CHAPTER XXII.

PALMERSTON.

THE death of Sir Robert Peel had left Lord Palmerston the most prominent, if not actually the most influential, among the statesmen of England. Palmerston's was a strenuous, self-asserting character. He loved, whenever he had an opportunity, to make a stroke, as he frequently put it himself, “ off his own bat." He had given himself up to the study of foreign affairs as no minister of his time had done. He had a peculiar capacity for understanding foreign politics and people as well as foreign languages, and he had come somewhat to pique himself upon his knowledge. As Bacon said that he had taken all learning for his province, Palmerston seemed to have made up his mind that he had taken all European affairs for his province. His sympathies were markedly liberal. As opinions went then, they might have been considered among statesmen almost revolutionary; for the Conservative of our day is to the full as liberal as the average Liberal of 1848 and 1850. In all the popular movements going on throughout the Continent, Palmerston's sympathies were generally with the peoples and against the governments; while he had, on the other hand, a very strong contempt, which he took no pains to conceal, even for the very best class of the Continental demagogue. It was not, however, in his sympathies that Palmerston differed from most of his colleagues. He was not more liberal even in his views of foreign affairs than Lord John Russell; he was probably not so consistently and on principle a supporter of free and popular institutions. But Lord Palmerston's energetic, heedless temperament, his exuberant animal spirits, and his profound confidence in himself and his opinions, made him much more liberal and spontaneous in his expressions of sympathy than a man of Russell's colder nature could well have been. Palmerston seized a conclusion at once, and hardly ever departed from it. He never seemed to

care who knew what he thought on any subject. He had a contempt for men of more deliberate temper, and often spoke and wrote as if he thought a man slow in forming an opinion must needs be a dull man, not to say a fool. All opinions not his own he held in good-humored scorn. In some of his letters we find him writing of men of the most undoubted genius and wisdom, whose views have since stood all the test of time and trial, as if they were mere blockheads for whom no practical man could feel the slightest respect. It would be almost superfluous to say, in describing a man of such a nature, that Lord Palmerston sometimes fancied he saw great wisdom and force of character in men for whom neither then nor since did the world in general show much regard. As with a man, so with a cause. Lord Palmerston was, to all appearance, capricious in his sympathies. Calmer and more earnest minds were sometimes offended at what seemed a lack of deep-seated principle in his mind and his policy, even when it happened that he and they were in accord as to the course that ought to be pursued. His levity often shocked them: his blunt, brusque ways of speaking and writing sometimes gave downright offence.

In his later years Lord Palmerston's manner in Parliament and out of it had greatly mellowed and softened and grown more genial. He retained all the good spirits and the ready, easy, marvellously telling humor; but he had grown more considerate of the feelings of opponents in debate, and he allowed his genuine kindness of heart a freer influence upon his mode of speech. He had grown to prefer, on the whole, his friend, or even his honorable opponent, to his joke. They who only remember Palmerston in his very later years in the House of Commons, and who can only recall to memory that bright, racy humor which never offended, will perhaps find it hard to understand how many enemies he made for himself at an earlier period by the levity and flippancy of his manner. Many grave statesmen thought that the levity and flippancy were far less dangerous, even when employed in irritating his adversaries in the House of Commons, than when exercised in badgering foreign ministers and their governments and sovereigns. Lord Palmerston was unsparing in his lectures to foreign States. He was always admonishing them that they ought to lose no time in at once adopting

the principles of government which prevailed in England. He not uncommonly put his admonitions in the tone of one who meant to say: "If you don't take my advice you will be ruined, and your ruin will serve you right for being such fools." While, therefore, he was a Conservative in home politics, and never even professed the slightest personal interest in any projects of political reform in England, he got the credit all over the Continent of being a supporter, promoter, and patron of all manner of revolutionary movements, and a disturber of the relations between subjects and their sovereigns.

