ROYAL PALACE, NAPLES.
The Whigs, embarrassed by the refusal of Jewish Members to take the Parliamentary Oath, next introduced a Bill expunging from the form of the oath the words “on the true faith of a Christian.” The only bitter opponents of the measure were the Tories, for most of the Peelites, like Mr. Gladstone, supported it. The Commons passed the measure readily enough; but in the House of Lords the hostility of the Episcopal Bench was fatal to it. Another measure was sacrificed to the ecclesiasticism which was then prevalent in Parliament. That was the Bill to legalise marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister, which Mr. Stuart Wortley introduced on the 3rd of May, and the most vehement opponents of which were Mr. Goulburn, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir R. Inglis. Mr. Wortley carried the Second Reading without much difficulty; but when Mr. Goulburn threatened to use the forms of the House to obstruct the further progress of the measure, it was withdrawn.
Foreign affairs originated some acrimonious debates in both Houses during the Session. On the 6th of March a question was put by Lord Stanley to
LADY PALMERSTON.
Lord Lansdowne asking if it were true that a Government contractor had been allowed to withdraw arms from a Government store, and supply them to the insurgents in Sicily. Lord Lansdowne could not deny that the allegation was true; and the incident not only caused a great deal of excitement in the country, but it was one that gave much pain to the Queen, who naturally saw in it the reckless hand of Lord Palmerston. The secret history of the affair was this: Mr. Delane, the editor of the Times, happened to meet a Mr. Hood—an Army contractor—accidentally. In conversation Mr. Hood incidently mentioned to Mr. Delane that when certain Sicilian agents applied to him for stores, he explained that he had none on hand, having supplied all he possessed to the Government. But he observed that if he could persuade the Government to let him have these back, he would hand them over to the Sicilian insurrectionary agents, replacing the Government stores in due time. The contractor applied to the Ordnance Department, stating that his application had a political, as well as a commercial, object. The Department, therefore, referred the matter to Lord Palmerston, who sanctioned the transaction. The Times immediately published this story, and its attacks on Lord Palmerston for having insulted Austria, and connived at insurrection in Sicily, annoyed the Queen so seriously that Lord John Russell compelled Lord Palmerston to apologise to the King of Naples, for whom he cherished a supreme contempt. But when the scandal grew clamant, Mr. Bankes opened up an attack in the House of Commons on Lord Palmerston. He, however, mixed up with it a great deal of general criticism on the policy of the Government in Italy, and gave Lord Palmerston an opportunity of winning an easy victory by posing as a friend of freedom, and a martyr to the doctrine of nationalities. Lord Palmerston, writes Mr. Greville, delivered, in reply to his antagonist, “a slashing, impudent speech, full of sarcasm, jokes, and claptrap, the whole eminently successful. He quizzed Bankes unmercifully, he expressed ultra-Liberal sentiments to please the Radicals, and he gathered shouts, laughter, and applause as he dashed and rattled along.”
On the 22nd of March Lord Aberdeen headed another abortive attack on the Foreign Policy of the Government. He complained that whereas Lord Palmerston had been active in menacing Austria if she meddled with Sardinia, he had spoken smooth things to Sardinia—never going further than warning her that if she broke existing treaties, she would be doing a dangerous thing. Aberdeen’s attack was regarded as a semi-official expression of the ideas of the Sovereign on Lord Palmerston’s policy; and it came to this, that Palmerston had made England an object of aversion in every capital in Europe, by interfering between Governments and their subjects, in a manner which brought on him the animosity of both. He had been arrogant to the despots, and, whilst he had encouraged the rebels, he had tamely abandoned them, whenever it became irksome to defend them. In this debate the Foreign Office was convicted of having suppressed an important despatch relating to Austro-Sardinian affairs in the papers laid before Parliament. The truth is that the Cabinet did not know what was and what was not included in the papers that Lord Palmerston chose to publish; and Lord Palmerston sometimes did not even give his colleagues enough information to enable them to answer questions. One example of this is worth recording, because it directly affected the Queen. In May, Lord Lansdowne, in reply to a question of Lord Beaumont, told the House of Lords that “no communication whatever had been made by the Austrian Government to ours relative to their intervention in Italy.” But Collosedo, the Austrian Minister, had five days before that gone to Lord Palmerston and communicated to him, by order of the Austrian Government, their objects in interfering in Italy. Palmerston kept his colleagues in utter ignorance of this interview; and when the truth leaked out, Lord Lansdowne had to set himself right the best way he could. As for Palmerston, when he was challenged with deceiving his colleagues, and suppressing the fact that this Austrian communication had been made to him, he replied impudently that “he had quite forgotten it.” His needlessly violent anti-Austrian policy, coupled with delinquencies of this kind, was intensely annoying to the Queen. Writing under the date of June 3rd, Mr. Greville, in his Journal, says, “The Duke of Bedford told me a few days ago that the Queen had been again remonstrating about Palmerston more strongly than ever. This was in reference to the suppressed Austrian despatch which made such a noise. She then sent for Lord John Russell, and told him she could not stand it any longer, and he must make some arrangements to get rid of Lord Palmerston. This communication was just as fruitless as all her preceding ones. I don’t know what Lord John said—he certainly did not pacify her; but, as usual, there it ended. But the consequences of her not being able to get any satisfaction from her Minister have been that she has poured her feelings and her wrongs into the more sympathetic ears of her late Ministers, and I believe that the Queen has told Peel everything—all her own feelings and wishes, and all that passes on the subject.”
In these circumstances an anti-Palmerstonian cabal was naturally formed. Lord Aberdeen, a devoted friend of the Queen, attempted to organise a movement for driving Palmerston from office; but the great obstacle was Peel. Nothing could induce him to upset the Ministry which was pledged to procure a fair trial for Free Trade. The Court Party, however, suggested that, if censured, Palmerston might resign and his colleagues stay in; or that they might all resign, and then, when it was shown that no other Government could be formed, and that the Peelites could render the formation of another Ministry impossible, Lord John Russell and his colleagues might come back to power, without Lord Palmerston. The scheme failed; but, as Mr. Greville says, the curious thing to note about it is “the carte du pays it exhibits,” and the remarkable and most improper position which Palmerston occupied vis-à-vis the Queen and his own colleagues. “I know not,” writes Mr. Greville, “where to look for a parallel to such a mass of anomalies—the Queen turning from her own Prime Minister to confide in the one who was supplanted by him; a Minister talking over quietly and confidentially with an outsider by what circumstances and what agency his colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, might be excluded from the Government; the Queen abhorring her Minister, and unable to rid herself of him; John Russell, fascinated and subjugated by the ascendency of Palmerston, submitting to everything from him, and supporting him right and wrong, the others not concealing from those they are in the habit of confiding in their disapprobation of the conduct and policy of their colleague, while they are all the time supporting the latter and excusing the former, and putting themselves under the obligation of identifying themselves with his proceedings, and standing or falling with them.”[2]