CHAPTER VI.

PALMERSTON OUT OF OFFICE, AUGUST, 1841, TO JULY, 1846.

The Whigs had been in office long enough for the country, which always desires a change after a period of four or five, or perhaps seven or eight years. Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston were undoubtedly popular in the House of Commons, of which Lord John was probably a more capable leader than any who have lived during the last half century, unless it be Lord Palmerston himself. But the Ministry had become weak, and, as Lord Palmerston said, “the Tories were anxious to turn them out.” He did not add, as he might have done, that the Whigs were as anxious to turn out the Tories whenever the Tories were in. C’la va sans dire, we may say of both; nor would the Liberals and Conservatives of to-day be worthy of their name unless as much could be predicated of them. On this occasion a direct vote of want of confidence was brought, and the House was so equally divided that there was a majority of one against the Government. Then they dissolved Parliament, and in the new House the Tories had a majority of seventy-two. Upon this the Whigs, of course, retired.

On going out of office Palmerston seems to have been specially perturbed, because he was unable to sign, as one of the plenipotentiaries, the new Slave Trade commission. This was postponed till it was necessary that the signature should be given by Lord Aberdeen, who was his successor, and he attributes the delay to wilful spite on the part of Guizot, with whom, as will have been seen, he had been constantly at loggerheads. “It is very shabby of Guizot to endeavour to shirk this, in order to sign with Aberdeen a treaty which I have been hammering at this four years.” That he should have felt this may be natural; but the mention of the grievance as a thing to be complained of even to such a friend as Sir Henry Bulwer, was hardly worth his while. From the summer of 1841 to the summer of 1846 Lord Palmerston remained for five years in Opposition, and during that period we must pass over his career somewhat quickly, because he was not a man who seems to have taken upon himself the hot and eager work of turning out Administrations, unless when, as was subsequently the case, he had to stand up in the ring, and have one lusty round with his old friend, John Russell. When personally attacked, he would hit back with all his strength, but he never seems to have felt rancour afterwards, and on the occasion to which allusion has been made, he returned almost at once into amicable relations with his old friend.

He did, however, as soon as he was out of power, attack Lord Stanley, who, since he had come into office, had spoken more than once on Foreign affairs, although that department was not peculiarly his own. And at this period of his life Lord Palmerston seems to have gone back to that system of making premeditated speeches, which is the common lot of all leading politicians; though it was one which he had altogether refused to adopt during the years that he had been at the Foreign Office. Nor had he complied with it while at the War Office. Now he did make his attacks, not with venom indeed, but with some sharpness. “I must say that the noble Lord’s charge shows a great want of information on his part, as to the state of our foreign relations. It may be that the noble Lord and his colleagues have been too busily occupied in their own departments to have leisure to ransack the archives of the Foreign Office to know what passed in our time; but then, really, they who are so wholly uninformed ought not to make such positive assertions. But the noble Lord’s attack upon me and my colleagues is an instance, not only of great want of information, but also of the grossest ingratitude. So far from having left embarrassments to our successors, we have bequeathed to them facilities. Why, what have they been doing since they came into office? They have been living upon our leavings. They have been subsisting upon the broken victuals which they found upon our table. They are like a band of men who have made a forcible entrance into a dwelling, and who sit down and carouse upon the provision they found in the larder.” The accusation is one which has always been made, and always will be made, by progressive against stationary politicians. We all know the story of the Tory finding the Whig bathing and running away with his clothes. Of course the Conservative wishes to prevent the Liberal from being successful, and finds that he can best do so by carrying out the measures which the Liberal has proposed. Is there any man in England who has thought that Catholic Emancipation, Free Trade in corn, or Reform of Parliament has been dear to the normal Tory mind?

Lord Palmerston made his attack on Lord Stanley in the speech above quoted. Lord Stanley treasured up the grievance; and in years to come, when Palmerston was back at the Foreign Office, in 1850, had his revenge, by the studied accusation he made in the House of Lords in regard to Don Pacifico. But Don Pacifico and the circumstances of his eventful career were still in the womb of time.

He at once begins life as an idle man; and tells his brother of a series of visitings, which he has made. Then he goes on to his racing. His famous mare Ilione has come out, and he has won a stake of £1,700 with her at Newmarket;—against which, however, he acknowledges that John Day, the trainer, will send him a long bill. “Then came Holmes’ accounts, which have necessarily fallen greatly into arrear.” Holmes was his steward. He writes a word of criticism about the present Government; “The country will understand what they are, and find out the difference between them and us. We shall have a little comparative repose, and shall be able to attend somewhat to our own affairs.”

He is still eager about the slave trade, and very busy also in abusing Guizot “The French Government have got themselves into a nice hobble about the Slave Trade Treaty. They cannot ratify without disgusting their deputies. They cannot refuse to ratify without bringing dishonour upon the Crown of France.” “All this comes from Guizot’s pitiful spite towards me for our success in the Syrian affair.” He is said to have declared of himself that during his many years at the Foreign Office, no subject was more constantly in his thoughts than the slave trade. And now, during the period of his leisure, he dinned the matter into the ears of the House of Commons. We, who are old, can remember how urgent he was, in season and out of season, respecting the African cruisers; and how, in disregard of all criticism, he “hammered away,” as he called it, so that the world should know that the slave trade had one enemy who would never yield. He never did yield; and though his service in the cause of free labour was not so palpable as that of Wilberforce and Buxton, who brought about the total abolition of slavery in the British Colonies, he did fully as much by forcing other nations into treaties, and then watching closely to see that those treaties were maintained.

In 1842, Lord Ashburton was sent to the United States with the object of establishing by treaty a boundary between them and British America; and while he was there he had also entrusted to him the duty of making some arrangement in reference to the Right of Search. We wanted to look for Africans intended for the slave market. No doubt we could not do so on board vessels belonging to nations which had not entered into treaty with us to that effect. But we claimed the right to see whether a vessel was in truth what she called herself. But the Americans would admit no Right of Search; and Palmerston roused himself into wrath on the occasion. “Ashburton’s treaty,” he writes, “is very discreditable to the negotiators who concluded it, and to the Government who sanctioned it.” “Our Foreign Affairs are getting into the most miserable state, and the country is fast falling from the position in which we had placed it. This Ashburton Treaty is a most disgraceful surrender to American bullying, for I cannot ever give Ashburton and the Government the credit of having been out-witted.” He has already stated that “Lord Ashburton has, if possible, greater interest in America than in England.” This probably was altogether incorrect. But the statement made at such a time shows the animus of the man, and the strong feeling with which he viewed anything which seemed to have a flavour of surrendering British interests.

