CLOUDS IN THE EAST AND ELSEWHERE.
Political Wreckage--Force triumphs over Opinion--The State of
France--Election of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte as
Prince-President--The Sad Plight of Italy--Palmerston’s
Anti-Austrian Policy--Defeat of Piedmont--The Fall of Venice--Fall
of the Roman Republic--A Cromwellian Struggle in Prussia--The
Queen’s Partisanship--Her Prussian Sympathies--The Hungarian
Refugees in Turkey--A Diplomatic Conflict with Russia--Opening of
Parliament--Mr. Disraeli and Local Taxation--Parliamentary
Reform--The Jonahs of the Cabinet--The Dispute with Greece--Don
Pacifico’s case--Coercion of Greece--Lord Palmerston meekly accepts
an Insult from Russia--French Intervention--A Diplomatic Conflict
in France--Recall of the French Ambassador--False Statements in
Parliament--The Queen’s Indignation--The Don Pacifico Debate--The
_Civis Romanus sum_ Doctrine--Palmerston’s Victory--The West
African Slave Trade.
When the year 1850 opened the counter-revolution had been accomplished.
Much political and social wreckage disfigured the Continent, but the
tempest which had produced it was over. What remained was an uneasy
after-swell agitating the restless ocean of discontent. Force had, in
fact, triumphed over opinion, and Europe was at last tranquil.
In France, after Louis Philippe fell, the country was left a prey to
four factions or parties. One demanded an absolute monarchy; another
demanded a parliamentary monarchy; a third demanded a military empire,
based on universal suffrage; a fourth demanded a republic. The partisans
of the republic triumphed in the first instance. But it fell, a victim
to the voracity of its own children. The Government of Lamartine was
poetic and Utopian,
[Illustration: LOUIS KOSSUTH (1850).]
and its experiment of creating national workshops in which the workers
were to be paid by the State, was not only fantastic but fatal. The
State found it had no work to give. It found it had no money to spend in
wages; and the artisans of the national establishments were accordingly
advised to join the army. This disastrous adventure in Socialism was
followed by another insurrection in Paris--in which, by the way, the
Archbishop of Paris and thousands of less eminent persons were slain.
What Prince Bismarck would call the “psychological moment” for the
interposition of a clever adventurer with a suggestion of compromise had
manifestly arrived. Accordingly, the advent of Prince Charles Louis
Bonaparte was hailed with a sense of relief by all parties--wearied to
despair by the futile conflicts of factions. Although M. Grévy vainly
endeavoured by a motion in the Chamber to procure the proscription of
the Prince, his Highness was elected President of the Republic on the
10th of December, 1848, by five and a half million out of seven and a
half million votes. He took the oath to preserve the Republic, without
compunction. But when the year 1850 opened, he was busily plotting for
its destruction, and manufacturing failure for its institutions.
The plight of Italy was a sad one. Austria had successfully met the
attempt to seize her Italian provinces. She had crushed Piedmont so
completely that, in 1849, there was danger lest she might be tempted to
invade that State, and thus provoke the interference of Republican
France. Lord Palmerston accordingly endeavoured to mediate between
Austria and Piedmont. The idea of mediation was chimerical, for Austria,
having made heavy sacrifices to hold her Cisalpine territories, and
having succeeded in doing so by force, could hardly be expected to
accept with equanimity Lord Palmerston’s favourite dogma, that the
Italian provinces of Austria were to her not a source of strength, but
of weakness. Austria repudiated all proposals for a conference of
mediation, unless they were limited to discuss what Piedmont owed her as
an indemnity, and the guarantees which could be given against
Piedmontese turbulence. Diplomacy had well-nigh exhausted its resources
in endeavouring to bring Austria to submit the points at issue to a
Congress at Brussels, when the whole situation was suddenly changed.
Joseph Mazzini and his school, convinced that Austria was checked by
France and England, overthrew the Governments of Florence and Rome,
which were under Austrian tutelage. Revolution headed by a monarch had
failed. Its victory, argued Mazzini, under Republican leadership, would
be a signal triumph for the Republican idea. The success of Mazzini and
his followers led to the formation of a violent anti-Austrian Ministry
in Piedmont.
