BIARRITZ.
This conflict[232] was eagerly canvassed in all its stages by Englishmen of all classes, who seemed at this time to take a keener interest in the fascinating problems of American politics than in their own domestic affairs. But perhaps nothing appealed more strongly to the imagination of the people than the ease with which the American people disbanded their armies, and absorbed a million unpensioned officers and soldiers at the very moment of victory into the mass of the peaceful civil population. The calmness, courage, and good sense with which the Americans set aside the menaces of the war party against England, and applied themselves to pay off the six hundred millions sterling of their war debt, further commanded the admiration of the world. Not even in Mexico could the United States be persuaded to interfere. Their Government simply refused to recognise that of the Emperor Maximilian, and accredited a minister to the President of the Mexican Republic, who still waged a desultory struggle with the Imperial Government and its French allies. As France, however, had now thought it prudent to announce the withdrawal of her troops from Mexico, the United States could afford to wait for the inevitable issue.
The Danish Question, in which the Queen had so deeply interested herself during the previous year, was easily settled—for a time. Austria and Prussia agreed to share the spoils of war, and the Duchies were divided between them. This arrangement, formulated by the Convention of Gastein, in August, averted war between the allies. As for the views of the minor States and the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg, they were brusquely put aside. The Duke had made the fatal mistake of pretending to regard the services of Prussia in liberating the Duchies as uncalled for. He even hinted that his cause would otherwise have been much better managed by the Diet. When he came to Berlin to press his claims at the Prussian Court, he had an interview with Von Bismarck in the King’s billiard-room, which ought to have warned him of what was coming.
“At first,” said Bismarck once, “I wanted from him no more than what the minor Princes conceded in 1866. But he would not yield an inch (thank Heaven! thought I to myself, and thanks to the wisdom of his legal advisers).... At first I called him ‘Highness,’ and was altogether polite. But when he began to make objections about Kiel Harbour, which we wanted, and would listen to none of our military demands, I put on a different face. I now titled him ‘Translucency,’ and told him at last, quite coolly, that we could easily wring the neck of the chicken we ourselves had hatched.”[233]
The French Government described the Treaty of Gastein as an act of political “highway robbery and attorneyism.” Lord Russell condemned it as a mere expression of brute force, and the Fleets of France and England met and made a foolish demonstration at Cherbourg, by way of giving point to their diplomatic denunciations of the Convention. It was merely a temporary arrangement, which gave Prussia time to secure herself against France before she attempted to expel Austria from North Germany. At a mysterious interview between Napoleon and Bismarck at Biarritz, in October, it was supposed that, in return for vague promises to assist French schemes in Italy and Belgium, the Prussian Minister—now Count Von Bismarck—had obtained an equally vague pledge of benevolent neutrality from France.[234]
The last days of the moribund Parliament were enlivened by a grave personal scandal. Lord Chancellor Westbury was accused of having improperly and corruptly administered the patronage of his high office, and two cases were cited against him. One was that of Mr. Leonard Edmunds, who, though he had heavy defalcations in his accounts, was allowed to retire on a pension from the Clerkships of Patents and of the House of Lords, in favour of Westbury’s son. The other case rested on certain appointments which Westbury had made to offices, and on grants of retiring pensions in the Leeds Court of Bankruptcy. It was alleged that the Lord Chancellor, in making these appointments, had been influenced by family considerations detrimental to the public service. After receiving the Report of a Select Committee, the House of Commons censured Lord Westbury, who immediately resigned his office.[235] His Lordship, when he went to hand over the Great Seal to the Queen, had a somewhat painful interview with her Majesty. In his Diary, under date the 7th of July, Bishop Wilberforce writes:—“Going in to the Queen met Westbury coming out; his fallen look moved my compassion. Later I met him on the broad staircase looking quite down, as he wandered alone down to town. But Delane [the editor of the Times] told me that going up to London in the train he was quite uproarious in his jollity, professing such delight at being free from office, going to enjoy himself, foreign travel,” &c.
Parliament died of old age. It had exhausted its allotted septennial span, and was prorogued and dissolved on the 6th of July. The General Election created little stir or excitement in the country, because no appeal was made by either party to the constituencies on any vital question. The election of Mr. John Stuart Mill for Westminster roused some popular interest. The defeat of Mr. Gladstone at Oxford University was due to the votes of the non-resident graduates among the country clergy; and there was a stroke of unconscious irony in the success of the Opposition at Tiverton, where they managed to give Lord Palmerston a Tory as a colleague. The Liberals claimed to have carried 367 seats, and the Tories 290. But all speculation as to what course the new Parliament might adopt was cut short by the death of Lord Palmerston on the 18th of October. He was within two days of completing his eighty-first year, and, as his biographer says, “the half-opened cabinet-box on his table, and the unfinished letter on his desk, testified that he was at his post to the last.”[236] He had sat in sixteen Parliaments, and had been chosen to sit in a seventeenth. He had been a member of every Administration that had ruled England since 1807, save those of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Derby, and the voice of the nation rightly decreed for him the funeral honours of Westminster Abbey. It will always be a mystery why Palmerston succeeded in establishing, towards the end of his life, a personal dictatorship over the England which was governed by the £10 householder. In home politics he took hardly any interest. One day, for example, at Balmoral, when the Queen asked him for some information about a serious strike in the North of England, he replied that he had none; but “Madam,” said he, “I hear that the Russians have crossed the Pruth.” He was an aristocrat to the core, and his ideas of England’s mission in the world, and of her interests in the political forces and conflicts that shaped the destinies of nations, were those, not of a man of business or of affairs, but of a happy-hearted, reckless, pugnacious public-school-boy. To coolness, courage, and tenacity of purpose, he, however, added a dexterity in action that rendered him a successful as well as
“A daring pilot in extremity.”
In one of his letters to Sir Stratford Canning he reveals the secret of much of his power when he says, “I believe weakness and irresolution are on the whole the worst faults that statesmen can have. A man of energy may make a wrong decision but, like a strong horse that carries you rashly into a quagmire, he brings you by his sturdiness out on the other side.” Looking back on his career, it is hard to find one single stroke of his policy that can be justified by history, with the exception of the support he generously gave to the cause of Italian unity. The cornerstone of his policy in his last administrations was the Anglo-French alliance, and its worthlessness was attested not only by the enormous military expenditure which Palmerston himself extorted from the people to ward off a French invasion, but by the fact that the alliance itself always broke down to the disadvantage of England, whenever a strain was put upon it. His sympathy with democracy abroad brought him no credit, for it was insincere. It was displayed mainly in order to keep the Radical party quiet when the people began to demand reforms at home. His most wonderful practical achievement was that of reconciling both Tories and Radicals to the political supremacy of the extremely moderate Liberals—the Liberals who had been rendered Conservatives by the prosperity which Free Trade had conferred upon them. His cleverness in selecting serviceable subordinates, his personal loyalty to them, his geniality and cheerfulness, his singular gift of managing the House of Commons, all contributed to consolidate his influence in the country. His power over the House of Commons was probably greater than Peel’s. He knew, as if by instinct, in any emergency the kind of argument that was sure to tell on that Assembly. He ruled it through its foibles, its prejudices, and its impulses. He could adapt his style to every passing mood of its fickle temper, and alike in jest and earnest he was always on the level of its standard of good taste and fine feeling.