PALMERSTON AS FOREIGN SECRETARY TILL HIS DISMISSAL, IN 1851.
Lord Palmerston achieved his triumph in 1850, and encountered his
disgrace, if it is to be so considered, in 1851. There was but the one
year and a few months before his foes were too many for him. In
describing this second battle, I shall endeavour to tell the story as
though the blow had come from Lord John Russell, the head of the
Cabinet, with such aid and counsel as may have been given to him by
others of his own class. Of the action of the Court, as told to us in
detail by Sir Theodore Martin, I have spoken in the first chapter, and
it will be more convenient if I go on with Lord Palmerston’s career
without much further allusion to it. He himself believed that he had
been the victim of a foreign conspiracy, aided by those Englishmen who
agreed that its purpose was good. In September, 1850, he thus wrote to
his brother,--after the affair of Don Pacifico; “I have beaten and put
down and silenced, at least for a time, one of the most widespread and
malignant and active confederacies that ever conspired against one man
without crushing him; but I was in the right, and I was able to fight my
battle.” “The death of Louis Philippe delivers me from my most artful
and inveterate enemy, whose position gave him in many ways the power to
injure me.” The readers of to-day will dislike the use of the word
conspiracy, and will think that the powers brought to bear against the
Foreign Secretary were no more than those of fair political opposition.
And it will probably be thought that Lord Palmerston was becoming too
powerful in foreign affairs,--or was wont to express himself too
loudly,--as has since come to be the case with another great arranger of
European strategy in another country. It was so. It is not within the
compass of a man’s nature to stretch his voice afar and yet to control
the power of his own hand. Looking back, we can understand that
Palmerston should have fallen; but we all feel that had he not risen to
higher place because of his fall, England would have lost much by his
falling.
In the autumn of 1850 General Haynau came to London, and, among other
sights, visited Barclay & Perkins’ brewery. According to English ideas
he had shown himself to be a brute during the Hungarian war; and very
brutally was he treated by the draymen. His name should not be mentioned
here but that all England was in a momentary ferment because of what had
been done. It was generally thought that he had been maltreated, and
that, as he had not ill-used Englishmen or English women, we should have
contented ourselves with simply ignoring him when he trusted himself to
our hospitality. Palmerston’s judgment as to what had been done was
lenient. “The draymen were wrong in the particular course they adopted.
Instead of striking him, which, however, by Koller’s account, they did
not do much, they ought to have tossed him in a blanket, rolled him in
the kennel, and then sent him home in a cab, paying his fare to the
hotel.”
In his sixty-seventh year (January, 1851) he wrote to his brother from
Broadlands. Speaking of the Christmas just past, he says; “I took a
fling, and went out several days hunting and shooting in the fine of the
early day, coming home, of course, for work earlier than if I had been
only a sportsman.” Let gentlemen of sixty-seven who habitually go out
hunting and shooting,--for I am aware that there are Englishmen of the
age who do so,--bethink themselves of the manner in which they pass the
remainder of the day after they have come home. Are they tired, and do
they sleep, or sit over their tea? Do they congratulate themselves that
at sixty-seven they have been still able to perform so well many of the
feats of their youth? I think I may say that they, none of them, betake
themselves to the hard thoughtful work of their lives; and that, if such
work still falls to their lot, it has to be done before they go out
hunting or shooting.
He, however, takes his share in all matters of interest. He knows what
is doing as to fortifications, and takes a strong interest in the
subject. He writes to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; “Could you but
take a sum, however small, to make a beginning, for similar defences at
Plymouth?” He is very eager as to some system of volunteering. “Every
other country that deserves to be called a power has this kind of
reserved force.” Then comes the great Exhibition of 1851,--the first of
those marvellous palaces of industry which have since been studded thick
over the world’s surface. He is writing to Lord Normanby, and is
speaking of the multitude. “The Queen, her husband, her eldest son and
daughter, gave themselves in full confidence to this multitude, with no
other guard than one of honour and the accustomed supply of stick-handed
constables.” And the Papacy has to be put down. “Our Papal Aggression
Bill will be carried in spite of the opposition of the Irish members
who are driven on by the influence of the priests over the Irish
electors.” As to this bill, however, I do not know that we are now
inclined to take much pride to ourselves. Then Mr. Gladstone’s
Neapolitan letters were written, and so moved Naples, through England,
that the Neapolitan prisons were at last opened. On this subject he
tells an excellent story. “Walewski told Milnes the other day, as a
proof of the goodness of heart of the King of Naples, that at his,
Walewski’s request, the King had at one time promised to set free three
hundred prisoners against whom no charge or no proof had been
established. ‘How grateful,’ said Milnes, ‘these men must have been! Did
they not come and thank you for their release?’ ‘Why,’ said Walewski,
‘you see, after the King had made the promise, the Chief of Police came
to him, and said that if the men were set free he could not answer for
the King’s life. And so, you see, the men were not set free.’”