But again Austria triumphed. Piedmont was crushed at Novara on the 23rd
of March, 1849. Venice was on the eve of surrender, and when the Pope,
who had fled to Gaeta, appealed to the Catholic Powers for aid, Austria
was thus quite free to help him. The prospect of Austria bringing
Central as well as North Italy under her sway alarmed France, and
accordingly the Republican Government in Paris sent an army under
Oudinot, which suppressed the Republican Government at Rome. The Grand
Duke of Tuscany was restored, the revolution in the Sicilies quenched in
blood, and the dream of Italian independence dissipated. Nor was this
the only triumph of Absolutism under Austria. The revolution in Hungary
was suppressed, but not till Russia came to the assistance of Austria.
In Prussia, too, the monarchy, after a Cromwellian struggle with a
factious Parliament, had completely restored its authority, and to
Prussia the smaller German States now began to turn for leadership in
consolidating themselves into a German Empire. Unhappily the King of
Prussia failed to respond to this feeling when Austria was struggling
with the revolution in Italy. At the beginning of 1850 he accordingly
found the feeling in favour of unifying Germany opposed by three great
Powers--France, Russia, and Austria, the last, indeed, claiming, on
behalf of the Archduke John, to be the executive head and heir of the
defunct German Confederation of 1815. By the Constitution of Kremsir,
Austria had consolidated her possessions--German, Magyar, Sclavonic, and
Italian--into one federal State, and, in a sense, she had thereby
withdrawn from the German Confederation. Her policy of obstructing
consolidation in disintegrated Germany was therefore alike ungenerous
and unjust.
Through this maze of difficulty the Queen and Prince Albert steered a
clear course. They were both partisans--one might say strong and zealous
partisans--of Teutonic consolidation under Prussia. Austria, they held,
had played for her own hand, and, by adopting Schwarzenberg’s policy of
consolidating her dominions in purely Austrian interests, she had
abandoned her claim to guide the destinies of the smaller German States,
in purely German interests. But, however strongly the Queen felt on this
point, her influence was used to moderate the extravagant anti-Austrian
antipathies of Lord Palmerston, and it largely contributed to keep the
country out of war. At last, however, a cloud rose in the East which
threatened us with calamity.
When Austria, by summoning to her aid the armed hordes of Russia,
stamped out the movement for Hungarian independence, several Hungarian
and Polish patriots--Kossuth, Ban, and others--fled to Turkey. Austria
and Russia demanded their extradition. The Sultan refused to surrender
the refugees, and De Titoff and Stürmer, Russian and Austrian
ambassadors, suspended diplomatic relations with the Porte. The Sultan
appealed to Britain and France against this outrageous violation of the
unity of nations. Britain remonstrated in firm but courteous language,
and Austria and Russia both withdrew their demands, but not before the
British fleet had moved within the forbidden limits of the Dardanelles,
in anticipation of a refusal. Lord Palmerston’s apology for thus
violating the treaty of 1841 was that the fleet had been driven into
forbidden waters by “stress of weather.” As there was notoriously no
“stress of weather,” this explanation merely irritated the Czar, and
planted in his heart the germ of that fierce hatred of England, which
culminated in the Crimean War.
Parliament was opened on the 31st of January, 1850, by Commission, and,
as had been anticipated, the Protectionists made, not an attack, but
rather a reconnoissance in force against the Government. During the
recess they had gone through the country painting the darkest pictures
of the condition of England. According to their speeches, one would have
imagined that another famine had smitten the nation; and for all this
pessimism there was but one justification. No doubt everybody who
depended on the soil for a livelihood was suffering from distress.
