Читать книгу The Times Great Victorian Lives - Ian Brunskill - Страница 17

THE FEARS WHICH for months past the state of Lord Palmerston’s health has excited have at length been realized. The great statesman is no more. Many who saw him towards the close of last Parliament, broken and bent by a recent attack of illness, shook their heads and whispered to each other that he could never meet another Parliament. That fear has been quickly and fatally verified. The bulletins we have published will have prepared most persons for the sad news which we have to announce to-day, that Lord Palmerston died yesterday morning, at a quarterto 11.

There never was a statesman who more truly represented England than Lord Palmerston. His name is now added to that splendid but very short list of Ministers, from Walpole to Pitt and from Pitt to Peel, who in times of great difficulty have rendered England prosperous at home and famous abroad, and who, while obtaining place from the Court, have derived their chief power from the country. Pitt, properly speaking, belonged to the last century, and there have been but three men in the present century who attained to the same enviable position. The first was Canning, a great spirit, but greater in what he devised than in what he accomplished; for no sooner had he reached the pinnacle of power, and excited the brightest hopes of the nation, than, sick at heart, he fell before the intrigues of rivals, leaving it to others to avenge his death and to prosecute his policy. After Canning, two statesmen from among his colleagues, the one his rival the other his disciple – Peel and Palmerston – gradually rose to the highest offices in the realm, and won, as only great characters win, the most sweet voices of the multitude. They have this in common – both were trained in the Tory camp, both forsook the traditions of Toryism, both have been decried as the most inconsistent statesmen that ever lived. Yet no two men could be more unlike, and the inconsistency of each was so different, that what in the one was a failing in the other was a virtue. Sir Robert Peel gave up his principles; Lord Palmerston merely relinquished his party. Less sociable than Palmerston, and less capable of forming new alliances, Peel clung to the Tories while rejecting their dogmas, and compelled them again and again to follow a course which they had learnt from his own lips to regard as the road to destruction. Free and frank, of a jovial nature, hail fellow with good men and true of every rank and politicians of every shade, Lord Palmerston was less fettered by party ties, and, so the objects dearest to his heart were attained, cared little whether the men with whom he sat on the Treasury benches were styled Whigs or Tories, Liberal-Conservatives, or Conservative-Liberals. His very consistency in this respect has been denounced as a fault. It has been said that he was constant only in the retention of office; that he was fixed only to the Treasury bench; that his one principle was that of the Vicar of Bray. He was a member of every Government since 1807, with the exception of those years in which Sir Robert Peel, and subsequently Lord Derby, held the reins. He began life as a Pittite; gradually he developed into a Canningite; when the Whigs came into power he renewed his youth; when they had fallen into disrepute he expanded into a Conservative-Liberal; afterwards he stood forward as the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet; and he closed his wonderful career as the head of a Ministry with the motto of ‘Rest and be thankful.’ In all these changes there may be traced a consistency of purpose which, when the clue to it is perceived, becomes entitled to our highest respect; and this clue is furnished in the fact that, whatever changes come over the domestic or colonial policy of England, her foreign policy is unalterable. That policy is indeed, more or less modified by the circumstances of the time, by the amount of our resources, by the temper of our allies, by the spirit of the nation; but in principle it is always the same. Our domestic reforms are for the most part carried in the face of a formidable Opposition; but our foreign policy is supported by overwhelming majorities, and by a national enthusiasm which nothing can resist. We have never a dispute about the principle; it is a tradition based on the universal sentiment of patriotism, and handed from generation to generation – from Cabinet to Cabinet. The Minister of such a policy may through all changes adhere to the Treasury bench if he can; nothing need remove him from it but his personal relations with its other occupants; and he who, like Lord Palmerston, can preserve his seat there through the vicissitudes of half a century is indeed a great man as well as a great statesman.

Henry John Temple was the third Viscount Palmerston, and was born at Broadlands, near Romsey, on the 20th of October, 1784. Although an Irish Peer, his descent is traced to Saxon earls anterior to the Conquest. In the arms of his family may still be seen the eagle displayed of that Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who is remarkable chiefly for his treatment of his wife, the Lady Godiva. Lord Palmerston, however, bears a nearer resemblance to another and less mythological member of his family, of whom his father was the heir male – Sir William Temple, the friend of William III, the patron of Dean Swift, the author of that triple alliance which bound England, Sweden, and the States-General to prevent France from entering the Netherlands, and, singularly enough, a statesman who, while he remained in public life, was always on the winning side, and had the credit of all the popular acts of the Government after the Restoration. M. Capefigue, in noting this resemblance, has been pleased to observe that the chief point of similarity between the Minister of William III and the Minister of Queen Victoria lies in the utter hatred which both had to everything French, and thinks that on one occasion, as he was dining with Lord Palmerston, he made a terrible home thrust when he recalled the unpleasant fact that Sir William Temple, in bequeathing his property to his grand-daughters, stipulated that they should not marry Frenchmen. It gave M. Capefigue considerable satisfaction that Lord Palmerston could only laugh at the remark; it never entered into his head that the statement is quite unfounded, there being no mention of such a condition in the will of Sir W. Temple. Not from Sir William Temple, however – it was from Sir John Temple, younger brother of the diplomatist, and the same of whom Archbishop Sheldon said, ‘He has the curse of the Gospel, for all men speak well of him,’ that Lord Palmerston was descended. The first viscount of the name was the grandson of Sir John Temple, and was created a peer in 1722. Little more has to be said of him than this, – that his wife was regarded as a perfect model of conjugal affection, her will being quoted with admiration in the Annual Register. The second viscount, the father of our great statesman, was grandson of the first, and, like his grandmother, has been regarded as a pattern of conjugal tenderness. The epitaph which he wrote on the death of his first wife is said to be the most pathetic ever penned; and written at a time when our poetry had reached its lowest ebb, when all was artifice and platitude, phrase and frippery, it must be admitted that the lines have a genuine tenderness which it is almost impossible to find, in other compositions of the period. To his father, indeed, Lord Palmerston owes much of that taste for literature which furnished many a happy illustration to his speeches in Parliament, besides enabling him in his younger days to join with Croker and Peel in assailing the Whigs with literary satire. Of his father’s lively humour the late Lord Palmerston himself gave an amusing illustration in one of those anecdotes with which he, of all men, knew best how to parry the questions of political opponents or the entreaties of troublesome deputations. He said that it was his father’s habit, in placing wine before his guests, to say, ‘Here is claret, gentlemen; here is sherry; but I cannot answer for them, I can only give you the word of my wine merchant for them. Here is port, however, for which I can give my own word, – it is very good – I made it myself.’ If he was a bad judge of wine, he was considered a good judge of pictures. He collected in Broadlands a gallery of paintings which, at the beginning of the century, had a high repute, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in bequeathing to his friends the works of his own easel unsold at the time of his death, gave to the Earl of Upper Ossory the first choice and to Lord Palmerston the second. He enjoyed the gift of his artistic friend ten years, and, dying in 1802, left by his second wife, who did not long survive him, two sons and two daughters. Of these sons, Henry John Temple, the elder, is the subject of the present sketch; the younger was afterwards known as Sir William Temple, the British Envoy at the Court of Naples.

