The question has often been asked, Why did English statesmen get up in both Houses of Parliament and tell a series of falsehoods which they knew must be discovered in forty-eight hours by official refutation from France? The fact is, Lord Palmerston had deceived his colleagues. He assured them that M. de Lhuys had taken back to Paris explanations so conciliatory, that his letter of recall would be quietly cancelled. Assured by Palmerston that he had made the cancelling of the recall a certainty, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell assumed that the letter of recall was suppressed, and they both answered as if it never had existed. On the 25th of May, Mr. Greville writes:—“The morning before yesterday the Duke of Bedford came here again. He had seen Lord John since, and heard what passed with the Queen. She was full of this affair, and again urged all her objections to Lord Palmerston. This time she found Lord John better disposed than heretofore, and he is certainly revolving in his mind how the thing can be done. He does not by any means contemplate going out himself, or breaking up the Government. What he looks to is this, that the Queen should take the initiative, and urge Palmerston’s removal from the Foreign Office. She is quite ready to do this as soon as she is assured of her wishes being attended to.”[13]
Lord John Russell screwed up his courage to the point of contemplating the removal of Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office to some other department of State, he himself undertaking the duties of Foreign Secretary along with those of the Premiership. Such a combination is never a wise one. Even in recent times, when Lord Salisbury attempted to unite in his own person the two offices, the strain was found to be greater than his strength could bear; and in the case of Lord John, whose health was at this time capricious and precarious, it was perhaps as well that at the eleventh hour he shrank from proposing the change to Lord Palmerston. Lord John has been accused of lack of courage in connection with this affair. The truth is, that a perverted chivalry prompted him to stand by Lord Palmerston. The Greek affair was hardly defensible. But it was bruited about that the Opposition, under cover of condemning Lord Palmerston in that special case, meant to direct a severe attack on the foreign policy of the Government as a whole. Lord Palmerston’s colleagues had, however, permitted themselves not only to be identified with that policy, but had thought fit to defend every blunder he had made in carrying it out. Lord John Russell, then, cannot be blamed for considering that to desert the Foreign Secretary on the Greek Question, would have been tantamount to making him the scapegoat of the Cabinet. Hence, in spite of the Queen’s strong feeling in the matter, it was agreed that Palmerston should not be “thrown over.”
After much fencing between the leaders of the two parties, the first of the attacks, which led to a series of debates almost unparalleled in our history as displays of sustained Parliamentary eloquence, was made in the House of Lords on the 17th of June. Lord Stanley moved a vote of censure on the Ministry for their coercive measures in Greece, affirming, however, the general proposition that it was the right and duty of the Government to secure to British subjects in foreign States, the full protection of the laws of those States. The scene was a memorable one. The House was crowded in every part, and the conflict began with an amusing farce. The Peeress’s Gallery was crammed to overflowing, and when Lady Melbourne and Lady Newport, under Lord Brougham’s escort, went to their places, they found them filled, and were ignominiously turned away. Brougham, however, espied Bunsen, the Prussian Minister, in the gallery, and requested him to retire to his proper seat in the Ambassadors’ quarter, but he refused. Then Brougham went down to his own place, and avenged himself on Bunsen by calling the attention of their lordships to the fact that there was “a stranger in the Peeress’s Gallery,” adding, “if he does not come down, I shall move your lordships to enforce the order of the House. It is the more intolerable as he has a place assigned to him in another part, and he is now keeping the room of two Peeresses.” As Bunsen was notoriously a fat, overgrown man, Brougham’s malicious personality was received with shouts of laughter. But it had no effect on the stolid Prussian, who kept his seat till Sir Augustus Clifford, Usher of the Black Rod, made him retire.[14]
The issue before the House was simple enough. (1), Lord Palmerston had agreed with M. Drouyn de Lhuys that if the terms which M. Gros, the French Envoy at Athens, proposed on behalf of Greece were rejected by Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy, coercion should not be again applied without special orders from Britain. But if M. Gros threw up his office of mediator because the Greeks declined to let him offer fair terms, then of course Mr. Wyse was to
MR. (AFTERWARDS SIR ALEXANDER) COCKBURN.
resort to coercion without further instructions. (2), M. Drouyn de Lhuys and Lord Palmerston in London agreed on a settlement, the terms of which were less onerous than those demanded by Mr. Wyse. (3), Though this was informally communicated by the French to Mr. Wyse, he rejected the terms which M. Gros offered on behalf of Greece, contending that he had no instructions from Lord Palmerston as to the adoption of any other course. (4), M. Gros then dropped the negotiations. Mr. Wyse, again arguing that he was without instructions, ordered coercion to be applied, upon which the Greek Government yielded. The pith of the dispute centred in one point. Did Palmerston or did he not send Mr. Wyse instructions as to the arrangement made in London with M. Drouyn de Lhuys? The French said that their Envoy abandoned negotiations because Mr. Wyse was unreasonable. Lord Palmerston contended that Mr. Wyse was of opinion that M. Gros had dropped mediation because the