In November, 1851, we come to the cause of his fall,--which cause was in
truth Napoleon’s _Coup d’Etat_. The feeling in England, when the _Coup
d’Etat_ was first made known, was very averse to it. There was a belief
that Napoleon had been guilty of falsehood and treachery. Mr. Kinglake,
in his great work on the invasion of the Crimea, translates the words
which Napoleon had used on the 13th of November, 1850--“The noblest
object, and the most worthy of an exalted mind, is not to seek when in
power how to perpetuate it, but to labour incessantly to fortify, for
the benefit of all, those principles of authority and morality which
defy the passions of mankind and the instability of laws.” About a year
after he had uttered this philanthropic but sententious idea he had
filched the Empire. Englishmen did not like that; and though they were
gradually won by the fealty of the Emperor to his English alliance so as
to endure him, the stain of the falsehood still stuck to him through his
twenty years of governing. Such we think has been the English feeling.
Such was not the feeling of Lord Palmerston, who knew more as to the
state of Europe than any other Englishman, and was more keenly alive to
the immediate needs of both France and England. He writes to Lord
Normanby; “There is no other person at present competent to be at the
head of affairs in France; and if Louis Napoleon should end by founding
a dynasty, I do not see that we need regret it as far as English
interests are concerned.” “At all events, I say of Louis Napoleon,
_laudo manentem_.” But it was known that there had been private
friendship between the two men while Louis Napoleon was living in
England, and also that there had been a strong aversion on the part of
Palmerston to the whole family of Bourbons. The Bourbons had during the
entire period of his career, both before and after the coming of the
Citizen King, ruled after that mysterious and crafty fashion which had
produced at last the Spanish marriages. Palmerston no doubt desired
something better than craft and mystery. The Bourbons had been expelled
by the Revolution; but the Republic, as established with Louis Napoleon
as its President, had not acted with much wisdom. To Palmerston’s
thinking something more nearly akin to the established rule of a dynasty
was necessary for France,--and for England also if it was to remain in
alliance with France,--than the wild and uninstructed enthusiasm of the
Assembly. He did believe in Louis Napoleon, and continued no doubt to
believe to the end of his life, justified, as he thought, by the French
Emperor’s early successes, and also by his friendship for England. He
had left the world of politics before Napoleon had spun all his thread
and run his reel out to the end. To me who write this, even the memory
of the Emperor is distasteful. But the fall that was about to come upon
Palmerston may have been in part due to his feeling for a man who stood
higher in his estimation than in that of his countrymen. Years
afterwards, in 1858, he had to retire with his Government, of which he
was then the head, for a reason which was partly similar. We shall come
to that before long; but it afforded another proof of the general tone
of his mind towards Louis Napoleon.
Lord Normanby was our Ambassador in Paris; and from some cause, of which
I know nothing, entertained different feelings. It may probably be that
he, as an honest man, disliked the dishonesty of the President. There
was a variance between him and Palmerston, and that too no doubt had its
effect upon the coming circumstances. And it must be remembered that
Lord Palmerston was already labouring under a sense of the
disapprobation of his superior officers in that he would not submit his
despatches in time for such surveillance as it was thought that they
should receive. He had then against him at this moment the Prime
Minister and his own Ambassador in Paris, who had been a Cabinet
Minister, and the Court influence, and he had the feeling that he
himself was on too friendly terms with the man who had achieved the
_Coup d’Etat_ by not the fairest means that ever were used in politics,
and not by the cleanest instruments.
On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that Palmerston knew
himself as few men do, and his own sagacity, and his general popularity
in the country. His object was so to administer foreign affairs as might
best redound to the honour of his country, and he was aware that there
was no man in England who could teach him a lesson in that respect. As
to his despatches, it was to him quite impracticable to encounter the
required delay. There was an order to that effect, and other orders
came. He, however, if he remained Foreign Secretary, must do so after
his own fashion. But there arose at this moment another source of
displeasure against him, which, joined to his disobedience as to the
despatches, caused his dismissal.[H] Lord Palmerston had expressed to M.