In 1844, O’Connell was tried for conspiracy, and convicted by a Protestant jury, and was put into prison. He appealed to the House of Lords; and there, it will not perhaps be too much to say, that the matter was tried on its political, rather than on its legal bearings. There were five lords, and the three who reversed the decision of the Court below were Liberals. Palmerston continually alludes to the subject in the letters to his brother. He speaks of the trial without any violence, and almost without the expression of an opinion. When the House of Lords had decided, he wrote as follows;—“The ending of the O’Connell trial has surprised us all; but the man most surprised is Chief Justice Tindal, who, having given the opinion of the majority of the judges in the House of Lords, thought the matter settled, and set off the same night for his summer excursion. Upon arriving at Frankfort, the day before yesterday, he met Bellenden Kerr, one of our Commissioners for digesting the criminal law, who immediately made an experiment on his legal digestion by telling him of the decision of the House of Lords. Tindal could hardly believe it possible. I agree with the Times that it would only be fair by O’Connell to allow him to stay in prison a few days longer, to consider what he is to do next.” But O’Connell and the trial soon died away, and in the Session of 1846 the Maynooth grant was the subject which chiefly filled the minds of politicians. Mr. Gladstone resigned upon it, because he would not, while in office, support Sir Robert Peel’s measure. Sir Robert endeavoured to strengthen his Cabinet by various changes, as to which Lord Palmerston makes the following suggestions as to his own office;—“If he would but shift Aberdeen to any other less important office, and put to the Foreign Office some man of more spirit, energy, and sagacity, it would be a great gain for the country; but that seems now hopeless!”

Then there came the step in English politics which Sir Robert Peel took in this Session, and by taking which he has obtained a place among the half-dozen greatest statesmen whom England has produced. He determined to repeal the Corn Laws altogether. “The Minister was honestly convinced,” says Morley, in his “Life of Cobden,” “but the party was not.” How far the intention of his purpose came from the immediate necessity of his position,—how far, that is, we owed the repeal of the Corn Laws at that moment to the scarcity of food in Ireland,—or how far it was due to the actual conversion of the statesman’s mind to the truth of Adam Smith’s teaching, is, to my thinking, doubtful. There were yet five years before his death, and during those five years the conversion was completed. But the audacity with which he acted on the spur of the moment, resolving that a people must be fed even though he might have to abandon all his old political alliances, betokened a great man; and a great man he will remain as long as English history is read and understood. The political position at the moment, and that of Lord Palmerston as a person concerned, is so well described by Mr. Ashley that I will venture to quote his own words:—“The immediate cause of events, however, which came so suddenly on the political world, was a scarcity of the Irish potato crop. The population of Ireland had to be provided for; and, after two or three meetings with his Cabinet, and propositions made by him and rejected by Lord Stanley, the Prime Minister declared that he saw no satisfactory course to adopt short of the total abolition of the Corn Laws, which it had been hitherto only proposed to modify; and the Administration broke up, Lord John Russell being entrusted with the construction of a new Ministry. This task, after a short effort to fulfil it, he resigned, giving as his principal reason for not forming a Government the refusal of Lord Grey to join it.” This Lord Grey was the son of him who had refused to come back to the Government after Lord Althorp had become a peer. “If, as it was generally said, Lord Grey’s refusal was because the Foreign Office was to be placed in the hands of Lord Palmerston, this would prove that all his former colleagues were not his friends, but that he still remained more powerful than his opponents. At all events, Sir Robert, exalted by the thought that he had a high duty to perform, once more sacrificed his past life to what he believed the future of his country, or perhaps (to speak more correctly) to the exigencies of the hour; and it was this disinterested conversion of an old and experienced statesman that gave the Manchester doctrines the unquestioned authority they have exercised from that time.”

When the deed was done, the resignation of Sir Robert Peel was its only possible conclusion. Lord Stanley had already left the Ministry on the Corn Law question, and on the next important division which took place the Government was defeated by a union of the Whigs and Tories in the House of Commons. Sir Robert Peel retired, never again to return to office. Lord Palmerston sang the late Minister’s pæan in the House of Commons, and then once more returned to the Foreign Office under the leadership of Lord John Russell.

CHAPTER VII.

PALMERSTON FOREIGN SECRETARY, JULY, 1846, TO DECEMBER, 1850.

When he got back to office, there had arisen a question as to the expulsion of the Jesuits from certain Swiss cantons; but I do not know that the English reader will care much now about the Jesuits in Switzerland. Nor are we specially anxious as to the civil war which was then carried on in Portugal. But the knot in European politics known as the Spanish marriages had then an importance, and has since achieved results, which make it necessary that we should not altogether pass it over in any record, however short, of Lord Palmerston’s life. But for those Spanish marriages Louis Philippe’s heirs might still have sat upon the throne of France, and the name of king would not be altogether disgraced in the realm over which Henry IV. had ruled. No prophecy shall be ventured upon here as to the future of the French nation; but it is, I think, notorious to the world at large that the last blow given to the Bourbon family, in the opinion of Frenchmen, came from the Spanish marriages.

I cannot but here remark that, strong, abiding, and consistent as was Lord Palmerston’s conduct in reference to these transactions, and assuredly as the disgrace would have been prevented could it have been staved off by our English Minister, he does not seem to speak of the foul political arrangements which were contemplated and carried out, with that disgust which they must have engendered in the mind of every honest and high-minded gentleman. But here we must remember that Lord Palmerston, as English Foreign Secretary, accustomed as he was to speak his mind freely, could not speak out quite plainly; and that of all that he did say we probably do not possess the whole. But the consequence is that up to this date men speak of the Spanish marriages as having been tolerable in politics though bad in morals, and as projects which should consign the inventors to no perdition, because they dealt, not with private, but with public matters. To us it has seemed that the evil intended, and in a great degree consummated, was of such a nature as to deserve all the stigma which a private iniquity could bear. The Spanish marriages are withdrawn from the comparatively easy regions of national conscience by the intensity of private desire for aggrandisement, by the private nature of the precautions taken, and by the private evil accomplished.

Now, I must tell the story with as little matter of annoyance as may be possible. It has already been told in Lord Palmerston’s life, and so often before and since, that there can be no other reason for silence but the abomination of the tale to be told. It is, however, impossible to produce aright a memoir of Lord Palmerston’s life without telling it. When kings and their councillors do amiss it is by no means the least of the evil done that their doings must be made public and explained.

It had become to be important to us and other nations that the thrones of France and Spain should be kept distinct, so that no French prince might come to sit upon the throne of Spain. As there were now two Spanish princesses,—Isabella, who was the Queen, and her sister, who at the moment was her heir,—Louis Philippe was required to engage, and did distinctly bind himself, that no son of his should marry Isabella, and also that no son of his should marry the sister till the Queen should have become a mother. Having bound himself by this undertaking the King’s first endeavour was, to use an English phrase, to drive a coach and horses through it. He determined that a son of his, or at any rate a grandchild, should sit upon the throne of Spain, and presuming, as we must surmise, that he found his opportunity in the comparative weakness of Lord Aberdeen, he set to work to make such arrangements as might be practicable. Palmerston had declared in 1836, when Isabella was about five years old, that it would be so. “The fact is that he,”—Louis Philippe,—“is as ambitious as Louis XIV., and wants to put one of his sons on the throne of Spain as husband to the young Queen.” But since then the young lady had grown to what in Spain is a marriageable age, and the young Prince who was to become the link between the thrones was twenty-two.