Not much is known regarding the early life of Henry John Temple. He was one of the late flowering plants. Always remarkable for his ability, and generally successful in his undertakings, he rejoiced in a splendid constitution, and had to get rid of a certain excess of animal spirits before his ambition could rise to the level of his powers. There is a long period of some five and forty years – considerably more than the half of a man’s life – which Lord Palmerston passed in comparative inactivity, and which is a puzzle to the biographer whose idea of the man is derived from the later glories of his career. To account for this anomaly, it has by some of his eulogists been asserted that he was never at heart a Tory, that he was out of his element in the Ministry of Liverpool and Castlereagh, and that he never truly lived until he escaped from the thraldom of Tory ideas and joined the friends of liberality and progress. This theory is quite unfounded. Lord Palmerston was at the last what he was at the first. There is no real difference between Palmerston Secretary-at-War, Palmerston Foreign Secretary, Palmerston Home Secretary, and Palmerston Prime Minister. The explanation of his backwardness lies wholly on the surface, and is what we have already indicated. He was never what would be called an ambitious man; and, delighting in society, he found in the pleasures of private life what, together with the cares of his particular office, was sufficient in his hot youth, if not fully to occupy his powers, at all events to employ his time. Whatever he had to do he did well, but it is quite evident in his parliamentary history that he never cared to go out of his way for work. As Secretary-at-War for some 20 years, he hardly ever made a speech except on the subject of the army, and then only when he was compelled to do so. As Foreign Secretary for a period little less, he in like manner confined his attention to the business of his own department. At a time when he was the most popular statesman in England, he was content to serve now under his junior, and now under his rival. On the dissolution of the Aberdeen Cabinet he consented to serve even under Lord Derby if certain of his colleagues could be induced to follow the same course. It was not until every possible combination had been tried, and every possible Premier had given up the task in despair, that, as a last resource, Lord Palmerston was asked to form a Government. He at once accepted the position which he had not sought and filled with dignity to himself and advantage to the country an office which, from his never having grasped at it, persons who measure men, not according to their deserts, but according to their demands, regarded as beyond his power.

In the little that is known concerning the early life of Lord Palmerston there is not much that is remarkable. He received his education at Harrow, at Edinburgh, and at Cambridge. He went to Harrow a little after Lord Aberdeen, and about the same time as Sir Robert Peel and Lord Byron. Thence he proceeded to Edinburgh, to enjoy the benefit of Dugald Stewart’s instruction; and, by the way, it may be noted as something peculiar that he was one of the very few Tories who followed the example of the young Whigs of that generation in sitting at the feet of the great Whig Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy. It certainly does not appear that he entered with any enthusiasm into the studies which absorbed every inmate of Stewart’s family; and one might with some show of reason accept it as a proof of this apathy that his name is not to be found among the members of that Speculative Society which was joined by every man of mark in the University, and which, besides Lord Lansdowne, Henry Brougham, Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Walter Scott, and Lord John Russell, included Lord Palmerston’s own brother, Sir William Temple. But he himself stated about two years ago in one of his speeches, ‘I passed three years of my youth in studying at the University of Edinburgh, and I will frankly own, without disparagement to any other seat of learning at which I had the fortune to reside, that I enjoyed greater advantages in the acquirement of useful knowledge and sound principles during the three years’ residence in Edinburgh than I possessed at any other place.’ Certainly, the influence of Stewart’s training was at a later period apparent in the strong determination expressed by Lord Palmerston to maintain those principles of government of which Huskisson was the exponent. So long as Huskisson remained in the Cabinet he felt certain that these doctrines would be honoured; when Huskisson was ejected from the Duke of Wellington’s Ministry on purely personal grounds he too seceded, because he had no guarantee, he said, that these doctrines would have the weight to which they were entitled. We may add that it must have been in Stewart’s classroom that a phrase which he often turned to good account in his speeches, and on one memorable occasion with most brilliant effect, first caught his fancy and left upon it an indelible impression –‘The fortuitous concourse of atoms.’ Having been inoculated at Edinburgh, where he remained three years, with these liberal views and this inkling of philosophy, he turned southward again to the University which Pitt represented in Parliament, and which was at that time the chief school of thought in England. Almost all his political contemporaries who took a leading position, whether in the Whig or in the Tory ranks, were Cambridge men. If Byron, Coleridge, and Wordsworth are to be classed among our greatest poets, it would appear that in other departments than that of politics Cambridge had, at the beginning of the present century, a pre-eminence over the sister University of Oxford. Lord Palmerston, who had in the meantime succeeded to his title through the death of his father, entered at St. John’s College in 1803, and worked in good earnest for academical success at a time when it was not usual for a nobleman to present himself for any but an honorary degree.

The Temples were a family predestined to rule. Within the space of 50 years Macaulay has counted among the sons and grandsons of the Countess Temple alone, and she died in 1752, three First Lords of the Treasury (George Grenville, W. Pitt, and Lord Grenville), three Secretaries of State, two Keepers of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of the Admiralty. Although Lord Palmerston belonged to a different branch of the Temple family, he too, whose father had been a Lord both of the Admiralty and of the Treasury, looked forward to political life, and, in 1806, immediately on the death of Pitt, offered himself to the University of Cambridge as a candidate to represent it in Parliament. He was opposed, on this occasion, by Lord Henry Petty, who had become Chancellor of the Exchequer in room of the ‘heaven-born Minister’ and who thus came to the election with a weight of Ministerial influence which his rival found it vain to withstand. That rival, however, was not to be discouraged. He presented himself again as a candidate in 1807, when he failed of success by only two votes; and in 1811 he tried his fortune a third time, in this case attaining the object of his ambition so unmistakably that he continued to represent the University until, in 1831, he gave mortal offence to his constituents by joining the Whigs. In the meantime, however, he found his way into Parliament, at first through the pocket borough of Bletchingley, and then through the borough of Newport, in the Isle of Wight. Nor was he long in Parliament before he enjoyed the sweets of office. The notorious Ministry of ‘All the Talents’ soon fell to pieces; and, as if in mockery of that splendid coalition, a Ministry succeeded to power headed by a nobleman whose natural incapacity was aided by a natural indolence, and whose indolence was aggravated not only by sickness, but also, to make assurance doubly sure, by continual opiates, under the influence of which he would fall asleep over his papers. Not able to touch animal food, not caring to open his mouth, often found sleeping at his desk, it would be one of the marvels of government that the Duke of Portland contrived to keep a Cabinet together for more than a couple of years, were we not too well acquainted with the truth of Oxenstiern’s commonplace regarding the wisdom of rulers. It was in this singular Ministry, whose great achievement was the Walcheren disaster, that Lord Palmerston first entered upon office. He entered on the office which his father had long enjoyed, as a Lord of the Admiralty; and when, on the quarrel of Castlereagh and Canning on the subject of the Walcheren expedition, the Duke of Portland resigned, and Perceval was called upon to form a Government, Lord Palmerston became Secretary at War. A number of writers, in recording this fact, have fallen into the mistake of confounding the Secretary at War with the Secretary for War, and thence inferring that Lord Palmerston at the early age of five-and-twenty succeeded Lord Castlereagh as War Minister while we were engaged in the gigantic contest with Napoleon. Castlereagh was Colonial Secretary, as such was Secretary for War, and in that double office was succeeded by Lord Liverpool. Palmerston succeeded Sir James Pulteney as Secretary at War, doubtless a very important post, but one which by no means implied a seat in the Cabinet.

