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On January 27, 1855, the Coalition Government of Lord Aberdeen and Lord John Russell resigned, being defeated on a vote of censure charging them with mismanagement of the Crimean War. Lord Palmerston received the commands of Queen Victoria to form an Administration. He, too, desired to have a Ministry of both Liberals and Conservatives. On February 7th he wrote to Ashley—now the Earl of Shaftesbury and a Conservative—offering him the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the Cabinet. That was in the morning. In the afternoon Shaftesbury received a brief note from Palmerston requesting him to “consider the offer as suspended,” in consequence of unforeseen difficulties, which, it subsequently transpired, were the claims of the Liberals for a greater share of place and power in the new Government. This explanation came to Shaftesbury from Lady Palmerston. “Palmerston is distracted with all the worry he has to go through,” she wrote. In a P.S. she added: “It is no pleasure to form a Government when there are so many unreasonable people to please, and so many interested people pressing for their own gratification and vanity, without any regard to the public good or the interests of the Government and country.” Shaftesbury thus poured out his virtuously indignant soul on the subject to his son: “The selfishness, the meanness, the love of place and salary, the oblivion of the country, of man’s welfare and God’s honour, have never been more striking and terrible than in this crisis. These, added to the singular conceit of all the candidates for office (and all have aspired to the highest), have thrown stumbling-blocks in Palmerston’s path at every step. The greediness and vanity of our place-hunters have combined to make each one of them a union of the vulture and the peacock.”
Shaftesbury declares that he had then no desire for place; and it is impossible to doubt the genuineness of the thanksgiving on his “escape from office” in which he indulges. A month later some of the Members of the Administration resigned, and Palmerston again offered Shaftesbury the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. But Shaftesbury was still reluctant. “I could not satisfy myself,” he says, “that to accept office was a Divine call. I was satisfied that God had called me to labour among the poor.” However, one morning he received this note from Lady Palmerston: “Palmerston is very anxious now that you should put on your undress uniform and be at the Palace a quarter before three to be sworn in. Pray do this, and I am sure you will not repent it.” Shaftesbury gave way to these pleading entreaties. The result was certainly curious. “I went and dressed,” he writes in his Diary, “and then, while I was waiting for the carriage, I went down on my knees and prayed for counsel, wisdom and understanding. Then there was someone at the door, as I thought to say that the carriage was ready. But instead of that a note, hurriedly written in pencil, was put into my hand. It was from Palmerston—‘Don’t go to the Palace.’” Many would have groaned in the anguish of their souls over this crowning disappointment. Shaftesbury declares he danced with joy. “It was to my mind,” he says, “as distinctly an act of special Providence as when the hand of Abraham was stayed and Isaac escaped.” Palmerston’s sudden change of mind is no doubt accounted for in a passage which I find in the Autobiography of the eighth Duke of Argyll, who was a member of Palmerston’s Cabinet. He states that one day Palmerston astonished all his colleagues by proposing that Lord Shaftesbury should be one of their number. “I was far too fond of Shaftesbury, and had much too great a respect for him to say one word in opposition,” Argyll writes; “but I saw that it rather took away the breath from a good many of my colleagues. His fervid nature, his uncompromising temperament, and his somewhat individual opinions were evidently not considered as promising well for united councils. My opinion, which, however, I kept to myself, was that he was a far more valuable man out of office than in it.” Argyll adds: “Palmerston evidently saw that the proposal was not very well received, and we heard nothing more of it.”