palmerston as junior lord of the admiralty and secretary of war, april, 1807, to may, 1827.
the early years of lord palmerston, though he was in office, in parliament, even when he had become a cabinet minister, were not those by which he will be known. pitt died about the age at which palmerston went to the foreign office, having served his country as prime minister for nearly twenty years. but during that period of his comparative youth, lord palmerston was always at work, gaining slowly that consideration in the eyes of men on which his fame and strength was built up. it was not in him to take parliament by surprise, and to captivate the ears of all hearers by some precocious speech. nevertheless he slowly learned the art of speaking with great efficiency, and could at last carry on a debate with energy and success,—as was found by the don pacifico speech, to which we shall come in his sixty-sixth year, when he spoke for five consecutive hours. in the way of speech-making, that was the greatest effort of his life; but other orators have reached their zenith before they have become sexagenarians. through his whole life i think that he had never spoken for the mere sake of the effect which oratory is supposed to have. in the mode of life to which he had fashioned himself, there constantly arose matters which{15} required speeches. when the occasion fell upon him he could express himself. when, as secretary of war, he had to advocate a military college, he declared that, “for his part, he wished to see the british soldier with a british character, with british habits, with a british education, and with as little as possible of anything foreign.” the argument was ad captandum, but it was of a nature fitted for its purpose. such generally were his arguments. and he could tell a story with expressive force, as he did tell the story of don pacifico in his own defence. he failed lamentably in defending himself after his dismissal from the foreign office,—when the witty statesman said, prematurely, that there “had been a palmerston.” defence by words would at that moment have been very difficult,—to have been efficacious and hot to have been disloyal! but he could answer a rowdy at the hustings with rough, easy fun, in a manner that, with such an audience, was found to be successful. he seems to have prepared his speeches carefully when he was young, having among his papers left the notes behind him when he died, but to have abandoned the practice as he became accustomed to the work. it was just what we should have expected. he looked forward as a young man to speaking as a necessity from which there could be no escape; but he never seems to have regarded the art as the source of his power, or the bulwark of his fame.
his first speech was in 1808, on the taking of copenhagen. we have all read our history sufficiently to know that nelson raised his telescope to his blind eye, or in other words, took upon himself to disobey his superior officer. the danish expedition was debated, and nelson, as we know, got great honour for what would have ruined{16} him had he been unsuccessful. the ministry were attacked as to the expedition to copenhagen, and on this occasion lord palmerston, as a lord of the admiralty, made his first speech. “my dear elizabeth,” he says, writing to his sister, “you will see by this day’s paper that i was tempted by some evil spirit to make a fool of myself for the entertainment of the house last night; however i thought it was a good opportunity of breaking the ice, although one should flounder a little in doing so; as it was impossible to talk any egregious nonsense in so good a cause.” in time, as he came to have more experience, he must have found that in this he was in error. let the case be ever so good, the oratory may be bad. but he had numbers on his side. there were 253 votes for government and 108 against it;—and yet palmerston complained to his sister that the division was not so good as he had expected. he tells us he was half an hour on his legs, and did “not feel so much alarmed as i expected to be.”
he had opened his lips but once in the house of commons, when, in october 1809, there came a break up of the cabinet, on the duel between canning and castlereagh. mr. percival undertook the office of prime minister, and offered to palmerston the place of chancellor of the exchequer, from the duties of which he was desirous of saving himself. the fact that he did so will chiefly be of use to us as showing the idea which was then held of lord palmerston by his elders, and the idea which he held himself. he writes to lord malmesbury for advice, but he himself gives the advice on which he means to act “i have always thought it unfortunate for any one, and particularly a young man, to be put above his proper level, as he only rises to fall{17} the lower. now, i am quite without knowledge of finance, and never but once spoke in the house.” “a good deal of debating must of course devolve upon the person holding the chancellorship of the exchequer. all persons, not born with the talents of pitt or fox, must make many bad speeches at first, if they speak a great deal on many subjects, as they cannot be masters of all; and a bad speech, though tolerated in any person not in a responsible situation, would make a chancellor of the exchequer exceedingly ridiculous.” and so that matter of the chancellorship of the exchequer was decided. he had not possessed the gifts which would have enabled him to be a second pitt, but he had the gift of knowing that he could not be so. he settled down at last as secretary at war, and, by his own judgment, decided on taking the office without a seat in the cabinet. writing again to lord malmesbury, he says: “percival having very handsomely given me the option of the cabinet with the war office (if i go to it), i thought it best on the whole to decline it; and i trust that, although you seemed to be of a different opinion at first, you will not, on the whole, think i was wrong.” he tells us that he entered on his new functions on the 27th of october, 1809. he was then twenty-five years old.