For some 20 years, amid all sorts of changes, he held the same appointment. Lord Liverpool succeeded Perceval as Premier – still Palmerston held to the War-office. Canning reigned in the room of Lord Liverpool – still Palmerston was found at the War-office. Lord Goderich assumed the position of Canning-still Palmerston remained at the War-office. The Duke of Wellington displaced Lord Goderich – still Palmerston and the War-office seemed to be inseparable. The secret of this devotion to the one office is partly to be found in the Secretary’s want of ambition, but chiefly in his perfect mastery of the business of his office at a time when it was of peculiar importance to his colleagues that it should be well represented in the House of Commons. During the first few years of his appointment he was the financer of the army, while we were engaged in the most costly war on which this country had ever entered, and when it was of the greatest moment that our resources should be turned to the best account. When the war came to an end, the Whigs, who had always been lukewarm in supporting it, joined with the Radicals in their outcry against standing armies and in their demand for retrenchment. As in our time the Manchester school of politicians required that our military establishments should be reduced to their condition in 1835, so, on the conclusion of peace, the refrain of many a debate through many a year of Parliament was that we should reduce our military establishments to their condition in 1792. It was in urging this policy of retrenchment that Joseph Hume first signalized himself; and it must be evident that, to meet the attacks of such an opponent, Lord Palmerston had a still more difficult game to play than when, backed with all the enthusiasm of the nation, he regulated the expenses of an army whose victories continually appealed to the national pride. He fought the battle of the Government with consummate skill, and by the accuracy of his information, the readiness of his wit, and the abundance of his good humour, sorely troubled honest Joseph Hume, who, compelled to take his seat silenced and discomfited, but neither convinced nor discouraged, would return to the charge on the following night, would read out sum upon sum, and would announce the ‘tottle of the whole’ with all the assurance of a man born with the multiplication table in his head but only to undergo a renewal of the process at the hands of his adroit adversary. If Lord Palmerston was thus successful in parrying the thrusts of his arithmetical opponents, it was in a great measure because he had a good case to defend, and because, being, as Hume termed him, ‘the alpha and the omega of the War-office, ’ he had imbued that department with his own spirit, introducing order where before there had been only confusion, efficiency where there had been only stagnation, and economy where all hadbeen profusion and waste. On one occasion, in reply to the attack of his indefatigable foe, he had the satisfaction of announcing a miracle which so staggered honest Joseph that he refused to believe it. He said that, by a careful supervision of past accounts and calling-up of arrears, he had for the two previous years been able to conduct the enormous business of his office without cost or charge to the country. Poor Hume, who was in those days very unpopular in the House, could not understand it, and insisted that the expenses had been increased; but it was only to see Lord Palmerston get up, and hear him, to the enjoyment of his audience, quote in his airiest style the ancient saying that there are but two things over which the immortal gods have no control – past events and arithmetic. Although Mr. Hume refused what the immortal gods are compelled to accept, the announcement of Lord Palmerston regarding the management of the War-office is by no means incredible to any one acquainted with the financial position of the various public departments during the early years of the present century. The state of our accounts was disgraceful. When Lord Henry Petty was Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1806, he brought forward a Bill for the better auditing the public accounts, and on that occasion somewhat startled the House of Commons by the assertion that in some of the offices there had been no audit for more than 20 years, that in all the offices the accounts were more or less in arrear and apparently without check, and that, taking altogether, public money had been expended to the amount of 455,000,000l. which had never been accounted for, a sum at that time larger than the National Debt. The arrear and confusion, the peculation and the waste which Lord Palmerston found at the War-office were but a part of this extravagant system. He brought his clear head and his vigorous habit to bear upon it, and succeeded in repelling the attacks of Hume not less by the fact that he had of his own accord effected the most important reforms in his department than by that art offence of which he had the most perfect mastery.

Lord Palmerston in those days, we have said, rarely opened his mouth in the House of Commons, unless to propose the Army Estimates or to answer some question relating to the army. Whatever he did in this way was always remarkable for clearness and brevity, but otherwise his colleagues obtained from him very little assistance in debate. Canning in vain expressed the wish that he could bring ‘that three-decker Palmerston into action.’ Palmerston held to his post, thought only of the army, and refrained from general discussion so entirely that one of the many names which in his lifetime have been given to him was ‘the silent friend.’ In his first 20 years of office he probably did not rise to address the House of Commons on any subject beyond his own department more than a dozen times; and, curiously enough, on those rare occasions, it was not to questions of foreign policy, in which as a War Minister it might be supposed that he would be chiefly interested, that his attention was turned. He spoke of the Catholic claims, of the law of copyright, of the game laws, of usury laws, of church extension, of slavery, of electioneering. Only once did he canvass our foreign policy, and that was in the first speech which he delivered in Parliament. The speech was a defence of the celebrated expedition to Copenhagen-an expedition of which the only defence that could then be offered to the country was that the result had been most successful, while the information on the strength of which it had been projected could not on any account be divulged. It was a good speech, terse, clear, forcible; and we may remark, as something characteristic of Lord Palmerston’s first Parliamentary effort, that it was not only devoted to a question of foreign policy, it was also devoted to a defence of official secrecy, and it was a following of Canning’s lead.

This portion of Lord Palmerston’s career may be dismissed with the record of two more facts. The first is that on the 8th of April, 1818, as he was mounting the stairs of the Horse Guards, a pistol was fired at him by a half-pay lieutenant named Davies. He was only slightly hurt, the ball striking him above the hip and causing nothing more serious than a contusion. It was said that had he not turned quickly round when passing the corner of the baluster the bullet must have taken a fatal direction. The would-be assassin was tried, proved to be insane, and confined for life in Bedlam, where he only recently expired. The other fact to which we have alluded is of higher biographical importance, although our information with respect to it is rather general than particular. It is that Lord Palmerston joined with Croker and Peel in producing that series of satires against the Parliamentary Opposition which was published under the title of the New Whig Guide. How much he contributed to this work, which, after all, perhaps, did not do the Whigs any great damage, it is difficult to say; nor are we well informed as to those squibs of his which appeared in the John Bull. On the whole, the satire in which the Tories indulged in those days was more remarkable for its personality and bluffness than for either wit or elegance, and very little of it deserves to live. Satire is the great weapon of Opposition, and when a party firmly seated in power resorts to it they are generally driven to extremities, and goaded into anger. In that case they are apt to be unsparing in their abuse, they are inclined to tread on the opponent whom they have managed to trip, and they hope to win by bullying what they lose in fair fight. This is the character of most of those shafts launched by the Tories against the Liberal party; and if we are forced to make such a statement with regard to men of great ability, it is but right to add that much of what is so distasteful to us now was due, not to the coarseness of the men, but to the temptations of their position; and that had they changed places with the Whigs, the latter, even with such men as Sydney Smith and Thomas Moore among their number, might have been guilty of the same excesses. The Whigs were at a discount in the eyes of the nation; they were therefore compelled to be circumspect; they found it necessary to guard against the imputation of using insolence for invective and personality for logic; they were obliged to rest their cause on its merits, and to attack the Government with genuine arguments and genuine wit; whereas the Tories, rioting in power, were less nice in their choice of missiles, and found it for their interest to show upon some occasions that the sole difference between them and their opponents was one of personalities.

