have a seat in the Cabinet. He became the first President of the Board of Agriculture in 1889, with a seat in the Cabinet, and retained this post until 1892. In the Conservative Cabinet of 1895 to 1900 he was President of the Local Government Board, and was responsible for the Agricultural Rates Act 1896. However, he was not included in the ministry after its reconstruction in 1900. Salisbury offered him a peerage, which he declined. Chaplin was considered an authority on agricultural matters and he served on the Royal Commission on the Supply of Food and Raw Materials in Time of War (1903–1905), the Royal Commission on Housing and the Royal Commission on Horse Breeding. He was also president of the Old Age Pensions Committee. When in 1903 the Tariff Reform movement began under Joseph Chamberlain's leadership, he gave it his enthusiastic support, becoming a member of the Tariff Commission and one of the most strenuous advocates in the country of tariffs in opposition to free trade. His daughter Edith said that Chamberlain's adoption of Tariff Reform must have seemed to Chaplin that "the hour he had waited for all his life had come at last"; Chaplin had been raised in a wheat-growing county that had been hard-hit by the agricultural depression and he had for years past advocated protectionism as a solution. He had supported the protectionist "Fair Trade" campaign in the 1880s and gained the nickname the "Veteran Protectionist". Chaplin earned Chamberlain's gratitude for his hard work in the Tariff Reform campaign. After losing his seat at Sleaford in the Liberal landslide of 1906, Chaplin was returned to the House of Commons at a by-election in May 1907 as member for Wimbledon. His opponent was the Independent Liberal candidate, Bertrand Russell, who stood on a platform of women's suffrage. Chaplin was opposed to this, saying "he might be very old-fashioned, but he drew the line at that". His own campaign focused on Tariff Reform and Imperial Preference, imperial union and opposition to Irish Home Rule. In his election address for the January 1910 general election, Chaplin supported the proposals of Lord Roberts and Lord Charles Beresford on national defence, and reiterated his support for Tariff Reform. In 1912 he was dismayed when Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, dropped tariffs on food as official Conservative policy in order to focus on fighting the Liberal government's Irish Home Rule