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V. Free Fooders, Balfourites, Whole Hoggers. Factionalism within the Unionist Party, 1906–10

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Neal Blewett
Neal Blewett
Affiliation:
University of Adelaide
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Extract

The unity of the Unionist party had been destroyed by Joseph Chamberlain's momentous speech at Birmingham on 15 May 1903, a speech described by one of his disciples as ‘a challenge to free thought as direct and provocative as the theses which Luther nailed to the church door at Wittenberg’. It was a particularly apt simile. Chamberlain's speech demanded a new Reformation and men soon found themselves ‘hating Free Trade with all the intensity with which any Calvinist ever hated the Church of Rome’.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1968 , pp. 95 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

1 Amery, L. S., My Political Life, vol. I, England Before the Storm 1896–1914 (London, 1953) 236.Google Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Balfour Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 49759, fos. 185–98, Hugh Cecil to Balfour, 4 May 1907. Hugh Cecil himself had been defeated in the election owing to the intervention of a tariff reformer. He remained on the sidelines throughout the 1906 parliament, perhaps the most eloquent, as he was undoubtedly the most passionate, of the free fooders.

4 The phrase is Balfour's. Balfour Papers, Add. MSS. 49,709, fo. 26, Balfour to Lord Cawdor, 7 February 1906 [Copy].

5 The Times, 30 January 1906. This classification is followed by Ensor in his England 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1936), p. 386.Google Scholar The Duke of Devonshire gave slightly different figures on 6 March-Tariff Reformers 102, Balfourites 36, Free Fooders 16, not classified 3. See Annual Register 1906, 12. For the contemporary conflict about the size of the factions see Russell, A. K., ‘The General Election of 1906’ (Unpublished Oxford D. Phil, thesis), p. 518.Google Scholar

6 Even Joseph Chamberlain himself thought that none of the mostly favourable lists was authoritative, and implied that the Balfourite element had been underestimated. See Hewins, W. A. S., The Apologia of an Imperialist (London, 1929), I, 162.Google Scholar

7 Leading Unionists who had been defeated but who found seats in the first six months of 1906 are included in this calculation, e.g. Balfour, Bonar Law, Lyttelton rather than the original victors in such seats. The total comes to 158 because it includes both Sir Edward Clarke, the free fooder purged in May 1906 and his whole hogger successor, Sir Frederick Banbury. It also includes Sir John Randies, who won a seat from the Liberals in August 1906, but it does not include G. H. Williamson, who was unseated on petition, and whose constituency Worcester City was disfranchised until 1908.

8 Chamberlain, A., Politics from Inside (London, 1936), p. 51.Google Scholar The list in the Austen Chamberlain papers is a list of all M.P.s summoned to a tariff reform meeting in the House of Commons on 13 February 1907 to discuss a tariff amendment to the Address. Referring to this meeting Austen Chamberlain noted: ‘We summoned all TRs. to meet at 4 o'clock tomorrow at the H. of C.’ [my italics]. Chamberlain, , op. cit. p. 51.Google Scholar

9 See 4Hansard, CLIII, 1183–8and The Times, 15 March 1906, for the division of 13 March. Most of the deliberate abstentions are easy to identify as the substantive motion followed immediately upon a procedural motion, while The Times gives information on those who were absent unpaired.

10 Sir Edward Clarke, a leading free food M.P., noted that there were about forty of ‘those who refused to support Mr. Chamberlain's programme’, in the days preceding the 13 March division. However, at least two of these were ‘absolute rotters’, for two names he mentions, E. A. Sassoon and H. Nield, were on the Austen Chamberlain list a year later. Clarke notes that about twenty-five abstained or voted with the Government and there were undoubtedly some discreet absentees, although on Balfour's orders the Unionist Whips were on. See Clarke, E., The Story of My Life (London, 1918), pp. 382–7.Google Scholar Acland Hood, the Unionist Chief Whip, seems to have thought there were about thirty who would oppose a tariff reform amendment. See Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,774, fos. 155–6, Joseph Chamberlain to Balfour, 16 March 1906. See Table 2 for names of the 31 members classified in this article as free fooders in March 1906.

