7 - ARTHUR BALFOUR

Summary

By the death of the Earl of Balfour, in the ripeness of his years, the Royal Economic Society has lost the last of the distinguished statesmen who were its original Vice-Presidents at the date of our foundation forty years ago, though, happily, no less than six of our original members of Council are still serving the Society.

Arthur James Balfour was probably better equipped than any man, who has been Prime Minister of Great Britain in modern times, to hold high office in our body. He first came to the subject in his undergraduate days in Cambridge as the pupil and friend of his brother-in-law, Henry Sidgwick. His first speech in the House of Commons was on the subject of bimetallism. His Economic Notes on Insular Free Trade was certainly the most ‘academic’ memorandum which a Prime Minister has ever circulated to his Cabinet.

His attitude to the two great economic controversies of the last generation, in both of which he played a part of first-rate importance—the bimetallic controversy and the tariff reform controversy—well illustrated his most marked intellectual characteristic, the remarkable open-mindedness with which he combined a cautious and balanced conservatism. Except for those who are too ‘enthusiastic’, too hasty to translate ideas into action, there was nothing in the intellectual world of England more charming and beautiful to behold than this supremely well-informed, brilliantly dialectical, open-minded conservative, perfectly poised between the past and the future. His boldest flight of policy naturally came earliest.