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!”
CHAPTER X.
PALMERSTON HOME SECRETARY, 1853 AND 1854.
THE world had not to wait long. Lord Palmerston had, as we have seen, been turned out on the 19th of December, 1851. Parliament met on the 8th of February following, and before the month was over Lord John was out of office. A Militia Bill was brought in by him to which Palmerston expressed himself as antagonistic. It is not supposed that he had been anxious to turn out his late chief on that special question, but had rather selected it as a commencement for his attack; but the House reconsidered the matter on which Lord John had been triumphant, and supported the late Foreign Secretary so loudly by its cheers, as to make it apparent to the Head of the Government that he could no longer stand his ground. It was then that Palmerston wrote as follows to his brother;—“I have had my tit-for-tat with John Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last. I certainly, however, did not expect to do so, nor did I intend to do anything more than to persuade the House to reject his foolish plan and to adopt a more sensible one. I have no doubt that two things induced him to resign: first, the almost insulting manner towards him in which the House, by its cheers, went with me in the debate; and, secondly, the fear of being defeated on the vote of censure about the Cape affairs which was to have been moved to-day.” Lord Palmerston speaks of Lord John’s “foolish plan.” It may probably be surmised that the abstract folly of the plan was not so potent with the writer of the letter as the determination of which he speaks “to have his tit-for-tat with John Russell.” It cannot be but that personal questions in the bosoms of Statesmen should share the ground with matters of public import, and often lead to the forming of an opinion or the riveting of a doubt. If I hear of a public man with whom it has not been so, I feel that he must have lacked the warmth necessary for party conflict. “Measures not men,” is a great war-cry by which to gain the voices of the ignorant; but, when they have been gained, men will count almost for as much as measures.
Lord Palmerston had at any rate delivered a knock-down blow, and Lord John was out. Lord Derby was sent for by the Queen, and in making his Cabinet offered to Lord Palmerston the place of Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was just forty-three years since the same place was offered him before, and then, as now, by a Tory Prime Minister. What a length of life to run between two such proposals! We are taught now to think that a man who first undertakes such duties as those of regulating the finances of his country at sixty-eight years of age, is taxing human nature too far; and certainly were we to hear that a youth of twenty-five had been so selected, we should think that he was very precocious, or that the Prime Minister was very silly. But this man refused both offers; and, without going into the motives which induced him to decline Lord Derby’s proposition, we cannot but rejoice that he saw his way clearly to the refusal. We cannot but think that there would have been a drifting back to Toryism under Lord Derby which would have materially interfered with that popularity by which he was to be lifted up to the management of affairs during the Crimean War. In discussing with his brother the state of parties at the time, he thus says;—“The truth is that the Whigs would be glad to get rid of John Russell and to have me in his stead, if this change could well be accomplished.” That, in truth, was the change which the Liberal party desired, without probably any defined expression of such a wish. The qualities of Lord Palmerston’s mind had taken possession of men, and though the English Liberal of to-day would probably think twice before he would place the thoughtful statesmanship of the one below the happy audacity of the other, at the moment undoubtedly the country was tired of Lord John, and inclined to turn against him because he had turned out his old colleague.