11 See Austen Chamberlain to Lord Ridley, President of the Tariff Reform League, 16 January 1907, published in Petrie, C., The Life and Letters of the Right Hon. Sir Austen Chamberlain (London, 1939), 1, 203–4.Google Scholar

12 The Marquess of Salisbury, who straddled the Balfourite and free food camps, warned Balfour in January 1906 that ‘…if Joe as deputy leader pledges the Party to Tariff Reform in the House of Commons we must at once repudiate him in the House of Lords'. Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49758, fos. 98–100, Salisbury to Balfour, 24 January 1906. Lansdowne more cautiously expressed a similar view. See Add. MS. 49,729, fos. 221–2, Lansdowne to Balfour, 12 February 1906. Lansdowne appears also to have compelled Lord Ridley to withdraw a tariff reform motion in the Lords early in the 1906 session. See Hewins, , op. cit. I, 172.Google Scholar

18 See Gollin, A. M., Proconsul in Politics (London, 1964), pp. 105–16Google Scholar for Milner's emergence as a tariff reform leader. Gollin appears to exaggerate the threat posed by this for Balfour. Balfour appeared unperturbed, and rightly so, by the notion of Milner as a rival for the Conservative leadership.

14 See Semmel, B., Imperialism and Social Reform (London, 1960), pp. 124–7.Google Scholar

16 Four of the University members belonged to the free food group at the opening of the parliament, and Hugh Cecil was to return to parliament in 1910 as one of the members for Oxford University.

16 See Semmel, , op. cit. 159.Google Scholar True, the Agricultural Committee of the Tariff Commission, under the chairmanship of that ardent and perennial advocate of agricultural protection Henry Chaplin, did recommend a small tariff on colonial produce (see Report of the Agricultural Committee of the Tariff Commission, paras. 390, 393, 394). But this distinctly protectionist element in the colonial preference scheme was never popular with tariff reformers and was officially abandoned after the January 1910 election.

17 Professor Semmel has suggested that a possible factor explaining why the Unionist party took up tariff reform and the Liberals did not, was that the former was a party of landowners and the latter was not (Semmel, , op. cit. 104Google Scholar). The above analysis casts considerable doubt on this explanation. In so far as economic factors explain the differing attitudes of the two parties to tariff reform, the explanation probably lies in the differing group of manufacturing and commercial interests clustered around each party, i.e. an explanation similar in type to that suggested above for the divide between free fooders and whole hoggers within the Unionist party.

18 Rose, R., ‘Faction and Party: the British example’ (Unpublished paper delivered at 1962 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar This paper contains many stimulating suggestions concerning the analysis of intra-party factions.

19 Contemporary participants were well aware of this cleavage. In a symbolic confrontation the fourth Marquess of Salisbury told Austen Chamberlain: ‘To you it must always be some thing positive upon which you rely to attract support, to me it is the rallying of cautious men who will join with me in resistance to restless change.’ Austen Chamberlain Papers, Salisbury to Chamberlain, 12 February 1910.

20 Strachey Papers, Strachey to Margot Asquith, 15 December 1908. This letter is part of a regular correspondence between the editor of the great Unionist journal and the wife of the Liberal Prime Minister, which provides a most fascinating commentary on the politics of the time.

