The English poet and radical liberal Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922) kept a diary, excerpts of which were published in 1920 with a Foreword by Lady Gregory
An entry for 10th November 1894 records Blunt driving with Gerald Balfour and his brother Arthur and their “Grand Discussion:-
Gerald maintained that patriotism was the Imperial instinct of Englishmen, who should support the country’s quarrels even when in the wrong….Gerald has all his brother’s inhumanity in politics, and it is a school of thought decidedly on the increase , for it flatters the selfish instincts of the strong by proving to them that their selfishness is right…..on our way home we renewed our argument applied especially towards the Irish.
‘They ought to have been exterminated long ago’ said Gerald, ‘but it is too late now‘….”
Gerald Balfour was Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1895 to 1900, too late to exterminate her people.
Arthur Balfour had been Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891, having been appointed by his uncle, the Prime Minister, Robert Cecil, 3rd Earl of Salisbury. This nepotism is the origin of “Bob’s yer Uncle”
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, had been chief adviser to Elizabeth Tudor for most of her reign and as murderous an enemy of Ireland as ever lived. He was an ancestor of the Balfours. Arthur Balfour earned the soubriquet ‘Bloody Balfour’ when the Royal Irish Constabulary shot three men dead with rifle-fire in Mitchelstown in 1887.
Arthur Balfour succeeded his uncle as Prime Minister in 1902 and served until 1905 and he continued as Leader of the Conservatives in opposition until 1911. He returned to the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915 and as Foreign Secretary in 1916 in the Wartime Coalition Government of Herbert Asquith. He was a lifelong opponent of Irish Home Rule and Republicanism but had presided over many progressive reforms such as education in England and he engineered the transfer, at a price, of much Irish land from the once all powerful landlords to the former powerless tenants.
He died in 1930 and, during the Second World War the former Chief Secretary’s mansion in the Phoenix Park was home to the American Minister, David Gray, a relation of Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of FDR. Gray hated the Irish at least as much as the Balfours did. But he didn’t have the brains of the Balfours and did not have a clue how to deal with De Valera who had already led 6 Irish Governments and could not be brow-beaten by bullying super-powers.
Gray decided to consult Arthur Balfour by occult methods. A twentieth century representative of the most technically power on earth was conducting seances to contact a departed statesman.
Imagine the fun Evelyn Waugh or Graham Greene would have made if the Minister had been an Abyssinian or a Haitian, or an American of a Darker Shade than Gray, had so acted.
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