Tory leader for his uncle, and a pocket-borough bidden by that
uncle to return him, he had obvious qualifications for political
success. He entered Parliament in his twenty-sixth year, at the
General Election of 1874, and his many friends predicted great
performances. But for a time the fulfilment of those predictions
hung fire. Disraeli was reported to have said, after scrutinizing
his young follower's attitude: "I never expect much from a man
who sits on his shoulders."

Beyond some rather perplexed dealings with the unpopular subject of
Burial Law, the Member for Hertford took no active part in political
business. At Cambridge he had distinguished himself in Moral Science.
This was an unfortunate distinction. Classical scholarship had been
traditionally associated with great office, and a high wrangler
was always credited with hardheadedness; but "Moral Science" was
a different business, not widely understood, and connected in the
popular mind with metaphysics and general vagueness. The rumour
went abroad that Lord Salisbury's promising nephew was busy with
matters which lay quite remote from politics, and was even following
the path of perilous speculation. It is a first-rate instance of
our national inclination to talk about books without reading them
that, when Mr. Balfour published _A Defence of Philosophic Doubt_,
everyone rushed to the conclusion that he was championing agnosticism.
His friends went about looking very solemn, and those who disliked
him piously hoped that all this "philosophic doubt" might not end
in atheism. It was not till he had consolidated his position as a
political leader that politicians read the book, and then discovered,
to their delight, that, in spite of its alarming name, it was an
essay in orthodox apologetic.

The General Election of 1880 seemed to alter the drift of Mr. Balfour's
thought and life. It was said that he still was very philosophical
behind the scenes, but as we saw him in the House of Commons he was
only an eager and a sedulous partisan. Gladstone's overwhelming
victory at the polls put the Tories on their mettle, and they were
eager to avenge the dethronement of their Dagon. "The Fourth Party"
was a birth of this eventful time, and its history has been written
by the sons of two of its members. With the performances of Lord
Randolph Churchill, Sir John Gorst, and Sir Henry Drummond Wolff I
have no concern; but the fourth member of the party was Mr. Balfour,
who