While the Liberal Party healed its divisions and rallied for Free Trade, the division inside the Unionist ranks became more apparent. Balfour had endorsed cautious protectionism soon after Chamberlain's resignation, but was unwilling to go further or to announce an early general election, by-election results being comprehensively unfavourable for the Unionists. While Chamberlain toured the country, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Liberal H. H. Asquith stalked him by preaching the virtues of Free Trade in the same venues in which Chamberlain had appeared a few evenings before. The campaign for tariff reform had a brief intermission as Chamberlain's health began to fail. Suffering from gout and neuralgia, Chamberlain took a two-month holiday in February 1904. Chamberlain decided that the Unionists were likely to lose the general election, and criticised Balfour for delaying the inevitable. Indeed, Chamberlain now hoped that Balfour would fail in promoting his guarded fiscal doctrine, probably with a strategy of eventually leading the Unionists on a purely protectionist platform after the expected defeat in the general election. He wrote to his son Neville that 'The Free Traders are "common" enemies. We must clear them out of the party & let them disappear.'