In the Belgian question however, he seems to have really played an active part. We get from him a strong impression of the restless vanity and unscrupulous ambition of France. We learn also that Leopold practised very early in the day the policy which assured him a quiet reign—that of keeping his trunk packed and letting the people understand that if they were tired of him he was ready to take the next train and leave them to enjoy the deluge.
Stockmar found employment especially suited to him in settling the question of Leopold's English annuity, which was given up on the Price's election to the Crown of Belgium, but with certain reservations, upon which the Radicals made attacks, Sir Samuel Whalley, a physician leading the van. In the course of the struggle Stockmar received a characteristic letter from Palmerston.
"March 9,1834
"MY DEAR BARON,—I have many apologies to make to you for not having sooner acknowledged the receipt of the papers you sent me last week, and for which I am much obliged to you. The case seems to me as clear as day and without meaning to question the omnipotence of Parliament, which it is well known can do anything but turn men into women and women into men, I must and shall assert that the House of Commons have no more right to enquire into the details of those debts and engagements, which the King of the Belgians considers himself bound to satisfy before he begins to make his payments into the Exchequer, than they have to ask Sir Samuel Whalley how he disposed of the fees which his mad patients used to pay him before he began to practise upon the foolish constituents who have sent him to Parliament. There can be no doubt whatever that we must positively resist any such enquiry, and I am very much mistaken in my estimate of the present House of Commons if a large majority do not concur in scouting so untenable a proposition.
"My dear Baron,
"Yours sincerely,
"PALMERSTON
"The Baron de Stockmar"
That the House of Commons cannot turn women into men is a position not so unquestioned now as it was in Palmerston's day.
Stockmar now left England for a time, but he kept his eye on English affairs, to his continued interest in which we owe it seems, the publication of a rather curious document, the existence of which in manuscript was, however, well known. It is a Memoir of King William IV., purporting to be drawn up by himself, and extending over the eventful years of 1830-35 'King William's style,' says the uncourtly biographer, "abounds to overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentary circumlocution, in which, instead of direct, simple expressions, bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the end intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner to despair." The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not the King, whose strong point was not grammatical composition, but some confidant, very likely Sir Herbert Taylor, who was employed by the King to negotiate with the "waverers" in the House of Lords, and get the Reform Bill passed without a swamping creation of peers. The Memoir contains nothing of the slightest historical importance. It is instructive only as showing how completely a constitutional king may be under the illusion of his office—how complacently he may fancy that he is himself guiding the State, when he is in fact merely signing what is put before him by his advisers, who are themselves the organs of the majority in Parliament. Old William, Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, being rather weak in intellect, was called "Silly Billy." When King William IV. gave his assent to the Reform Bill, the Duke, who knew his own nickname, cried "Who's Silly Billy now?" It would have been more difficult from the Conservative point of view to answer that question if the King had possessed the liberty of action which in his Memoir he imagines himself to possess.