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.
But the one speech of the occasion was that delivered by Lord
Palmerston, and it was the greatest speech he ever made. It proved that
had he chosen to devote himself to that branch of politics, he could
have become a great orator. The debate lasted for four nights, and this
speech occupied four hours and a half. He was, in truth, pleading for
his life. And yet he seemed to take it quite calmly, and did not, during
the whole of the four hours, allow himself to be carried into any
violence. He went on with his arguments, never allowing them to fall
flatly, but seldom attempting to rise to any excessive height. He laid
down his idea as to the redress to which an Englishman is entitled. “I
say, then, that our doctrine is, that, in the first instance, redress
should be sought from the law courts of the country; but that in cases
where redress cannot be so had,--and those cases are many,--to confine a
British subject to that remedy only would be to deprive him of the
protection which he is entitled to receive.”
Going on to the special case of Don Pacifico, he then explains the
circumstances. “What happened in this case? In the middle of the town of
Athens, in a house which I must be allowed to say is not a wretched
hovel, as some people have described it,--but it does not matter what it
is, for whether a man’s home be a palace or a cabin, the owner has a
right to be there safe from injury,--well, in a house which is not a
wretched hovel, but which, in the early days of King Otho, was, I am
told, the residence of the Count Armansperg, the chief of the
Regency,--a house as good as the generality of those which existed in
Athens before the sovereign ascended the throne,--M. Pacifico, living in
that house, within forty yards of the great street, within a few minutes
walk of a guard-house where soldiers were stationed, was attacked by a
mob. Fearing injury when the mob began to assemble, he sent an
intimation to the British Minister, who immediately informed the
authorities. Application was made to the Greek Government for
protection. No protection was afforded. The mob, in which were soldiers
and gens-d’armes, who even, if officers were not with them, ought, from
a sense of duty, to have interfered and to have prevented plunder,--that
mob, headed by the sons of the Minister of War, not children of eight or
ten years old, but older,--that mob for nearly two hours employed
themselves in gutting the house of an unoffending man, carrying away or
destroying every single thing the house contained, and left it a perfect
wreck.”
Then he passes on to the general foreign policy of his administration,
and answers the charges which had been made against him at great length
by Sir James Graham. We cannot follow him here, as to do so we should be
driven to go back over the whole work of his life. But the clearness
with which it is all done is of such a nature that no one can now
obtain a more lucid statement of the English view of European politics
during the period; and he then concludes his view of the manner in which
Great Britain could wish that her foreign affairs should be governed,
and in which he thinks that they have been governed by him. “I do not
complain of the conduct of those who have made these matters the means
of attack upon Her Majesty’s Ministers. The Government of a great
country like this is undoubtedly an object of fair and legitimate
ambition to men of all shades of opinion. It is a noble thing to be
allowed to guide the policy, and to influence the destinies of such a
country; and, if ever it was an object of honourable ambition, more than
ever must it be so at the moment at which I am speaking. For while we
have seen, as stated by the right honourable baronet the member for
Ripon, the political earthquake rocking Europe from side to side,--while
we have seen thrones shaken, shattered, levelled,--institutions
overthrown and destroyed,--while in almost every country of Europe the
conflict of civil war has deluged the land with blood, from the Atlantic
to the Black Sea, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, this country has
presented a spectacle honourable to the people of England, and worthy of
the admiration of mankind.”
The speech was liked by the whole House, foes as well as friends. It was
thus that all Englishmen felt that they would wish that an English
Minister of State should defend himself and the Government to which he
belonged. “It has made us all proud of him,” said poor Sir Robert Peel,
who, after that day, never lived to express such pride again. Then came
the division; and, in a House of five hundred and seventy-four members,
Lord Palmerston was acquitted by a majority of forty-six. On the next
day,--or, in truth, on that day, for the division was not taken till
nearly four o’clock,--he sent a word of joy over to Lord Normanby. “Our
triumph has been complete in the debate, as well as in the division;
and, all things considered, I scarcely ever remember a debate which, as
a display of intellect, oratory, and high and dignified feeling, was
more honourable to the House of Commons.”
There never had been a pitched battle fought on that arena in which the
thing to be fought for was better understood, in which the combatants
were marshalled in fairer order, in which the strategy was of a higher
nature, or the courage displayed more brilliant. Should the Whigs, plus
Palmerston, be kept in office, or should they be expelled from office
because of Palmerston’s ungovernable arrogance? The House of Commons and
the Whigs determined to keep Palmerston in his place. The victory was
very great, and the glory almost unbounded. The House of Lords was set
at naught, and a majority of forty-six in the House of Commons was taken
as showing the will of the entire nation.
But it was not to last for long. Lord Palmerston knew, or asserted that
he knew, where lay the real force which he had to encounter; and though
he sounded his trumpet loudly on the occasion, and in the moment of his
triumph forgot that his enemies still existed, he lived to remember
their power. He thus wrote to his brother William; “The attack on our
foreign policy has been rightly understood by everybody as the shot
fired by a foreign conspiracy, aided and abetted by domestic intrigue.”
He goes on in the same letter to tell how he was invited to dinner by
two hundred and fifty members of the Reform Club, and how the banquet
might have been extended to a thousand had it not been thought well to
limit the demonstration. It was after this victory that the famous
portrait of Lord Palmerston was painted, and presented to Lady
Palmerston, by a hundred and twenty members of the House of Commons.
This period,--the end, that is, of the session of 1850,--was the
culminating point in the fortunes of our great Foreign Minister. He
lived, indeed, to be twice Premier, and to have superintended the
counsels by which Nicholas was beaten to his death in the Crimean War;
but I do not think that he was ever as great as on the night on which he
defended himself for having protected Don Pacifico. Such is the story of
Don Pacifico. How the battle was renewed under other auspices in the
next year, and how Lord Palmerston was then dismissed by the same Lord
John Russell who now had defended him, must be told in the next
chapter.