The turning point in Lord Palmerston’s career was now fast approaching. Hitherto he had been a member of the Government only in a subordinate capacity; he had never been a member of the Cabinet. Lord Liverpool’s Ministry was in its later years divided into two sections, the principal point of difference being solicited by the claims of the Catholics to emancipation. At the head of the one section was Canning, and he had followers in Mr. Robinson (Lord Goderich), in Huskisson, in Sir John Copley, and in Lord Palmerston. At the head of the other section was the Premier himself, while among those who sided with him were Lord Eldon, the Duke of Wellington, and Mr. Peel. Canning, it is well known, was the advocate of Catholic Emancipation – therefore, up to a certain limit, of Constitutional Reform; while, on the other hand, Peel bore the standard of commercial and juridical reform. The Canning party fully accepted the Peel reforms, but the Peel party had the utmost horror of any attempt to meddle with the Constitution, and were determined to stop the way. Therefore, when Lord Liverpool was struck down by paralysis, and when Canning, as the most popular man in the Cabinet, was requested to form a Ministry, his colleagues, who were opposed to the very small measure of constitutional reform implied in Catholic Emancipation, refused to stand by him, and he was compelled to look for aid in the first place from the subordinates of the Government, among whom was Palmerston, and in the second place from the more moderate Whigs, among whom were Lord Lansdowne and W. Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne. It was under these difficult circumstances, which forced Canning to the dubious expedient of a coalition, that Lord Palmerston was called to the Cabinet and put upon his mettle. Unfortunately the Coalition Ministry of 1827 shared the fate of all coalitions, and after it had put Canning to death, and Goderich, his successor, to his wits’ end, it went the way of all flesh. It served its purpose, however, in preparing the way for a new race of Ministers, of whom by far the most remarkable was Lord Palmerston. Of all the Tory Ministers who on this occasion coalesced with the Whigs he was attached to his party by the fewest number of ties, and was drawn to his political opponents by the greatest number. He was ripe for a quarrel with the men who had hunted his friend Canning to death, and he was ripe for a union with the men who had been his own companions at College and had sat with him at the feet of the eloquent professor of Whiggism. At first, however, his junction with the Whigs was not such as to preclude, when the Coalition fell to pieces, an acceptance of office under the Duke of Wellington, whose Government was pledged to oppose Reform. In the Duke’s Cabinet the Canningites found that they occupied by no means so high a place as in the previous Government; but it was less on personal grounds than on grounds of principle that Lord Palmerston felt the necessity of seceding from it; and it may be worth while to trace the steps by which he was led finally to change sides.

The Canningites agreed with the Whigs in their desire to emancipate Dissenters, both Catholic and Protestant; but they agreed with the Tories in their opposition to Parliamentary Reform. It was the opinion of Huskisson and Palmerston that by mitigating the more palpable abuses – by, for example, giving a member to Manchester–it might be possible to stave off more Radical measure of Reform. ‘I am anxious,’ said the latter, ‘to express my desire that the franchise should be extended to a great town, not because I am a friend to Reform in principle, but because I am its decided enemy. I think that extending the franchise to large towns is the only mode in which the House can avoid the adoption at some time or other of a general plan of Reform.’ Therefore, when East Retford and Penryn were to be disfranchised, and the Opposition proposed that the power of electing members should be transferred to Manchester and Birmingham, it so happened that by a curious shuffling of the question at issue Huskisson and Palmerston found themselves in the division lobby voting against the Government of which they were members. The real point of difference between themselves and the Government was quite unimportant, since they were all agreed on the Tory side of the House to give to a large town – Birmingham was the favourite – the franchise which had been taken from one of the corrupt boroughs, and to give that which was taken from the other to the neighbouring hundred. But in the particular division to which we refer, Mr. Huskisson and the Canningites, as fate would have it, were found voting the franchise of East Retford to Manchester, while their colleagues were voting it to the hundred in which the borough was situate. Poor Huskisson, with considerable ability and the best possible intentions, was all his life a bungler. He was always in difficulties through his clumsiness, which was physical as well as moral. He was always stumbling over chairs, tripping against ropes as he landed from steamboats, breaking his shins upon stones, until at last he was knocked down and killed outright by the first railway train. On the present occasion he sent in his resignation and didn’t send it in, explained and tried to retract without retracting. ‘There is no mistake, there can be no mistake, there shall be no mistake,’ said the Duke, in his most oracular style. Palmerston and some others followed Huskisson, and it will be observed that they had the credit of retiring from the Ministry as the advocates of a certain measure of Reform. When afterwards Palmerston became the member of a Whig Cabinet pledged to Reform, he could say this in his defence, that he had been anxious to avoid a Radical measure by the application of partial remedies, but that the time had long passed for piecemeal legislation, and that nothing less than sweeping changes would satisfy the country.

To sit in the House of Commons no longer as a Minister was a novelty for Lord Palmerston. It was also a novelty that he now turned his attention especially to foreign politics. How came this about? The care of foreign politics devolved upon him as the ablest of Canning’s disciples. Upon him the mantle of the master fell. Add to this, that among the eventualities to be foreseen was the chance of his one day taking a seat in a Whig Cabinet. Which of the great offices of State could he hold in that Cabinet with most satisfaction to himself and to his colleagues? Evidently the post in which he should find himself most enjoying the sympathy of the party would be the Foreign Secretaryship. The Whigs were always enthusiastic in praise of Canning’s foreign policy, and they would back Palmerston as the successor of Canning. In quitting the Tory ranks however, he was not all at once committed to the Whigs. The Duke of Wellington tried to win him back to the Cabinet, but although he might conscientiously, and even triumphantly, have joined it when its leading members came round to his opinions on Catholic Emancipation, the position of the Government was so unsatisfactory that he deemed it better to maintain his independence. It was in this independent character that he made two very able speeches – the first (June 1, 1829) on our foreign relations generally, the second (March 10, 1830), on the affairs of Portugal in particular – which at once marked him out as the exponent of a Liberal foreign policy. Before the year in which the latter speech was delivered had expired, the Whigs, with Lord Grey at their head, found themselves unexpectedly in power, – and to whom should the seals of the Foreign-office be intrusted but to Lord Palmerston? He stepped into the post as unquestionably the right man in the right place, and during that 10 years’ run of power which the Reform Bill gave to the Whigs he stood forth as the most brilliant member of the Cabinet, the man of men, the Minister of Ministers, the type and the glory of England. No English Minister ever attained to more world-wide fame than he acquired in these and subsequent years of office. All over the globe his name was invoked as the symbol of English generosity and English omnipotence. The Bedouin of the Desert recognised in Palmerston Pasha a being whom Allah had endowed with more than mortal power. The negro on the Guinea Coast knew that Palmerston was his friend, and worked day and night against slavery. Brown in the back-woods of America, or in the gardens of Siam, felt that he had an infallible safeguard if he had Palmerston’s passport to show. Palmerston, it was imagined, would move the whole force of the British empire in order that this Brown – Civis Romanus – might not be defrauded of his Worcester sauce amid the ice of Siberia, or of his pale ale on the Mountains of the Moon. He could do anything, and he would do everything. Nothing great was accomplished without being attributed to him. He was supposed to have his pocket full of constitutions, to have a voice in half the Cabinets of Europe, to have monarchs past reckoning under his thumb. He humbled the Shah, he patronized the Sultan, he abolished the Mogul, he conquered the Brother of the Sun, he opened to the world the empire which had been walled round for centuries by impregnable barriers, he defied the Czar, and the Emperor of the French felt safe when he received the assurances of the brilliant Foreign Secretary.