21 Ibid. Dicey to Strachey, 8 July 1908.

22 See Cecil, Lord Hugh, Conservatism (London, 1913).Google Scholar

23 For instance, the Unionist effort to produce an imaginative response on Ireland, in relation to Lloyd George's offer of coalition in September–October 1910, was confined entirely to whole hoggers. The best account of this somewhat desperate attempt to transform Unionist policy is in Gollin, A. M., The Observer and J. L. Garvin, 1908–14 (London, 1960), ch. VII.Google Scholar

24 See Dugdale, Blanche E. C., Arthur James Balfour (London, 1936) II, 41–6.Google Scholar

25 Leo Maxse, the most vitriolic of whole hogger editors, thought the policy of negative opposition ‘perilous nonsense’. Bonar Law Papers, 18/3/28, Maxse to Law z January 1907. I am grateful to the First Beaverbrook Foundation for material from the Bonar Law Papers. See also Austen Chamberlain's effort to persuade Balfour to provide ‘a definite constructive alternative to the wild-cat and predatory schemes of the present Govt, and its socialist allies’. Austen Chamberlain to Balfour, 24 October 1907, quoted in Fraser, Peter, Joseph Chamberlain (London, 1966), p. 288.Google Scholar Other whole hoggers, despairing of Balfour, talked of a new unauthorized programme. See Austen Chamberlain Papers, Arthur Lee to Austen Chamberlain, 28 October 1907.

26 Smith, F. E., Unionist Policy and Other Essays (London, 1913), p. 15.Google Scholar

27 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,709, fo. 26, Balfour to Cawdor, 7 February 1906 [Copy].

28 Ibid. Add. MS. 49,708, fos. 106–30, Balfour to Selborne, 6 March 1908.

29 Balfour in the Commons, 10 June 1903, quoted in Young, K., Arthur James Balfour (London, 1963), pp. 213–14.Google Scholar

30 Dugdale, , op. cit. ii, 84–5.Google Scholar

31 A prominent free fooder, Arthur Elliot thought that ‘Balfour was never more than a broken reed, and he has done us much harm, and probably will do us more yet’. Strachey Papers, Elliot to Strachey, 11 July 1907. Elliot's antipathy to Balfour was partly explained by the fact that the Conservative Central Office had sanctioned a candidate against him in 1906, which had cost him his safe seat at Durham City.

32 Strachey, who was pushing the scheme of a centre party, wrote of ‘the tremendously strong combination’ of Rosebery, Cromer and Devonshire. ‘No combination… could inspire more confidence in the country.’ Strachey Papers, Strachey to Rosebery, 4 September 1907 [Copy]. Rosebery was flattered but as with all the schemes of the free fooders nothing came of it.

33 It must be confessed, however, that the notion of a Rosebery ministry of moderates remained a hardy perennial in Edwardian politics. Some saw it, at a later stage, as a way out of the constitutional crisis. Perhaps an even more hare-brained suggestion of Strachey's was his plea that Curzon should come forward to lead the Unionist party, dethroning in effect both Balfour and Chamberlain. Strachey Papers, Strachey to Curzon, 3 February 1906 [Copy].

34 Robert Cecil Papers, B.M. Add. MS. 51,159, Strachey to Robert Cecil, 3 February 1909.

35 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,759, fos. 185–98, Hugh Cecil to Balfour, 4 May 1907.

36 Austen Chamberlain Papers, Balfour to Austen Chamberlain, 9 February 1907. This section of the letter is quoted in Petrie, op. cit. I, 205. The concluding section of this letter is published in Chamberlain, op. cit. p. 48. As might be expected Austen found the letter ‘very unsatisfactory’.

37 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,709, fo. 26, Balfour to Cawdor, 7 February 1906 [Copy].

38 Austen Chamberlain Papers, Joseph Chamberlain to J. Boraston (Chief Agent, Liberal Unionist Association), 3 February 1906.

