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426

LORD PALMERSTON'S DEFENCE.

1852

To those who had been accustomed to see Lord Palmerston rise with the difficulties of his position, it was a surprise and disappointment to find how feeble and inconclusive was his reply, and how completely it avoided the points on which Lord John Russell had laid stress in his statement. It was obvious to all present that the quotation of the Memorandum came upon him with overwhelming effect. From that moment he sat with his forehead resting on his hands, absorbed in thought, and seeming not to attend to the further course of Lord John Russell's speech. When he rose to reply he was warmly cheered by his supporters, but, as he advanced, their hopes of a successful vindication dwindled away. The speech was obviously that of a man in the wrong, whom not even his great talents and practised dexterity could extricate from the embarrassment of a bad cause.10

On all hands it was admitted, that the impression produced upon the House by what had taken place was unfavourable to Lord Palmerston. It was even thought by some experienced observers that his position as a public man was irreparably injured. This conclusion, however, was very quickly disproved. Whatever his faults as a Foreign Minister might have been, his influence in the country and in the House was too great to be shaken even by the unpleasant circumstances, which led to his temporary exclusion from office. At all events he was not a man to be daunted by defeat. Its bitterness, no doubt, was not soon forgotten. It appears to have continued for a

letters, to speak of that Sovereign in the language cited above on pages 305 and 422?

10 We have before us the memorandum of a conversation with one of his parliamentary supporters at this time, in which Lord Palmerston gave the following explanation of the reason of his failure. I had prepared a long speech, which would have been triumphant, vindicating my whole foreign policy; but, when Lord John read the Queen's Memorandum, it was all upset. I could not use any part of it, and had in a hurry to think what I could put together. In fact I had nothing to say. Lord John had given me notice that he would refer to the Queen's Memorandum of August, 1850, but somehow I did not believe it.'

1852

OPINION OF DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

427

time to warp his judgment both of his Sovereign and of the Prince. But a day was to come, in which more intimate knowledge made him see, that they who had but one motive of action in their public life-a single-minded care for the welfare and the dignity of England,-had not to learn, even from the most spirited of Ministers, or the subtlest of diplomatists, how these were best to be maintained, and that in much that he had said and written of them he had been utterly mistaken.

Among the Prince's papers is a memorandum of a conversation between himself and the Duke of Wellington at Windsor Castle on the 21st of January, 1852, on the subject of Lord Palmerston's retirement. We extract from it those parts of it which bear on the Constitutional issues involved.

'I told the Duke,' the Prince writes, "I thought Palmerston would lay stress in his defence upon his having spoken to Walewski as Viscount Palmerston, and not as Secretary of State. Oh, but that won't do! That would be dishonest. It would be appearing in two characters. No! No! We are very particular upon that point. Not only can a Minister not speak to any one on matters connected with Her Majesty's service except officially, but we even require that there should be consistency of conduct between the man's private life and his public employment. . . .

'The Duke thought he would complain of Lord John Russell's interfering with his office, as he saw it hinted in the Post that Lord John had long been in the habit of "interfering in his department."

"I rejoined, that I supposed, when his Grace was Prime Minister, he was somewhat in the habit of interfering with the Foreign Department himself.'

""Good God!" said the Duke, "there never went a paper, which I had not brought to me first. But Lord Palmerston could at no time be trusted, as he was always anxious to do things by himself. When I succeeded him as Secretary of

428

THIS OPINION ILLUSTRATED.

1852

State for Foreign Affairs in 1834, he had offered the mediation of England between France and the United States. I received the answer from the United States, that they would accept the mediation. I at once sent for the UnderSecretary to look out for me what the terms of the offer had been. After a long search he came back to me, saying: My lord! there is no trace of the transaction to be found in the office!' He [Palmerston] had managed the whole by private correspondence, and I had absolutely to ask him to give me some information on the subject."

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That Lord Palmerston had not altered his ways much in the meantime was shown by what occurred in the December of this very year. The use made by Polish and other refugees of their asylum in England to organise conspiracies against the Governments abroad had led to very urgent remonstrances on the subject being addressed to our Government by Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France. In the official notes conveying these remonstrances great stress was laid upon a Despatch by Lord Palmerston to Mr. Bancroft, the American Minister, on the 30th September, 1848, in reply to a demand for explanations as to the arrest of certain persons, who had come over from America at the time of the. Irish Rebellion. The action of our Government was vindicated in this despatch by a line of argument, which the Continental Governments, not without some show of reason, suggested would justify them in adopting rigorous measures towards Englishmen who might be found travelling within their dominions. Yet this document, a State paper of obviously the greatest importance, had never been submitted to either the Prime Minister or the Queen, and they first became aware of its existence from the copies transmitted from abroad with the Notes on behalf of the Continental Powers.

In the discussions which ensued in the public journals and in society upon Lord Palmerston's removal from office,

1852

LORD PALMERSTON AND THE PRINCE.

429

it was often broadly hinted by his supporters that the Prince Consort had been the chief instrument of his fall. Whether Lord Palmerston encouraged this view, or not, is now of little moment. This much is certain, however, that in after years no man spoke more warmly of the Prince, or was readier to acknowledge his services to the country. Nor can we better conclude our narrative of this painful episode in the political history of the year, than by placing on record one of the many illustrations of this which have come within our knowledge. In a letter addressed to us (6th Feb. 1875) by Colonel Kemeys Tynte, formerly Member for Bridgwater, and an intimate personal friend of Lord Palmerston's, he writes:

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Shortly after the return of Her Majesty and his Royal Highness from their visit to the Emperor and Empress of the French [in August, 1855], I called one morning upon Lord Palmerston at Cambridge House. I congratulated him upon the, in every respect, very successful visit of Her Majesty and the Prince to France, remarking, "what an extraordinary man the Emperor was!" "Yes," replied Lord Palmerston," he is, but we have a far greater and more extraordinary man nearer home." Lord Palmerston paused, and I said, "The Prince Consort?" "Certainly," he replied. "The Prince would not consider it right to have obtained a throne as the Emperor has done; but in regard to the possession of the soundest judgment, the highest intellect, and the most exalted qualities of mind, he is far superior to the Emperor. Till my present position "-he was then Premier gave me so many opportunities of seeing his Royal Highness, I had no idea of his possessing such eminent qualities as he has, and how fortunate it has been for the country that the Queen married such a Prince." These are as nearly as possible Lord Palmerston's words, which made a deep impression upon me.'

66

CHAPTER XLV.

THE state of Europe at the beginning of 1852 was well calculated to dissipate the fanciful visions of an era of peace, which had been woven by imaginative journalists under the excitement of the Great Exhibition of 1851. To these the Prince had given no countenance. That era, he well knew, was yet far off, however much people might be taught to think kindlier of each other by being brought together in the peaceful rivalry of which the Exhibition was the arena. The days had long gone by in which, as Gibbon says, 'the nations of the earth were brought together by the pursuits of piracy, or the practices of pilgrimage.' Rapine, if sometimes it went only masked in the guise of commerce, had been in the main replaced by the give and take of equitable barter and exchange; while religious enthusiasm no longer went forth to propagate the Gospel of peace with corselet and sword under the crusader's mantle. But the selfish passions by which the spirit of enterprise is swayed, the aspirations and jealousies which fire the hearts of nations, were likely for many a day to be the fertile cause of warfare in the future, as they had been in the past. The Exhibition might do much to give a quickening impulse to the humanising influence of national intercourse, and to make men feel and understand the blessings of peace. It might bring home to their minds how much can be done for the good of mankind by the interchange of the commodities and the manufactures of countries far remote, and still more by giving to the less

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