The King of the French did not see his way to break the engagement by running counter to its first clause. He could not marry his son to the young Queen. He might marry his son to the Queen’s sister, as soon as that sister had a child. But that clause he did manage to break; and on the day on which the Queen was married, the Duke de Montpensier was married to the Princess. This was wrong, and false, and mischievous,—likely to lead to quarrels and wars, and unlikely to lead to increased power and dominion for any king or prince. But it was a trick within the compass of certain kings and certain ministers, and was not unroyal in all its bearings. Louis Philippe, however, was not contented with this. He went farther, and selected the Prince who was to marry the Queen. There was a Prince, unfortunate, as the minds of men go, but hitherto not disgraced,—a poor man who could never become the father of children. He it was whom Louis Philippe selected, with the assistance and guidance of Guizot, in the absolute ignorance, I do not hesitate to say, of Lord Aberdeen.

Such were the Spanish marriages. The fruits of them, as might have been guessed, were disastrous. The Queen, at any rate, had children, on whose royal birth no slur was openly thrown. The Duke de Montpensier lives as an unknown nobleman in a foreign land, to whose name there clings something of the flavour of his father’s deeds. M. Guizot, who was the great Minister of the day, a man of high intellect, of thoughtful habits, of religious feeling, and a Protestant, tarnished his name for ever. And Louis Philippe ran from France as an exile, taking refuge in England under the name of Mr. Smith. And here he died! The marriages were perpetrated! But with what results to all who were concerned in them! It may be doubted whether any meaner crime was ever committed in the name of policy, or one of which the end was more befitting, or better deserved.

The effect which this produced in Europe took eighteen months to show itself. The marriages were solemnized in the autumn of 1846, and Louis Philippe came to England and took up his abode at Claremont in the spring of 1848. All his fine machinations had been blown like soap-bubbles into air! The result of the marriages upon English feeling, and upon Lord Palmerston, who was the one Englishman more concerned than others, was that of distinct alienation. It afforded matter but for few speeches in the House of Commons, and not much for private correspondence, as it was done in secret, and the wickedness of the arrangements could only creep out by slow degrees. Men at the time used to whisper to each other that it was so, and men who received the whisper declined to believe the story in all its foul enormity. Now it has become a matter of history, and there is no ordinary reader who does not know of what nature were the Spanish marriages. But Guizot is said at the time to have become so lost to all decent feeling, so warped and stung by the constant interference which he had received from Lord Palmerston, as to have boasted that the political arrangement made was the one great thing which France had herself achieved, unaided, since 1830!

It effected the entire break-up of the concert which had existed between the great Powers of Europe, and clearly led to all the revolutions and disturbances of 1848. England and France were severed, and by their division Austria, Prussia and Russia were encouraged to expect to have their way. A further appropriation of Poland was intended, and was effected; but we find Palmerston endeavouring to prevent it. He writes to Lord Normanby on the 19th of November, 1846; “I have prepared an answer about Cracow, which I shall send off to Vienna without waiting for Guizot.” “Guizot will make a show of resistance; but the fact is, that, even if France and England had been on good terms, they have no means of action on the spot in question, and could only have prevented the thing by a threat of war, which, however, the three Powers would have known we should never utter for the sake of Cracow. The measure is an abominable shame, and executed by the most hollow pretences and the most groundless assertions.”

In January, 1847, the Queen protested, in her speech from the throne, against this new Polish outrage. Lord Palmerston was evidently nettled to think that he could not interfere so as to prevent it. It was but another scar on the Treaty of Vienna, and he could do nothing. Soon afterwards a French political officer of high standing had been condemned for corruption, and had endeavoured, or pretended to endeavour, to commit suicide. “In either way, these things must be a blow to Guizot and the Philippine system.” The Philippine system was to Palmerston unutterably damnable. It was sly, fraudulent, false, extremely courteous, and thoroughly un-English. But it was secret, clever, and at this moment seemed to be triumphant. It was above all things opposed to Palmerston. We can conceive nothing more bitter than the hatred which at this time raged between the two statesmen. And in speaking of it, we should by no means endeavour to wash Lord Palmerston quite white. It may have been that had the “suaviter in modo” been more customary with him, the “fortiter in re” might have been more apparent. Being an older politician, and, we may say, a much wiser one, he had thought to dominate the Frenchman; but the Frenchman knew himself to possess a brighter intellect, a more brilliant style of eloquence, and, in erudition, to be the greater man. We will concede it to him,—that he was so. But Lord Palmerston possessed two virtues by means of which his name will go down to posterity altogether unsullied. He was brave, and he was honest.

We now come to Lord Minto’s mission to Italy, which had been, we presume, arranged between Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. Pio Nono, the late Pope, had been elected in 1846, and Lord Minto started for Italy in November, 1846. We still remember how decided was the Liberalism of the new Pope, when he first filled St. Peter’s chair,—an almost impossible condition for a Pope, and one which he soon vacated. But Lord Minto went to assist him in his Liberalism, to give him such aid as might be possible for an English Liberal Lord, and to find out in return what the new pope could do for England in keeping quiet seditious Irish bishops. “You will be at Rome,” said Lord Palmerston, “not as a minister accredited to the Pope, but as an authentic organ of the British Government, enabled to explain its views and to declare its sentiments upon events which are now passing in Italy.” “Her Majesty’s Government are deeply impressed with the conviction that it is wise for Sovereigns and their Governments to pursue, in the administration of their affairs, a system of progressive improvement; to apply remedies to such evils as, upon examination, they may find to exist, and to re-model, from time to time, the ancient institutions of their country,—so as to render them more suitable to the gradual growth of intelligence, and to the increasing diffusion of political knowledge; and Her Majesty’s Government consider it to be an undeniable truth, that if an independent Sovereign, in the exercise of his deliberate judgment, shall think fit to make within his dominions such improvements in the laws and institutions of his country as he may think conducive to the welfare of his people, no other Government can have any right to attempt to restrain or to interfere with such an employment of one of the inherent attributes of independent sovereignty.”

We cannot but observe here the way in which Lord Palmerston lays down the law for the governance of the nations generally. No doubt he was right in what he said; but he said it with the air of some superior being, whose word is to go for more than the words of other mortals. Lord Minto does not go at once to Rome, but stays awhile at Turin, where the Austrians have shown a desire to interfere with Charles Albert, the father of Victor Emanuel. It is to be hoped that the Ambassador Extraordinary knew the phraseology of the hunting-field as well as did his correspondent. If so, he would understand when he was told that, “As to the Austrians they have been headed, and will not break cover towards Italy.” Then Palmerston explains that, for having stopped the Austrians, the Pope ought to do him a good turn, in silencing a meddlesome bishop or two. Alas, that an opinion so absurd should ever have been held in regard to Pio Nono! “We wish to make the Pope the plain, and simple, and reasonable request that he will exert his authority over the Irish priesthood, to induce them to abstain from meddling in politics, but, on the contrary, to confine themselves to their spiritual duties.” “I shall be able to send you by the next messenger, a memorandum about the letter which has recently been received by McHale, from Rome, upon the subject of the Irish colleges. This is an unkind and most mischievous measure, and was little to be expected at the hands of the Pope at the very moment we were stepping out of our way to be of use to him. It is an ungrateful return.” And a little further on he writes to his correspondent; “You may confidently assure the Papal authorities that at present in Ireland, misconduct is the rule, and good conduct the exception, in the Catholic priests.”