Prices had fallen, and farmers had not taken kindly to the new order of
things. But the masses of the people, especially in industrial centres,
were enjoying greater comfort than ever. The revenue was showing signs
of buoyancy; the foreign trade of the
[Illustration: THE WHITE DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]
country had increased, and pauperism had diminished. All these cheering
facts were concealed from the public by the Conservative agitators, who
concentrated attention on one point--the admitted and deplorable
distress of the landed interest. The real desire of the Tory party at
this time was to turn out the Government and restore Protection. The
Duke of Richmond’s indiscreet speech on the Address in the House of
Lords proves that. But, conscious of the difficulty of suddenly
upsetting the fiscal system which was based on Free Trade, they
concealed their real purpose. Mr. Disraeli therefore supported a
Protectionist amendment to the Address in reply to the Queen’s Speech,
on the ground that the landed interests were entitled to a certain
amount of relief from public burdens, in compensation for the loss of
Protection. On the 19th of February, Mr. Disraeli had to show his hand.
He then moved for a committee to revise the Poor Law so as to mitigate
distress among the agricultural class. This debate is worth noticing,
because it may be said to have definitely originated the perennial
movement for local taxation reform, which is always an object of
enthusiasm to what may be called the country party, when out of office.
Mr. Disraeli’s idea was to transfer from local rates to the Imperial
Treasury (1), Poor Law establishment charges; (2), rates which had
nothing to do with the relief of the poor, and were only raised by
[Illustration: THE PIRÆUS, ATHENS.]
Poor Law machinery as a matter of convenience--such as rates for
registration of births, deaths, and marriages, for getting up jury
lists, and the like; and (3), the rate for supporting the casual poor.
His case was not decided on its merits. Members did not look to what was
in the motion, but to what was behind it, namely, the restoration of
Protection, or an increase in Income Tax to provide funds for the relief
of local burdens. Sir James Graham’s frank admission, as a landlord,
that relief in the rate would be swallowed by an increase in the rents,
and that it was the landlord and not the tenant who would profit,
determined many, who did not deny the abstract justice of Mr. Disraeli’s
contention, to vote against him. The sensational incident in the debate
was the speech of Mr. Gladstone, who supported Mr. Disraeli against his
own leaders. In fact, he replied to Sir James Graham. Despite the
support of Peel, the Government, instead of having a majority of forty,
as they expected, were saved from defeat only by a majority of twenty.
From that day till now a clever debater, by a skilful motion in favour
of relief of local taxation, has always been able to weaken the majority
of the strongest of Ministries. Local taxation is the vulnerable point
of Governments, and it is the one subject with which they all seem
afraid to deal in a bold and comprehensive spirit. All they do is to
denounce the evil in Opposition, and palliate its existence when in
Power.
The agitation for Parliamentary Reform had increased. Some of the
Peelites, notably Sir J. Graham, had warned Lord John Russell that they
were in favour of an extension of the franchise, and Lord John himself
had abandoned the doctrine of finality. Mr. Hume, therefore, brought
forward his annual motion on the 28th of February, hinting plainly that
he would have no objection to extend its scope so as to include female
franchise, and the substitution of an elective for a hereditary House of
Lords. It was quite certain that Lord John Russell was by this time of
opinion that some safe concessions might be made to the Radicals.
Several of his colleagues, however--_e.g._, Mr. Labouchere--were of a
different opinion, and it is accordingly right to say that those who
denounced Lord John’s “apostasy,” when he opposed Mr. Hume, were
somewhat unfair. Had the Prime Minister produced a Reform Bill this
Session, every question which it might be possible to deal with would
have been put aside. But as he was not likely to carry his own
colleagues with him in advocating reform, not only would this sacrifice
have been made in vain, but a Government which, in the existing state of
parties, was indispensable to the nation, would have fallen. Mr. Hume
was beaten by a vote of 242 against 96, though the Prime Minister’s
argument against him was rather a plea for delay, than a defiant “_Non
possumus_.”
