this time an established position in public
life, and a reputation for weight of character, which procured for him
universal respect and confidence, and exempted him from bitter attack,
even from his most determined political opponents. Wealth and rank
combined with character to place him in a measure above party; and his
succession to his father as chancellor of the university of Cambridge in
1892 indicated his eminence in the life of the country. In the same year
he had married the widow of the 7th duke of Manchester.

He continued to hold the office of lord president of the council till
the 3rd of October 1903, when he resigned on account of differences with
Mr BALFOUR (q.v.) over the latter's attitude towards free trade. As Mr
Chamberlain had retired from the cabinet, and the duke had not thought
it necessary to join Lord George Hamilton and Mr Ritchie in resigning a
fortnight earlier, the defection was unanticipated and was sharply
criticized by Mr Balfour, who, in the rearrangement of his ministry, had
only just appointed the duke's nephew and heir, Mr Victor Cavendish, to
be secretary to the treasury. But the duke had come to the conclusion
that while he himself was substantially a free-trader,[1] Mr Balfour did
not mean the same thing by the term. He necessarily became the leader of
the Free Trade Unionists who were neither Balfourites nor
Chamberlainites, and his weight was thrown into the scale against any
association of Unionism with the constructive policy of tariff reform,
which he identified with sheer Protection. A struggle at once began
within the Liberal Unionist organization between those who followed the
duke and those who followed Mr CHAMBERLAIN (q.v.); but the latter were
in the majority and a reorganization in the Liberal Unionist Association
took place, the Unionist free-traders seceding and becoming a separate
body. The duke then became president of the new organizations, the
Unionist Free Food League and the Unionist Free Trade Club. In the
subsequent developments the duke played a dignified but somewhat silent
part, and the Unionist rout in 1906 was not unaffected by his open
hostility to any taint of compromise with the tariff reform movement.
But in the autumn of 1907 his health gave way, and grave symptoms of
cardiac weakness necessitated his abstaining from public effort and
spending the winter abroad. He died, rather suddenly, at Cannes on the
24th of March 1908.

The head of an old and p