The life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), covers
so great a space of time elapsed and embraces so many high activities
that few are the careers in English political history comparable to
it. If one instinctively refers to the case of Mr. Gladstone, the
nearest nineteenth century parallel, it is chiefly to observe the
partly antithetical relation of the men: the one, a commoner always,
the other, aristocrat by birth; each, in his time, Premier; and each
preserving undimmed, past the great age of eighty years, distinguished
powers of body and mind.
Lord Palmerston sprung from the Irish Temples, an ancient and honorable
family. The whirligig of time has surely brought in no quainter
changes than that the Temple of the Don Pacifico debate, the utterer
of England’s downright word, the first Jingo of his period, should
have descended, by near consanguinity, from the graceful, ineffectual
Sir William Temple of Swift,--and, alas, of Bentley,--the gentleman
who retired from the rude shock of politics to his Shene gardens, and
who, instead of directing the troublous destinies of the state, penned
models of prose style on gout and other gentlemanly things. And yet
from the outset Lord Palmerston was destined to play a positive part
in his world: as a man and a publicist he had few qualities that were
not aggressive. A table condensed from the life by Bulwer gives in the
most succinct form a view of how continuously he was in the thick of
affairs.--
Born, Oct. 20, 1784
Succeeded to the Title, 1802
M. A., at Cambridge, 1806
Junior Lord of the Admiralty, 1807–1809
Secretary at War, 1809–1828
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, { 1830–34; 1835
{ 1841; 1846–1851
Home Secretary, 1852–1855
Prime Minister, { 1855–1858;
{ 1859–1865
As a boy, he is described as being notable for vivacity and energy;
and, although undoubtedly hastened by family and connections, his early
entry into public life was due in some measure to his own talents.
Thus, before he was twenty-four, he had twice stood unsuccessfully
for member for the University of Cambridge. His first election to
Parliament came in June, 1807, from Newton, Isle of Wight. A few
months later, Palmerston made his maiden speech, in favor of the
expedition against Copenhagen, having previously, by family interest,
been appointed a Junior Lord of the Admiralty. The speech attracted
immediate attention; and the public was not surprised when, in 1809,
the young man of twenty-five was offered so great a post as the
Chancellorship of the Exchequer. There were doubtless few rising
men who would have had a similar self-control; but Lord Palmerston
modestly and wisely declined the sudden elevation, and, instead,
elected to be Secretary at War, a kind of bursar to the army, in which
comparatively obscure position he passed nearly twenty years. His
next advancement--to the Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs--marks his
entrance into his real element. From now on the years were those of
preparation; little by little he built himself toward the Premiership.
From 1830, then, until his occupancy of the highest office an English
subject may hold, Palmerston was almost constantly in office,
constantly, too, a figure to be reckoned with. At last, in 1855, as a
crown to his ripe years and manifold experience, came the Premiership,
which was to occupy the last decade of his life. Until very near the
end, he may be said to have upheld firmly the high responsibilities of
the office. Hardly suspected to be seriously ill by the public, he died
October 18, 1865, within two days of his eighty-first year, of gout,
the statesman’s disease.
The career of Lord Palmerston is typically an English and an
aristocratic one. Nothing could be farther removed from the democratic
ideal of the “self-made man.” Palmerston, so to speak, was born into
success; and he was able to retain and to extend his birthright. In
democracies like the United States, and in constitutional monarchies
like England, it is not always that the man showered with fortune’s
gifts makes public life at once his amusement and his profession. In
the former state, such an one is the least likely of persons to raise
an influential voice in Congress; in the latter, the man often drifts
into the channels of sport or society. That the higher path has been
essayed by so many well-born Englishmen is more than creditable: this
fact lies close at the foundations of the British Empire.
We have said that through all the ramifications of the higher English
life and politics Lord Palmerston was ever a pervasive figure. He
could remember games of chess he had played, as a young man, with
the unfortunate Queen Caroline: the year Byron published his first
poems was the year of his entrance to Parliament; and he died as
the American Confederacy flickered out in ashes. Through all these
years, as a statesman he had preserved much the same character.
Foreign Affairs were his chief interest: his conception of their
administration practically never swerved from the theory of a
militant, unsleeping England--an England at times, perhaps, apt to
be blustering and overbearing, but an England frankly devoted to its
higher self-interests and to what, from an English point of view, was
indubitably the good of the world. His position toward home affairs is
hard to describe. So far as he was identified with local divisions he
was a Conservative with a strong tinge of Liberal doctrine. Abroad,
the tinge of Liberalism and the sympathies with Continental rebellions
against absolute monarchy due to it, caused Palmerston to be regarded
as almost a revolutionary. In truth, so far as England was concerned,
he was profoundly in love with the _status quo_: the uprisings abroad,
he considered, were only the restless gropings of the peoples towards
a realization of the English system of government. In hardly any
sense was his policy constructive. As Mr. McCarthy remarks, in his
brilliant estimate, great national crises he was at no time--perhaps
happily--called on to meet. It was ever his way to follow, not direct
the great impulses of public opinion that swept through Parliament.
The same authority neatly sums him up in saying, “His policy was
necessarily shifting, uncertain, and inconsistent; for he moulded it
always on the supposed interests of England as they showed themselves
to his eyes at the time.” In a word, he was an astute server of the
hour; and the hour requited him with more than the usual success.
Such a person is obviously not nicely scrupulous in matters of the
_haute-politique_. The qualities of indomitable self-confidence,
lightning decision, and immediate execution which he carried to the
Foreign Office were the direct cause of the one inglorious episode of
his life. To state it colloquially, Palmerston was inclined as Foreign
Secretary to run the external relations of England on his own hook. His
impatience would not allow him to hold despatches, in all cases, for
the Queen’s approval; and he soon fell under her grave displeasure.
The formally polite warnings of the Court were not heeded by the
eager Secretary. Just at the moment of the Don Pacifico triumph, Lord
Palmerston was dismissed from office by royal request. He bore the
slight bravely. In England such a man could not be kept down; but the
incident is rare in the modern history of Court and Cabinet.
Except in the show speech of the Don Pacifico debate, Palmerston was
rarely eloquent. He was humorous, flippant, almost slangy in phrase;
and his favorite style was one of banter. Personally, his manner was
distinguished by no particular stateliness of bearing--he seems to have
been generally liked.
Mr. McCarthy hesitates to call him a great man. But it is likely that
he will be remembered as one richly endowed by circumstance who was
equal to his fate.