Writing on the 10th of February, Mr. Greville says in his Journal, “The
brightness of the Ministerial prospect was very soon clouded over, and
last week their disasters began. There was first of all the Greek
affair, and then the case of the Ceylon witnesses--matters affecting
Lord Palmerston and Lord Grey”--the Jonahs of the Cabinet. “The Greek
case,” continues Mr. Greville, “will probably be settled, thanks to
French mediation, but it was a bad and discreditable affair, and has
done more harm to Palmerston than any of his greater enormities. The
other Ministers are extremely annoyed at it, and at the sensation it has
produced.” The Greek case was briefly this: Mr. Finlay, a British
subject in Athens, alleged that King Otho had enclosed a bit of his land
in the Royal Garden, and demanded compensation. The King offered him the
same compensation that had been accepted as fair by other owners of
enclosed land in Mr. Finlay’s position. This Mr. Finlay refused, and he
demanded £1,500 for the land which, it was admitted, he had bought for
£10. Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew from Gibraltar, sought damages for
the pillage of his house by the Athenian mob. He claimed £31,534. The
value of his furniture was shown to be £2,181. The balance was supposed
to represent the value of documents proving that he had a claim on the
Portuguese Government for £27,000. Mr. Finlay and Don Pacifico had not
raised their claims in the ordinary law courts, and to the amazement of
everybody, Lord Palmerston proposed to employ the mailed might of
England to collect their bad debts. He peremptorily ordered the Greek
Government to pay these exaggerated claims, on pain of inflicting on
Greece a blockade and reprisals within twenty-four hours. On the 18th of
January, Admiral Parker, with the Mediterranean Fleet, blockaded the
Piræus--for, contrary to Lord Palmerston’s expectations, Greece refused
to comply with his demands. The Greek Government appealed for protection
to France and Russia--whose Governments being with that of Britain joint
guarantors for the independence of Greece, were justly annoyed that
their good offices had not been invoked by Lord Palmerston. Count
Nesselrode, burning to avenge the defeat of the Czar over the question
of the Hungarian refugees in Turkey, sent a remonstrance to Lord
Palmerston, which was couched in the language of bitter contempt and
studied insolence. The French Government, on the other hand, pretending
that our agent in Athens had blundered, courteously offered to extricate
Lord Palmerston from his difficulties by using the influence of France,
to compose the dispute with Greece. On the 12th of February Lord
Palmerston ordered the British Envoy to inform Admiral Parker that he
must suspend coercive operations. It was not till the 2nd of March that
these instructions arrived, and in the interval the Admiral had been
vigorously coercing the Greeks. France was naturally irritated at this
untoward incident, all the more that Lord Palmerston’s explanation of
the delay was deemed unsatisfactory. Ultimately, the matter was settled
on Greece agreeing to pay Mr. Wyse, the British Minister, £8,500 to be
distributed by him as he thought just among the claimants--the value of
Don Pacifico’s lost vouchers against the Portuguese Government to be
determined by arbitration.
This compromise, however, was made by negotiation in London. A French
steamer conveyed the purport of it to Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy at
Athens, on the 24th of April. He, however, said that he had no
instructions from his Government to countermand his original orders,
which were to renew coercion if the French Envoy at Athens could not
induce the Greeks to submit. Coercion was therefore again applied, and
the Greek Government on the 27th submitted to Mr. Wyse’s demands. These
were more onerous in some respects than the terms agreed on by the
London Convention, and Lord Palmerston persisted in adhering to the
Athenian arrangement. M. Gros at Athens, finding he could not persuade
Mr. Wyse to act on the London Convention, had on the 21st of April
officially intimated that his action as mediator was ended. This, argued
Lord Palmerston coolly, left the British Envoy--in the absence of
instructions from England--free to renew coercion, and to enter into the
Athenian arrangement. Palmerston, in other words, claimed the right to
take advantage of his own delay, in notifying to Mr. Wyse the result of
the London Convention, to refuse to act on the finding of that
Convention. It is but fair to say that the Queen was quite as indignant
as the Government of France, at Lord Palmerston’s rude and provocative
conduct. Lord John Russell intimated to her the fact that the French
Government had met the affront with which Lord Palmerston had rewarded
their efforts to extricate him from the effect of his own blunder, by
recalling M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Her Majesty promptly directed her husband,
who acted as her confidential secretary, to send the Prime Minister one
of those curt, cutting notes, which invariably indicate her displeasure.