The foreign policy of Lord Palmerston has given rise to much controversy. Many a fierce debate has it kindled in both Houses of Parliament. Its author was said to be the firebrand of Europe, the destroyer of peace, a luckless lucifer match, the plague of the world, the Jonah of England, which was always in a storm when he was in the Cabinet. The question has been so stirred by political passions, and has been whipt into such a froth by the eloquence of interminable discussions, that there are very few of us indeed who know what is the real point at issue. And the perplexity is heightened by the fact that, after 20 years of opposition to his policy, Lord Aberdeen, his great rival, coalesced with him in 1853, and defended the coalition with the memorable statement ‘that, though there may have been differences in the execution, according to the different hands intrusted with the direction of affairs, the principles of the foreign policy of the country have for the last 30 years been the same.’ The cardinal doctrine of our foreign policy in those years was, as it is now, the principle of non-interference. There was not one of our statesmen who did not give his adhesion to this principle; and where, then, it may be asked, was the ground of dispute ? In order to understand this fully from Lord Palmerston’s point of view we must grasp his ruling idea in politics. If anybody will take the trouble to read his speeches from beginning to end he will be struck with the prevalence of one great idea running through them all like a thread of gold, and serving as a clue to every inconsistency. He saw in Public Opinion a force and a meaning which no statesman before him had realized, and which Peel only of his contemporaries acknowledged with anything like the same clearness. On two great occasions Peel sacrificed to Public Opinion. But all through his political life Lord Palmerston bowed to this deity, recognized its power, and used it as he could. He saw that opinion often creates a right where no right previously existed, – that it not seldom makes good evil and evil good. It has this peculiarity, too, that, exerting an enormous power it acts informally, beyond control and beyond rebuke. All the armies in the world cannot put down an opinion, which is a silent influence that remains even when the holder of the opinion is down in the dust. We may compel our neighbours to change their tactics, but we cannot compel them to alter their estimate of us; we cannot even quarrel with them for thinking as they do. We must submit to opinion, and though there are men who do not care for what other people say, yet those in whom the social instinct is strong are powerfully moved by it. The sociable nature of Lord Palmerston felt this deeply. The force of Public Opinion was a great fact, and he raised it into a great doctrine. Opinions in his view were more than opinions – they were deeds – they were title-deeds. All through his speeches we find him insisting on opinion as the source of political power, a moral influence which survives every physical force, and which, although more formidable than armies, we can bring into action without danger of hostilities. People said, – ‘What is the use of his expressing sympathy for oppressed nationalities when he declines to fight for his opinions? He is a sham; he has only words to offer; he says one thing and does another; his talk is in favour of liberty, but his inaction is in favour of tyranny.’ Lord Palmerston, in effect, said, – ‘No, our principle is non-interference with foreign Governments; we have no right to appeal to the arbitrament of the sword; it is no business of ours to dictate to others. But we cannot help having our opinions; I express mine frankly; let it go for what it is worth; I believe that the opinion of an English Minister is worth something – is more than words, and, giving my voice to the side of freedom and justice, I leave the despots to their own intelligence, to conscience, and to God.’

And while thus, on the one hand, he was attacked by those who saw an inconsistency between his words and his work, and who wished him not only to sympathize with freedom but also to undertake a crusade in behalf of it, he was attacked, on the other hand, by those who, like Lord Aberdeen and Sir Robert Peel, agreed in the policy of non-interference, but thought that he was not consistent, that he was not honest in carrying out that policy, since he did not abstain from the expression of opinion as well as from the declaration of war. The expression of opinion, the offer of advice, they said, is in effect dictation and interference. There is no middle course. We have no right to interfere with the domestic affairs of other countries unless some clear and undeniable necessity arises from circumstances affecting the interests of our own country, and the attitude of non-interference is that of interested, it may be, but silent spectators. ‘It is my firm belief,’ said Peel, in the last speech which he delivered, ‘that you will not advance the cause of Constitutional Government by attempting to dictate to other nations. If you do, your intentions will be mistaken, you will rouse feelings upon which you do not calculate, you will invite opposition to Government; and beware that the time does not arrive when, frightened by your own interference, you withdraw your countenance from those whom you have excited, and leave upon their minds the bitter recollection that you have betrayed them. If you succeed, I doubt whether or no the institutions that take root under your patronage will be lasting. Constitutional liberty will be best worked out by those who aspire to freedom by their efforts. You will only overload it by your help.’ It was in this speech, delivered the day before he fell from his horse, that Sir Robert Peel, in spite of so emphatic a condemnation of Lord Palmerston’s policy, passed upon him, or rather upon the speech in which Lord Palmerston defended his policy, the cordial eulogium – ‘We are all proud of the man who delivered it.’ The House of Commons, by a majority of 46, pronounced against Sir Robert Peel, and in favour of the foreign policy which he condemned.

Lord Palmerston insisted upon it that there is a middle course between interference and absolute silence. We are not stocks and stones – our non-interference is not that of lifeless blocks. Let the foreign States have the liberty of acting, but we surely have the liberty of thinking. If it is criminal to have our opinions, it is the crime of possessing intelligence; if it is criminal to express our opinions, it is the crime of possessing freedom. We cannot help having our opinions, and we should despise ourselves were we to conceal them. An English Minister has no right to dictate to foreign States, but it is very hard, indeed, if he alone is to be tongue-tied – if he alone is to see no difference between right and wrong, if he alone is to express no sympathy with suffering and no dissatisfaction with wrong. Besides which, it may well be asked whether non-interference, in the extreme sense of the word, be a possible thing. We know that silence may be eloquent, and that, as the world is constituted a sympathetic world, to hold our peace and to restrain our sympathies may, to all appearance, be the condonation of tyranny and the casting of our influence into the scale of the oppressor. In point of fact, Lord Aberdeen, who carried out the policy of non-interference in the most determined manner, obtained thereby the reputation of being partial to the continental despotisms, and of looking with an evil eye on the struggling liberties of Europe. Being one of the most liberal-minded men in England, he by reason of his liberality – we mean, by reason of his strict adherence to the principle of non-interference – gave the whole weight of his influence to the despotic Governments of the Continent, and withdrew his countenance entirely from the popular cause. In that first great speech on our foreign relations which Lord Palmerston delivered (June 11, 1829,) in Opposition, and which marked him out as the future Foreign Secretary, he laid down principles which afford the key to his subsequent conduct in office. ‘There are two great parties in Europe,’ he said; ‘one which endeavours to bear sway in the force of public opinion, another which endeavours to bear away by the force of physical control; and the judgment, almost unanimous, of Europe assigns the latter as the present connexion of England. The principle on which the system of this party is founded is, in my view, fundamentally erroneous. There is in nature no moving power but mind; all else is passive and inert. In human affairs this power is opinion, in political affairs it is public opinion; and he who can grasp the power with it will subdue the fleshy arm of physical strength and compel it to work out his purpose.’ This was the weapon of weapons; Lord Palmerston had faith in its power; he believed also in the right of every man to have this weapon at his side and to use it as he could. If any statesman refused to arm himself with this power, he had but one other weapon to depend upon–he ranged himself definitely with those who had but the one resource of brute power, the one baptism of blood and fire.

These are the principles of foreign policy which were discussed through 20 long years, while Lords Aberdeen and Palmerston were rivals. If interest will lead us to side more frequently with Lord Aberdeen, every generous feeling will incline us to take the side of Lord Palmerston; although in the long run there is perhaps not much difference between these statesmen. At all events, from the general statement which we have thus given, the reader will be able to determine for himself how far the floods of eloquence that have been exhausted in endless debates on this question are important or unimportant; and we save ourselves the trouble of going over the history of Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy in detail. It will be enough if we state some of the results, and foremost among these must be mentioned the establishment of Belgium as an independent kingdom with free institutions. We who now behold in Belgium a State which knows how to unite liberty with order, and which preserves its dignity in spite of limited means, are apt to forget in the midst of so much prosperity and quiet what anxiety the establishment of this little kingdom gave to the Ministers who had to conduct the negotiations, what interminable discussions in the Legislative Assemblies, what hosts of prophecies, what odious taunts, what waggonloads of despatches it called into being. Lord Palmerston came in for a good share of the abuse. His ‘little experimental Monarchy’ was a never-failing subject of jest. Through himself and Talleyrand the negotiations were principally conducted; and if the caricatures of ‘H. B.’ may be taken as a faithful index of the popular opinion, we should leap to the conclusion that our Foreign Secretary was a mere tool in the hands of his wily adversary. He was pictured as a blind man led by a French poodle to a precipice; again, as a blind man carrying a lame one who points the way; as a fly listening to the blandishments of the spider; as a cat held by a monkey, after the manner of Landseer’s picture, in which the monkey makes use of the cat’s-paw to get the chestnuts out of the fire. The caricatures were amazingly clever, and Talleyrand had such a reputation for cunning and success that people were ready to believe anything to his glory, and to the disadvantage of a younger adept who ventured to cope with him. If we may judge, however, by the facts, we do not see how Lord Palmerston could have acted differently; and if we may judge from results, it does not appear that France has gained anything by the transaction, while Europe has the advantage of possessing one more State which presents a favourable example of Constitutional government. It may be added that Talleyrand himself gave his opinion of Lord Palmerston in the phrase, ‘C’est un homme qui n’a pas le talent du raisonnement,’ – which really means that he found his opponent proof against all his arguments and not to be deceived by all his talk.

