In 1839, an accusation had been made against Lord Palmerston, alleging that in dealing with foreign affairs he was too ready to sacrifice British interests, being the reverse of the medal as it was afterwards exhibited, in which he was shown as offending all foreigners by his arrogance in asserting every thing British. To this latter accusation he was probably open;—but the other was brought against him also, and then he defended himself: “In the outset, I must deny the charge made personally against myself, and against the Government to which I belong, of an identification with the interests of other nations. I venture to say that never was there an Administration that paid more attention to the commercial interests of this country. And this I will add, that much as I feel the importance of the alliance of this country with other Powers, and much as I wish to perpetuate such alliances, and to endeavour to render other nations as friendly as possible with this, I am satisfied that the interest of England is the Polar star,—the guiding principle of the conduct of the Government.” Here, no doubt, he declared the purpose and the practice of his life;—the practice, by adhering to which he so nearly became shipwrecked, but succeeded in obtaining that special attachment which is felt for his name among Englishmen generally.
On the 13th of July, 1840, he continued the correspondence with his brother William, the treaty with Austria, Prussia, and Russia, for restraining Mehemet Ali, being dated on the subsequent 15th. He gives the particulars of the treaty which, had it been accepted by Mehemet, would have left Syria in his hands for life. But it was not accepted, and Syria was consequently taken away by the victories of Sidon and Acre. But Lord Palmerston, in the same letter, goes on to other subjects. The Queen had now been married, and a child is to be born. “Prince Albert is to be sole Regent during the confinement of the Queen, and if any misfortune were to happen during the minority of the heir to the throne, or rather of the infant sovereign, there is already a Bill in force to provide for the Regency till the arrival of Ernest, if, as a signal punishment for the sins of the nation, he were to come to the throne of England.” This was Ernest, the Duke of Cumberland, as well as King of Hanover. Then, in the easy tone of fraternal conversation, he rushes on to another matter.
“My Priam filly, three-year old, out of Gallopade’s dam, has won the only two races she has started for; one at Stockbridge, and the Queen’s Plate at Guildford; and she may win a stake this week at Southampton.”
We must here for awhile go back, before we finish the story of Mehemet Ali, to two circumstances, one of which had a considerable interest among the political quidnuncs of the day, and the other a more lasting influence on the life of Lord Palmerston himself. In the spring of 1839 the Government was nearly beaten on the question of the Jamaica Constitution, having been supported by a majority of only five. They resigned in consequence, and Sir Robert Peel, having been desired to form a Government, broke down under the difficulties imposed upon him in reference to the ladies of the household. “They insisted on the removal of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. The Queen declared she would not submit to it; that it would be too painful and affronting to her; that those ladies have no seats in Parliament; that the object in view in dismissing them was to separate her from everybody in whom she could trust, and to surround her with political spies, if not with personal enemies.” “The Queen, alone and unadvised, stood firm against all these assaults, showed a presence of mind, a firmness, a discrimination, far beyond her years.” “We shall, of course, stand by the Queen, and support her against this offensive condition which the Tories wanted to impose upon her, and which her youth and isolated condition ought to have protected her from.”
In all this Lord Palmerston takes the part of his Cabinet against Sir Robert Peel’s, with all the eagerness of a partisan, and did, no doubt, feel as he wrote. But it was thought at the time that there was much to be said for Sir Robert’s view of the case, and that however well he might have been able to contest political questions with a Whig Cabinet, he could not have done so with any chance of success against the wives and sisters of Whig Ministers. The ladies, however, won the battle, and the Whigs patched up their majority again, sufficiently to enable them to go on. The other event was the marriage of Lord Palmerston with the Countess Cowper, which took place on December 11, 1839. This lady, who had been left a widow in June, 1837, was sister to Lord Melbourne. She immediately took the name of her second husband, though in a rank inferior to that which she at the time enjoyed, and is still remembered as the most popular woman in London. She brought to her husband a considerable accession of fortune, and, among other things, Brocket Hall, in Hertfordshire, which had been the seat of her brother, and in which he died, and in which Lord Palmerston, another Prime Minister, was fated to die also. Lord Palmerston, we may imagine, had but few things to regret in the world; but this marriage, which he did not achieve till he had reached the ripe age of fifty-five, certainly was not one of them.
Now we must go back and finish the story of Mehemet Ali, as far as Lord Palmerston is concerned with it, and also the record of his doings as Foreign Secretary up to the year 1841. All through 1840 we find him carrying on the battle. “Guizot has looked as cross as the devil for the last few days,” he says in one of his letters; “and, indeed, on Sunday, when he dined here, he could scarcely keep up the outward appearances of civility.” And then writing still to Mr. Bulwer, who was acting as Ambassador in Paris, “If Thiers should again hold to you the language of menace, however indistinctly and vaguely shadowed out, pray retort upon him to the full extent of what he may say to you; and with that skill of language which I know you to be master of, convey to him, in the most friendly and inoffensive manner possible, that if France throws down the gauntlet we shall not refuse to pick it up; and that if she begins a war she will to a certainty lose her ships, colonies, and commerce, before she sees the end of it; that her army of Algiers will cease to give her anxiety; and that Mehemet Ali will just be chucked into the Nile.” “Really Thiers must think us wonderful simpletons to be thus bamboozled.”