39 These points are more fully developed in Peter Fraser's ‘Unionism and Tariff Reform: The Crisis of 1906’, The Historical Journal, v, no. 2 (1962), 149–66.Google Scholar

40 Bryce Papers, Miscellaneous, Sir William Anson to Bryce, 19 April 1908.

41 My account is heavily indebted to the excellent narrative of this crisis in Fraser, ‘Unionism and Tariff Reform’. I have two major qualifications in relation to this article. First Mr Fraser considers that ‘the bitter hostility with which Joseph Chamberlain was pur sued by the sections of the Unionist Party opposed to his policy of tariff reform… is a curious aspect of Unionist history’. Yet, as Joseph Chamberlain's initiative split the Unionist cabinet and party, and contributed to the catastrophe of 1906, and as it was Joseph Chamberlain and his supporters who began the policy of evicting their opponents from the seats they held, ‘bitter hostility’ to him seems natural rather than curious. But a second, and more serious reservation is the tendency to see the 1906 crisis as an isolated incident. Mr Fraser argues chiefly on the grounds of Joseph Chamberlain's illness, that ‘the episode had no sequel and left little trace upon the course of events’. Now it is true that Chamberlain's illness was a severe blow to his cause, and that in the autumn of 1906 there was a hiatus in the forward momentum of the tariff reformers. Nevertheless the three substantive issues around which the 1906 episode was fought, official acceptance of a general tariff, a democratic reorganization of the party, and the ostracism of the free fooders, remained the major themes in the intraparty struggle between 1906 and 1910 and beyond. The tariff reformers did not abandon these objectives on Joseph Chamberlain's illness, but in the following years, as shown below, achieved substantial if not complete success on all three points.

42 Balfour to Chamberlain, 8 February 1906, quoted in Fraser, ‘Unionism and Tariff Reform’.

43 See Dugdale, , op. cit. II, 28–9.Google Scholar

44 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,737, fos. 47–9, Robert Cecil to Balfour, 14 May 1906. Strachey considered that with the Valentine letter Balfour ‘had crossed the Rubicon, or… appeared to have crossed the Rubicon, or was generally believed to have crossed it’ (Strachey's emphasis). Strachey Papers, Strachey to Robert Cecil, 19 November 1907 [Copy].

45 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,737, fos. 62–4, Robert Cecil to Balfour, 17 January 1907.

46 Ibid. fos. 53–4, Robert Cecil to Balfour, 14 June 1906.

47 See Fraser, ‘Unionism and Tariff Reform’, and Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,858, fos. 182–4, Balfour to F. H. Clark, 19 February 1906 [Copy].

48 Austen Chamberlain Papers, Austen Chamberlain to Lord Ridley, 21 January 1907 [Copy].

49 Bonar Law Papers, 18/3/28, Maxse to Bonar Law, 2 January 1907.

50 See Ridley's warning to Chamberlain that discontent with Balfour ‘has now spread far beyond the Maxses and the Wares’. Austen Chamberlain Papers, Ridley to Austen Chamber lain, 15 January 1907.

51 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,771, fos. 166–7, Hood to Short (Balfour's personal secretary), 14 January 1907.

52 See Dugdale, op. cit. II, 44.Google Scholar

53 From report in The Times, 2 February 1907.

54 Hewins, , op. cit I, 192.Google Scholar

55 Chamberlain, , op. cit. p. 86.Google Scholar See also Fraser, , Joseph Chamberlain, pp. 283–5.Google Scholar

56 Chamberlain, , op. cit. p. 83.Google Scholar

57 Balfour Papers Add. MS. 49,708, fos. 106–30, Balfour to Lord Selborne, 6 March 1908. Balfour told Selborne, who had married the Cecils' sister, that ‘this difference of opinion within the family has been the cause of untold vexation, and has more than once gone near to inducing me to leave the leadership to other men, unhampered by the memories and affection of which I cannot get rid’.

58 Chamberlain, , op. cit. pp. 77–8.Google Scholar See also Hewins, , op. cit. I,Google Scholar chs. vii and ix passim. The free fooders were certainly alarmed by this tendency in Balfour and sought to combat it. Hugh Cecil warned Balfour against ‘the windy-minded underbred spirits who form the common type of Colonial politician’. Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,759, fos. 185–98, Hugh Cecil to Balfour, 4 May 1907. While the free fooders were abusing these ‘gaseous orators’, these ‘trans-oceanic mediocrities’ (further Cecilian epithets) the very same colonial politicians were being fSted as heroes in the cause by the whole hoggers.

