Lord John communicated the Queen’s views to Lord Palmerston, and he was especially cautioned as to the future upon “the necessity of a guarded conduct.” Lord John writing to the Queen was sanguine enough to hope that this remonstrance would “have its effect upon Lord Palmerston.” The ink of his letter was hardly dry when like a clap of thunder came the news of the coup d’état in Paris; Louis Napoleon, then President of the Republic, had had his political opponents seized in the night and thrown into prison, nearly 500 persons were shipped off to Cayenne without any form of trial, thousands were shot down in the streets, and the Prince President became first by military force and then by popular election Napoleon III. and Emperor of the French.
The Queen, true to her principles of non-intervention, at once wrote to the Prime Minister, instructing him to caution Lord Normanby, our ambassador in Paris, to observe strict neutrality, and to remain absolutely passive towards the new Government. Lord Palmerston accordingly sent a despatch to Lord Normanby in that sense. At the same time, however, that he was sending his despatch to Paris, he was seeing Count Walewski, the French ambassador in London, and expressing his entire approbation of the coup d’état and his conviction that the President could not have acted otherwise than he had done! On the 16th December he followed this up by a despatch to Lord Normanby, expressing his conviction that the action of Louis Napoleon was for the benefit of France and also of the rest of Europe. This despatch was sent off without the knowledge or approval of the Queen or the Prime Minister, and in contravention of their express wishes. This was the end. Lord Palmerston was dismissed, not at the instance of the Queen, but with her entire approval. Lord John Russell offered him, as a consolation, the Lord Lieutenantcy of Ireland and a British Peerage, both of which were curtly declined. The general opinion of the political world was that Palmerston’s career was over. Disraeli spoke of him in the past tense, as if he were dead. There was tremendous rejoicing over his fall in every stronghold of despotism in Europe, especially in Austria, where the heads of the Government took credit to themselves for his overthrow, and gave balls in honor of the event; a rhyme was current in Austria at the time which expresses the feelings Palmerston had awakened:—
“Hat der Teufel einen Sohn,
So ist er sicher Palmerston.”[26]
In the debate in the House of Commons which followed these events, Lord John made a most successful speech, in which he showed the impossibility of working with a colleague who deliberately defied the express views of the whole Cabinet; he read the memorandum drawn up by the Queen for Lord Palmerston’s guidance on the occasion of a former dispute. In this paper Her Majesty had claimed her right to know distinctly what the proposals were to which she was asked to give her sanction, and, secondly, that, having once given her sanction to a despatch, it was not to be arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. She also claimed her right to be kept informed of what passed between the Foreign Secretary and the ambassadors before important decisions were taken, and to receive the despatches in good time, so that she could acquaint herself with their contents. Lord John Russell completely carried the House with him. It was felt that the demands of the Queen and the Cabinet had been strictly reasonable, and that it would be impossible to carry on the business of the country on any other basis. Lord Palmerston practically had no defence, and he abandoned any attempt to manufacture one. Of the Queen’s memorandum he said not a word. Greville says the effect of Lord John’s speech was prodigious, and that Palmerston’s reply was weak and ineffective. He had resigned the seals of the Foreign Office before Parliament met, and Lord Granville had been appointed his successor. He bore the whole position with admirable good temper. He received Lord Granville with the greatest cordiality, spent three hours with him putting him in possession of the threads of his diplomacy, spoke of the Court without bitterness, and in strong terms of the Queen’s “sagacity,” and ended by offering to give any information or assistance that was in his power. He pursued the same line of conduct when in a few weeks Lord John Russell’s Government fell and was succeeded by Lord Derby’s; Lord Malmesbury becoming Foreign Secretary. Palmerston at once came to see him, and offered to coach him in Foreign Office policy. He gave the new Foreign Secretary a masterly sketch of the status quo in Europe, as well as general hints upon the principles by which English policy should be guided; the pith of these was, “Keep well with France.” By this means, though ousted from office, Palmerston remained practically the director of the policy of the Foreign Office.