Of course it would be so, human nature being the same with Roman Catholics as with Protestants. Had we paid the priests, as we paid, and still pay, the parsons, out of the funds collected by the Government, the priests would have worked for the Government. To expect that they should do so under other circumstances is to dream of a Utopia. But to imagine that assistance could be got from the Pope to induce the priests to do so, was beyond any Utopian dream. There was a notion afloat at the time that the Pope should send an ambassador to London to carry out the liberal views with which he was supposed to have been imbued. But to this Lord Palmerston will give no assent. “As for the idea that we could manage the Irish priests by means of a Roman priest in London, I am convinced that the presence of such a man would only have given the Irish priests an additional means of managing us.” Lord Minto writes back word that “The Pope is a most amiable, agreeable, and honest man, and sincerely pious to boot, which is much for a Pope; but he is not made to drive the State coach.”

The honesty and piety of Pio Nono must be judged from his whole career. Certainly Lord Minto could not teach him the political state of Europe. “As to the poor Pope,” says Lord Palmerston, writing back to Lord Minto, “I live in daily dread of some misadventure having befallen him. Events have gone too fast for such a slow sailer as he is.” Then he speaks of the deposition of Guizot’s ministry in Paris—for Guizot had been deposed. “What has been happening in Italy ought to have been a warning to Guizot. What has now happened to Guizot ought to be a warning to Italy. Guizot thought that by a packed Parliament and a corruptly-obtained majority, he could control the will of the nation, and the result has been that the will of the Crown has been controlled by an armed popular force. People have long gone on crying up Louis Philippe as the wisest of men. I always have thought him one of the most cunning, and therefore not one of the wisest. Recent events have shown that he must rank among the cunning, who outwit themselves; and not among the wise, who master events by foresight and prudence. This surrender of the King of the Barricades to the commons of the National Guard is, however, a curious example of political and poetical justice.” This was in 1848, when all Europe was on the stir. “Was there ever such a scene of confusion as now prevails almost all over Europe? Fortunate, however, has it been for Italy that you crossed the Alps last autumn. If the Italian sovereigns had not been urged by you to move on, while their impatient subjects were kept back, there would by this time have been nothing but Republics from the Alps to Sicily.” Then he ventures on a prophecy which has become absolutely true in later years. “We have just heard of the entrance of Sardinian troops into Lombardy to help the Milanese. Northern Italy will henceforth be Italian, and the Austrian frontier will be at the Tyrol. This will be no real loss to Austria.” His dislike to Austria and Metternich is only second to his hatred for Louis Philippe and Guizot. France itself he did not hate, or even dislike—or, rather, liked as well as he could any country except England. He says that Austria after such losses may, if well governed, become a powerful State. But he adds: “The question is, Has she any men capable of making any State a powerful one by good government.”

There had in the meantime sprung up a revolution in Sicily against Naples, and Lord Minto had gone on to Naples, and into the Sicilian waters, attempting to put it down. But it was not put down till 1849, when the seditious efforts of the previous year were nearly quelled throughout Europe. So Lord Minto returned home, having not apparently done much, but having brought with him more correct views of the Italian people than English Ministers had hitherto possessed.

Early in 1848 there came upon France that thorough disturbance of all things which has never yet quite rectified itself. Indeed, it may be said that there has been nearly a century of disturbance, during which, however, France has grown wonderfully in wealth and intelligence. But in 1830 France had once more re-established herself, and the Citizen King was put upon his throne as a thing of permanence and a just mixture of monarchical principles with democratic ideas. It must be acknowledged of Louis Philippe, as also of Napoleon III., that France did grow rich under him. But in both cases the riches came “post hoc” and not “propter hoc.” According to our thinking, neither the one ruler nor the other could have benefited his people much, because neither of them was simple in his way of ruling. Louis Napoleon was yet to come, but Louis Philippe had now brought himself and his administration to an end.

There had been a great demand for reforms in Paris and the King had expressed himself strongly. “I never will consent to reform,” he had exclaimed. “Reform is another word for the advent of the Opposition.” “Tell your master not to mind having popular assemblies,” is quoted by Lord Normanby as said by Louis Philippe to some foreign ambassador. “Let them only learn to manage things as I manage mine.” The dismissal of Guizot, the Minister, was demanded among other things. Guizot had stood high for personal integrity;—and we believe that he was perfectly honest; but he got into various troubles in which he consented to the expenditure of public money to satisfy the rapacity of others; and, though he was honest himself, he seems to have dealt easily with dishonesty in his subordinates. But Louis Philippe felt that to lose Guizot was to own himself beaten, and clung to his Minister. Then came the proposition for a popular banquet, and the stopping of the banquet by the police, but with permission given for a procession; and then the stopping of the procession; and then the catastrophe. Louis Philippe, with his family, ran away, and in a few days appeared as Mr. Smith on the coast of Sussex, at Newhaven.

On the 26th of February Lord Palmerston thus writes to Lord Normanby; “What extraordinary and marvellous events you give me an account of. It is like the five acts of a play, and has not taken up much more time. Strange that a king who owed his crown to a revolution, brought about by royal blindness and obstinacy, should have lost it by exactly the same means, and he a man who had gone through all the vicissitudes of human existence, from the condition of a schoolmaster to the pomp of a throne; and still further that his overthrow should have been assisted by a Minister deeply read in the records of history, and whose mind was not merely stored with the chronology of historical facts, but had extracted from their mass the lessons of events and the philosophy of their causes.” And then he gives instructions as to what shall be done by the English Ambassador in Paris. “Our principles of action are to acknowledge whatever rule may be established with apparent prospect of permanency, but none other.” “We will engage to prevent the rest of Europe from meddling with France, which, indeed, we are quite sure they have no intention of doing. The French rulers must engage to prevent France from assailing any part of the rest of Europe.” Then he goes on to lay down rules for different emergencies. What shall be done if the Revolution endeavours to protect itself by using the army for foreign conquest? But his heart beats warmly for his own child. “We cannot sit quiet and see Belgium overrun and Antwerp become a French port.” “If they will look to the stipulations of the treaty finally concluded between the five Powers, Belgium, and the Netherlands, they will see that there are in it guarantees which would have a very awkward bearing upon any attempt by France to annex Belgium to its territory.” He expresses his own feelings on the whole matter; “I grieve at the prospect of a Republic in France, for I fear it must lead to war in Europe and fresh agitation in England. Large Republics seem to be essentially and inherently aggressive, and the aggressions of the French will be resisted by the rest of Europe, and that is war; while, on the other hand, the example of universal suffrage in France will set our non-voting population agog, and will create a demand for an inconvenient extension of the franchise, ballot, and other mischievous things. However, for the present, ‘Vive Lamartine!’” Lamartine was the provisional President of the New Republic, and while he remained in office did behave with a better grace than could have been expected from a man so abnormally situated.

