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"At Cambridge he [Arthur James Balfour] had thought of giving up his inheritance to a younger brother, and devoting himself to philosophy. He had been dissuaded by his mother, who wrote to him 'You will have nothing to write about by the time you are 40'." Dick Leonard, *A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair*, p. 27. Even after his Uncle Bob (Robert Cecil, Third Marquis of Salisbury) persuaded him to go into politics, Balfour would at times return to philosophy, writing, for example, *A Defence of Philosophic Doubt* (1879) https://archive.org/details/defenceofphiloso00balf and *The Foundations of Belief* (1895). https://archive.org/details/foundationsofbib028110mbp After he resigned as Leader of the Opposition in 1911, he again contemplated a return to philosophy, undertaking to give two major courses of lectures at the University of Glasgow; but only one course had been given by August 1914, when he was called to London by Asquith to assist in the war effort.

Suppose Balfour had decided to devote himself to philosophy and stay out of politics. (One possible consequence I was thinking of was that the expression "Bob's your Uncle" might never have entered the English language; according to some sources, it referred to the universal belief that his advancement under Salisbury was due to family favoritism. Alas, a glance at Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_your_uncle casts some doubt on that theory: "A common explanation is that the phrase dates to 1887, when British Prime Minister Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury decided to appoint his nephew Arthur Balfour to the prestigious and sensitive job of Chief Secretary for Ireland...The difficulty with any of these explanations is that – despite extensive searching – the earliest known published uses of the phrase are from 1932, two from 1937, and two from 1938.")

In OTL Balfour was eventually seen as his uncle's inevitable successor. This was partially because there was no obvious alternative: "Lord Randolph Churchill had died in 1894, and neither Joseph Chamberlain nor the Duke of Devonshire, both Liberal Unionists, would have been readily acceptable at the head of a Tory government." (Leonard, pp. 29-30)

So the first question is who becomes Prime Minister after Salisbury steps down. Whoever it is, I do not think he will be much more successful than Balfour was in OTL. Joseph Chamberlain's decision to come out for Imperial Preference would have left the Unionists hopelessly split no matter who would succeed Salisbury; while meanwhile the end of the Boer War would help ease the tensions between "Liberal Imperialists" and "pro-Boers." So the Liberals look like they will win in 1906 in any event. Still, one can argue that Balfour's attempt to "balance" the two sides in the Tariff Reform dispute was the worst possible position a Prime Minister could take, inasmuch as it cost him Cabinet members from *both* sides; four free trade ministers resigned because they thought he was leaning too much to Chamberlain, while Chamberlain himself left because he thought Balfour did not lean far enough...

A second question has to do with Balfour's role as Leader of the Opposition from 1906 to 1911. His use of the House of Lords to obstruct (some but not all) important Liberal legislation--something which would almost certainly have been done regardless of who led the Unionists--led to Lloyd George's famous reference to that House as "not the watchdog of the Constitution, but Mr. Balfour's poodle." However, it was Balfour who finally convinced just enough Unionist peers to vote for the 1911 Parliament Act to enable the Act to pass. Is it possible that with another Unionist Leader the peers would have defeated the Act, forcing the King to "swamp" them with the creation of new Liberal peers? (Maybe it would have been better if this had happened--some of the proposed peers on Asquith's list, such as Thomas Hardy and Bertrand Russell, would certainly have improved the intellectual level of the Upper House. Of course it might also ease the way for future Lords Reform now that the Conservatives would no longer have a vested interest in keeping the Upper House unchanged...)

A third question might be most important of all--what if Balfour were not around to become Foreign Secretary after Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916? (Balfour's niece reported Balfour as saying "As you can imagine I have no prejudices in favour of Lloyd George. I have opposed every political principle he holds--but I think he is the only one who can at the moment break down that wall of military red tape, and see that the brains of the country are made use of.") Although in general Balfour did not take the lead in Cabinet discussions and supported the views of Lloyd George, Leonard (pp. 34-5) thinks that there may have been two instances where Balfour's influence was decisive: first, the rejection of Austrian Foreign Minister Baron Von Khlmann's September 1917 overture (through Spain) proposing peace talks (apparently Lloyd George was tempted to accept); and second, the Balfour Declaration:

"The Balfour Declaration of November 1917, expressing support for 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people' has undoubtedly become Balfour's greatest claim to posthumous fame. Although it resulted from a decision of the whole Cabinet (the one Jewish member, Edwin Montagu, being ironically the sole dissenter), *it is unlikely that it would have seen the light of day without Balfour's enthusiastic advocacy.* [emphasis added--DT] As a student of history, he had been fascinated by the survival over two millennia of this small and unimportant tribe, while great empires had perished. He had met with Chaim Weizmann a dozen years earlier and had been deeply impressed by his Zionist convictions. In his later years he often said that 'looking back on his life in politics, he felt that what he had been able to do for the Jews was the thing most worth while.'" (Leonard, p. 34) I know that some have argued that the Declaration was not all that important because British policy in Palestine remained basically pro-Arab; but that is to ignore the boost in prestige the Declaration gave to Zionism (not least among many Jews who had previously been skeptical).

Thoughts?
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