But the establishment of what has been termed The Quadruple Alliance was still more fiercely canvassed. This was a treaty of alliance negotiated by Lord Palmerston between England, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the object of it was the defence of the existing monarchies in the Peninsula, that of Donna Isabella in Spain, and that of Donna Maria in Portugal, against all attempts to displace them. Don Carlos laid claim to the Spanish throne, and Dom Miguel to the Portuguese. Their claims were really false, but, besides the weakness of their titles, they were obnoxious to the English statesman on account of their antipathy to Constitutional government. The claims of the two Queens to their respective crowns were asserted by the Liberal Cabinets at Paris and London, and for the preservation of their rights the Quadruple Alliance was established. More than this, Lord Palmerston placed certain English forces at the disposal of the Peninsular Governments, and consequently engaged in armed as well as moral interference in the Affairs of two foreign States. Here was an opening for the enemy. Lord Aberdeen objected entirely to The Palmerstonian policy, and pertinently asked how the Foreign Secretary could work out the Quadruple Treaty, supposing – what was not at all unlikely – that Don Carlos should make his way to Madrid, should seize upon the throne, and should expel his niece from the country? What right had we to interfere in such a case? What business was it of ours to impose a Sovereign upon a foreign State? What voice had we in the election of a Peninsular potentate? The logic of debate evidently belonged to Lord Aberdeen; but Lord Palmerston had the still more convincing logic of success. He violated the principle of neutrality; but the principle could never be absolute; the violation was necessary, and it proved to be beneficial. In defending his policy long afterwards, in that great speech which he delivered in the Don Pacifico debate, Lord Palmerston observed:– ‘As long as England is England, as long as the English people are animated by the feelings, and spirit, and opinions which they possess, you may knock down twenty Foreign Ministers one after another, but, depend upon it, none will keep the place who does not act upon the same principles.’

The most brilliant of Lord Palmerston’s exploits, however, during the first period of his Foreign Secretaryship was an armed interference to prevent the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire. It is well known that Mehemet Ali, from being the mere vassal of the Grand Seignior, had by his great ability raised himself as Pasha of Egypt into a position of real, though not nominal independence. Not content, however with the Pashalic of Egypt, he wished to add to it Syria, and, with the assistance of his son Ibrahim, proceeded to carry out his plans. Turkey, which had from its weakness been for many years an object of anxiety to European statesmen, was apparently in a very critical position. It had practically lost Egypt, and it was now to lose another great province. The beginning of the end seemed to have come, as more than a dozen years later it seemed to have come again, when the Emperor Nicholas proposed that the European Powers should dispose of the sick man’s effects. Lord Palmerston determined to avert this catastrophe if it were possible, and he made the utmost efforts to draw the great Powers into a league for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire in its integrity. Thiers at that time held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in Paris, and, probably from some lingering sympathy with the Napoleonic designs on Egypt, kept aloof from the movement while he continued to play with it. The results of all M. Thiers’s objections and doubts and despatches, however was that Mehemet Ali was gaining time; he was planting himself firmly in Syria, and the object for which the league was started was slipping from their grasp. Lord Palmerston saw through this Fabian policy, and set to work to counteract it. A treaty was suddenly signed by England, Austria, and Turkey, on the strength of which a fleet was sent to the Syrian coast with orders to co-operate in driving the Egyptian troops out of the country. The squadron was principally composed of English ships, and was under the command of Sir Robert Stopford, with Sir Charles Napier as second in command. In a very short time the intruders were driven from every position which they held in Syria, with the exception of the fortress of St. Jean d’Acre; and the defences of this town were so very strong that the Admiral declined the responsibility of an attack upon it. Sir Charles Napier’s plans for its reduction, however, were forwarded to Lord Palmerston, who, at once accepting the responsibility, took the unusual course of giving orders to Sir Robert Stopford for the attack in accordance with the views of his second in command. Who does not know the rest? The fortress, which had defied Napoleon, was taken in the most brilliant style, and Mehemet Ali was finally driven from the country and compelled to give up his claims.

The rapidity with which the exploit was conceived and executed, the daring of the attempt, and the magnitude of the result gave a lustre to the reputation of Lord Palmerston, and rendered him at once the most popular statesman in England. The energy and skill which he displayed on this and other occasions were really marvellous, and we can have little idea of it unless we remember at the same time the precarious condition of the Government to which he belonged. With a straggling party, which barely contrived to present the appearance of a majority, Lord Melbourne’s Administration was by its weakness forced into inaction and the most miserable expedients. The dashing Foreign Secretary, however, so far from acting as the member of a tottering Cabinet, went to work as if he had invincible majorities at his back, and could boast of being the most formidable Minister in Europe. He was, perhaps, the most active Minister then living, and his activity was felt in ways which but seldom came under the observation of the public. His exertions for the suppression of the slave trade, to give a single example, were of the most effectual, but also of the most unobtrusive, kind. He worked in that cause with the warmest zeal; others might wax cold in their endeavours, or might change their opinions, but he never altered – his interest in the negro never flagged, his desire to suppress the nefarious traffic amounted to a passion; and those who are fond of showing their own wisdom by talking of Lord Palmerston’s insincerity in the cause of constitutional liberty might acquire a further insight into his character by turning their attention to his ceaseless but silent efforts in this sacred cause. To crown all, let it be added that in the midst of all these labours Lord Palmerston found time to marry. The most active Minister in the world was the lightest of heart and the freest from care. He married in 1839 the sister of Lord Melbourne, and the widow of the fifth Earl Cowper. There never was a happier union, and Lord Palmerston owed to it not only the comfort of a happy home, but also much of that public influence which comes of an extended social intercourse and which in the end raised him to the Premiership. It was delightful to see him in public with his wife, and to note the interest which the pair excited. At the opera a thousand glasses would be levelled at his box, and all his little attentions to Lady Palmerston would be studiously observed, and criticized as if he were different from other men. If he differed from other men in this respect, it was in being the most devoted and attentive of husbands and in asserting his resemblance to those conjugal models, the first Lady Palmerston and the second Lord Palmerston.