“Here is a pretty to do at Paris,” he says a few days later on in a letter to Lord Ponsonby at Vienna. “It is plain that, for the present at least, we shall have a Republic in France. How long it may last is another question. But for the present the only chance for tranquillity and order in France, and for peace in Europe, is to give support to Lamartine. I am convinced this French Government will not be aggressive if left alone. But if the Austrian Government does not mitigate its system of coercion in Lombardy and grant liberal institutions, they will have a revolt there.” Our British difficulty at the moment arose chiefly from the advantage endeavoured to be taken by the Irish of the French revolutionary spirit. When all Europe was in revolt Ireland, of course, would not remain calm. Smith O’Brien with various deputations was at once in Paris. “I have written to you,” says Lord Palmerston to Lord Normanby, “an official despatch about M. De Lamartine’s allocutions to Irish despatches and his direct allusions therein to our internal affairs, such as Catholic Emancipation, Irish agitation, Repeal of the Union, and other matters, with which no foreign Government had any right to meddle. I wish you to convey to him, in terms as civil as you can use, that these speeches, and especially that to which my despatch refers, have given great offence in this country.” It does not appear to have occurred to him how often he himself was interfering in the foreign affairs of other countries. But Lamartine seems to have taken the observations in good part. “Pray tell Lamartine,” he says, “how very much obliged we feel for his handsome and friendly conduct about the Irish deputations.”

The amount of business which fell on to his shoulders at this time may be well imagined, and yet he was now sixty-four years old. “As to your not always getting letters from me by every messenger who passes through Paris, never wonder at that, nor think it extraordinary.” This is still to Lord Normanby. “Wonder rather when I am able to find time at all. I am sure you would if you saw the avalanches of despatches from every part of the world which come down upon me daily, and which must be read, and if you witnessed the number of interviews which I cannot avoid giving every day of the week. Every post sends me a lamenting minister throwing himself and his country upon England for help, which I am obliged to tell him we cannot afford him. But Belgium is a case by itself, and both France and England are bound by treaty engagements in regard to that country, which it is most desirable for the repose of France and England that no events should call into active operation.” Then he sends word to our Ambassador at St. Petersburg as to what may there be expected of England in reference to certain Polish difficulties which have cropped up. “We, the Government, will never do anything underhand or ungentlemanlike in these matters. I wish we could hope that the Emperor might of his own accord settle the Polish question in some satisfactory manner.” Then there is an allusion to the one burlesque English incident which graced the Revolution. “I conclude that he”—he is Lamartine—“has escaped one danger by the refusal to naturalize Brougham; for it is evident that our ex-Chancellor meant, if he got himself elected, to have put up for being President of the Republic.”

In 1848, as a part of the European disturbance, the Chartist rows came up in London, affording the most signal evidence that up to that time at least the spirit of democratic enmity to order was not at work in England. Nor, according to such evidence as we possess, is it so now,—though at this moment, 1882, it is rampant in Ireland. The question was one with which Lord Palmerston had not much immediate concern. But, alluding to his branch of politics, he writes with his usual vivacity. “The foreigners did not show; but the constables, regular and special, had sworn to make an example of any whiskered and bearded rioters whom they might meet with, and I am convinced would have mashed them to a jelly.”

Then he interested himself very strongly in the attempt which was made in 1848 to banish the Austrians from the North of Italy. “Things have gone much too far to admit of the possibility of any future connection between the Italians and Austria.” And again, “I certainly agree with you and your Austrian friend that Austria would be much better out of Italy than in it. Italy can never now be a useful possession for Austria.” And again, “On the whole, the conclusion to which I should come is, that the cheapest, best, and wisest thing which Austria can do, is to give up her Italian possessions quietly and at once, and to direct her attention and energy to organizing the remainder of her coast territories, and to cement them together, and to develop their abundant resources;”—to induce the Austrians to abandon their Austrian possessions as a matter of pure policy. “But to do this there ought to be some able men at the head of affairs, and our doubt is whether there are any such now in office. First and foremost, what is the animal implumis bipes, called Emperor? A perfect nullity; next thing to an idiot.” Then he discusses the practicability of an abdication, or rather two abdications, with a wisdom and foresight to which events have given their ample testimony. Francis Joseph, the Emperor of to-day, was, after a while, elected in place of his uncle, and has since reigned, through many troubles, with good sense and moderation.

“How can an empire stand in these days without an emperor at its head? And by an emperor, I mean a man endowed with intellectual faculties suited to his high station.” And again, “I fear that his next brother is little better than he is; but could not the son of that brother be called to the succession?” But it is remarkable that this is all written to our ambassador at Vienna, and is written as advice to be given to an Austrian Minister. “Pray then, tell Wessemberg from me, but in the strictest confidence, that I would entreat of him and his colleagues to consider, for the salvation of their country, whether some arrangement could not be made by which the Emperor might abdicate.” Can we imagine any foreign minister recommending to an English statesman the abdication of a British sovereign? In this case, no doubt, the abdication had been previously discussed; but still the audacity, necessary for such advice from an Englishman, was very great. Fighting, however, in the meantime, was going on, and Radetsky, on the part of Austria, was victorious at Milan. France and England joined to assist Sardinia by their moral weight, and an armistice was concluded.

But Palmerston will not give up his points. “The real fact is that the Austrians have no business in Italy at all, and have no real right to be there.” This he writes to Lord Ponsonby at Vienna, and says very evil things of the Austrian mode of governing. “The only Austrians have been the troops, and the civil officers. She has governed it as you govern a garrison town, and her rule has always been hateful.” Then he expresses his strong resentment against attempts which have been made from Vienna, or which he thinks have been made, to influence the English Court. “I quite understand the drift and meaning of Prince Windischgrätz’s message to our Queen; but pray make the Camarilla understand that, in a constitutional country like England, these things cannot answer; and that a foreign Government, which places its reliance upon working upon the Court against the Government of this country, is sure to be disappointed.” But in his strong feeling against Austria and in favour of Italy, in his passionate dislike to the Austrian mode of government, and his strong love for that which he believed would be the Italian mode of government in Italy, he runs into some absurdities which are contradicted in the same letter. “Providence,” he says, “meant mankind to be divided into separate nations, and for this purpose countries have been founded by natural barriers, and races of men have been distinguished by separate languages, habits, manners, dispositions, and characters.” Then he goes on; “North of the Alps, we wish her”—that is Austria—“all the prosperity and success in the world;” though the Austrian and the Hungarian are also distinguished by separate language, habits, and manners. But for the moment the contest was brought to an end by the victory of Austria, and ten years had to pass by before Lord Palmerston saw all his hopes for Italy realized by the unification of the country under the Sardinian crown.

Before the close of the Session in 1849 Mr. Disraeli brought on a vote of want of confidence in the Government. Lord Palmerston writes thus to his brother; “After all the trumpetings of attacks that were to demolish first one and then another member of the Government—first me, then Grey, then Charles Wood—we have come triumphantly out of all debates and divisions, and end the Session, stronger than we began it. Our division this morning, on Disraeli’s motion ‘On the State of the Nation,’ was 296 to 156—a majority of 140.” And in the House of Lords, Lord Brougham fared no better. “Sicily, Lombardy and Rome will be the main topics on which Brougham, Stanley and Aberdeen—the three witches who have filled the cauldron—will dilate.” France had at this time “occupied” Rome. “The questions which will naturally be asked are; In what character has the French army taken possession of Rome? Is it as conquerors of a city to be added to France? Of course not; that answer is easily given. Is it, then, as friends of the Pope, or as friends of the Roman people?” It was a question which would naturally be asked. But the French had taken possession of Rome to guard it equally from the Pope and from the people. The above was written on the 16th July, 1849. On the previous 24th of November the Pope had escaped from Rome in disguise, and had got as far as Gaeta on his way to Majorca. He did not go further on that journey, and there we may leave him, remarking that it was less than thirty months since he had received as a reforming Pope professions of universal affection from the Roman people.