59 Chamberlain, , op. cit. p. 79.Google Scholar

60 Austen Chamberlain Papers, Balfour to Austen Chamberlain, 23 October 1907.

61 As it was cleverly composed of phrases from his own speeches it was a little diffcult for him not to support it.

62 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,832, fos. 192–201, Sandars to Miss Balfour, 20 March 1908.

63 Bonar Law Papers 18/4/66, Maxse to Bonar Law, 5 June 1908.

64 Russell, , loc. cit. p. 47 n. 4.Google Scholar

65 Acland Hood to Sandars, 22 December 1905, quoted in p. 143 n. 1. Wells was chief agent of the Conservative party July 1903–November 1905.

66 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,774, fos. 125–7, Joseph Chamberlain to Balfour, 7 February 1906. Part of this letter is published in Dugdale, , op. cit. II, 23–4.Google Scholar

67 This paragraph relies heavily on Jones, R. B., ‘Balfour's reform of party organization’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Reseach, xxxviii, no. 97 (1965), 94–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Apart from the study of this episode Mr Jones's article is disappointing on the period 1906–9, and what he has to say on this period is weakened by a serious misdating of two letters from Sandars to Balfour.

68 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,765, fos. 10–16, Sandars to Balfour, 22 January 1907. This letter is partly quoted in Dugdale, , op. cit. II, 43–4.Google Scholar

69 The Central Councils elected in 1908 and 1909 both had clear whole hogger majorities.

70 This certainly occurred in Hertford in 1909, and a promise of future recognition was made to a rebel association in Marylebone in the same year.

71 Previously this had been shared between the Central Office and the National Union. For details of these reforms see National Union Records, report of the Special National Union Conference, London, 27 July 1906 and minutes, Council, National Union, 11 May 1906.

72 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,708, fos. 106–31, Balfour to Lord Selborne, 6 March 1908.

73 Ibid. Add. MS. 49,771 fos. 166–7, Hood to Short, 14 January 1907.

74 See ibid. Add. MS. 49,765, fos. 10–16, Sandars to Balfour, 22 January 1907. Sandars pointed out that the T.R.L. branches were taking good men and money away from the local Conservative associations.

75 See Sandars to Balfour, 2 April 1907, quoted in Jones, loc. cit.

76 Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,159, typed memorandum dated 1 January 1909 by G.[eorge] H.[amilton].

77 See Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,737, fos. 71–9, Robert Cecil to Balfour, 9 July 1907.

78 Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,158, Hood to Cecil, 17 November [1908].

79 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,771, fos. 170–3, Hood to Sandars, 11 January [1908].

80 See Add. MS. 49,727, fos. 306–10. This is an unsigned letter to Lansdowne from 14 Egerton Gardens, Sandars' residence, which gives an account of Hood's interview with Joynson-Hicks, the candidate concerned. Joynson-Hicks was fighting Winston Churchill at the Mancheste rr North West by-election, caused by the latter's elevation to the Cabinet. Hood believed that if Joynson-Hicks had run straight on the Birmingham policy of Balfour, ‘ without hedging at the beginning’ under free food pressure, he would have had a four figure majority. As it was Hicks won by 429 votes. See Add. MS. 49,765, fos. 138–43, Sandars to Balfour, 1 May 1908.

81 Chamberlain, , op. cit. 106.Google Scholar

82 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,771, fos. 179–80, Hood to Sandars, 1 October [1909].

