London, July 13th.—I left Paris on Tuesday night at 7.30, got to Calais at three; low water and steamer three miles out at sea; went out in a boat in a torrent of rain which had lasted the whole journey and all day. Train was just gone when we got to Dover, but we arrived in town about eleven. I found a precious state of affairs, all confusion and consternation, Bulwer having given notice of a motion of want of confidence on account of John Russell, whose affair has brought himself and the Government to the very brink and almost to the certainty of ruin. There is as much excitement against Palmerston's Government, all on account of Lord John, as there was a few months ago against Aberdeen. I found Brooks's in a state of insurrection, and even the Attorney-General (Cockburn) told me that the Liberal party were resolved to go no further with John Russell, and that nothing but his resignation could save the Government, even if that could; that they might be reconciled to him hereafter, but as long as the war lasted they repudiated him. Meanwhile he has not resigned. There was a long Cabinet the day before yesterday in which they discussed the state of affairs, and what measures could be taken. Lord John offered to resign, but they would not hear of it, and came to a resolution to stand or fall together. I saw Clarendon yesterday, who was fully aware of the imminence of the danger and of the probability of their being out on Monday; he said Lord John's whole conduct was inconceivable, and he knew not to what to attribute his strange speech, in which he had made for himself a much worse case than the circumstances really warrant and given to the world impressions which are not correct; for in point of fact he did not urge Buol's proposal upon the Cabinet, but when he laid it before them and found it not acceptable, he at once yielded to all the arguments against it, and instead of making any attempt to get peace made on those terms, he joined with all his colleagues in their conviction of the necessity of carrying on the war vigorously; and this conviction induced him to make the warlike speech with which he is now reproached as being inconsistent with the opinions he was entertaining (as it is said) at the time he made it. Yesterday he attempted to make something of an explanation, but he only floundered further into the mire, and was laughed at. Everybody thinks he made his case worse rather than better, but he really seems to have lost his head. His whole conduct at Vienna and here has exhibited nothing but a series of blunders and faults, and he has so contrived it, that no explanations he can possibly make will extenuate them, or place him in a tolerable light in the eyes of the public. In the morning yesterday I had occasion to call on Disraeli about some business, when he talked over the state of affairs very freely and gave me to understand that he intended and expected to turn out the Government and to come in with his party, but he owned that their materials for forming a tolerable Government were very scanty, that he would not attempt their old Government over again, but, except Lytton Bulwer, of whom he spoke in terms of high praise, he knew not where to find any fresh men worth anything.
Bath, July 19th.—I came here on Saturday night. In the course of Friday morning I met Drumlanrig, who told me the subordinate place men had caused John Russell to be informed that if he did not resign they should, and vote for Bulwer's motion on Monday. This produced his resignation, but under circumstances as mortifying as possibly could be, and which must have made him deeply regret that he did not resign at first, although he is not to be blamed for having yielded to the wishes of his colleagues, and I am satisfied he did so from the best motives. It was no sooner known that he had resigned than the excitement began to subside, and everybody thought that Bulwer would withdraw his motion, and at all events nobody doubted that it would come to nothing. The motion was withdrawn but the debate took place, and such a debate!—it was impossible to read it without indignation and disgust. Bulwer's speech was a tissue of foul abuse with the grossest and most wilful misrepresentations and endeavours to draw inferences he knew to be false and fallacious, with the hope and purpose of damaging the characters of the Ministers. In these times, when the great evil is the bad opinion which the public has been led to entertain of public men, Bulwer endeavours, for a mere party purpose, to aggravate that hostile feeling and to make the world believe that, in a great party and a Cabinet composed of men whose characters have never been impugned, there is neither truth, sincerity, nor good faith, and by producing such an impression to bring the aristocracy into greater disrepute. Disraeli, of course, spoke in the same tone, Palmerston was very bad, and his speech was quite unbecoming his position. John Russell's defence was not calculated to relieve him from the weight of obloquy and unpopularity he had brought on himself, and the whole thing was unsatisfactory, except that it denoted the end of the contest and the disappointment of the Opposition, whose hopes had been so highly raised.