At length the Whigs were driven from office; Peel became Premier, and Lord Aberdeen ruled at the Foreign-office. Sir Robert Peel had no sooner attained the object of his ambition than Lord Palmerston made a remarkable prediction, which we must record in his own words. ‘The right hon. baronet,’ he observed, ‘has said that he is not prepared to declare that he will never propose a change in the Corn Laws, but that he certainly shall not do so unless at the head of a united Cabinet. Why, looking at the persons who form his Administration, he must wait something near five years before he can do it.’ Lord Palmerston waited something near five years, and, perhaps, to his own astonishment, beheld the prediction verified. It will be remembered that when Sir Robert Peel proposed to abolish the Corn Laws he soon felt the necessity of handing over that work to the Whigs and of resigning his Premiership, but that the Whigs were unable to form a Government, through the refusal of Lord Grey to sit in the same Cabinet with Lord Palmerston. The first Earl Grey was the only one of the Whigs who stubbornly refused to coalesce with the Canningites in 1827, and now his son imitated his example by refusing to become the colleague of the last of the Canningites, if the direction of the Foreign-office was to be in his hands. This was too much for Lord Palmerston, who expressed his willingness to retire from office altogether, but insisted on being placed in the Foreign-office if he was to have a place at all. In the following year Lord Grey got over his scruples, and, under Lord John Russell, a Whig Ministry was formed, with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary. But, this preliminary complication seemed to indicate that even his colleagues began to doubt the policy of him who was at once the most popular and best abused statesman in England; and in the end Lord John Russell’s Cabinet was overturned through its resistance to Lord Palmerston. Six years of office, however, is a long lease of power as Cabinets go; and in Lord Palmerston’s department they were six very eventful years. The repeal of the Corn Laws had sweetened the political atmosphere of England, and had removed all anxiety from the administration of our domestic affairs. But, unfortunately, that which had brought peace and plenty to England – the repeal, which had done so much to alter the face of the country – had, by contrast, been the signal for revolution and disturbances of every kind throughout Europe. Lord Palmerston had scarcely received the seals of the Foreign-office, when he found himself in the midst of a Swiss difficulty. A majority of the Cantons had ordered the Jesuits to retire from Switzerland; the Catholic-Cantons resisted the order, and the Catholic States seemed not unwilling to assist the minority by force of arms. By very skilful negotiations, and by a promptitude and decision which distanced every attempt to keep up with him, Lord Palmerston settled the difficulty, holding the Catholic States back with a promise of joint intervention, until the Protestants of Switzerland had fairly put down their adversaries, scattered their forces in a single engagement, and left no question open for the interference of an European Congress. Then came the affair of the Spanish marriages, in which Louis Philippe was supposed to have outwitted the Foreign Secretary. If in this business Louis Philippe had a triumph, it was a short lived one; for in the following February the dynasty which he thought to strengthen and make sure for ever was banished from France. In that tempestuous year 1848 every one of the Continental Thrones was shaken, the oppressed nationalities of Europe arose, and there seemed to be every likelihood of universal Democracy. The attitude which our Foreign Secretary assumed in this conjuncture was that of’a judicious bottle-holder,’ to use a term which was constantly applied to him, – in plain English, was that of cautious sympathy. He was too sympathetic to please those whose watchword was the law, and who frowned on constitutional liberty, – he was too cautious, too much a friend to order, too little disposed for forcible interferences, to please those who wished for subsidies as well as opinions, soldiers as well as advice, and so falling between two stools, his conduct gave satisfaction to very few on the Continent. The Germans sang—

‘Hat der Teufel einen sohn,

So ist er, sicher, Palmerston,’

because he refused to help them. So, also, he gave his support to Turkey when Austria and Russia with threats demanded the extradition of Kossuth and other refugees who had fled to the dominions of the Sultan, and he ventured to express great sympathy with the Hungarians; but, because he would not consent to go further, and wage war with Austria in behalf of the Hungarian and Italian nationalities he was denounced as a traitor. His conduct in the affair of Pacifico gave still greater offence on the Continent and not a little offence at home. He sent a powerful fleet to Athens in order to compel the Greek Government to pay up the ‘little bill’ of a certain Jew of the Ionian Islands, and of some others, for losses which they had sustained through outrages committed by the Greeks. There was something so amusingly disproportionate in the spectacle of the British fleet being sent to bombard Athens in order to force the payment of a disputed debt – of a British fleet dunning a Royal city for the recovery of a Jew’s pots and pans and chamber crockery – that nobody can wonder at the earnestness with which the policy that led to such a result was assailed in both Houses of Parliament. The debates on Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy which arose out of this incident are among the ablest and most important upon record, and, although his policy was entirely condemned in the House of Lords, it received the sanction of the House of Commons by a considerable majority. It was in reference to the vote of censure passed in the Upper House that Lord John Russell made the memorable statement – ‘So long as we continue the Government of this country, I can answer for my noble friend that he will act not as Minister of Austria, or of Russia, or of France, or of any other country, but as the Minister of England,’ – a statement which seemed to suggest that the question in dispute was something much deeper than that of a petty debt, and infringed on far more important rights affecting our relative position in the balance of power. The question was decided by the speech of Lord Palmerston himself, which was the ablest oration he ever made; and a very masterly, as well as very eloquent exposition of his whole foreign policy it is. The peroration is particularly effective, and when he came to that concluding passage in which he compared the British to the Roman citizen, reminded his audience of the protection which the latter could invoke in the simple phrase – ‘Civis Romanus sum’ – and asked why the former should not claim a similar protection in a similar formula, the enthusiasm of his supporters rose to its height, he was tumultuously cheered, and for that night the debate closed with this miracle of a speech, which, said Sir Robert Peel, ‘made us proud of the man who delivered it.’

Lord Palmerston gained the day, but the seeds of distrust were sown in the Cabinet, and soon bore their fruit. In December, 1851, he was forced to resign, because on his own authority he had pronounced in favour of Louis Napoleon when he assumed the dictatorship of France. It had been arranged that no important step in our foreign affairs should be taken without the assent of the whole Cabinet as well as of the Queen, and Lord Palmerston had – perhaps without knowing it – violated this arrangement, which was a restriction upon his powers. Lord John’s Cabinet, however, did not long survive the dismissal of the Foreign Secretary, who quietly kicked it over on a Militia Bill. Lord Derby’s Government succeeded, when, strangely enough, the Premier offered to Lord Palmerston that very post in the Foreign-office from which he had been dismissed by Lord John Russell, and for his conduct in which the House of Lords had, at the instigation of Lord Derby, passed a vote of censure. Lord Palmerston declined the offer, chiefly on account of the equivocal position which the Tory party maintained on the subject of Free Trade; and the consequence was that the Derby Ministry only held office until the more Liberal statesmen could compose their differences and make up an alliance. An alliance was soon formed under the auspices of Lord Aberdeen, who entered upon office at the head of the strongest Cabinet which has ever controlled the destinies of England. Lord Palmerston consented to serve in the Home-office under his old rival, while to propitiate the Whigs, Lord Clarendon was placed in the Foreign-office. The Russian War was the leading incident of this coalition. It finally broke down in consequence of those Crimean disasters which introduced an element of strife between the Conservatives and Liberal sections of the Ministry. In the meantime Lord Palmerston was plodding at the Home-office as if there were no such thing as foreign politics, and as if smoke nuisances and sewer nuisances were the only great themes of Ministerial anxiety. He dilated upon manure, and informed the world that dirt was only ‘a good thing in the wrong place;’ he discussed the subject of the cholera, and informed the English public that cleanliness is a more certain preventive than prayer. In this last piece of administration it was wittily said that the Foreign Secretary peeped out – he treated Providence as a foreign Power. There were not a few who in those days wished that he were indeed Foreign Secretary, – that he occupied a post which would bring more directly under his control the real work of the Aberdeen Cabinet, either the conduct of our negotiations for peace or the conduct of our military operations; and when he succeeded Lord Aberdeen as Prime Minister he more than justified the public expectation by the vigour which he threw into the war and the tact with which he concluded a peace.

