Arthur James Balfour: Governance

Arthur James Balfour was British Conservative politician and statesman. Explore interesting quotes on governance.

Arthur James Balfour: 96 quotes4 likes

“His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Arthur James Balfour

Letter (2 November 1917) to Lord Rothschild; this letter became known as the Balfour Declaration, quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 171.

“On questions of taste there is notoriously the widest divergence of opinion./…/ if, from a survival point of view, one taste be as good as another, it is not the varieties in taste which should cause surprise so much as the uniformities. To be sure, the uniformities have often no deep aesthetic roots. They represent /…/ tendencies to agreement, which govern our social ritual, and thereby make social life possible.”

Arthur James Balfour

Theism and humanism

“It is proof of the most vital principle of the English Constitution, which no foreigner can understand, that when they are brought together in the public interest, they never get deflected from the main issue before them by the memory of ancient conflict or the impossibility of working together. That is the great secret of the paradox that in this country alone will you see the perfection of Parliamentary Government carried to the pitch it has been.”

Arthur James Balfour

Speech in the Speaker's Courtyard of Parliament for his 80th birthday ceremony (25 July 1928), quoted in The Times (26 July 1928), p. 16
Lord President of the Council

“This Government have lived on electoral bribes for six years. They have been floating helplessly down the revolutionary stream, which they have not controlled or guided in any way, snatching now at one electoral advantage and now at another electoral advantage. They have attacked the Crown, they have attacked the Second Chamber, they have bound the Representative Chamber hand and foot; and, having finished their bribes, they are now lapsing into the old Radical practice of destroying Churches, passing what they conceive to be judicious Reform Bills from the gerrymandering point of view, and generally comporting themselves as a Radical Party in difficulties always does comport itself. I do not believe the country will stand it much longer.”

Arthur James Balfour

Leader of the Opposition
Source: Speech to the executive committee of the City of London Conservative Association announcing his resignation as party leader (8 November 1911), quoted in The Times (9 November 1911), p. 10

“The Government have tyrannically destroyed, so far as the Parliament Bill is concerned, every real power which the Second Chamber possesses. They have in their own fashion imitated Cromwell, without either his excuses or his genius.”

Arthur James Balfour

Letter to Lord Newton (25 July 1911), quoted in The Times (26 July 1911), p. 8
Leader of the Opposition

“The advantage of the Referendum is this—that the issue is quite clear and quite precise. It is not one of the mixed issues inevitably put before the constituencies at a General Election. It is perfectly easy to say, when the Referendum is over, on what the Referendum was, whereas after a General Election every man says that it was upon the subject in which he is interested, if the election has gone in his favour. The Referendum has an enormous advantage. It does not involve a General Election; it does not involve all the personal bitterness inevitably involved in a contest between the two competitors for a seat; it does not carry with it a change of Government; and it does get a clear verdict from the people.”

Arthur James Balfour

Speech in the Albert Hall, London (29 November 1910), quoted in The Times (30 November 1910), p. 9
Leader of the Opposition

“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.”

Arthur James Balfour

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1901/jan/25/address-in-reply-to-the-kings-message#column_20 in the House of Commons (25 January 1901) <br class="br">Leader of the House of Commons

“To secure order, freedom, and safety, for the minority as well as for the majority of the Irish people, and to do so as far as possible, by the administration of equal laws, should be the first object of any Ministry responsible for the government of that country. But I shall resist to the uttermost any attempt to loosen the connection, which has subsisted so long between Ireland and Great Britain, under whatever disguises that attempt may be made.”

Arthur James Balfour

Election address for the 1885 general election, quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1848–1905 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 72
President of the Local Government Board