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Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), styled Lord Robert Cecil before 1865 and Viscount Cranborne from June 1865 until April 1868, was a British Conservative statesman, serving as Prime Minister three times for a total of over 13 years. He was the last Prime Minister to head his full administration from the House of Lords. Lord Robert Cecil was first elected to the House of Commons in 1854 and served as Secretary of State for India in Lord Derby's Conservative government from 1866 until his resignation in 1867 over its introduction of Benjamin Disraeli's Reform Bill that extended the suffrage to working-class men. In 1868 upon the death of his father, Cecil was elevated to the House of Lords. In 1874, when Disraeli formed an administration, Salisbury returned as Secretary of State for India, and, in 1878, was appointed Foreign Secretary, and played a leading part in the Congress of Berlin, despite his doubts over Disraeli's pro-Ottoman policy. After the Conservatives lost the 1880 election and Disraeli's death the year after, Salisbury emerged as Conservative leader in the House of Lords, with Sir Stafford Northcote leading the party in the Commons. He became Prime Minister in June 1885 when the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone resigned, and held the office until January 1886. When Gladstone came out in favour of Home Rule for Ireland, Salisbury opposed him and formed an alliance with the breakaway Liberal Unionists, winning the subsequent general election. He remained Prime Minister until Gladstone's Liberals formed a government with the support of the Irish Nationalist Party, despite the Unionists gaining the largest number of votes and seats in the 1892 general election. The Liberals, however, lost the 1895 general election, and Salisbury once again became Prime Minister, leading Britain to war against the Boers, and the Unionists to another electoral victory in 1900 before relinquishing the premiership to his nephew Arthur Balfour. He died a year later, in 1903. Historians agree that Salisbury was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs. He had a superb grasp of the issues, and was never a 'splendid isolationist' but rather, says Nancy W. Ellenberger, was: :a patient, pragmatic practitioner, with a keen understanding of Britain's historic interests....He oversaw the partition of Africa, the emergence of Germany and the United States as imperial powers, and the transfer of British attention from the Dardanelles to Suez without provoking a serious confrontation of the great powers.〔Nancy W. Ellenberger, "Salisbury" in David Loades, ed. ''Reader's Guide to British History'' (2003) 2:1154〕 Smith characterises his personality as "deeply neurotic, depressive, agitated, introverted, fearful of change and loss of control, and self-effacing but capable of extraordinary competitiveness."〔Smith 1972 cited in Ellenberger, "Salisbury" 2:1154〕 A representative of the landed aristocracy, he held the reactionary credo, "Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible." Searle says that instead of seeing his party's victory in 1886 as a harbinger of a new and more popular Conservatism, he longed to return to the stability of the past, when his party's main function was to restrain demagogic liberalism and democratic excess. ==Early life: 1830–1852== Lord Robert Cecil was the second son of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury, and Frances Gascoyne. He was a patrilineal descendant of Lord Burghley and the 1st Earl of Salisbury, chief ministers of Elizabeth I. The family possessed vast rural estates in Hertfordshire and Dorset. This wealth increased sharply in 1821, when he married the rich heiress of a merchant prince who had bought up large estates in Essex and Lancashire.〔Andrew Roberts, ''Salisbury: Victorian Titan'' (2000), p. 7〕 Robert had a miserable childhood, with few friends; he filled his time with reading. He was bullied unmercifully at the schools he attended.〔Roberts, pp. 8–10〕 In 1840, he went to Eton College, where he did well in French, German, Classics, and Theology; however, he left in 1845 because of intense bullying.〔Paul Smith, '(Cecil, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-, third marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) )', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''.〕 The unhappy schooling shaped his pessimistic outlook on life and his negative views on democracy. He decided that most people were cowardly and cruel, and that the mob would run roughshod over sensitive individuals.〔Roberts, p. 10〕 In December 1847 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he received an honorary fourth class in mathematics conferred by nobleman's privilege due to ill health. Whilst at Oxford he found the Oxford movement or "Tractarianism" to be an intoxicating force; he had an intense religious experience that shaped his life.〔Roberts, pp. 12, 23〕 In April 1850 he joined Lincoln's Inn but subsequently did not enjoy law.〔Roberts, p. 15.〕 His doctor advised him to travel for his health, and so in July 1851 to May 1853 Cecil travelled through Cape Colony, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand.〔Roberts, pp. 15–16.〕 He disliked the Boers and wrote that free institutions and self-government could not be granted to the Cape Colony because the Boers outnumbered the British three-to-one, and "it will simply be delivering us over bound hand and foot into the power of the Dutch, who hate us as much as a conquered people can hate their conquerors".〔Roberts, p. 16.〕 He found the Kaffirs "a fine set of men – whose language bears traces of a very high former civilisation", similar to Italian. They were "an intellectual race, with great firmness and fixedness of will" but "horribly immoral" as they lacked theism.〔Roberts, p. 17.〕 In the Bendigo goldmine of Australia, he claimed that "there is not half as much crime or insubordination as there would be in an English town of the same wealth and population". 10,000 miners were policed by four men armed with carbines and at Mount Alexander 30,000 people were protected by 200 policemen, with over 30,000 ounces of gold mined per week. He believed that there was "generally far more civility than I should be likely to find in the good town of Hatfield" and claimed this was due to "the government was that of the Queen, not of the mob; from above, not from below. Holding from a supposed right (whether real or not, no matter)" and from "the People the source of all legitimate power,"〔Roberts, p. 18.〕 Cecil said of the Maori of New Zealand: "The natives seem when they have converted to make much better Christians than the white man". A Maori chief offered Cecil five acres near Auckland, which he declined.〔Roberts, p. 19.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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