“MY DEAR LORD JOHN,--Both the Queen and myself are exceedingly
sorry at the news your letter contained. We are not surprised,
however, that Lord Palmerston’s mode of doing business should not
be borne by the susceptible French Government with the same good
humour and forbearance as by his colleagues.
“Ever yours truly,
“ALBERT.
“Buckingham Palace, 15th May, 1850.”[12]
The view which the Queen took was the fair and common-sense one, namely,
that we should act on the London Convention. The Convention of London
which we made with France gave us certain terms. By an accident, for
which Palmerston was responsible, Mr. Wyse at Athens had extorted better
ones for us at Athens. It was not high policy, but sharp practice; it
was not in the spirit of enlightened diplomacy, but in the spirit of the
meanest attorneydom, that any claim to benefit by the “accident” which
had given better terms to us at Athens than at London, was pressed by
Lord Palmerston.
But the Queen’s troubles did not end here. Her birthday was celebrated
on the 15th of May, and the absence of the French and Russian
Ambassadors from the usual Foreign Office dinner on that occasion,
naturally roused suspicion. It was not known that the French
representative had been recalled, and that France and England were in
open diplomatic conflict. What was the meaning of the absence of these
ambassadors? asked Society at the great rout at Devonshire House on the
night of the 19th. Questions to this effect were put to Ministers in
both Houses. Lord Lansdowne said that the departure of M. Drouyn de
Lhuys was purely accidental; and Lord Palmerston had the effrontery to
declare, in reply to Mr. Milner Gibson, that M. de Lhuys had merely gone
to Paris as a medium of communication between the two Governments. But
the _Times_ reported in due course that General de la Hitte, Minister of
War, had intimated from the tribune of the French Assembly that, because
Lord Palmerston’s explanations in regard to points at issue between the
two Governments were not such as France had a right to expect, “the
President had ordered General de la Hitte to recall their Ambassador
from London.” Nothing could exceed the mortification of the Queen when
she was informed of the almost simultaneous publication of these
contradictory official statements. Her detestation of equivocal and
shuffling Ministerial explanations has long passed into a proverb. Her
Majesty’s theory, in fact, is that the Minister is for the time the
trustee of the honour of the Crown, and that, especially in foreign
countries, where the relation between the British Sovereign and her
Ministers is ill understood, the Crown is held personally responsible
for what the Minister says, in all matters affecting
[Illustration: GRAND ENTRANCE, WESTMINSTER PALACE.]
the external relations of the kingdom. In plain English, the Queen has
always held that if a Minister tells a lie in Parliament, nine people
out of ten on the Continent will suspect that she has ordered or induced
him to tell it. Hence her indignation on reading Lord Palmerston’s reply
to Mr. Milner Gibson’s question was tinged with a feeling of personal
humiliation and shame. Public opinion was similarly excited when the
newspapers were studied, and fuller questions were immediately put to
Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell. They gave evasive and
prevaricating answers, attempting to explain away the French
Ambassador’s letter of recall, much to the disgust of all parties in
Parliament. The tide of anger rose higher every day that the scandal was
discussed. Lord John Russell told his brother, the Duke of Bedford, that
Ministers must defend Palmerston on this occasion, but, after the
dispute came to an end, he would have Palmerston dismissed from the
Foreign Office. “He is,” writes Mr. Greville on the 19th of May, “to see
the Queen on Tuesday, who will of course be boiling over with
indignation;” for by this time Baron Brunnow, the Russian Ambassador,
had warned Lord John that he, too, must ask to be relieved from his
post, as “it was impossible for him to stay here to be on bad terms with
Palmerston.”
The question has often been asked, Why did English statesmen get up in
both Houses of Parliament and tell a series of falsehoods which they
knew must be discovered in forty-eight hours by official refutation from
France? The fact is, Lord Palmerston had deceived his colleagues. He
assured them that M. de Lhuys had taken back to Paris explanations so
conciliatory, that his letter of recall would be quietly cancelled.
