THIRD MARQUESS OF SALISBURY 299
In the summer of 1900 the Boxer outbreak and the siege of the legations in Pekin necessi- tated a revival of the Concjert-of-Europe in a new sphere, and still further increased the work and anxieties of the Foreign Secretary. In September the Government dissolved Parliament, and at the " khaki election," which followed, Lord Salisbury secured a majority of 134. Had he consulted his own wishes, he would now have retired from public life. " He was borne down with domestic grief and physical weakness ; and yet he felt himself unable to lay down his burden lest the enemies of his country should take courage from the ministerial and electoral difficulties that might, and indeed did, follow his resignation. He remained at his post, and his countrymen honoured his determination. But very few of them knew what the effort was costing him, and how much sorer was the self-sacrifice involved in holding office in 1900 than in resigning it thirty- three years before." l
He did, however, hand over the direction of the Foreign Office to Lord Lansdowne, taking himself the post of Lord Privy Seal. But he
1 Lord R. Cecil in the Monthly Review, October, 1903. After the election of 1900, the Government contained so many members and connections of the Cecil family that it was nicknamed " The Hotel Cecil, Unlimited " thus recalling the " Regnum Caecilianum " of 300 years before. In addition to Viscount Cranborne (Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs), Mr. A. J. Balfour (First Lord of the Treasury) , and Mr. Gerald Balfour (President of the Board of Trade), one of Lord Salisbury's daughters was married to Lord Selborne (First Lord of the Admiralty), and one of his nieces, Mary Beresford-Hope, was the wife of Mr. J. W. Lowther, then Chairman of Ways and Means, and now S peaker.
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