Lord Palmerston was not inconsistent in thus being a Conservative at home and something like a revolutionary abroad. He was quite satisfied with the state of things in England. He was convinced that when a people had got a well-limited suffrage and a respectable House of Commons elected by open vote, a House of Lords, and a constitutional Sovereign, they had got all that, in a political sense, man has to hope for. He was not a far-seeing man, nor a man who much troubled himself about what a certain class of writers and thinkers are fond of calling "problems of life." It did not occur to him to think that as a matter of absolute necessity the very reforms we enjoy in one day are only putting us into a mental condition to aspire after and see the occasion for further reforms as the days go on. But he clearly saw that most Continental countries were governed on a system which was not only worn out and decaying, but which was the source of great practical and personal evils to their inhabitants. He desired, therefore, for every country a political system like that of Great Britain, and neither for Great Britain nor for any other country did he desire anything more. He was, accordingly, looked upon by Continental ministers as a patron of revolution, and by English Radicals as the steady enemy of political reform. Both were right from their own point of view. The familiar saying among Continental Conservatives was expressed in the well-known German lines, which affirm that "If the devil had a son, he must be surely Palmerston." On the other hand, the English Radical party regarded him as the most formidable enemy they had. Mr. Cobden deliberately declared him to be the worst minister that had ever governed England. At a

later period, when Lord Palmerston invited Cobden to take office under him, Cobden referred to what he had said of Palmerston, and gave this as a reason to show the impossibility of his serving such a chief. The good-natured statesman only smiled, and observed that another public man who had just joined his Administration had often said things as hard of him in other days. "Yes," answered Cobden, quietly, "but I meant what I said."

Palmerston, therefore, had many enemies among European statesmen. It is now certain that the Queen frequently winced under the expressions of ill-feeling which were brought to her ears as affecting England, and, as she supposed, herself, and which she believed to have been drawn on her by the inconsiderate and impulsive conduct of Palmerston. The Prince Consort, on whose advice the Queen very naturally relied, was a man of singularly calm and earnest nature. He liked to form his opinions deliberately and slowly, and disliked expressing any opinion until his mind was well made up. Lord Palmerston, when Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was much in the habit of writing and answering despatches on the spur of the moment, and without consulting either the Queen or his colleagues. Palmerston complained of the long delays which took place on several occasions when, in matters of urgent importance, he waited to submit despatches to the Queen before sending them off. He was of opinion that during the memorable controversy on the Spanish marriages the interests of England were once in danger of being compromised by the delay thus forced upon him. He contended, too, that where the general policy of a state was clearly marked out and well known, it would have been idle to insist that a Foreign Secretary capable of performing the duties of his office should wait to submit for the inspection and approval of the Sovereign and his colleagues every scrap of paper he wrote on before it was allowed to leave England. If such precautions were needful, Lord Palmerston contended, it could only be because the person holding the office of Foreign Secretary was unfit for his post; and he ought, therefore, to be dismissed, and some better qualified man put in his place. Of course there is some obvious justice in this view of the case. It would perhaps have been unreasonable to expect that, at a time when

the business of the Foreign Office had suddenly swelled to unprecedented magnitude, the same rules and formalities could be kept up which had suited slower and less busy days. But the complaint made by the Queen was not that Palmerston failed to consult her on every detail, and to submit every line relating to the organization of the Foreign Office for her approval before he sent it off. The complaint was clear, and full of matter for very grave consideration. The Queen complained that on matters concerning the actual policy of the State Palmerston was in the habit of acting on his own independent judgment and authority; that she found herself more than once thus pledged to a course of policy which she had not had an opportunity of considering, and would not have approved if she had had such an oppor tunity; and that she hardly ever found any question absolutely intact and uncompromised when it was submitted to her judgment. The complaint was justified in many cases. Lord Palmerston frequently acted in a manner which almost made it seem as if he were purposely ignoring the authority of the Sovereign. In part this came from the natural impatience of a quick man confident in his own knowledge of a subject, and chafing at any delay which he thought unnecessary and merely formal. But it is not easy to avoid a suspicion that Lord Palmerston's rapidity of action sometimes had a different explanation. Two impressions seem to have had a place deeply down in the mind of the Foreign Secretary. He appears to have felt sure that, roughly speaking, the sympathies of the English people were with the Continental movements against the sovereigns, and that the sympathies of the English court were with the sovereigns against the popular movements. In the first belief he was undoubtedly right. In the second he was probably right. It is not likely that a man of Prince Albert's peculiar turn of mind could have admitted much sympathy with revolution against constituted authority of any kind. Even his Liberalism, undoubtedly a deep and genuine conviction, did not lead him. to make much allowance for any disturbing impulses. His orderly intellectual nature, with little of fire or passion in it, was prone to estimate everything by the manner in which it stood the test of logical argument. He could understand arguing against a bad system better than he could under