Palmerston and the Danish duchies.
Wars nearer home were meanwhile beginning to distract the attention of the English from America. A quarrel between the King of Denmark and his German subjects in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein led to the interference of Austria and Prussia. The inhabitants of the two duchies wished to cut themselves loose, and to join Germany. Bismarck, the iron-handed prime minister of Prussia, saw his way to make profit for his country out of the war, and induced the unwise Austrian government to join him in bringing force to bear against the Danes. The English looked upon the struggle as a mere case of bullying by the two German powers, and Palmerston used somewhat threatening language against them; but when he found that his usual ally, the Emperor of the French, was not prepared to help him, he drew back, and allowed the Austrians and Prussians to overrun the duchies. Beaten in the field, the Danish king had to consent to their cession.
Palmerston and the Polish insurrection.
To protest, and then to make no attempt to back up words with deeds, is somewhat humiliating. But this course was forced on Palmerston not only in the case of the Schleswig-Holstein war, but also in the case of Poland in the same year (1863). Treating the unfortunate Poles with even more than its usual rigour, the Russian government forced them to a fierce but hopeless insurrection. Palmerston sent a note to the Czar in favour of better treatment of Poland, but met with a rebuff, and was practically told to mind his own business. Not being ready to engage in a second Crimean war without Louis Napoleon's aid, he had to endure the affront. He was much censured for his useless interference, but it is hard to blame him either for his protest, or for his refusal to follow it up by plunging England into a dangerous war.
Prosperity at home.—Rise of Gladstone.
While these foreign affairs were engrossing most of the nation's attention, domestic matters caused little stir. After the cotton famine ended, the country entered into a cycle of very considerable growth and prosperity. Gladstone, once a Peelite, but now one of the most advanced of the progressive wing of the Liberal party, was now Chancellor of the Exchequer. Year after year he was able to announce a surplus, and to grant the remission of old taxes. His measures were judicious, but the constant growth of the revenue from increased prosperity, and the conclusion of a fortunate commercial treaty with France, were the real causes of his being able to produce his favourable budgets, and won him a financial reputation at a comparatively cheap expense of labour. But his name was rapidly growing greater, and it was beginning to be clear that he would be Palmerston's successor as leader of the Liberal party. The old premier did not view this prospect with much satisfaction. "Whenever he gets my place," he observed, "we shall have strange doings."
Death of Palmerston.
The succession was not long delayed. Lord Palmerston died on October 18, 1865, and, on the removal of his restraining hand, the Liberal party began to show new and rapid signs of change. For the first time it was about, under the guidance of its new leader, to frankly accept the principles of democracy, and to throw up its old alliance with the middle classes. Palmerston had been for so many years the leading figure in English politics, that his death, at the ripe age of eighty-one, seemed to end an epoch in domestic history. He was by far the most striking personage in the middle years of the century. Faults he had: somewhat over-hasty in action, somewhat flippant in language on occasion, too self-confident and too prone to self-laudation, he was yet so resourceful and so full of courage and patriotism that he won and merited the confidence of the nation more than any minister since the younger Pitt.