“I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained.”
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Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. He also later served as foreign secretary in the Lloyd George ministry, from 1916 to 1919.
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culture · UK Prime Minister (1848–1930) · politician · writer · philosopher · head of government · also Arthur Balfour, Viscount Traprain of Whittingehame, A. J. Balfour, Arthur James, Earl of Balfour, Arthur James Balfour, first earl of Balfour
Born 25 July 1848 · Died 19 March 1930 · Q19008
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2026· 2 entries
“No, that is not so. I rather think of having a career of my own.”
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2025· 1 entry
Reported claimRated False. Israel's status as a nation is not dependent on the declaration, which has not expired. · AAP
AAP rated the claim “Israel is no longer a sovereign nation because the Balfour Declaration expired on October 31.” False. Israel's status as a nation is not dependent on the declaration, which has not expired..
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2024· 1 entry
Yahoo: Activist slashes painting of Arthur Balfour over 1917 declaration
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2023· 3 entries
fact checker rated the claim “The University of Edinburgh apologizes for Balfour Declaration.” fake.
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Reported claimRated This is not true. The letter comes from a fictional performance piece set in 2043. The University of Edinburgh has issued no such letter. · Full Fact
Full Fact rated the claim “A letter shows a “public apology” from the University of Edinburgh to the Palestinian people for the 1917 Balfour Declaration.” This is not true. The letter comes from a fictional performance piece set in 2043. The University of Edinburgh has issued no such letter..
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Lead Stories rated the claim “Balfour lease expires October 31, 2023” No Such Lease.
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1930· 9 entries
Died 1930-03-19.
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“...we are now in a position which we have not been within the memory of living men. (“Shame.”) Now, what does this imply? Everything depends upon the Navy. (Hear, hear.) We exist as an Empire only on sufferance unless our Navy be supreme (hear, hear), and I for one, ladies and gentlemen, am not content to exist on sufferance. (Cheers.)”
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“...this Home Rule Bill is an experiment in Federalism of the most impossible, unexampled, and preposterous character.”
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“It is necessary for us as a nation not merely to be organized for war but to be organized for peace, not only to be an armed nation while other nations are armed but to have our industry, our productive capacity organized while other nations are organizing their industry and their productive capacity. (Cheers.)”
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“...the great Unionist party shall still control, whether in power or whether in opposition, the destinies of this great Empire.”
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“In my judgment, the importance of the Crown in our Constitution is not a diminishing, but an increasing factor. It increases, and must increase with the development of those free, self-governing communities, those new commonwealths beyond the sea, who are constitutionally linked to us through the person of the Sovereign, the living symbol of Imperial unity.”
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“There are those who talk as if Irishmen were justified in disobeying the law because the law comes to them in a foreign garb. I see no reason why any local colour should be given to the Ten Commandments.”
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“He did not believe that any such transaction could be quoted from the annals of our political or Parliamentary history. It stood alone—he did not wish to use strong language, but he was going to say—it stood alone in its infamy.”
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Aged 81, having spent a vast inherited fortune
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1925· 2 entries
Awarded Cross of Liberty 1st Division, 3rd Class (1925).
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Career landmark: Lord President of the Council (1925–1929).
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1924· 1 entry
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
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1923· 1 entry
The Irish government bought out most of the remaining landowners, and in 1933 diverted payments being made to the British treasury and used them for local improvements
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1922· 1 entry
Career landmark: member of the House of Lords (1922–1930).
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1919· 3 entries
But continued in the government (and the Cabinet after normal peacetime political arrangements resumed) as Lord President of the Council
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Was elected Chancellor of his old university, Cambridge, in succession to his brother-in-law, Lord Rayleigh
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In his introduction to Nahum Sokolow's History of Zionism, that the Zionist movement would:
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1918· 1 entry
Career landmark: member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom (1918–1922).
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1916· 2 entries
Awarded Order of Merit (1916).
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Career landmark: Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1916–1919).
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1914· 1 entry
Delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, which formed the basis for his book Theism and Humanism (1915)
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1910· 3 entries
And the passage of the Parliament Act 1911
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Career landmark: member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1910–1918).
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Career landmark: member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1910–1910).
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1909· 1 entry
Liberal legislation required compulsory sales in certain cases
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1907· 1 entry
“not convinced the majority of women actually wanted the vote”
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1906· 2 entries
Career landmark: member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1906–1910).
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During a House of Commons debate, Balfour argued that the disenfranchisement of the blacks in South Africa was not immoral
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1905· 1 entry
Supported the Aliens Act 1905, one of whose main objectives was to control and restrict Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe
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1904· 1 entry
When threatened with deselection at Oldham), but Balfour's act had drained his authority within the government
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1902· 4 entries
Career landmark: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1902–1905).
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And an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1917
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Career landmark: Leader of the Conservative Party (1902–1911).
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Career landmark: Lord Privy Seal (1902–1903).
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1899· 1 entry
Bore his share of controversy and, when the Second Boer War began disastrously, he was first to realise the need to use the country's full military strength
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1898· 1 entry
And again in Salisbury's absence abroad, Balfour was in charge of the Foreign Office, and he conducted negotiations with Russia on the question of railways in North China
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1895· 2 entries
Balfour again became Leader of the House and First Lord of the Treasury
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Career landmark: member of the 26th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1895–1900).
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1894· 1 entry
1897 and 1910, and served as captain both of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in 1894 and the newly founded Rye club in 1895
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1893· 1 entry
(when Balfour was still in opposition) but set in an imagined near future of 1903–1905
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1892· 2 entries
Career landmark: member of the 25th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1892–1895).
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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
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1891· 1 entry
Balfour became First Lord of the Treasury – the last in British history not to have been concurrently prime minister as well – and Leader of the House of Commons
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1887· 4 entries
Career landmark: Chief Secretary for Ireland (1887–1891).
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And may have engaged in sado-masochism, a claim echoed by A
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Career landmark: Member of the Privy Council of Ireland (1887).
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Lowering rents to match the lower prices, and protected more tenants against eviction by their landlords
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1886· 2 entries
Career landmark: member of the 24th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1886–1892).
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Career landmark: Secretary of State for Scotland (1886–1887).
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1885· 5 entries
Career landmark: member of the 23rd Parliament of the United Kingdom (1885–1886).
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Lord Salisbury appointed Balfour President of the Local Government Board; the following year he became Secretary for Scotland with a seat in the cabinet
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Career landmark: Member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom (1885).
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“I have never had to go back beyond the year 1885 to prove that the Irish leaders desired to obtain what they call the freedom of their country by illegal and anarchic means.”
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Giving him the style "The Right Honourable" and after ennoblement the post-nominal letters "PC" for life
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1880· 1 entry
Career landmark: member of the 22nd Parliament of the United Kingdom (1880–1885).
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1875· 1 entry
She died of typhus on Palm Sunday, 21 March 1875; Balfour arranged for an emerald ring to be buried in her coffin.
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1874· 3 entries
Balfour was elected Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Hertford until 1885
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Balfour achieved prominence as Chief Secretary for Ireland, in which position he suppressed agrarian unrest whilst taking measures against absentee landlords
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After her two previous serious suitors had died, Balfour is said to have declared his love for her in December 1874.
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1848· 1 entry
Born 1848-07-25.
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