having thus made his choice against the cabinet, he did not enter those sacred doors till may, 1827. an apprenticeship of eighteen years was more, probably, than he had anticipated when he made his choice. but it was no doubt well for his future fame and his stability as a government servant, that it should have been so. during these eighteen years he was thoroughly learning his duty as a minister of the crown;—learning, as some{18} will say, how to exaggerate those duties, and to absorb into his own hands more of power and potentiality than had been intended by those who had appointed him. but by himself, though he thought probably but little about it while he was learning it, the lesson had to be learned; and the lesson taught seems to have been this, that he would interfere with the duties of no other office than his own, but with those duties he would put up with no interference. there may have been danger in this; but such was his theory of official life. and it can hardly be denied that as a minister of state no englishman has been more successful.
than mr. percival, who thus offered to lord palmerston a seat in his cabinet, no englishman who has become prime minister, was ever a more prejudiced, more antiquated tory. he was, especially, a determined protestant, regarding any catholic claims to the privileges of citizenship with all the bigotry of religious conviction. at this time the regency began, king george iii. having given place to his son, who became prince regent, and ten years afterwards george iv. but in lord palmerston’s early speeches, or in his parliamentary conduct, there is no allusion to any peculiar political bias, and apparently no thought of it. he had joined the government, as other young men in lower ranks of life join this or the other profession, and as other young men do,—or neglect to do,—did the work that came to his hands. in none of his letters that are published does there appear any strong political feeling, as there would be nowadays, in the letters of young men who look to parliament for distinction. he had been brought up among tories, and was therefore a tory; but with no violence of predilection. he was keen rather as to the{19} delights of the life of fashion in which he lived; but he seems to have known that such delights cease to be delightful if they be not accompanied by work, and therefore he worked, having always before his eyes the future which might possibly be open to him,—and which did eventually come to him. throughout the next twenty years he will be found constant at his office, for the most part silent in parliament, but speaking, when he did speak, always with a mind gradually, but very gently, tending towards liberal principles.
then there came a change in the government. in may, 1812, mr. percival was murdered in the lobby of the house of commons, and lord liverpool became prime minister. under him there came a period of so great a glory for england that the weakness of his administration has been forgotten in the military annals of the country. but lord palmerston held his place as secretary at war till 1827, and, on the death of lord liverpool, he came into the cabinet. that such a man as lord liverpool should have been head of the government for fifteen years is not more wonderful than that such another as lord palmerston should during the same long period have filled a subordinate office under him. and during this time waterloo had taken place, and the occupation of paris. but our concern is here with the subordinate, and not with the prime minister. he had at last been elected by the university of cambridge in 1812, and was re-elected in 1818, 1820, and 1825. very little is heard of him during the whole of this period as a public man, and yet it was by his mouth that the taxes were suggested by which the enormous war estimates and foreign subsidies of 1813, 1814, and 1815 were supplied. he seems to have{20} submitted tamely to whatever lord liverpool proposed, and to have considered that, if he did his duty according to his own theory in his own office, he need not trouble his head with the political feelings of other members of the government. he contested with sir david dundas and the duke of york the question of the power and supremacy which was invested in them as commanders-in-chief, and in himself as secretary of war, with a determination of purpose quite worthy of the future foreign secretary. on these occasions neither did the commander-in-chief nor the secretary at war gain any victory, the prime minister of the day feeling himself to be too weak to decide against either disputant; but palmerston seems to have held his own and to have well maintained the prestige and influence of his office.
when the name of “cupid” was first given to him i am unable to learn, but it was probably during this period, and tells a tale only of the sort of life which he then led. he was the “enfant gaté” of society; but he was not “spoiled” as regarded his official and parliamentary duties. he was called “cupid,” and enjoyed a peculiar popularity in all assemblies in which fashion held the sway. men seemed to believe in him, and women too, as having a position peculiarly his own.
