Conservatives felt differently – Balfour was able to limp through most of the next year. His prospects of survival were much increased by the robust support of Joseph Chamberlain, who wrote to his son, ‘In no case am I going to fight against Balfour’s government. I would much rather go out of politics.’33 And he added – with the bellicosity that was sometimes a stronger feature of his politics than sound judgement – that the tariff reformers in the Tory Party had nowhere else to go. He was proved wrong almost immediately. Eleven Unionist free traders, including Winston Churchill, crossed the floor of the House of Commons.
The government needed Joe Chamberlain, and he continued to support Balfour because he hoped that, sooner or later, he would be able to elbow the Prime Minister into accepting across-the-board tariff reform. He knew that the unequivocal rejection of free trade which he planned could only result in the Unionists losing their House of Commons majority and that, in the general election which followed, Balfour would be defeated. But, when the election was over, the Unionist parliamentary party, that would make up the Opposition, would contain a protectionist majority. And who could predict what the consequences of that would be? A new leader would certainly replace Balfour.
The Prime Minister had quite different – indeed diametrically opposed – objectives. When Austen Chamberlain suggested a colonial trade conference to buy him more time, Balfour seized on the idea at once and announced, during a speech in Edinburgh on 2 October 1904, that he intended to call the Empire together. He then added, without the knowledge of Joseph Chamberlain, that the conclusion of the conference might form the basis of tariff reform which a Unionist government would implement after the proposal had been endorsed in two general elections.
Although Joseph Chamberlain was reluctant to wait so long, he was still inclined to support Balfour as the best hope of tariff reform on offer. To him it was ‘inconceivable … that the Prime Minister can contemplate a conference with the colonies without being prepared to give immediate effect to any policy agreed to …’34 But to make sure that he had not overestimated Balfour’s respect for the Empire, Chamberlain determined to tie the Prime Minister’s hands by committing first the Council and then the full Conference of the National Union of Conservative Associations to tariff reform. His agent, Henry Chaplin, achieved both objectives and succeeded in defeating a free trade resolution.
The Prime Minister’s public humiliation, which Chamberlain must have intended, was avoided by the diversion of the general public’s attention towards a tragic, but undeniably bizarre, incident on the Dogger Bank. The Russian Baltic fleet, steaming to the Far East to pursue the war against Japan, mistook a group of Hull trawlers for the Japanese navy steaming in the opposite direction. The Russians opened fire and killed or wounded ten Hull fishermen. For a moment, all of Britain was consumed with fury. Russia offered an immediate apology and massive compensation. But it was some weeks before Balfour was able to return to the toils of free trade and the stream of House of Commons motions which demanded that the government abandon all thought of tariff reform. Many of them appeared on the order paper above the name of Winston Churchill.
A more cunning motion than anything which the impetuous young turncoat proposed moved that ‘a proposition laid down by Mr Chamberlain in 1903 in Glasgow to the effect that on average ten per cent all round [tariff] on manufactured goods shall be opposed …’35 It was not only the passionate ‘Cobdenites’ who wanted to see the resolution carried; in the House of Commons Chamberlain attracted a good deal of personal animosity. Austen Chamberlain’s proposal that opposition to his father’s policy should be made a matter of confidence – ‘put on all the pressure we can and dare our men to turn us out’ – was therefore far too dangerous for Balfour’s taste. The Prime Minister knew that the free traders would be reinforced by MPs like Iwan Muller who told him, ‘I would far sooner risk defeat … than carry on with Highbury patronage.’36 (Highbury was Chamberlain’s Birmingham home.)
The Prime Minister believed that, by prevarication, he could hold his party together. He refused to have the resolution dismissed by a technical device which avoided a vote. Instead, with a fine lack of consistency, he agreed that the government should ignore the vote completely. ‘Courteous to the last, he remained to hear the vigorous speech delivered across the table. Then with smiling countenance, languorous grace and lingering step, he fared forth out of the chamber.’37
Unfortunately two government back-benchers were not so quick-witted or fleet-footed. The resolution was carried by two hundred and fifty-four votes to two. Chamberlain was not amused. The government, he decided, was doomed. The longer it hung on, the greater its eventual defeat would be.
Problems always multiply for broken-backed governments. So it was with Balfour’s administration. The Empire was experiencing growing pains. Curzon – infuriated by the Cabinet’s decision to give Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief, sole and supreme command of the Indian Army – resigned the high office of Viceroy. Although he had leaked his criticisms of the government to newspapers through the device of making a ‘policy speech’ to the Indian Legislative Council, the Cabinet accepted the resignation with courteous regret. Curzon responded with a statement which made clear that he disagreed with more government policy than its view on the proper chain of military command. Then, worse still, the recruitment of Chinese ‘indentured labour’ to work in the gold mines of South Africa was, perhaps
unreasonably, judged to be the government’s responsibility.
The mine owners of the Transvaal constantly needed additional workers. The obvious source of new labour was China. ‘Coolies’ were anxious to volunteer, but the racial prejudices of the Boers did not allow them to enter the country as free men. Ten thousand Chinese labourers were imported into South Africa, all of them indentured to live and work like slaves. They were confined in compounds which they were only allowed to leave, for the whole period of their indenture, during their daily shifts in the mines. Disease was rife, punishment for misdemeanours brutal and, since no women were allowed in the compounds, homosexual rape was common. The High Commissioner, Milner, saw the whole issue as no more than a question of labour economics and therefore well outside the jurisdiction of the imperial Parliament, but a coalition of moralists and radicals thought differently. It was not a situation with which Balfour was ideally equipped to deal. His insouciance looked like indifference. Support for the government was haemorrhaging away Joe Chamberlain smelt blood.
The tariff reformers grew increasingly restless. On 15 April 1905, Chamberlain presided over a meeting of potential supporters. As is the way with putative parliamentary revolts, the gathering began with the counting of heads. It concluded that three hundred and forty-three of the three hundred and seventy-four Unionist MPs demanded some sort of tariff reform. In common with parliamentary revolts down the ages, fewer than half of the dissidents signed the petition which Chamberlain presented to Balfour. The Prime Minister still searched for a stratagem rather than a policy, and since nobody doubted his ingenuity, few people were surprised when he suggested an amendment to his own plan. There was no need to hold a general election until 1907. The Colonial Conference, which had been adjourned in 1902, was due to reconvene in 1906. The Prime Minister proposed that the House of Commons consider ‘colonial preference’ at the conference and go to the country committed to whatever was there agreed when the Parliament completed its full term. He had bought himself two years. Or so he believed.
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