APOLOGY FOR LORD JOHN.
After much consideration of John Russell's conduct, I think it is not obnoxious to the severe censure with which it has been visited, and though he has committed errors, they are venial ones and admit of a fair explanation. Had not Buol's publication revealed to the world what had passed between them confidentially, nothing of it would have been known, and he would have been left to the enjoyment of the popularity he had gained by his anti-Russian speech. The statement about him in Buol's Circular naturally led to questions, and then it was necessary to tell everything and lay bare the arcana of Cabinets and Conferences; and when he endeavoured to explain his own conduct it became, amidst all the complexities of the case itself, its endless variety of details and confusion of dates, next to impossible to unravel it satisfactorily, and quite impossible to protect himself from the imputations which an unscrupulous and malignant assailant could easily contrive to bring against him; and in this great difficulty he displayed no tact and ingenuity in extricating himself from the dilemma in which he was placed; on the contrary, he went blundering on, exposing himself to many charges, all plausible and some true, of inconsistency, inaccuracy, and insincerity, and he made in his speeches a case against himself which left very little for his enemies to do. It might be strange in any other man, but is perhaps only consistent in him, that he is now more indignant with the friends who refused to follow and support him on this occasion than either ashamed or angry with himself for having blundered into such a scrape. He writes, meanwhile, to his brother, who has sent me his letter, in these terms:—'I have endeavoured to stand by and support Palmerston, too much so, I fear, for my own credit, but had I resigned on my return from Vienna, I should have been abused as wishing to trip him up and get his place: in short, the situation was one of those where only errors were possible. I have acted according to my own conscience; let that suffice.' False reasoning and wounded pride are both apparent in this letter, but he is quite right when he says that 'only errors had become possible.' There is no course he could have taken that would not have exposed him to bitter attacks and reproaches, and these unavoidable errors were not confined to himself.
LORD JOHN'S CONDUCT AT VIENNA.
The first thing that strikes me is that the Cabinet ought to have accepted his resignation when he first tendered it; but there were no doubt difficulties and objections to that course, and their reluctance to let him throw himself overboard was not unnatural and was generous. The defence which his conduct really admits of may be (to state it very briefly) thus set forth. I put it loosely, and as it strikes me, taking a general view of the case; to make it more accurate and complete, the dates and the documents should be before me, which they are not. He went to Paris with instructions precisely corresponding with what was verbally arranged in London between Drouyn de Lhuys and the Cabinet, and they were conjointly to propose the conditions which the two Governments had agreed to require from Russia; but still they were not the bearers of an Ultimatum, they did not go to give law to Russia, or as judges to pronounce sentence upon her. They went to confer and to negotiate, to endeavour to obtain the precise terms which would be entirely satisfactory to their two Governments, and failing in this to see what they could obtain. If they were instructed to insist on the limitation, just as they proposed it at the Conference, and to accept nothing else, nothing either short of it or varying from it, then the very idea of a Conference and a negotiation was a mockery and a delusion. It was a mockery to invite the Russian plenipotentiary to make proposals, and the conduct of the Allies was disingenuous and deceitful. Certainly Austria never contemplated, still less would she have been a party to, such a course of proceeding; and her notion was, and, of course, that of Russia also, that there should be a bon? fide negotiation, and an attempt to bring about an understanding by the only way in which an understanding ever can be brought about—mutual concessions. We proposed the limitation scheme, and Austria backed us up in it cordially, sincerely, and forcibly, at least to all appearance. Russia rejected it on the ground of its incompatibility with her honour and dignity. Then Russia made proposals, which the Allies, Austria included, rejected as insufficient. John Russell and Drouyn de Lhuys appear to have fought vigorously in the spirit of their instructions, but when they found there was no chance of the Russians consenting to the limitation, they both became anxious to try some other plan, by which peace might possibly be obtained, and they each suggested something. At last, when the Conference was virtually at an end, as a last hope and chance Buol produced his scheme. John Russell had already committed himself to an approval of the principle of it, by the plan he had himself suggested, and, when he found that both his French and Turkish colleagues were willing to accept it, it is not surprising that he should have told Buol privately and confidentially that