he was a member of a tory government, and yet since 1812 had voted in favour of the catholics whenever questions in their favour came before the house. it seems that in 1825, when at a general election he had to stand again for the university, he expected that the influence of the government would be given to copley,—the future lord lyndhurst,—and to goulburn. “i had complained,” he said, “to lord liverpool and the duke{21} of wellington and canning, of being attacked, in violation of the understanding upon which the government was formed, and by which the catholic question was to be an open one; and i told lord liverpool that if i was beaten i should quit the government. this was the first decided step towards a breach between me and the tories, and they were the aggressors.” and that the influence of the government was so given there can be no doubt, as copley came in at the head of the poll; but still, as lord palmerston was enabled to keep his seat, he and lord liverpool went on together in office as long as lord liverpool remained. “the whigs have behaved most handsomely to me,” he says further on; “they have given me hearty and cordial support, and, in fact, bring me in. liverpool has acted as he always does to a friend on personal questions,—shabbily, timidly and ill. if i am beat, i have told him he must find another secretary at war, for i certainly will not continue in office.”
during this long period we have glimpses of his life from letters to his sister elizabeth and to his brother william, who was afterwards for some years our minister at naples. he went to paris soon after waterloo, but not till the sovereigns and the duke of wellington had decided on surrendering to their old owners those works of art which napoleon had brought to paris. “but i rejoice most exceedingly in the thing, and would have foregone the sight of every work of art in the gallery sooner than have left them there. the french, however,—that is, the royalists,—are furious; and lady malmesbury, who lives almost entirely with them, has taken it up in so tragical a tone that literally there is no talking of it to her. she says the duke has disgraced himself, that it{22} is impossible for him to stay in paris, and that it must end in the murder of all the english. when first she talked to me about it, i felt like a person who is holding his countenance for a wager while somebody tickles his nose; and when, in spite of all my endeavours, a smirking smile crept into my face, she said, in the most serious manner, ‘no, indeed, this is no laughing matter; i can assure you it is very serious indeed! the netherland pictures are gone. the austrians are beginning to take the italian school belonging to them; and then the pope takes his property. the statues will go after the pictures, and the horses are to be taken down to-day or to-morrow!’”
in 1818 palmerston was shot at as he was entering his office, by a madman, one lieutenant davis; and i remember well to have had the spot pointed out some ten years afterwards, and to have heard the story that it was chiefly by his own quickness of movement that his life was saved. we have been told since that he supplied the money necessary for the defence of the culprit. he afterwards visited waterloo, and criticizes the dirt of the russian troops whom he saw reviewed there. he finds fault also with the reasons given for the building of a fortress at namur, thinking that this displayed an absence of proper military spirit “i am afraid,” he says, “that our allies the belgians want much of that spirit never to submit or yield, which is necessary to enable them successfully to defend their territory.” here we do not quite agree with his criticism, and can only express our hope, as we pass on, that the belgians may continue to do their work as well for the next fifty years as they have done for the last. then we come across a remark as to an old friend of ours, which the light of subsequent years{23} has proved to be altogether wrong. speaking of the army estimates, he says: “he”—joseph hume—“is going down hill very fast; indeed, so dull and blunder-headed a fellow, notwithstanding all his perseverance and application, could not long hold his own in the house of commons.” joseph hume, however, did hold his ground, and rose till he was believed in as the great financial reformer of the house of commons.
the style of palmerston’s letters is what one would expect from that of his speeches and despatches. it is clear, concise, and very easy to understand, without any approach to artificial graces, or even to the formalities of grammatical correctness. “as to weather, we are fried alive.” he mixes up his racing and his property, his art and his politics, just as any other man would do. “i have been a horrid bad correspondent for some time past.” but he goes at length into his land improvements, and tells his reader, with great zeal, of the good he has been doing down in co. sligo: “my harbour is nearly completed;—it will be an excellent one for my purposes; it will be about one and a quarter english acres in extent, and will have fourteen feet water at high spring tides,—enough depth to admit vessels of 300 tons, and as much as any harbour on the west coast of ireland; and it has an excellent anchorage in front of it, where ships may wait the tide to enter. i have no doubt that in a short time it will be much frequented by the coasting trade; and if i can get people—which nimmo thinks probable—to lay down a railway to it from the end of loch erne, a distance of fourteen english miles, it would become the exporting and importing harbour for a large tract of very fertile country lying on the banks of that lake, and would communicate with an inland navigation of nearly forty{24} miles in extent.” the nimmo named is the engineer of those days who did much good work in the west of ireland. “i have established an infant linen market at cliffony, held once a month, and have no doubt of its prospering and increasing. i have just got two schools on foot, but am at war with my priest, who, as usual, forbids the people to send their children.”