All the contemporary records agree upon the main outward and visible facts; but they are provokingly silent upon Palmerston’s real motives. He was neither a hot-headed youth, acting on the impulse of the moment, neither was he “an old man in a hurry;” he was sixty-seven years old, about the prime of life for a statesman, and steeped to the lips in an absorbing interest in England’s foreign politics. His whole tradition had been to oppose despotism and support civil and political liberty against despots all over Europe. Why did he go out of his way to establish, so far as he could, a cordial understanding with a despot who was also an upstart, and whose Government was founded on violence, and carried on by crushing every vestige of liberty in France? Some have thought an answer could be found in his hostility to the Orleans family; but this does Palmerston less than justice. It is true he hated Louis Philippe, and rejoiced in his fall, which he attributed to the King’s perfidy about the Spanish marriages. When the French King was fugitive in England, Palmerston had tried to prevent his receiving the shelter of Claremont, although the Government really had no business whatever to interfere, as Claremont had been settled for his life on Leopold, King of the Belgians, and if he chose to lend it to his father-in-law, no one else had any business in the matter. Louis Philippe died in 1850, and in 1851, although Palmerston said the Orleans Princes were plotting for a restoration, and if Louis Napoleon had not struck when he did, he would himself have been overthrown, the excuse was not a good one. Some contend that Palmerston was afraid of the red spectre in France, and thought Louis Napoleon the only man capable of laying it. But Palmerston was not afraid of the reds in any other European country. The real explanation of his conduct must be sought elsewhere. At the end of 1851, it required no superhuman power of prophecy, especially to one who surveyed Europe from the watch-tower of the London Foreign Office, to foresee that the time was approaching when England would have to face the alternative of either relinquishing her traditional policy of maintaining the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, or fight Russia in order to sustain it. Palmerston, it need hardly be said, was all for fighting; but the question was whether England would face Russia alone, or whether Russia would restore the Holy Alliance, and thus lead a combination of European powers against England; or whether, as a third possibility, England could succeed in isolating Russia and in obtaining an ally for herself. It is not extravagant to suppose that it was to make this third possibility a probability that Palmerston hastened to make friends with a man whom he could not have trusted, and whose cruelty and despotism he must have loathed. It was impossible for England to look for any other ally. Russia, Austria, and Prussia were wild against England, regarding her as the great stronghold of constitutional principles, and believing that to her encouragement was due the revolutionary outbreak of 1848. The immunity of England herself from disorder did not open their eyes to see that it was their own misgovernment which had produced revolution. It only rendered them the more furious, as they believed that England had preached insurrection, while other Governments bore its penalties. It was touch-and-go in the first year of Napoleon III.’s reign whether he would try to put himself at the head of a European combination against us, or whether he would become our ally and fight one of the other Powers. He certainly believed that war was necessary in order to divert the attention of France from domestic politics, to conciliate the army, and thus on both sides to consolidate his own position. The almost universal feeling in England was that he was going to fight us. The common opinion was that the new Emperor’s first thought would be to avenge Waterloo. By 1853, however, Louis Napoleon had decided not to fight us, but to fight with us against Russia. This was due more to Palmerston than to any other Englishman.
Greville reports a conversation early in 1853 between himself and Comte de Flahault (afterwards French ambassador in London), who had just returned from Paris, where he had been in constant communication with the Emperor. Flahault said that the rancor and insolence against England on the part of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, were almost inconceivable; he added that Louis Napoleon had offered to him in the first year of his reign a position which it had been the object of his uncle’s life to attain,—the leadership of a European league against us; that he decided to decline these flattering overtures, and to consolidate his alliance with England. Flahault went on to say that he had supported Louis Napoleon in this determination, and had represented to him that the Northern Powers had long withheld any recognition of his Imperial position; whereas England had at once recognized him, and that if she had not done so, probably the acknowledgment of the other Powers would have been still further delayed. Flahault represented to Greville that, greatly to his surprise, the Emperor had wholly concurred in this view.