Walewski, who was then the Ambassador from France in London, his
approbation of the _Coup d’Etat_. This assent had been given somewhat in
an off-hand manner, so as not to have bound him absolutely to the words
which he had used. He alleged that it was so. Count Walewski of course
sent home to the new Emperor his report of the English Foreign
Secretary’s opinion.
Two days afterwards Palmerston instructed Lord Normanby as to his
conduct; “I am commanded by her Majesty to instruct your Excellency to
make no change in your relations with the French Government.” And it
seems that some ill-feeling was engendered in Paris by priority of the
private to the official communication made. The private communication
had been to the effect that Lord Palmerston entirely approved of what
the President had done. It must be said that he did not admit having
gone so far as this. He pointed out that Walewski had reported from
memory the words spoken; that Turgot, the Minister in France, had
reported the words verbally to Lord Normanby; and that Normanby had
written home his remembrance of the anger which M. Turgot had expressed.
M. Turgot was at loggerheads with Lord Normanby, M. Turgot representing
the President-Emperor. “You need not at all trouble yourself to tell us
‘what you are commanded by her Majesty to instruct me,’ because we have
known two days since what was our friend Lord Palmerston’s opinion.” It
was thus that Turgot answered Lord Normanby,--with scorn added to
acrimony, because Lord Normanby had ventured to suggest that had the
English Government pleased, the English Government might have interfered
with the French Government. Lord Normanby, in his official report,
distinctly stated that he had made this communication to M. Turgot. But
Lord Palmerston had never so instructed him; “I am commanded by her
Majesty to instruct your Excellency to make no change in your relations
with the French Government.” There is no message contained in this, and
these are Lord Palmerston’s words; but Lord Normanby seems to have
misunderstood them. At any rate the private communication had reached
Paris first, and the official despatch two days afterwards. Then there
were official and semi-angry despatches between the two Lords in London
and Paris, and the question of which was right fell into the hands of
Lord John Russell as Prime Minister.
The gravamen of the charge now made was that the Foreign Secretary,
without the sanction of the Cabinet, had taken upon himself to tell the
French Ambassador that the President-Emperor had done uncommonly well by
arranging the _Coup d’Etat_. That readers should think that the
President did very ill has nothing to do with the question. It is not
alleged that there was disagreement in the Cabinet on that
point,--though no doubt there was either in the Cabinet or without the
Cabinet. This is simply a memoir of Lord Palmerston, and does not
presume to be a vindication of his policy. And the present object is to
show why he was dismissed, and how he turned upon those who had
dismissed him, and got the better of them. He himself, in a letter
written a few days later to his brother, gives a detailed history of the
whole affair, in which he takes the trouble to show that as he had
expressed himself to Walewski, so had other members of the Cabinet said
the same thing to the same man at the same period; and he quotes Lord
Lansdowne, and Charles Wood, and John Russell himself. Am I forbidden to
do that which my colleagues did, what all London was doing,--that part
of London who knew what they were talking about?
I will quote his own words, in which he tells his brother how he had
defended himself to Lord John Russell. “I answered that his doctrine, so
laid down, was new and not practical; that there is a well-known and
perfectly understood distinction in diplomatic intercourse between
conversations which are official and which bind Governments, and
conversations which are unofficial and which do not bind Governments;
that my conversation with Walewski was of the latter description, and
that I said nothing to him which would in any degree or in any way
fetter the action of the Government; and that if it was to be held that
a Secretary of State could never express any opinion to a
foreign Minister on passing events, except as the organ of a
previously-consulted Cabinet, there would be an end of that easy and
familiar intercourse which tends essentially to promote good
understanding between Ministers and Governments.” But as he goes on he
expresses himself more warmly; “It is obvious that the reason assigned
for my dismissal was a mere pretext, eagerly caught at for want of any
good reason. The real ground was a weak truckling to the hostile
intrigues of the Orleans family, Austria, Russia, Saxony, and Bavaria,
and in some degree also of the present Prussian Government. All these
parties found their respective views and systems of policy thwarted by
the course pursued by the British Government, and they thought that if
they could remove the Minister they would change the policy.”
