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BERNARD ALDERSON
Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) enjoyed a long and distinguished career in British politics, serving, among other positions, as prime minister from 1902 to 1905 and foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919. Bernard Alderson’s 1903 biography of Balfour depicts him as a selfless and dignified public servant who did not seek after his own acclaim—a great example for all men.
Mr Balfour took the most momentous step in his public career when he accepted the post of Irish Secretary, which was destined to be the means of rapidly lifting him into the front rank of British statesmen and leading him eventually to the highest office in the state.
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Writing about his political standing at this time, Mr Lucy says: “Up to the day when all the world wondered to hear that Mr Balfour had been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, he was a person of no consequence. His rising evoked no interest in the House, and his name would not have drawn a full audience in St James’s Hall.”
Mr Balfour was himself responsible for this obscurity. He never made any effort to gain prominence, and never indulged in those extraordinary artifices and eccentric attitudes by which some politicians have in their early days endeavoured to attract to themselves public notice. If he had cared, with the aid of his powerful connections, he could easily have acquired an empty notoriety, but nothing would have been more averse to his refined, reserved nature. It may truly be said that popularity, fame, and greatness came upon him unsought. He would never have intrigued for them, and they would never have been his, had they not been found in the path of duty. His hatred of shams was too real and intense; he was steeped too much in the genuineness and the reality of things, and his spirit was too choice to allow him to angle for the fleeting favour of popular applause. It was largely owing to this fine temper of mind, and to this self-effacing attitude, that up to his appointment as Chief Secretary for Ireland he was an unconsidered personality and a negligible quantity in political affairs. To the great masses of the electorate, his name was almost unknown.