Assured by Palmerston that he had made the cancelling of the recall a
certainty, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell assumed that the letter
of recall was suppressed, and they both answered as if it never had
existed. On the 25th of May, Mr. Greville writes:--“The morning before
yesterday the Duke of Bedford came here again. He had seen Lord John
since, and heard what passed with the Queen. She was full of this
affair, and again urged all her objections to Lord Palmerston. This time
she found Lord John better disposed than heretofore, and he is certainly
revolving in his mind how the thing can be done. He does not by any
means contemplate going out himself, or breaking up the Government. What
he looks to is this, that the Queen should take the initiative, and urge
Palmerston’s removal from the Foreign Office. She is quite ready to do
this as soon as she is assured of her wishes being attended to.”[13]
Lord John Russell screwed up his courage to the point of contemplating
the removal of Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office to some other
department of State, he himself undertaking the duties of Foreign
Secretary along with those of the Premiership. Such a combination is
never a wise one. Even in recent times, when Lord Salisbury attempted to
unite in his own person the two offices, the strain was found to be
greater than his strength could bear; and in the case of Lord John,
whose health was at this time capricious and precarious, it was perhaps
as well that at the eleventh hour he shrank from proposing the change to
Lord Palmerston. Lord John has been accused of lack of courage in
connection with this affair. The truth is, that a perverted chivalry
prompted him to stand by Lord Palmerston. The Greek affair was hardly
defensible. But it was bruited about that the Opposition, under cover of
condemning Lord Palmerston in that special case, meant to direct a
severe attack on the foreign policy of the Government as a whole. Lord
Palmerston’s colleagues had, however, permitted themselves not only to
be identified with that policy, but had thought fit to defend every
blunder he had made in carrying it out. Lord John Russell, then, cannot
be blamed for considering that to desert the Foreign Secretary on the
Greek Question, would have been tantamount to making him the scapegoat
of the Cabinet. Hence, in spite of the Queen’s strong feeling in the
matter, it was agreed that Palmerston should not be “thrown over.”
After much fencing between the leaders of the two parties, the first of
the attacks, which led to a series of debates almost unparalleled in our
history as displays of sustained Parliamentary eloquence, was made in
the House of Lords on the 17th of June. Lord Stanley moved a vote of
censure on the Ministry for their coercive measures in Greece,
affirming, however, the general proposition that it was the right and
duty of the Government to secure to British subjects in foreign States,
the full protection of the laws of those States. The scene was a
memorable one. The House was crowded in every part, and the conflict
began with an amusing farce. The Peeress’s Gallery was crammed to
overflowing, and when Lady Melbourne and Lady Newport, under Lord
Brougham’s escort, went to their places, they found them filled, and
were ignominiously turned away. Brougham, however, espied Bunsen, the
Prussian Minister, in the gallery, and requested him to retire to his
proper seat in the Ambassadors’ quarter, but he refused. Then Brougham
went down to his own place, and avenged himself on Bunsen by calling the
attention of their lordships to the fact that there was “a stranger in
the Peeress’s Gallery,” adding, “if he does not come down, I shall move
your lordships to enforce the order of the House. It is the more
intolerable as he has a place assigned to him in another part, and he is
now keeping the room of _two Peeresses_.” As Bunsen was notoriously a
fat, overgrown man, Brougham’s malicious personality was received with
shouts of laughter. But it had no effect on the stolid Prussian, who
kept his seat till Sir Augustus Clifford, Usher of the Black Rod, made
him retire.[14]
The issue before the House was simple enough. (1), Lord Palmerston had
agreed with M. Drouyn de Lhuys that if the terms which M. Gros, the
French Envoy at Athens, proposed on behalf of Greece were rejected by
Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy, coercion should not be again applied
without special orders from Britain. But if M. Gros threw up his office
of mediator because the Greeks declined to let him offer fair terms,
then of course Mr. Wyse was to
[Illustration: MR. (AFTERWARDS SIR ALEXANDER) COCKBURN.]