It is needless to say that the importance of this conversation is not derived from its truth, but from its representing what Louis Napoleon wished to be believed in England in the spring of 1853. He was strongly desirous for his own purposes of the English alliance, and knew that it was the only one he could hope for at that time in Europe. So far from declining flattering proposals from the Czar, his vanity had just been bitterly wounded by the absolute refusal of the Russian monarch to greet him as “mon frère.”
There can be little doubt that Palmerston availed himself of the Emperor’s isolated position in Europe, and “captured” him as an ally of England. It was the wish to secure him more surely that made Palmerston endeavor in 1852-3 to promote a marriage between Louis Napoleon and the Queen’s niece, the Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe. There was a definite proposal made to bring this about, the Emperor stating that his wish was to reserrer les liens entre les deux pays. The offer was declined by the Queen on behalf of her niece, on the ground of the latter’s youth and inexperience. In 1854, another matrimonial project between the two families was started with the same object, between Princess Mary of Cambridge and Prince Jerome Napoleon. Malmesbury heard of it, and said he hoped it was not true, for the sake of the Princess; but it was strongly pressed by Palmerston on the Queen, and was only put an end to by the Princess’s absolute refusal to listen to it.
If Palmerston ever believed in the Emperor’s fidelity to the English alliance, he did not do so permanently.[27] All through the negotiations which finally led up to the Crimean War, Palmerston and his coadjutor at Constantinople, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, urged on his country, not only to war, but to immediate war. Palmerston knew his man. It was Louis Napoleon’s present purpose in 1853 and 1854 to fight on our side; England’s policy, in Lord Palmerston’s view, was to clinch the matter before he had turned against us.
When Palmerston was dismissed in 1851, his defence of himself in the House of Commons at the opening of the Session of 1852 was such a complete failure that people went about saying “Palmerston is smashed.” But the epithet was misapplied. The Government of which he had been the life and soul was smashed. In less than three weeks’ time from the debate on his dismissal, the Government was defeated, and the Russell Administration resigned. Palmerston wrote to his brother: “Dear William,—I have had my tit-for-tat with John Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last.” Lord Derby formed a Government which he invited Lord Palmerston to join. The offer was declined, but, as already pointed out, Palmerston continued practically to direct our foreign policy. The Conservative Government was of very short duration. Before the year was out, Mr. Disraeli’s Budget was defeated, the Government resigned, and Lord Aberdeen became the head of a Coalition Government formed by a union of the Whigs with the Peelites. In this Government, Lord Palmerston was Home Secretary. Greville mentions that when the Queen went to Scotland in 1853, she desired that Lord Granville should be the Minister-in-Attendance, because she did not wish for the presence of the Home Secretary at Balmoral. But this feeling was not of long duration. Lord Clarendon, the new Foreign Secretary, labored diligently to change it. He told the Queen everything he could likely to make her regard Palmerston in a more favorable light, and showed her notes and memoranda by him calculated to please her. Lord Aberdeen also used his influence in the same direction. The Queen is never implacable, and always ready to recognize good service, and before the autumn was out Palmerston took his turn as Minister-in-Attendance on the Queen at Balmoral. An anecdote is told, illustrative of his continued absorption in foreign politics, although he was now Home Secretary. The Queen was much interested in some strikes and labor troubles that were taking place in the North of England, and asked Palmerston for details about them which, as Home Secretary, he might be expected to know. However, she found him absolutely without information. “One morning, after previous inquiries, she said to him, ‘Pray, Lord Palmerston, have you any news?’ To which he replied, ‘No, Madam, I have heard nothing; but it seems certain that the Turks have crossed the Danube!’” Palmerston was at the Home Office during the outbreak of cholera in 1854. His measures against it were said to have been conceived in the spirit of treating Heaven as if it were a Foreign Power.