The reader can tell, without any reference to Lord Palmerston’s private notes, those despatches of which he has intended that the very spirit, if not the language, shall be made known to his French antagonist. Convey to him in the “most friendly and inoffensive manner possible that if France throws down the gauntlet we shall not refuse to pick it up!” What other Minister ever wrote in language made so monstrously uncivil by its mock civility? But his anger is not only against France and Frenchmen, but also against certain Englishmen whom he does not name, but who, we are left to believe, sat in the same Cabinet with himself, or formed part of the same administration. “I must say I never in my life was more disgusted with anything than I have been by the conduct of certain parties,—useless now to name,—in all this affair.” He is supposed here to have alluded specially to Lord Holland, who had opposed him in the Cabinet. Lord Holland died shortly afterwards, and then Lord Palmerston had nothing to say of him but what was good and affectionate. Further on he writes to Lord Granville, who had returned to Paris by October: “Pray go to the King immediately, and say you are instructed to deprecate in the most friendly, but at the same time the most earnest, manner, steps which we hear are under consideration, and which, if taken, would either make war inevitable, or at least render the continuation or resumption (if they have ceased) of friendly relations a matter of the utmost difficulty.”
Palmerston goes on doggedly with his projects, and does not cease to boast as to his progress. Still writing to Lord Granville, he says, on 23rd October, 1840; “It is plain that we have as good as driven Mehemet Ali out of the whole of Syria.” “Indeed, I have good reason to believe, by information I have received from Paris, that Mehemet has sent to Thiers to beg he would make the best terms he could for him.” “Louis Philippe seems to have held to you the same language which Flahault and Guizot held while here, namely, that it is necessary, in order to assist the King to maintain peace and keep down the war party, that we should make to the entreaties of the King those concessions which we have refused to the threats of Thiers. But this is quite impossible, and you cannot too soon or too strongly explain it to all parties concerned.” “All Frenchmen want to encroach and extend their territorial possessions at the expense of other nations; and they all feel, what the National has often said, that an alliance with England is a bar to such projects.” “It is a misfortune to Europe that the national character of a great and powerful people, placed in the centre of Europe, should be such as it is.” And on the 15th of November he says; “Rémusat has let the cat out of the bag, by declaring that France, in protecting Mehemet Ali, meant to establish a new second-rate maritime power in the Mediterranean, whose fleet might unite with that of France, for the purpose of serving as a counterpoise to that of England.” And on the 26th: “Mehemet is the subject of the Sultan, and nothing more, and never can or will be anything more.” “I am very sorry to find that M. Guizot is still hankering after Mehemet Ali, and clinging to the broken-down policy of Thiers. Pray communicate the substance of this letter to M. Guizot.” And then comes the final blast of the trumpet. “My dear Granville,—This day has brought us a flight of good news; Mehemet’s submission”—together with other good news from foreign parts. “The general result”—and here I quote Mr. Ashley’s words—“of this long but successful contest over Eastern affairs, was to produce the same respect for the names of Palmerston and England in the East as had been already produced in Europe. Those names were whispered in the tents of the Arabs with fear and reverence.”
But what was felt in England as to these matters is, we should say, of higher moment in regard to our Minister’s reputation. The outspoken words of Englishmen are of more avail than the whisperings of Arabs. The writers of the Quarterly and the Edinburgh are supposed, at any rate, to write with their eyes open. But here we find that each party fights manfully, simply on its own side. Writing in April, 1837, the Quarterly thus expresses itself; “The tinkering our Constitution has undergone at the hands of Whig-Radical Ministers has certainly not tended to elevate it in the estimation of foreigners, and Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy bids fair to bring the English flag into downright contempt from one end of Europe to the other.” So much for the Tory view of the years with which we have been dealing. When we turn to the July number of the Edinburgh for 1840, we find the Whig idea of our foreign politics thus given: “It was the moral influence of the policy of England at this period, which preserved Europe in a state of tranquillity, and maintained that equipoise on which every hope of peace depended.” Perhaps, after all, when party feelings ran so high at home—and still run so high—the greater dependence may be placed on the Arab whisperings. No doubt a knowledge of the policy of the world at large is necessary to determine the respect or contempt for England which was felt when Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office. But I doubt whether any Tory can hesitate on the matter; and my conviction is the stronger seeing that the charge now made against Lord Palmerston is, not that he showed a tendency to bully, but that he was so efficacious in bullying.