In looking back at Lord Palmerston’s career, and the entire success of his political life, we have to own that it was due to the teaching, or rather to the genius, of Mr. Canning. He had fallen into Mr. Canning’s hands, and though without that fine intellect which would have enabled him to imitate the lessons which he had so learned, he was quick enough to perceive their merit, and wise enough to follow them, whether he were called Whig or Tory. Canning died, and in carrying out his lessons Palmerston had become a member of Lord Grey’s Cabinet. It was not much to him whether men called him Whig or Tory. But he saw the wisdom of going still on; and whether he were Member for the University which demanded a Tory to represent it, or for his own county, which afterwards in turn again repudiated him, or for the borough of Tiverton, where he could be one or the other, he remained always true to the precepts of the school which he had adopted. “A Tory Government,” he says, writing to his brother, in June, 1833, “is an utter impossibility in the present state of the public feeling; the country would not stand it.” Then he goes on to speak of what he and the Cabinet had just done for the abolition of slavery. “To be sure, we give the West Indians a tolerably good compensation. I really believe that the twenty millions which are to be voted for them are about the whole value of all the estates at the present market price; so that they will receive nearly the value of their estates, and keep their estates into the bargain. I must say it is a splendid instance of generosity and justice, unexampled in the history of the world, to see a nation (for it is the national will, and not merely the resolve of the Government or the Parliament) emancipate seven hundred and fifty thousand slaves, and pay twenty millions sterling to their owners as compensation for the loss they will sustain. People sometimes are greatly generous at the expense of others, but it is not often that men are found to pay so high a price for the luxury of doing a noble action.”
“Some persons on the Continent want to have it supposed that the English are so bent upon economy and retrenchment that no provocation or injury would rouse them to incur the expense of another war. This vote of so large a sum for the satisfaction of a principle ought to show those persons that it would not be safe to rely too much upon their calculation.” In this he takes great pride to himself; but it is a pride in the glory of his country; and it is exhibited in private letters in which an absence of reticence is not unbecoming.
Some time previous to this he had shown the same determined spirit. Writing to our Minister in Spain in March, 1831, he says, “It is well known that every river on the coast of Africa, where slaves are obtained, still swarms with slave ships, bearing openly the flag of Spain; while vessel after vessel sails for that coast from the Havannah, returns laden with these slaves, of whom even the number on board is probably known, lands them unmolested at the back of the island of Cuba, re-enters the port of the Havannah in ballast, and is again fitted up, rapidly and without impediment, for a fresh expedition in this prohibited traffic.”
In 1834 the Slave Commissioner, at Sierra Leone, writes to him on the subject. “The traffic under the Portuguese flag, which for years past had been almost unheard of, appears now to be carried on to as great an extent as it was before Brazil ceased to belong to Portugal.” In the same year Mr. Macleay, our British Commissioner at the Havannah, complains to him on the same subject,—of the trade as carried on under the new Captain-General of Cuba. From this we may see that our Foreign Minister found ample matters on which to write to the servants of other Crowns so as to make himself enemies. It is not to be doubted but that he did write with all the pertinacity of purpose which is apt to be odious to people who entertain opinions opposed to those who exercise it.
The above references have been taken from the Quarterly Review of December, 1835. If we turn to the July number of the Edinburgh Review for 1836, we shall find him and the slave trade spoken of in the same spirit; but the tone is so hearty that I will venture to quote the passage:—“Every Power in Europe has acknowledged that a solemn obligation is upon them to contribute to the abolition of the accursed traffic in our fellow creatures. Each also admits that their formal declaration to that effect, made more than twenty years ago, has to this hour been fruitless, and the pledges then given to use every means in the power of each to effect it, still unredeemed. The frivolous pretexts which have been advanced by some for not adopting the only means which experience has shown to be effectual, require only to be refuted, and the object to be sincerely and heartily pursued by us, and complete success cannot be far distant. We have abundant evidence before us that no exertions will be wanting on the part of Lord Palmerston. His urgent remonstrances and representations have been poured into every country of the civilized world. His tone has been firm and decisive when our slave treaties have been infringed. He has used argument and persuasion where as yet there had been no obligation. After a careful perusal of the documents before us, we hesitate not to say that his zealous, consistent, and able advocacy of this great cause, while it tends to raise his country high among nations for enlightened humanity and for moral worth, will constitute, next to the preservation of peace, his worthiest title to a lasting reputation.”