resort to coercion without further instructions. (2), M. Drouyn de Lhuys
and Lord Palmerston in London agreed on a settlement, the terms of which
were less onerous than those demanded by Mr. Wyse. (3), Though this was
informally communicated by the French to Mr. Wyse, he rejected the terms
which M. Gros offered on behalf of Greece, contending that he had no
instructions from Lord Palmerston as to the adoption of any other
course. (4), M. Gros then dropped the negotiations. Mr. Wyse, again
arguing that he was without instructions, ordered coercion to be
applied, upon which the Greek Government yielded. The pith of the
dispute centred in one point. Did Palmerston or did he not send Mr. Wyse
instructions as to the arrangement made in London with M. Drouyn de
Lhuys? The French said that their Envoy abandoned negotiations because
Mr. Wyse was unreasonable. Lord Palmerston contended that Mr. Wyse was
of opinion that M. Gros had dropped mediation because the
[Illustration: CAPE TOWN.]
Greeks were unreasonable, and that therefore, in terms of the
arrangement made in London, Mr. Wyse was justified in resorting to
coercion without further instructions. Mr. Wyse may have been mistaken
in supposing that M. Gros retired from the negotiations in the
circumstances which, according to the London Convention, would have
justified a resort to coercion without further reference to Lord
Palmerston. If that were the case, the Government had a good defence;
for it would have been unfair to censure them for Mr. Wyse’s blunder.
But was it the case? How could Mr. Wyse have blundered in interpreting
the conditions of the London Convention, if no instructions in
accordance with that Convention had been sent to him? The complaint was
that the Foreign Secretary had neglected to send these instructions, and
a close and careful examination of Palmerston’s own Blue-book, fails to
bring to light the slightest proof that they ever were sent. Therefore
it was clear (1), that England had broken a binding diplomatic compact
with France, and (2), that this breach of faith had enabled Mr. Wyse at
Athens to extort by force from a small, weak Power more onerous terms
than the English Government had agreed with France to accept in London.
The House of Lords took this view of the matter, and when the debate
ended, in the grey dawn of a summer’s morning, it was found on division
that there was a majority of 37 against the Government.
Some members of the Cabinet were for resignation. Many friends of the
Government thought that Palmerston should personally offer the Queen his
resignation, begging her not to accept that of his colleagues if they
tendered theirs. But the Foreign Secretary made no offer to resign, and
at first the Cabinet resolved to take no more notice of the vote of
censure in the Upper House. Ultimately, they found that they must notice
it, and as their Foreign Policy as a whole was impugned, they decided
not to abandon the Foreign Secretary. On the 20th of June, Lord John
Russell explained why he would not resign. He gave two reasons--one good
and the other bad,--the first being one of which the Queen approved. It
was that a change of Government, in consequence of a resolution of the
House of Lords, would be unconstitutional, because, in his opinion, it
might be dangerous even to the House of Lords to lay upon it the
responsibility of controlling her Majesty’s Executive. Two precedents,
one a hundred years old, and one taken from 1833, when the Peers, on the
motion of the Duke of Wellington, censured Lord Grey’s Foreign Policy in
Portugal, were ingeniously cited by Lord John Russell in support of this
constitutional doctrine. But his second reason was characteristically
Palmerstonian. He said that the House of Lords had laid it down, that it
was the duty of the British Government to see that British subjects in
Foreign States got full protection from the laws of those States. That
was a _limitation_ of duty which Lord John Russell refused to recognise,
because, said he, a Foreign State might make bad laws, and it would be
the duty of England to prevent her subjects from being injured by those
laws. No principle is more clearly established in international law than
this--that a Sovereign State has an absolute right to dictate the terms
on which any alien shall abide on its soil.[15] If the alien does not
like the law of the Foreign State, he has no business to call on his own
countrymen to defend him by force of arms in refusing to obey it, seeing
that it was not at their request or in their interest, but of his own
free will, and in pursuit of his own fortune, he went to live or traffic
abroad. In fact, to lay it down that England might levy war on any
country, whose laws Englishmen residing in that country considered
inequitable, was tantamount to proclaiming her _hostis humani generis_.
