THIRD MARQUESS OF SALISBURY 285
The Home Rule Bill was defeated by a majority of thirty (June 8th), and a dissolution followed. The resulting election gave the combined Unionists a majority of 118 over the Gladstonians and Nationalists.
After a magnanimous attempt to induce Lord Hartington, the leader of the Liberal Unionists, to form a Government, Lord Salisbury again took office on July 26th, 1886. He himself became First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Iddesleigh going to the Foreign Office, while Lord Randolph Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Mr. Balfour was made Secretary for Scotland, and was admitted to a seat in the Cabinet a few months later. Friction soon arose between Churchill and his chief ; and at Christmas, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a protest against Lord Iddesleigh's foreign policy, and the growth of expenditure on arma- ments, tendered his resignation, which, to his great surprise, was accepted.
At this crisis the Prime Minister again approached Lord Hartington, with the proposal that he should either form a coalition government or enter the ministry as leader of the House of Commons. 1 In spite of the strong desire expressed by the Queen that he should accept this offer, Hartington felt unable to comply. It was, how- ever, by his advice that Goschen joined the ministry as Chancellor of the Exchequer. W. H. Smith became First Lord of the Treasury
1 Bernard Holland, Life of the Duke of Devonshire, II. 179.
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