the battle for catholic emancipation was being carried on, and it became clearer from year to year on which side lord palmerston was to be counted, in spite of his colleagues, whom he thus names: “i can forgive old women like the chancellor, spoonies like liverpool, ignoramuses like westmoreland, old stumped-up tories like bathurst; but how such a man as peel, liberal, enlightened, and fresh-minded, should find himself running in such a pack is hardly intelligible. i think he must in his heart regret those early pledges and youthful prejudices which have committed him to opinions so different from the comprehensive and statesmanlike views which he takes of foreign affairs.” but even for catholic emancipation he had very little to say in parliament. it cannot be too often declared,—either as against his character as a statesman or on his behalf, as the reader may think it,—that he was not in any part of his career a man prone to speech. he was brought up in that school of politicians in which a man uses his power of speech, or used to use it, not as a woman uses her teeth, for ornament, but as a dog does, for attack and defence. to have to make a speech was from the first to the last of his career an evil thing, though the evil became mitigated by practice, till as a personal annoyance it wore away. nevertheless there was the time lost, and the trouble necessary to be taken, and the hours given{25} up to the listening to other people, which might have been so satisfactorily employed either in reading or writing, or in early years in playing cupid, or even in shooting pheasants, if his keeper would preserve them for him! as for his taking delight in the speeches of others, it cannot be believed of him. once—but he was then very young—did he burst out into praise of canning’s eloquence. “canning’s speech was one of the most brilliant i ever heard. he carried the house with him throughout.” but at that time he was not yet twenty-four.
when lord liverpool died he was forty. and he had lived as a man conspicuous in the world,—in office the whole time, holding a rank there next to that of the cabinet, remarkable for his official carefulness, for his industry, for his resolution to let nothing pass without his notice. soon after he had joined the war office, in 1809, he had remarked on the insufficiency of the departmental resources. “its inadequacy to get through the current business that comes before it is really a disgrace to the country; and the arrear of regimental accounts unsettled is of a magnitude not to be conceived. we are now working at the treasury, to induce them to agree to a plan, proposed originally by sir james pulteney and reconsidered by granville leveson, by which, i think, we shall provide for the current business, and the arrear must then be got rid of as well as we can contrive to do it.” but he had clung to his work during the whole period with that tenacity which in official life will get the better of all arrears. and in doing so he had made his character known to all official men. it was not because he was a good speaker, as is now generally the case, that he was chosen by one minister after{26} another, and that lord liverpool had been so anxious to retain him, but because the office work was safe in his hands, and because he had shown that he would make fewer mistakes than another man. he had always the pluck to stand up for himself and his office in a becoming manner, caring nothing for any, whether they were in opposition, or below him in office or above; whether they were in the cabinet or of royal blood, as was the duke of york. “come on then and fight, if it has to be.” this is what he would say, with all good-humour; but had never any special desire to have his official points and aspirations and beliefs made matter of debate in either house of parliament. such was his official character, and joined to this was his fame as a man of fashion. he did all things that young men did, and did them well, and at forty he was still a young man. or if he did not do them well, he did them as a young man of fashion ought to do them. if he was not at first successful with his racing, he carried on the amusement in the grand manner. he did not bet. it was not the fashion for a nobleman in those days to plunge. but he kept his horses with a first-class trainer, and was careful to see that the stable as far as possible was made to pay its expenses. we can imagine that he was much thought of at almack’s, and was a desired guest at the houses of all the exquisites. there is little, or indeed nothing, said about his tailors or bootmakers in any of his letters that have come to us. but we can imagine that he was very careful in his dress, without descending to the outspoken vanity of dandyism. he lived a life full to overflowing in every direction, and on which the society of beautiful women must have had great effect. but with beautiful women he got into no troubles.{27} there exists at least no record of such trouble. he passed on, a young man of fashion, for a period of twenty years, sipping all the honey from all the flowers, but without any of the usual consequences of such sipping. it was characteristic of him that neither in his early or in his later life was there any love of display. he was a man desirous of all things that were pleasant, but seems to have wished that they should be accorded to him simply as his deserts, and not in obedience to any demand that he had made for them. in 1827, when he was nearly forty-three years old, he was called into the cabinet. this formed the dividing point in his life, up to which i have regarded him as a young man, and after which i will not call him by that name though it may have been deserved. but i will ask my readers to remark that when that time came he had already a long time since refused to be a cabinet minister; refused to be chancellor of the exchequer; had twice refused to be governor-general of india; had refused to be the governor of jamaica, an office for which george iv. seems to have thought him peculiarly qualified; and refused to be postmaster-general, a place which in those days required the holder to be a peer. but of the records of his life up to that period little is but now thought, and even yet three years more had to run by, and the discreet age of forty-six had to be reached, before he was placed at the foreign office, in the administration of which department he will, i think, be best known in history.