It was certainly a proud day for him when, in answer to the long series of attacks upon him, he was elevated to the highest office in the State, as the only man able and ready to carry out that very policy of a war with Russia and an alliance with the French Emperor, which had been the source of misunderstandings innumerable and recriminations without end. It showed also immense courage on his part that he was willing to undertake this arduous task with the assistance of a Cabinet which Lord Brougham is said to have characterized as ‘a staff of eleventh-rate men.’ He was feebly supported both in administration and in debate; and the effects soon became visible in little incidents which do not come before the public, but which in the undercurrents of the Legislature tell with great force on the credit of a Government. The weakness of some of his colleagues compelled them into occasional discourtesies, which were nothing more than the natural refuge of incapacity, but which left a bad impression on political opponents and wavering allies; and the Prime Minister had so much to do to cover the deficiencies of his Cabinet that he was known to have given offence to certain of the Liberals by the assumed airiness of his manner and the levity of his answers to serious questions, while others reported to his discredit that he, the kind of heart and light of soul – he who had not one particle of bitterness in his nature – he who had been notorious for his good humour under the most trying circumstances – he who had won the hearts of the country gentlemen by refusing to side with the rest of the Liberal party in demanding from them a humiliating confession of the advantages of Free Trade, had on one occasion lost his temper and spoke angrily. The House of Commons was slipping from his grasp, and on the Chinese question he lost his majority. Nor did he recover it without an appeal to the country, from which he received the most enthusiastic support. He returned to Parliament with an enormous increase of power, and it seemed that, spite of the feebleness of his coadjutors, his term of office would be coincident with his life. Unfortunately, the same series of causes which deprived him of his majority in the previous Parliament gradually tended to deprive him of his majority in that which had been newly summoned. On a mere question of form the vote went against him. It is useless to say that there was anything really offensive to the country in his conduct to the French Emperor. The Tories voted in favour of his policy one day and against it the next. When they succeeded to power they but carried out the Palmerstonian policy. There was no real difference between Lords Derby and Palmerston on this question. A slight informality in the mode of conducting our foreign correspondence was seized as a fit opportunity for the annoyance of the Government, and the annoyance proceeded to the extent of placing Lord Palmerston in a minority. A minority in a Parliament summoned to support himself was a serious matter, and he instantly resigned.

Lord Derby, who ruled in his stead, did not long enjoy power. In about a year the whole of the Liberal party combined, agreed to sink their differences, and to cope with the Tories for victory. By a small majority they won, and Lord Palmerston was installed in office. If, however, one inquires why the Whigs again came in, it would be difficult to show any reason, save that of personal confidence in their chief. Nominally, Lord Derby’s Cabinet was ousted because it was not sufficiently reforming, and because its foreign policy was not safe. But the new Government failed to carry a Reform Bill, and the new Secretary for Foreign Affairs distinctly declared after he got into office that his policy did not differ from Lord Malmesbury’s. As far as we can see, the change of Government is to be explained only in one way. The Italian war broke out; there was an uneasy feeling in the country; and politicians of every shade wished to see the reins of Government in the hands of the most able, the most popular, and the most experienced statesman in the land. So Lord Palmerston was again raised to the chief office in the State. His Government carried us through the danger of the Italian war, united us through the treaty of commerce in a closer alliance with France, carried out reforms in India that led to its comparative prosperity, remodelled our bankruptcy law and our educational system, and steered through the difficulties raised by the American war and by the Polish rebellion. Amid these and other perplexities, which are so recent that they will be in everybody’s recollection, it was constantly apparent that nothing but the personal popularity and adroitness of Lord Palmerston saved the Government from going to wreck in the House of Commons. While he sat on the Treasury Bench everything went on smoothly. Whenever an attack of gout compelled him for an instant to leave the guidance of the House of Commons, even to such an accomplished orator as Mr. Gladstone, defeat and disaster were the consequence. Again and again the Government were saved from ruin only by the marvellous popularity and address of its chief, who has been a Prime Minister for a greater number of years than any man in this century, with the exception of Lord Liverpool.

Nor was it merely his fame, his dexterity, and his good humour that thus succeeded; he worked hard for success even in extreme old age. As a young man he did less than his friends expected of him; as an old one he did far more. It was amazing to see how he could sit out the whole House of Commons in its longest sittings. At 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning he was the freshest and liveliest man there, ready with his joke or a clever explanation to appease the irritability of a worn assembly. Besides the toil of debate and incessant watching in the House of Commons, his office work was enormous. His despatches, all written in that fine bold hand which he desired to engraft upon the Foreign-office, are innumerable. His minutes upon every conceivable subject of interest in the last 50 years would fill many volumes, and it is to be hoped that some of them will be published. Moreover, in private, he was always ready to write for the information of his friends, and he always wrote well. We may add, in a parenthesis, that generally he wrote standing. To get through this immense amount of work he lived during the Session what most men would regard as an unwholesome life. Four days a week, when the House sat at night, he dined at 3 o’clock; on other days at half-past 8. When his dinner was late he took no lunch; when it was early he seldom took any supper. While young men went off from a debate to enjoy a comfortable meal, he sat on the Treasury Bench all night and never budged from it except to get a cup of tea in the tea-room, where he liked a gossip with whoever was there. For, with all his official labours, he kept his hold on society and enjoyed life like a youth. Lord Palmerston – and in this Lady Palmerston resembles him – was in his very nature genial and social. They loved society – not necessarily their own society, but all men and women. In the country, as in town, their hospitality was unbounded. A large family circle continually gathered about them, reinforced by whoever was remarkable for political or literary or artistic eminence, for sport, for travel, for military or naval exploits. All were welcome, and all found in both host and hostess a sympathizing audience. Yet they were never rich until latterly, and even at last their means were as nothing when compared with the opulence of many who never open their doors except to the members of a coterie. All this was the result of a prodigious vitality. Any doubts on that score might be settled by seeing Lord Palmerston at a public dinner – he sat down to it with the zest of an Eton boy; or by seeing him on horseback – when nearly an octogenarian he would ride some 15 miles to cover and think nothing of it. His mind neverlost its interest in whatever was new. He was as keen as any young man about the coming ‘Derby,’ and would rather have won it then gained any political triumph. These things are worth mentioning, for they are elements of political success. Great as Pitt was, he was said to have lost much through deficient sociability. Lord Palmerston lost nothing in this way, but gained a great deal. He owed, indeed, so much to his social tact, that superficial observers have seen in it the whole secret of his power. There is no mistake more common than this. A dark and heavy writer is supposed to be profound; a pompous and reserved statesman gets the credit of wisdom. A clear writer is regarded as shallow, and a light-hearted statesman is said to have nothing in him. We, however, who breathe a religion the Founder of which was set at naught for His social habit, because He came eating and drinking, may learn not to think the less of a statesman because of his geniality, his ready jest, and his open house.

As this full, appreciative and observant obituary makes clear, Palmerston was a ‘late flowering plant’ who retained his zest both for life and for politics until his dying day. Latterly he may have been inclined to doze both in the Commons chamber and in Cabinet but in the July of last year of his long life he dissolved Parliament and increased his majority at the subsequent general election. As an Irish peer, who had succeeded to his title in 1802, Palmerston was able to sit in the House of Commons, representing a series of different constituencies for some fifty-eight years. The obituarist is well aware of Palmerston’s widespread rapport with the general public, though he plays down his frequent disagreements over foreign policy with Queen Victoria and, above all, Prince Albert. His mistakes, notably his overt sympathy with the Confederate States during the American Civil War, are played down and there is also no hint of the womanising that inspired his nickname: ‘Lord Cupid’. A twentieth-century Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, described him as ‘undoubtedly the greatest “character” Downing Street has seen…Not all Prime Ministers enjoy the job; few enjoyed it more than Palmerston.’