No weaker Government than that of Lord Derby’s was ever formed in England. The only persons in it well known at the time to political life were Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, who had fallen into the vacancy made by the death of a much weaker man than himself. Lord George Bentinck had gone, and left to Mr. Disraeli the leadership of the House of Commons. But when we look back over the not long interval of nineteen years we hardly know who they were that he had to lead. It has been said that besides Lord Derby and Mr. Herries there was not an English Privy Councillor among the number. It included none of Sir Robert Peel’s followers. Free Trade was the one matter in dispute, and on the question of Free Trade there was a majority against Government consisting of Peelites, Whigs, and Radicals. Lord John and Lord Palmerston, together with Sir James Graham and Mr. Gladstone, declared it to be impossible to carry on the Government in such a condition of things. A new Parliament was called, and on the 11th of November, 1852, the Queen’s Speech was read to them. Parliament was invited to consider whether recent legislation had not inflicted unavoidable injury.[J] This was intended as a direct slap in the face for the advocates of Free Trade. Mr. Villiers moved a counter-resolution, full, as Mr. Disraeli said, of “odious epithets.” This was rejected by 336 votes to 256. Lord Palmerston then proposed a second resolution, declaring “That it is the opinion of the House that the improved condition of the people ... is mainly the result of recent legislation.” This was directly at variance with the convictions of the Ministry, but it was accepted and allowed to pass by a great majority. The resolution is supposed to have been prepared by Sir James Graham, in concert with Lord John. And the fact of its adoption by Lord Palmerston, and its promotion by him in political concert with Lord John, proves that at this moment there was no war between the two old colleagues. The cause for war still remained, and did in fact prevent for the present any combination of Statesmen in which Lord Palmerston should serve under Lord John; but of personal quarrel there was none, and the two men were thus able to act together within twelve months of the day on which the fatal letter had been written. Lord Palmerston had in June of that year declared his purpose not to serve under Lord John. “He certainly has entirely lost mine.” Lord John had lost Lord Palmerston’s confidence. “I feel no resentment towards him personally or privately; but it would require strong inducements to persuade me to become again a member of a Government of which he was the head. I feel no confidence in his discretion or judgment as a political leader, and could place no trust in his steady fidelity as a colleague, having my official position at his mercy.”
It was in vain, however, that Lord Derby accepted the resolution in favour of Free Trade. Mr. Disraeli brought in his Budget, which was at once thrown out by 303 votes to 286. This took place on the 16th of December, and on the 20th Lord Derby declared that the Ministry had resigned. Lord Aberdeen was then sent for, and formed the Administration in which Lord John Russell went in as Foreign Secretary and Lord Palmerston to the Home Office. There must have been to him in this a certain bitterness. He had at first declined Lord Aberdeen’s offer because Lord Aberdeen’s policy as Foreign Minister had for many years been at direct variance with his own. He had, however, been persuaded by Lord Lansdowne, who had been better able, perhaps, to read the signs of the times than could he himself, and the feelings of the minds of men towards him against whom the Court had used its influence. He was assured that the administration of Foreign Affairs would not rest with Lord Aberdeen, but with Lord Clarendon or Lord John,—and of the general liberality of both of these he was well assured. He says himself to his brother that he had determined that he himself would not in any case take the Foreign Office. In this, no doubt, there was some boasting,—natural and understood. It would have been impossible that Lord Palmerston should then have returned to the Foreign Office.
There is something almost ludicrous in the energy displayed by Lord Palmerston at the Home Office; and yet it was essentially useful. He visited prisons and wrote memoranda on the ventilation of cells. He arranged tickets-of-leave for convicts, and attempted to abate the nuisance of smoke in London. He built cemeteries, and fixed the winter assizes. Such matters are by no means ludicrous. It is by attending to them that the welfare of a people is in a great measure obtained. They are, no doubt, as important as those foreign arrangements for the government of Europe,—and, indeed, of the world at large,—in which Lord Palmerston had been hitherto engaged. But they do not loom so large before the imagination. And we can imagine that he himself felt the difference when he descended from instructing Sir Stratford Canning to consulting a factory inspector.
It was about this time, I think, that he fell into a habit of intercourse with the public generally which adhered to him till the day of his death. He became notorious as a joker. He passed on from the light, courteous persiflage of the Foreign Minister to the common John-Bull fun of an English magistrate, without an apparent effort, but with an evident intention. The wit was never very good. It must be acknowledged that it was generally commonplace, and that from the mouth of another it would have had no effect. But the world had so come to love its Palmerston that it was ready to laugh at everything; and when the world of deputations has been made to laugh, much has been achieved. The deputations did laugh, and Lord Palmerston obtained the character of being the wittiest Englishman of his day. No character was ever more cheaply earned, or used to a better effect.