83 The Times, 20 January 1909. See Bonar Law's significant comment on this decision in a letter to A. T. Salvidge, the Conservative ‘boss’ in Liverpool, published in Salvidge, Stanley, Salvidge of Liverpool (London, 1934), p. 83.Google Scholar

84 Bonar Law Papers, 18/5/87, Goulding to Law, 25 January 1909. Goulding passed the same story on to Austen Chamberlain, see Chamberlain, , op. cit. p. 142. Goulding's source was Fabian Ware, editor of the Morning Post.Google Scholar

85 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,736, fos. 12–15, Balfour to Austen Chamberlain, 9 February 1907 [Copy].

86 For details see McCready, H. W., ‘The Revolt of the Unionist Free Traders’, Parliamentary Affairs, xvi, no. 2 (1963), 188–206;Google Scholar and Gollin, Alfred, Balfour's Burden (London, 1965), particularly part in.Google Scholar

87 Taylor had been unopposed by the Liberals in 1906, indeed his nomination papers had been signed by members of both parties and from the outset he claimed that ‘with the Liberals’ democratic views on educational and social reform I have always had so much in common' (The Times, 21 February, 3 March 1906). He voted with the Liberals on all major issues during the parliament. The actual occasion of Corbett's break with the Unionist party had been the Licensing Bill of 1908, and he claimed that from August 1909—when he returned to the Commons after an illness—until the end of the session he had voted 323 times for the Government and only once against them (Lewis Harcourt Papers, Corbett to Harcourt, 8 January 1910). Cross too had supported the Liberals on licensing, as well as on education in 1908, and his rejection by the Camlachie Unionist associations, engineered apparently by the Confederates, was defended on the grounds that Cross had shown a lack of sympathy with the Unionist party, and had given general support to the Liberals (The Times, 26 January 1909). The Liberal party was not unappreciative of such desertions. Corbett was raised to the peerage in 1911, Cross knighted in 1912.

88 See above, footnote 10.

89 E.g. Mildmay, Walrond, Hicks Beach were cases ‘where the desire to reunite is obvious even tho’ action may be slow'. Balfour Papers, Add MS. 49,736, fos. 21–32, Austen Chamberlain to Balfour, 24 October 1907.

90 Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,159, Hornby to Cecil, 7 February 1909.

91 Annual Register 1906, p. 15.

92 See Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,737, fos. 51–2, Robert Cecil to Balfour, 24 May 1906.

93 As Unionist M.P. for Plymouth he had been critical of the Venezuela policy of Salisbury in 1896 and later of Unionist policies in South Africa. See Clarke, , op. cit. chs. xxv and xxvii.Google Scholar

94 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,791, fos. 188–97, Sir Joseph Lawrence to Balfour, 24 March 1906.

95 See Clarke, , op. cit. 384–5,Google Scholar and Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,158, Clarke to Cecil, 5 March 1906. For Clarke's anti–tariff speech in Commons see 4 Hansard, CLIII, 1036–48. On this speech Balfour commented: ‘What malicious fairy prompted him to make the speech he did the other night, I cannot even imagine’. Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,858, fo. 199, Balfour to Herbert Gibbs, 22 March 1906 [Copy]. For Balfour's reprospective view of Clarke's actions see ibid. Add. MS. 49,758, fos. 167–74, Balfour to Salisbury, n February 1907 [Copy].

96 Ibid. Add. MS. 49,791, fos. 188–97, Sir Joseph Lawrence to Balfour, 24 March 1906 (Lawrence's italics).

97 See Clarke, , op. cit. 388, and Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,858, fo. 199, Balfour to Herbert Gibbs, 22 March 1906 [Copy].Google Scholar

98 Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,158, Robert Cecil to Clarke, 29 May 1906 [Copy].

99 Clarke, , op. cit. 388.Google Scholar

100 Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,737, fos. 61–4, Robert Cecil to Balfour, 17 January 1907.