His work is incessant, and he can hardly allow himself a few days of holiday when the Session is over. “I may then manage to get down to Broadlands for a week, and I long for a little rest.” At the end of the year he joins a shooting party, but is not able “to get out of town for more than four days at a time. I had three days shooting at Woburn last week, and pretty good sport. An official party, Grey, Brougham, Lansdowne (now combatants), Althorp, Melbourne, Ripon, Graham, John Russell, Auckland, Ellice, myself, young Ellice and Lord Charles Russell, were the sharpshooters.” We see from the names above given, that he had now fallen entirely among the Whigs; for Sir James Graham was then a Whig. “I must say that this reformed House of Commons is growing to be wonderfully like its predecessors; impatient of fools, intolerant of blackguards.” It is much the same thing at present, though now the blackguards have to be tolerated. Then he speaks exultingly of the Quadruple Alliance between England, France, Spain and Portugal for the expulsion of Carlos and Miguel. He speaks almost boastingly of his own power. “I carried it through the Cabinet by a coup de main, taking them by surprise, and not leaving them time to make objections.” This is the spirit in which he looks at all his own doings as Minister for Foreign Affairs, and though we may be angry at the boasting, we cannot but acknowledge that it was this spirit which kept him up. Then we have him for a week down in Hampshire among his race-horses. But his papers follow him. “I was a week at Broadlands entirely by myself, working all day, and almost every day, at F. O. boxes and Holmes’s accounts for the last three years, which I had not before been able to look at; they were all right, however.” After this he tells us of that wicked Thresher who only provided sixteen pheasants for five guns to kill in Yew Tree. After that he speaks again of the Quadruple Alliance, and again exults. “This treaty was a capital hit, and all my own doing.” Mr. Ashley, however, adds that “this treaty was a full completion of Mr. Canning’s policy.”
CHAPTER V.
PALMERSTON AS FOREIGN SECRETARY, APRIL, 1835, TO AUGUST, 1841.
WHY Lord Grey abandoned the Government in 1834, and why he refused to come back again either in 1834 or in 1835, is a question in English politics which it is difficult to answer. That it was occasioned, as Lord Palmerston says, by Mr. O’Connell and the Irish Coercion Act may be true; but why it should have been occasioned thereby is another question. In the summer of 1834 the Government went out with Lord Grey at its head, and came back with Lord Melbourne instead of Lord Grey. The world was astonished when it saw how good a Prime Minister it had in Lord Melbourne, and how sufficiently clever he was for all the purposes of his position; and the old-fashioned world has hardly yet got over its astonishment as it looks back on the strong and adequate conduct of William Lamb in that position. In July, 1834, the King chose him for the office, and Lord Palmerston, of course, remained with him. But in November, 1834, the Tories came in. “We are all out,” says Lord Palmerston to his brother. “Turned out neck and crop. Wellington is Prime Minister, and we give up the seals, etc., to-morrow at St. James’s at two. I am told Ellenborough succeeds me. The Speaker takes the Home Office, ad interim, and till Peel returns from Italy.” Then he adds, “This attempt to re-install the Tories cannot possibly last. The country will not stand it. The House of Commons will not bear it.”
This change had been brought about by the death of Lord Spencer, whose eldest son, Lord Althorp, became a peer, and could no longer lead the House of Commons. There was a project to make Lord Palmerston leader, and it was a position for which he afterwards proved himself to be pre-eminently fitted. But King William took advantage of the accident of Lord Althorp’s peerage, and was carried by his royal instincts into the arms of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. This King has always borne the character of being a true Liberal. The Reform Bill was passed in his days, and a Tory minister and Tory principles were for a time impossible. But for a few months, when Lord Grey had gone, and Lord Althorp had been removed from the House of Commons, he went back to Toryism, as it was surely natural that a king should do. But here must be given an extract from a kindly letter which the King wrote to Lord Palmerston on his leaving office, which is inserted for the purpose of showing that though the Foreign Secretary had no doubt made himself disagreeable to the King of the French and to his servants, he had contrived to make himself pleasant to his own sovereign. “His Majesty has, at all times, derived satisfaction from the free and unreserved character of Viscount Palmerston’s official intercourse with him, and from the anxiety which he has shown to afford to him upon every matter the most ample information, and all the explanation which he could possibly require, and His Majesty assures Lord Palmerston that he will always take a constant interest in his welfare and happiness.
“William R.”