Yet such was the doctrine which the House of Commons, in spite of the
protests of the Tories, of Radicals like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, and
Peelites like Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, cheerfully accepted
from the Whigs at this period. The only thing that can be said in its
defence is that it is a doctrine which the House has never dared to
apply to a stronger Power than Greece--never to a Power like Russia,
which deports English Jews, nor like Germany, which deports English
residents, personally obnoxious to Prince Bismarck, in the most
arbitrary manner. It is doubtful if it would even dare to apply it to an
autonomous colony like Victoria, had her Government refused, as was
threatened, to permit the Irish informer, James Carey, to reside within
her frontier.
Having decided to defy the House of Lords, the Government hit on an
ingenious plan for neutralising the vote of censure. They put up Mr.
Roebuck on the 21st of June to move a vote of confidence in them not
touching the Greek dispute, but approving generally of their Foreign
Policy as one likely “to preserve untarnished the honour and dignity of
this country.” The debate, which lasted five days, was a veritable
tournament of Titans. On both sides speeches were made that touch the
highest point to which Parliamentary eloquence can reach. Mr. Cockburn,
afterwards Lord Chief Justice, delivered an oration by which, at one
bound, he leapt into the first rank of British orators. Peel delivered
the last speech he was fated to make in the great assembly, on which for
years he had played with the easy mastery of a musician on his favourite
instrument. Palmerston himself spoke for four hours and a quarter with
more than his usual dash and intrepidity, and with surprising moderation
and good taste--basing his case virtually on the application of the
_civis Romanus sum_ doctrine to British Foreign Policy. This was the
point in it which Mr. Gladstone demolished in a passionate protest, that
may be said to have become classical. But in the end the Government
triumphed by a majority of 46! Yet, on the face of the facts, they had
absolutely no case. Why, then, were they victorious? For many reasons.
In the then divided state of parties, the Government was felt to be the
only possible Government. Palmerston, by adroitly spreading the report
that the attack on
[Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE (1855).]
him was really fomented by the agents of the despotic Powers, whose
policy he had persistently opposed, won strong support from the
Radicals. The Whigs felt that as the Foreign Policy of the Government as
a whole was attacked, they were bound to defend the Ministry, quite
irrespective of Palmerston’s possibly objectionable method of carrying
out that policy. Moreover, it was undoubtedly a weak point in the
tactics of the Opposition, that they did not venture to submit in the
House of Commons, the motion of censure which they had carried in the
House of Lords. But though Lord Palmerston’s triumph was complete, the
Queen continued to be dissatisfied
[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE: VIEW FROM THE QUADRANGLE.]
with his reckless manner of managing the Foreign Office. Pressure was
put on him by the concurrence of Lord John Russell, the Duke of Bedford,
Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Clarendon to take another department, which,
however, he refused to do. For the time--confident in his popularity--he
was able to hold his position, but ere a year had elapsed her Majesty’s
warnings were fulfilled, and Lord John was simply compelled to force him
to retire.[16] It must be here told how this whole controversy ended.
Before the debate closed, it was announced that we had accepted, with
some trifling modifications in detail, the French proposals made on
behalf of Greece. The demands of the claimants in support of whom we had
been brought to the brink of war with France, were finally assessed at
£10,000--about one-thirtieth part of the sum they originally asked!
No other question of Foreign Policy agitated the House of Commons in
1850, save Mr. Hutt’s proposal to withdraw the British war-ships engaged
in suppressing the West African slave trade. The cost of the squadron
had made its maintenance unpopular even with Liberals, and when Lord
John Russell threatened to stake the existence of his Ministry on it,
the Queen was distressed to learn that there was every prospect of his
being defeated, at a time when a change of Government would have
produced the utmost confusion. A meeting of the Liberal Party was
convened by the Prime Minister at Downing Street, and pressure, which
they hardly dared to resist, induced the malcontents to support the
Government. Mr. Hutt’s motion was lost, many Ministerialists, however,
complaining bitterly that the Prime Minister had concussed them into
voting against their convictions.