Arthur Balfour | Jewish Virtual Library
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Arthur Balfour was born on the family's Scottish estate                                    in East Lothian in 1848. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge,                                    he entered the House of Commons in 1874 as the Conservative MP for Hertford.
In 1878 Balfour became private secretary to his uncle,                                    the Marquess of Salisbury, who was Foreign Secretary in the Conservative                                    government headed by Benjamin                                      Disraeli .
In the 1885 General Election Balfour was elected to                                    represent the East Manchester constituency. The Marquess of Salisbury,                                    who was now Prime Minister, appointed him as his Secretary for Scotland.                                    Other posts during the next few years included Chief Secretary of Ireland                                    (1887), First Lord of the Treasury (1892) and leader of the House of                                    Commons (1892).
Balfour replaced his uncle as Prime Minister in 1902.                                    The most important events during his premiership included the 1902 Education                                    Act and the ending of the Boer War. The topic of Tariff Reform split                                    Balfour's government and when he resigned in 1905, Edward VII invited                                    Henry Campbell-Bannerman to form a government. Campbell-Bannerman accepted                                    and in the 1906 General Election that followed the Liberal Party had                                    a landslide victory.
Balfour remained leader of the Conservative Party until                                    he was replaced by Andrew Bonar Law in 1911. He returned to government                                    when in 1915 Herbert Asquith offered him the post of First Lord of the                                    Admiralty in Britain's First World War coalition government. The following                                    year, David Lloyd George, the new Prime Minister, appointed him as Foreign                                    Secretary, and consequently was responsible for the Balfour                                      Declaration in 1917 which promised Zionists a national home in Palestine.
Balfour left Lloyd George's government in 1919 but                                    returned to office when he served as Lord President of the Council (1925-29)                                    in theConservative government headed by Stanley Baldwin. Arthur Balfour died in 1930.