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With this team, Macmillan had to get Britain past the immediate crisis brought on by the blockage of the canal. He had to restore some self-respect to the Tory Party. In foreign policy, his first priority was to re-establish the old confidence between the U.S. and Britain. It was a task easier for Macmillan, who during the Suez crisis had described himself as "half American," than for Eden. Washington, which rebuffed all recent attempts of Eden to see
Eisenhower, made known that Macmillan would be welcome any time.
From Sir Anthony Eden, Macmillan inherits a comfortable Tory majority of 59 in the House of Commons, with which he will probably hope to hold off a general election until the Tories' five-year term runs out in 1960. Labor can be expected to demand a general election now, on the grounds that a new Prime Minister, and one who was not naturally heir apparent, should request a new mandate. As he came out of n Downing Street the first day, Harold Macmillan was asked whether he favored an early election. "No," he said with a confident bristle of his mustache. "But when there is one, we should win it."
-* Eden announced that he was also resigning his seat in Parliament. Since outright resignation is considered a show of disloyalty to the Crown, he will follow the ancient practice of disqualifying himself by applying for a job of "honor and profit" under the Crown. This post has since 1742 been "Bailiff or Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds" — a job originally established to protect the Chiltern Hills from bandits, and which once carried the nominal salary of £i a year. The salary, like the bailiff's duties, has long since receded into traditional fiction. Eden also turned down "for the present" the Queen's prompt offer of an earldom — the customary reward for retiring Prime Ministers. *Last year Macmillan visited his mother's home town, peered through the window of the house where she had lived, gallantly tried eating fried chicken with his fingers, and at the invitation of the pastor read the lesson in the Methodist Church where his mother had worshiped (he himself is Church of England).