Lord Palmerston feels himself compelled to ask hypothetical questions of the French Government, and to put hypothetical answers into its mouth. We can see that he is in truth jealous that there is a European pie in which he is not allowed to have a finger. But there is not a word in what he says in which an ordinary Englishman does not sympathize. “There are mutually repellent properties between a reasoning people and an elective priestly Government.” “The Roman people will ere long reply by saying; We are no longer Papists; take your Pope and give him as sovereign to those who are Papists still. The Reformation in Europe was as much a movement to shake off political oppression as it was to give freedom to religious conscience, and similar causes are apt to produce similar effects.” Then there has come an attack upon him as Foreign Minister from Lord Aberdeen, whom he takes an opportunity of “paying off,” as he calls it. He does pay him off—with great severity, with good thorough-going abuse, which is, however, altogether parliamentary. The entire speech is too long to be given here with the necessary explanations. But he winds up as follows; “I will only say that the conduct of such men is an example of antiquated imbecility.” The “such men” is, of course, Lord Aberdeen. The next day, no doubt, he would have been on excellent terms with Lord Aberdeen had he met him.

Then, still in 1849, there is a difficulty as to the amount of assistance to be given to Turkey in holding her own against Austria and Russia. The Hungarian conflict had come on, in which Hungary had endeavoured to maintain her own kingdom and her own government, as separated from that of Austria. The Hungarians were willing that the Emperor of Austria should be King of Hungary, but refused to assent to any other joining of the two countries. Here again Palmerston had not his fingers very deep in the pie. How far he may have been restrained by colleagues in his Cabinet, we do not know; but we do remember how, when Austria was hard pressed by her rebels, she was assisted by Russia; and we do know, also, how ungratefully Austria behaved on the occasion. But when the Hungarians were beaten, some of their leaders, and Kossuth among them, escaped into Turkey. Then Russia and Austria demanded the extradition of these rebels, and the Sultan was encouraged to withhold them by Sir Stratford Canning, who now first comes forward as the great friend of the Porte.

Lord Palmerston also warmly takes the part of the Turks, and will not allow the men to be surrendered. It is this affair which gives the chief interest to the autumn of 1849. He writes on the matter very hotly to Lord Ponsonby. “As to working upon their feelings of generosity and gentlemanlikeness”—the feelings of the Austrians—“that is out of the question, because such feelings exist not in a set of officials who have been trained up in the school of Metternich, and the men in whose minds such inborn feelings have not been crushed by Court and office power, have been studiously excluded from public affairs, and can only blush in private for the disgrace which such things throw upon their country. But I do hope that you will not fail constantly to bear in mind the country and the Government which you represent, and that you will maintain the dignity and honour of England by expressing openly and decidedly the disgust which such proceedings excite in the public mind in this country.” It is evident that he had heard something of which he does not approve in Lord Ponsonby’s mode of thinking. “The remedy against these various dangers, which are rapidly undermining the Austrian Empire, would be generous conciliation; but instead of that, the Austrian Government knows no method of administration but what consists in flogging, imprisoning, and shooting. The Austrians know no argument but force.” The two fleets (the English and the French) were moved up to the Dardanelles. “In this affair we are trying to catch two great fish, and we must wind the reel very gently and dexterously, not to break the line.” This he says to Sir Stratford Canning. He declares to Brunnow, “That our sending our squadron up the Mediterranean was, for the Sultan, like holding a bottle of salts to the nose of a lady who had been frightened.” Of course he has his way, and Turkey is not allowed to give up the Hungarians, though he ascertains in the course of the correspondence that Lord Ponsonby, his own ambassador at Vienna, is opposed to the instructions which he receives. But he reprimands him at last with severity. “I write you this, and desire you to do your best; though I hear from many quarters that you oppose instead of furthering the policy of your Government, and that you openly declare that you disapprove of our course. No diplomatist ought to hold such language as long as he holds his appointment.”

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STORY OF DON PACIFICO.

THE story of Don Pacifico is interesting, dramatic, and peculiar, and emblematic in the highest degree of Lord Palmerston’s manner of feeling and condition of mind. In it he will be seen carrying British honesty, British honour, and British determination to the very verge of absurdity and arrogance, till he pushes his principles almost beyond the verge. But who shall say what is absurdity? And he is held to have been thoroughly triumphant in the whole affair, because at last he got a majority of the House of Commons to vote that he had been splendidly English and splendidly honest rather than absurd and arrogant. We may be sure that the statesmen of other nations ridiculed him, but that they did so with a mixture of awe, knowing that it was Palmerston,—and knowing that Palmerston must be allowed to have his own way in such matters,—unless he were stopped by his own countrymen. And a great attempt was made by his own countrymen to keep him down, and to prove that he had been ridiculous. Lord Stanley, who, since 1844, had been in the Upper House, brought a direct motion against him, in which he was supported by Lord Aberdeen and Lord Canning; and he carried his resolution by a majority of thirty-seven. Lord Stanley had not forgotten the accusations of official ignorance made against him by Lord Palmerston; and Lord Aberdeen’s memory was still laden with the bitterness of that “example of antiquated imbecility,” as which he had been represented to the House of Commons. For amenities such as these Lord Palmerston was too wise to expect in return aught but similar amenities.

