brought to light numerous rifts within the
Liberal party, and when the new ministry, in July, appealed to the
country, with Home Rule as a preponderating issue, its supporters
secured in the Commons a majority of 152 seats over the Liberals and
Nationalists combined. The Liberal Unionists returned 71 members, and
to cement yet more closely the Conservative-Unionist alliance Lord
Salisbury made up a ministry in which the Unionist elements were ably
represented by Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary, Viscount
Goschen as First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Duke of Devonshire as
President of the Council. The premier himself returned to the post of
Foreign Secretary, and his nephew, Arthur J. Balfour, now become again
Government leader in the Commons, to that of First Lord of the
Treasury. The accession of the third Salisbury ministry marked the
beginning of a Unionist ascendancy which lasted uninterruptedly a full
decade. In 1902 Lord Salisbury, whose fourth ministry, dating from the
elections of 1900, was continuous with his third, retired from public
life, but he was succeeded in the premiership by Mr. Balfour, and the
personnel and policies of the Government continued otherwise
unchanged.[218]

[Footnote 218: The most useful works on the party
history of the period 1874-1895 are Paul, History
of Modern England, vols. 4-5, and Morley, Life of
W. E. Gladstone, vol. 3. J. McCarthy's History of
Our Own Times, vols. 4-6, covers the ground in a
popular way. Useful brief accounts are May and
Holland, Constitutional History of England, III.,
88-127, and Cambridge Modern History, XII., Chap. 3
(bibliography, pp. 853-855). An excellent book is
H. Whates, The Third Salisbury Administration,
1895-1900 (London, 1901).]

*162. Unionist Imperialism: the Elections of 1900.*--During the larger
part of this Unionist decade the Liberal party, rent by factional
disputes and personal rivalries, afforded but ineffective opposition.[219]
The Home Rule question fell into the background; and although (p. 154)
the Unionists carried through a considerable amount of social and
industrial legislation, the interests of the period center largely in
the Government's policies and achievements within the domain of
foreign and colonial a