When Lord Rosebery brought his brief Administration to an end, Lord
Salisbury became Prime Minister for the last time. His physical
energy was no longer what it once had been, and the heaviest of
all bereavements, which befell him in 1899, made the burden of
office increasingly irksome. He retired in 1902, and was succeeded
by his nephew, Mr. A. J. Balfour, The Administration formed in
1895 had borne some resemblance to a family party, and had thereby
invited ridicule--even, in some quarters, created disaffection.
But when Lord Salisbury was nearing the close of his career, the
interests of family and of party were found to coincide, and everybody
felt that Mr. Balfour must succeed him. Indeed, the transfer of
power from uncle to nephew was so quietly effected that the new
Prime Minister had kissed hands before the general public quite
realized that the old one had disappeared.

Mr. Balfour had long been a conspicuous and impressive figure in
public life. With a large estate and a sufficient fortune, with
the 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.