The “weak truckling” and the “hostile intrigues” I will lay aside,
leaving it to the individual reader to judge of these expressions as he
may please. But it is manifest that there were running at the time in
Great Britain two currents as to foreign politics: the one which I can
only define as English;--and the other, which I call the policy of
absolutism, because I do not wish to descend to abuse, which I must do
if I give to it any national name. That both were held with high
patriotic ideas we should not doubt. Emperors and their Ministers
naturally believe in Emperors and their Ministers. Those who are opposed
to them are, to their thinking, a stubborn revolutionary crowd. If by
little tricks the absolute party can gain a point in their own favour, a
great stroke of policy is made. But they who maintain that the united
opinion of the world at large may be best used for the governance of the
world, may be as wise, and at any rate as honest, as their opponents. A
comparison of the national success of nations is in their favour. Lord
Palmerston, during his whole life after he had come to think of these
things, and especially during the strongest part of his life in which he
presided at the Foreign Office, held the British view, and would not
allow himself to be driven from it for a moment. A constitutional king
did not, as he thought, rule in the sense of holding the strings of
national policy in his own hands. In defence of his view, he was
authoritative, imperious, arrogant,--sometimes even tyrannical, if you
will. The bull-dog can hardly hold tight by his bone without crushing
it. But it is very difficult to get a bone out of the mouth of a
bull-dog.[I]
When called upon for his explanation by Lord John, Lord Palmerston gave
it, with more precision than accuracy. His letter is dated the 16th of
December. He went at length into the question of the President’s
conduct, and justified the President’s judgment in the _Coup d’Etat_.
But it was not that which was now called in question. There was a
rejoinder made to him in which he was expected to acknowledge his error
in having spoken to Walewski. This he refused to do, and then, on the
19th of December, there came the blow. Lord John wrote as follows; “I
have just received your letter of yesterday. No other course is left to
me than to submit the correspondence to the Queen, and to ask Her
Majesty to appoint a successor to you in the Foreign Office.” Lord
Palmerston was dismissed. The dismissal of a Cabinet Minister, and of
such a Cabinet Minister, was at any rate a most uncommon occurrence. It
struck Lord Macaulay as “rashly, needlessly harsh.” Lord John himself
repented of it. “My own judgment upon it is, that it was hasty and
precipitate,” he says--page 258, of his “Recollections and Suggestions.”
He thought to soften the blow by offering to the dismissed, but ever
active Secretary of State the _fainéant_ retreat of Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland. One is almost tempted to think that Palmerston was right when
in his earlier years he spoke of the average Minister as one who would
“by instinct come round to the oat sieve.”
He, however, would not come round after that fashion. He felt that it
had been for some time intended that he should be dismissed; and, now
that the blow had come, was by no means prepared to retire into
obscurity and silence. But he seems to have experienced great difficulty
in making up his mind how he would act. He did nothing;--nor was there
anything to be done till Parliament should meet early in February. But
it was, of course, manifest that Lord John should offer to the House his
explanation of the most unwonted circumstance. This he did in a very
powerful speech; but he could speak, knowing that the Court was at his
back. Lord Palmerston answered him, but he did so without such backing;
and could hardly have made his points good without a reference to the
Court which his loyalty would forbid him to use. He seems to have
recognized the fact that he must accept his dismissal, and bide his
time, and try another fall with Lord John on other grounds. He knew his
popularity with the country, and did not doubt his own power. Could he
succeed on other ground, the Queen would be bound to accept him. A short
time afterwards the Queen did accept him very willingly. But in his
present difficulty even his popularity would not suffice to put him
straight before the Parliament. It would not suit him, the old public
servant of his country,--him who still hoped to serve his country
long,--to take upon himself the rôle of a demagogue, and join as he must
have joined the ultra-radicals in a vain endeavour to get a majority
against his old chief. He made no effort of the kind, but allowed the
matter to pass by, defending himself only on small points,--as to which
it was not claimed for him by his friends that he was especially
successful.
The debate was thus described by Lord Dalling, who was especially
Palmerston’s friend. “His speech,”--John Russell’s--“certainly was one
of the most powerful I ever heard delivered. It was evidently intended
to crush an expected antagonist, and, by the details into which it went,
took Lord Palmerston by surprise. I listened to his reply with the most
affectionate interest, since he was kind enough to mention my own name
with praise; but I felt, and all his friends felt, that it was feeble as
a retort to the tremendous assault that had been made on him.”
“‘Palmerston is smashed’ was, indeed, the expression generally used at
the clubs; but it did not in the least convey the idea that Lord
Palmerston had formed of his own position. I must say, in truth, that I
never admired him so much as at this crisis. He evidently thought he had
been ill-treated; but I never heard him make an unfair or irritable
remark, nor did he seem in anywise stunned by the blow he had received,
or dismayed by the isolated position in which he stood.” It was on this
occasion that the witty Statesman expressed his opinion that “there was
a Palmerston”--Fuit Ilium et ingens gloria Teucrorum. That Statesman
intended to express his opinion that the power of Palmerston was a thing
of the past.
“So sinks the daystar in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky!”