he acquiesced in it, and would urge it on his Government. As it has turned out, this was a great indiscretion for which he has been severely punished. As he had every reason to believe that Buol's plan would not be acceptable to his own Government, what he ought to have done was to give notice to Clarendon that such a proposal had been made, and to beg it might be considered before any final resolution was taken, and to tell Buol that he had done so; to promise that he would submit to the Cabinet all the arguments that had been used in its favour, but to abstain from any expression of his own opinion, and shelter himself from the necessity of giving any by the tenour of his own instructions. When he found the French Minister for Foreign Affairs consenting, he might very well suppose that the French Government would not reject the proposal, and that he should not be justified in putting a peremptory veto on what France was disposed to accept as sufficient. Besides, although he has never put forward such an argument in any of his speeches, he may have thought, as I do, that 'counterpoise' and 'limitation' were the same thing in principle, and the only difference between them one of mode and degree. Buol's counterpoise involved limitation, our limitation was to establish a counterpoise; therefore, even in the spirit of the instructions and arguments of the French and English Governments, their plan of limitation having failed, Buol's plan of counterpoise was entitled to consideration,[1] and the only question ought to have been whether it would have been effectual for the purpose common to all, and whether it would be an honourable mode of terminating the war.
John Russell's fault was committing himself to Buol as approving his plan before he knew how it would be viewed at home; but I see neither impossibility nor inconsistency in his having regarded it favourably at Vienna, and being biassed by all the arguments in its favour which there beset him on all sides, and when he returned to England and found the opinions of all his colleagues adverse to it, and heard their reasons for being so, that he should have been convinced by them, have subscribed to the general decision, and joined cordially with them in the vigorous prosecution of the war. Having come finally to this conclusion, his warlike speech was not unnatural, and he made it probably very much to prove to his own colleagues that he was in earnest with them. There was no necessity for his proclaiming what had passed at Vienna, as nothing had happened in consequence, and the question was not what impression had been made on his mind there in the course of the negotiations, but what was the opinion and what the resolution at which he finally arrived when all was over. But he has repeatedly in the course of his career contrived to do a vast deal of mischief by a very few words, and so it was in this instance. When he was driven to confess that he had endorsed Buol's proposal, and said that he was still of the same opinion, his opponents were able with every appearance of truth to say that he had intended to conceal what he had done at Vienna, and to deceive the country, both as to his past conduct and his present opinions; and as it was obvious from his own avowal that he still was of the same opinion as at Vienna, his war speech was hypocritical and insincere, and he was unfit to be in a Cabinet pledged to carry on the war earnestly and vigorously. Against such an attack it was very difficult to make a good defence, and I doubt whether the most lucid and circumstantial statement and the most natural explanation of his own motives and sentiments at different periods of the transaction would have received a patient hearing and dispassionate consideration. The House of Commons and the public were in that frame of mind that will not listen, and cannot be fair and just, and he became, and could hardly avoid becoming, the victim of his own want of caution and prudent reserve and the excessive complication of the circumstances and details of the case.
[1] [The proposal submitted to the Conference by Count Buol was that each of the Powers should have the right to maintain a limited naval power in the Black Sea. The whole discussion turned upon suppression of the naval supremacy of Russia in the Black Sea and the manner in which it was to be effected.]
COMMAND OF THE ARMY.
London, July 28th.—I returned from Bath yesterday; went to Newmarket in the evening and returned this morning. There is nothing new at home and abroad; to all outward appearance the siege standing still, but they say it is going on in a safe and judicious manner calculated to bring about success. General Simpson wants to resign, but no man fit to succeed him can be found.[1] I have read the pamphlet 'Whom shall we Hang?' and think it makes a very good case for the late Government, especially Newcastle, but it is so long that few people will read it; and though it may convince and satisfy some one here and there, it will not suffice to stem the torrent which is so swollen by ignorance and malice. At Brooks's this afternoon I met Fitzroy, who said a great deal to me about the condition of the Government, of the state and disposition of the House of Commons, and Palmerston's management there, and his conduct as a leader.