Third Ministry.—This was in many ways the least satis factory of Lord Salisbury's four tenures of the foreign office. Since he was last in office the German emperor had quarrelled with England over Far East politics, and never afterwards paid more than lip service to the old friendship. The breach with France was not yet healed, and, though Lord Salisbury's personal authority remained and the influence of his initiative, England was isolated in European sympathy throughout this period. He found diplomacy once more absorbed in the Near East problem as the result of a peculiarly atrocious outbreak of Turkish cruelty and misgovernment in Armenia. After failing in a private pro posal to Germany to join in some drastic enterprise—its details are not known—for the dismemberment or subjugation of Turkey, he appealed in 1896 to the Christian Powers as a whole to take combined action for enforcing reform on the Porte. They agreed and accepted his initiative. The "Concert of Europe" succeeded both in this matter and in a subsequent crisis in Crete, in averting the ever-present danger of a breach in the "armed truce" on the continent. But as regarded the lot of the unhappy Armenians it proved a sore disappointment to its author—Russia, who, in the strange whirligig of time, had become the champion of Turkish independences, vetoing, with German support, any form of coercion at Constantinople.
In the summer of 1895 a long-drawn-out frontier dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela achieved sudden importance through the action of the American Government which, with a view to hastening a conclusion, addressed a singularly discourteous despatch to that of England, claiming rights of dictation rather than intervention. Lord Salisbury, after some delay, replied with a reasoned demurrer to such a development of the Monroe doctrine. President Cleveland responded in a fierce speech, foreshadowing ultimatums, and was applauded by his public in a wild outbreak of anglo-phobic jingoism. Lord Salisbury declined the quarrel and some months later, when feelings had cooled, tacitly conceded America's claim to intervene and agreed to defer the whole question to neutral arbitration, whose verdict substantially conceded the British case. (Oct. 1899.) In the winter of '97-98 a stir of anger was roused in England by Russia's illegal seizure from China of two ports—Port Arthur and Talienwan—which were supposed to secure domination over Pekin, and Lord Salisbury was much censured for passing the aggression by with no more than a diplomatic protest. Events else where called urgently for complaisance. The culminating crisis of the long quarrel with France over Egypt was imminent and Lord Salisbury held that its peaceful issue would depend on her finding no militant encouragement from sympathetic outsiders when the moment 'came. Colonel Marchand had been for more
than three years making his way through the forests of Central Africa with instructions to assert a French claim upon the upper waters of the Nile before England had established an effective occupation there. He succeeded in fact in arriving that July at Fashoda a few weeks before General Kitchener reached it, steam ing hurriedly up the river from the battle of Omdurman. But the news of the planting of the French flag and that of its removal reached Paris concurrently and with it a telegram from Lord Salisbury announcing the British occupation of the post and warn ing the French Government and people in the clearest terms that no compromise on England's claim upon the Nile valley was possible. Popular passion, dangerously excited for a few days, was thus compelled in the first moment of its ebullition to face the gravity of the decision to be taken and in the end it suffered its Government, discouragingly advised thereto by its Russian ally, to follow counsels of peace. The episode thus safely passed through proved, in spite of the resentment which it aroused at the time, the close of the quarrel that had so long kept the two nations apart. The resentment was artificially prolonged by the general unpopularity in which England was submerged through the South African war the following year, but when in 19or that had passed by, the way was left open for the automatic operation of the forces which three years later resulted in the conclusion of the Entente.
The successful conduct of this crisis was Lord Salisbury's last diplomatic achievement of any note. He surrendered the foreign office in Nov. 1900, and the prime ministership in July 1902-only deferring this final retirement to avoid the embarrassment of a change before peace had been concluded in South Africa. He died a year later on Aug. 22, 1903, his wife having predeceased him in Nov. 1899.
He was singularly happy in his domestic life, taking little pleas ure in society outside his home, though his wit, literary culture and gift of language made him a brilliant companion in conver sation. Science was his main interest outside his profession and he was also widely read in history and theology. He was a strong Churchman and a convinced and devout Christian, his religious faith constituting the fundamental inspiration of his life.
(G. CE.) See Speeches of the Marquis of Salisbury (ed. H. W. Lucy, with short biography, 1885) and Lord Salisbury's Essays (2 vols., 1905) ; also F. S. Pulling, Life and Speeches of the Marquis of Salisbury (1885) ; S. H. Jeyes, Life and Times of the Marquis of Salisbury (4 vols., 1895-96) ; G. G. Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1921).