But to the Fourth Party, more than to any other section of the House, was due that defeat over the Budget which, in June, 1885, drove Gladstone from power and enthroned Lord Salisbury.  In the new Administration Mr. Balfour was, of course, included, but his sphere of work was the shady seclusion of the Local Government Board, and, for anything that the public knew of his doings, he might have been composing a second treatise on philosophic doubt or unphilosophic cocksureness.  The General Election of 1885 marked a stage in his career.  The pocket-borough which he had represented since 1874 was merged, and he courageously betook himself to Manchester, where for twenty years he faced the changes and chances of popular election.

The great opportunity of his life came in 1887.  The Liberal party, beaten on Home Rule at the Election of 1886, was now following its leader into new and strange courses.  Ireland was seething with lawlessness, sedition, and outrage.  The Liberals, in their new-found zeal for Home Rule, thought it necessary to condone or extenuate all Irish crime; and the Irish party in the House of Commons was trying to make Parliamentary government impossible.

At this juncture Mr, Balfour became Chief Secretary; and his appointment was the signal for a volume of criticism, which the events of the next four years proved to be ludicrously inapposite.  He, was likened to a young lady—­“Miss Balfour,” “Clara,” and “Lucy”; he was called “a palsied, masher” and “a perfumed popinjay”; he was accused of being a recluse, a philosopher, and a pedant; he was pronounced incapable of holding his own in debate, and even more obviously unfit for the rough-and-tumble of Irish administration.

The Irish, party, accustomed to triumph over Chief Secretaries, rejoicingly welcomed a new victim in Mr. Balfour.  They found, for the first time, a master.  Never was such a tragic disillusionment.  He armed himself with anew Crimes Act, which had the special merit of not expiring at a fixed period, but of enduring till it should be repealed, and he soon taught sedition-mongers, Irish and English, that he did not bear this sword in vain.  Though murderous threats were rife, he showed an absolute disregard for personal danger, and ruled Ireland with a strong and dexterous hand.  His administration was marred by want of human sympathy, and by some failure to discriminate between crime and disorder.  The fate of John Mandeville is a black blot on the record of Irish government; and it did not stand alone.

Lord Morley, who had better reasons than most people to dread Mr. Balfour’s prowess, thus described it: 

“He made no experiments in judicious mixture, hard blows and soft speech, but held steadily to force and tear....  In the dialectic of senate and platform he displayed a strength of wrist, a rapidity, an instant readiness for combat, that took his foes by surprise, and roused in his friends a delight hardly surpassed in the politics of our day.”