“I can only say,” said Lord Stanley, “that I have arisen from the perusal of these papers,”—and he describes the documents in his hands, all referring to claims made by Lord Palmerston against Greece, as a weary waste of papers,—“with regret and shame for the part which my country has played.” Then he takes the proud ground that the weakest and the strongest nations should in such matters be treated alike; and he asks whether such has been the case—imputing, of course, to Lord Palmerston the degrading fault that he has been imperious only against the weak. Then he recapitulates the absurd cases for redress as to which Lord Palmerston sent the British Fleet to the Piræus,—a fleet larger, as Lord Aberdeen goes on to say, than that with which Nelson conquered at Trafalgar. Can this, we wonder, have been true? There is the matter of Stellio Sumachi, the blacksmith, which was of itself a very trivial affair. Then there was the question of two of our war vessels, the Fantôme and the Spitfire. A midshipman out of one had landed in plain clothes where he ought not to have landed, and officers of the one ship were taken to have been officers of the other. This had given ground for great offence to British honour. There was the plunder of some Ionian boats at Salcina, Ionians being regarded in Athens as being Greeks well able to take care of themselves,—whereas to Lord Palmerston they were British subjects. Then there was the case of certain Ionians who had laid themselves down in the street to get rid of the fleas which were intolerable in their houses. With these men the police had interfered, as they certainly should not have interfered with British subjects afraid of fleas. Then there was a bit of ground, which Mr. Finlay had bought for £10 or £20, amounting to less than an acre. This was included in King Otho’s garden without payment, whereas a Britisher should, of course, have been paid,—and Mr. Finlay demanded about £1,500. He did ultimately get £1,000. And lastly there was Don Pacifico, the Jew. It had been the custom of the Greeks at a certain festival to burn the figure of Judas; but one of the Rothschilds had come to Athens, and it was thought that this Christian ceremony would be distasteful to him. Therefore the Greeks omitted to burn the Judas, but did burn Don Pacifico’s house, and among the rioters who burnt it was the son of the Greek Minister of War. Now, Don Pacifico, though his relations were supposed to have been Portuguese-Jews, had resided at Gibraltar, or, as some said, had been born there. He had at any rate made out for himself some claim to British citizenship. It sufficed for Lord Palmerston; but the amount of compensation claimed by Don Pacifico was, among the many absurdities, the most absurd. There were certain Portuguese documents which were represented as of immense value. They had been burned, and £26,000 had been charged for them, though they seem to have consisted only of letters from Don Pacifico in which he made his claim, and from the Portuguese Government denying that anything was due to him. All these points Lord Stanley exposed, and he ended by moving; “That, while the House fully recognizes the right and duty of the Government to secure to her Majesty’s subjects residing in Foreign States the full protection of the laws of those States, it regrets to find, by the correspondence recently laid upon the table by her Majesty’s command, that various claims against the Greek Government, doubtful in points of justice, or exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by coercive measures, directed against the commerce and people of Greece, and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with other Powers.” He carried his motion, as I have said, by thirty-seven votes. During the debate, Lord Aberdeen spoke of the “cry of indignation” which had been called forth throughout Europe by the doings of our fleet; and Lord Cardigan threatened the peers with a great war.

The joy was great among Lord Palmerston’s enemies; and it will be understood that they were numerous. He had against him generally the diplomacy of Europe. First of all the French were very hostile to him. The hostility of Thiers and Guizot still remained, kept warm among the archives of the French Foreign Office. And the Austrians and the Prussians and the Russians were all hostile to him;—and the Bavarians, of whose king, Otho, the young king of Greece, was son. The French, as he complains, were treating him with gross ingratitude. When the French were making demands on Morocco, which Palmerston himself describes as “unusual and exaggerated,” had not our consul, “first spontaneously, and then by instructions from me,” and “by an infinity of trouble,” talked the Moors into paying? But, he tells Lord Normanby, that when we ask for our own, “we find the French Minister, faithful to the course which French diplomacy has for years past pursued in Greece, encouraging the Greek Government to refuse, and thus doing all he can to drive us to the necessity of employing force to obtain redress.” And even among Englishmen a strong party has been made against him. Even his own friend Lord Normanby, his own ambassador in Paris, does not seem to have assisted him with his whole heart in what he was doing. “As to the melodrama which you talk of, it seems to me to have been the right course.” “But we have all along been thwarted in Greece by the intrigues and cabals of French agents, who have encouraged the Greek Government to ill-use our subjects and to refuse us satisfaction, and of course Thouvenel is frantic that at last we have lost patience.” And Russia is as hostile as France. He writes to Lord Bloomfield; “We do not mind the Russian swagger and attempt to bully about Greece. We shall pursue our own course steadily and firmly, and we must and shall obtain the satisfaction we require.” “I have been so busy fighting my battle with France, that I have been obliged to put off for a time taking up again my skirmish with Russia.” “There have been in London within the last week letters from Madame Lieven to friends of hers here, abusing me like a pickpocket.” And he complains of our own newspapers. In writing to the Prime Minister, he talks of “the boastful threats made by the Times newspaper as to what Russia would do to put a stop to our proceedings in Greece.” Then again he writes to Lord John as to a question which is to be brought before the Cabinet on the next day. He has already obtained a deposit from the Greek Government, and the question is mooted whether the deposit shall not be returned. “Normanby’s conversation with the President brings another question under the consideration of the Cabinet. Louis Napoleon would be satisfied, as I infer, if to the arbitration we added the restitution of the deposit, and this the Cabinet will have to consider to-morrow. The reasons for and against seem to me to be much as follows.” He then proceeds to explain why he thinks the deposit should be kept in hand, and he evidently feels that the Cabinet may be against him. Indeed, he fears that many are opposed to him who should be his friends, as well as all who are naturally his enemies. And we can see that it is not about this affair of Don Pacifico that his mind is anxious. Don Pacifico is such a flea as that which disturbed the slumbers of the British Ionians. And Greece, with its freedom, of which by this time Palmerston had become nearly sick, was not much more. Shall he, or shall he not, be able to hold his head on high amidst the deep Court waters, in which he had so long been struggling? For the battle with him was one against the absolutism of rulers, on behalf of the constitutional rule of nations. With the rulers were their favourites and Ministers,—and indeed masters; for who need be told that a Metternich was, in fact, master in the Court of Vienna? “We have long had all these things in our own hands,” we can imagine they would say to themselves. “All the glory and the power, and the silks and the satins, and the soft words and courtly shows of imperial rule; and here is this man, who has crept in among us; and has become by his own audacity the first of our order, and is daily lecturing us as to the way in which we shall do our business! And at the bottom is he not as abominable a Revolutionist as any of them? Are we not, among us, able to put him down; and shall we not use the power which, by the excess of his own arrogance, he has now given us?” Thus it is we can imagine that they spoke among themselves, not without sundry endeavours to inveigle his own servants in their own Courts. And we can imagine also in what language Palmerston spoke to himself, when he looked round about him in the world and saw what was going on. He had been continually prompted to arrogance by the conviction that in no other way could he withstand the counts and barons, the duchesses and princesses. He must have known of himself that he was arrogant; but he must have known also that when he would yield an inch he would at once fall, an ell at a time. The motives in men’s minds are mixed. We do believe that with him a true love of liberty had grown up amidst his Foreign Office duties, forcing him to think rather of the English nation than of the ways of Courts. But there had grown with it a lust of personal power and a desire to rule from his desk in Downing Street as much of Europe as he could get into his hands. So should the Turk do under certain circumstances, and so the Austrian, so the Russian, so the Greek, and the Spaniard,—and so, also, as far as might be possible, the Frenchman. Of course, with so many efforts, he often failed; but as he went on he saw, or thought he saw, that where he failed there had come misfortune to the world at large; and where he had succeeded, prosperity.

When he had found, or thought that he had found, that a thing was just, he would have his own way, and was not unfrequently earned astray from justice in the pursuit of power. Greece had become to him a very stumbling-block of offences. Prince Otho of Bavaria, who had been sent there to be King, hardly with Palmerston’s assent, had not at all answered the purpose of his mission. The Constitutional Government which was promised had been delayed, and was never really established under King Otho. Misrule of all kinds became rampant; and matters arose which, with all his patience, must have driven Palmerston nearly mad in his efforts to keep men—not right, but from drifting into recognized illegality. That Mr. Finlay, who had bought his bit of ground, and had had it taken from him without payment and could get not even an answer when he sent in his bill, must have been a provoking stumbling-block. So also was Don Pacifico, with his abominable pettifogging Levant lies and his Jew villanies. I can imagine that, though it did not suit Lord Palmerston openly to abuse Don Pacifico, he must have hated him in the core of his heart. And those flea-bitten Ionians, and even the silly English sailors, must have been distasteful to him. Such a bill as Don Pacifico sent in! There were sofas, ottomans, and consoles of most portentous manufacture; and, above all things, there was a lit conjugal, which must have been surely kept for the expected arrival of a young Duke and Duchess. Lord Stanley says he prefers, in giving the inventory of the furniture, the language of Don Pacifico to the more homely phrase, a double-bed. And then those Portuguese documents,—invaluable, not to be replaced, and now gone for ever!