101 Ibid. Add. MS. 49,708, fos. 106–30, Balfour to Selborne, 6 March 1908.

102 Ibid. Add. MS. 49,771, fos. 170–3, Acland Hood to Sandars, 11 January 19[08].

103 This attempt to identify some of the leading Confederates is based on various private letters, particularly Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,765, fos. 74–7, Sandars to Wilfred Short, 28 October 1907; Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,072, E. G. Brunker to Robert Cecil, 9 January 1908; on an admittedly inaccurate list published in the Daily Graphic, 21 January 1909; on Croft, Lord, My Life of Strife (London, 1949), p. 43;Google Scholar and Winterton, Earl, Pre-War (London, 1932), pp. 229–30.Google Scholar If Bonar Law was not himself a Confederate he was certainly privy to most of their secrets and acted as their front bench guide. His correspondence with Goulding in the Bonar Law Papers makes this quite clear. The list of Confederates given in Gollin, The Observer and J. L. Garvin, pp. 97–8 is surprisingly inaccurate. Croft himself denies that Milner and Chaplin were Confederates and I have discovered no evidence refuting this. Unless Austen Chamberlain regularly lied to Balfour he was not one either. The pertinent description of Goulding is from Gollin, p. 103, and of Winterton from the Balfour Papers, Add. MS. 49,737, fos. 84–5, Robert Cecil to Balfour, 13 January 1908.

104 Croft, , op. cit. 43.Google Scholar

105 National Review, February 1909.

106 There is a suggestion of this in Croft's account of the Hertford struggle. See Croft, , op. cit. p. 42.Google Scholar

107 Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,072, Cecil to Walter Long, 18 April 1908 [Copy].

108 National Review, February 1909.

109 See the article on ‘The Confederacy. By a Confederate’, National Review, January 1909.

110 The Times, 23 January 1909.

111 Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,158, J. S. Underhill to Cecil, 8 January 1909.

112 See Asquith Papers, Box 12, fos. 3–10, for correspondence marked ‘secret’ between Asquith and Robert Cecil. See also Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,159, for Cecil's correspondence with C. E. Mallet of the Free Trade Union.

113 The Times, 22 October 1909.

114 Bryce Papers, MS. 13, fos. 170–5, Ilbert to Bryce, 3 August 1909.

115 See Gollin, , The Observer and J. L. Garvin, 100,Google Scholar and Chamberlain, , op. cit. 181.Google Scholar

116 Bryce Papers, MS. 13, fos. 160–3, Ilbert to Bryce, 4 July 1909.

117 See The Times, 20 September 1909 for the text of Balfour's speech and Chamberlain's letter.

118 Beach, V. Hicks, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Earl St Aldwyn (London, 1932), II, 258.Google Scholar

119 Bonar Law Papers, 18/5/100, Maxse to Bonar Law, 29 July 1909.

120 All extracts are from letters in the Strachey Papers, Northumberland to Strachey, 7, 13 and 21 September 1909 (my italics). Northumberland also advanced a further reason for supporting the tariff reformers: ‘…the only feasible course is to side with the bigger battalions, which I rather think the Tariff Reformers are’.

121 See Gollin, op. cit. 113–16, and 122.Google Scholar Gollin has misdated the Bingley Hall speech.

122 The Times, 23 September 1909.

123 Daily Telegraph, 14 January 1910.

124 Robert Cecil Papers, Add. MS. 51,159, Broadhurst to Cecil, 8 May 1909.

125 Many historians have noted that strong opposition to rejection came from the U.F.T.s. Balfour of Burleigh, James of Hereford, St Aldwyn, Lytton and the Spectator all opposed rejection.

126 Morning Post, 26 January 1910. See too its savage comments on the defeat of Cecil and Bowles, Morning Post, 18 January 1910.

127 Practically every address has been preseved and bound in two volumes at the National Liberal Club. Where there was no specific declaration about the prime importance of tariff reform, prominence and space given to the question were used as determinants of importance.

128 See the article 'Mr Chamberlain, the Crisis and the Call', in National Review, January 1910.

129 Morning Leader, 18 January 1910.

130 Austen Chamberlain Papers, Ware to Chamberlain, 25 January 1910.

131 Austen Chamberlain Papers.