Lord Palmerston of course knew, as well as did Lord Stanley, that Don Pacifico’s bill was a hideous Levant fraud from beginning to end, having its only base of justice in the fact that the Greek Government had refused to acknowledge it at all. A Greek, of some position in his country, had been present in the streets encouraging the rioters when the house had been burnt down, and the police had refused to notice the matter. Application over and over again had been made for redress,—that due inquiries should at any rate be made; but nothing had been done, and Lord Palmerston would not put up with it Don Pacifico was the last ounce which broke the camel’s back. No doubt Greece was a difficulty to him, and specially a difficulty because she was powerless to protect herself. King Otho and his Ministers were probably instigated by others to use their own weakness. When Great Britain finds a difference between herself and France or the United States, no doubt she must bide her time and wait till just inquiries have been made before true justice shall have been,—or shall not have been, discovered. But with Greece,—with Greece who was there as a separate nation, partly, if not mainly, by his own efforts,—it was out of the question that Great Britain should allow herself to be laughed at. It was at any rate, out of the question with Lord Palmerston. So he sent a fleet,—perhaps larger than was necessary,—to exact damages. Certainly it was larger if it would have sufficed at the date of Trafalgar to beat the united navies of France and Spain;—but we doubt the fact. “Even this Pacifico,—this vile Portuguese Jew, this scum of the Mediterranean,—shall have such justice as he may deserve; and if he have much more than justice, that will be the fault of those who refused to inquire into the matter when some inquiry was possible.” It was thus, that we can imagine Palmerston to have spoken to himself.

The matter took wide proportions and loomed large as though it would assume European greatness. Baron Gros was sent from France as a mediator, and the French Ambassador was actually withdrawn from London. It is hardly necessary now to make all the ins and outs intelligible to the reader. At last the matter was settled. Mr. Finlay was paid and Don Pacifico received compensation. Lord Palmerston had so far been victorious. But the time had come in which the contest was to be transferred from the Piræus, and to be fought out in London. It has been told how Lord Stanley, whom we remember better now as Lord Derby, and Lord Aberdeen, had risen in their wrath, backed by Lord Cardigan and the majority of the Peers generally. What influence had been at work who can say? But it was natural that such influence should prevail. That Lord Stanley did blush for his country, and that Lord Aberdeen did hear a cry of indignation, and Lord Cardigan fear a general war, was, perhaps, true. But the blushes and the cry and the fears were extended only to a limited area. The Princes and the Countesses blushed and feared. The Lords having carried their resolution showed no purpose of going any further. But Lord Palmerston having been so treated could not allow the matter to rest there. He was not a man specially fond of making speeches; but here was a case in which, unless a speech could be made to some effect, he must acknowledge himself to have been beaten. In the House of Lords Viscount Canning, the son of Lord Palmerston’s old master in politics, and who afterwards served in the Cabinet with him and was his Governor-General for India, finished his speech as follows; “If it was fated that a page in their history must be defaced by the record of a policy founded on injustice, conducted with arrogance, and closed without dignity, let them at least have the consolation to know that the same page would bear witness that their policy received, at the earliest opportunity circumstances would permit, its direct, deliberate, and unqualified condemnation in a censure of the House of Lords.” Lord Canning was not then so great a man as he became afterwards; but it was necessary that language such as this should receive a direct refutation in the House of Commons, seeing that it had been asserted in the House of Lords. If this could not have been made to come to pass Lord Palmerston must have retired.

On June 17, 1850, the debate took place in the House of Lords. As no hostile motion was intended to follow up in the House of Commons the hostility of the Lords, the matter must be met by a movement on the other side. There was a consultation, no doubt, between Palmerston and certain of his friends, and it was decided that the service of Mr. Roebuck should be employed,—more especially as Mr. Roebuck had more than once opposed the foreign policy of the great Foreign Minister. There was some flattery in the selection no doubt, but it availed. On June 24, therefore the member for Sheffield moved that “The principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty’s Government have been regulated have been such as were calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country; and, in times of unexampled difficulty, to preserve peace between England and the various nations of the world.” Mr. Roebuck, though his speech was long and somewhat inflated, did represent the matter well, looking at it from Lord Palmerston’s side.

Then arose a debate as of the gods,—remarkable among debates for the length and strength of the speakers, as also, in the case of many of them, for the excellence of their speeches. Sir Frederick Thesiger was longer than Mr. Roebuck, and Sir James Graham almost as long. They were men conspicuous then among Tories, and they both did their best against the Foreign Secretary. That Lord John Manners should have done so, and Sidney Herbert, and Sir Robert Peel,—who now, alas, spoke for the last time in that House,—and Mr. Disraeli, the lion and the lamb thus lying down together, was what we should have expected to find on looking back to the debate. But Sir W. Molesworth spoke on the same side, and Mr. Cobden, both, no doubt, moved by high ideas of conscience. The strongest speech of all, however, as against the Government, and the most damning to Lord Palmerston, was that spoken by Mr. Gladstone, who, sitting on the Tory benches, rose in his rage, and laid about him with all that damaging passion of which he was then, when a Tory, almost as great a master as he has since proved himself in the Liberal ranks. As this is a short memoir of Lord Palmerston’s life, I cannot deal at length with Mr. Gladstone’s speech on that occasion. We can see him, however, and hear him as he rebukes the weary House. “What, sir, are there gentlemen in this House who can pursue their idle chat while words like these are sounding in their ears? If there are, I must tell them frankly that I am not a little mortified at their withholding from myself the compliment of their attention.” And again, he is Gladstone himself, as he speaks of what the mighty owe to the feeble. “No, sir, let it not be so. Let us recognize, and recognize with frankness, the equality of the weak with the strong, the principles of brotherhood among nations and of their sacred independence.” There were giants also on the Government side of the House. Bernal Osborne, Sir George Grey, Monckton Milnes, and Lord John Russell all spoke well. But among those who supported Lord Palmerston, Mr. Cockburn, our Lord Chief Justice afterwards, was the most effective. His speech to this day is admirable reading, as indeed were many of the speeches then made. Baillie Cochrane, now Lord Lamington, who had long been a popular member of the House, had written a pamphlet strongly condemnatory of Greece and of the gross injustice which prevailed there. But Mr. Cochrane was a Tory,—a very decided Tory,—and had spoken against Palmerston in this debate with violence, and he now heard the words he had printed read to him with great effect by Mr. Cockburn. A more telling speech on Mr. Roebuck’s side could not have been made than this quotation, as showing the impossibility of obtaining redress by law in Greece.