the story of don pacifico.
the story of don pacifico is interesting, dramatic, and peculiar, and emblematic in the highest degree of lord palmerston’s manner of feeling and condition of mind. in it he will be seen carrying british honesty, british honour, and british determination to the very verge of absurdity and arrogance, till he pushes his principles almost beyond the verge. but who shall say what is absurdity? and he is held to have been thoroughly triumphant in the whole affair, because at last he got a majority of the house of commons to vote that he had been splendidly english and splendidly honest rather than absurd and arrogant. we may be sure that the statesmen of other nations ridiculed him, but that they did so with a mixture of awe, knowing that it was palmerston,—and knowing that palmerston must be allowed to have his own way in such matters,—unless he were stopped by his own countrymen. and a great attempt was made by his own countrymen to keep him down, and to prove that he had been ridiculous. lord stanley, who, since 1844, had been in the upper house, brought a direct motion against him, in which he was supported by lord aberdeen and lord canning; and he carried his resolution by a majority of thirty-seven. lord stanley had not forgotten the accusations of official{113} ignorance made against him by lord palmerston; and lord aberdeen’s memory was still laden with the bitterness of that “example of antiquated imbecility,” as which he had been represented to the house of commons. for amenities such as these lord palmerston was too wise to expect in return aught but similar amenities.
“i can only say,” said lord stanley, “that i have arisen from the perusal of these papers,”—and he describes the documents in his hands, all referring to claims made by lord palmerston against greece, as a weary waste of papers,—“with regret and shame for the part which my country has played.” then he takes the proud ground that the weakest and the strongest nations should in such matters be treated alike; and he asks whether such has been the case—imputing, of course, to lord palmerston the degrading fault that he has been imperious only against the weak. then he recapitulates the absurd cases for redress as to which lord palmerston sent the british fleet to the pir?us,—a fleet larger, as lord aberdeen goes on to say, than that with which nelson conquered at trafalgar. can this, we wonder, have been true? there is the matter of stellio sumachi, the blacksmith, which was of itself a very trivial affair. then there was the question of two of our war vessels, the fant?me and the spitfire. a midshipman out of one had landed in plain clothes where he ought not to have landed, and officers of the one ship were taken to have been officers of the other. this had given ground for great offence to british honour. there was the plunder of some ionian boats at salcina, ionians being regarded in athens as being greeks well able to take care of themselves,—whereas to lord palmerston they were british subjects. then there was the case of certain ionians who{114} had laid themselves down in the street to get rid of the fleas which were intolerable in their houses. with these men the police had interfered, as they certainly should not have interfered with british subjects afraid of fleas. then there was a bit of ground, which mr. finlay had bought for ￡10 or ￡20, amounting to less than an acre. this was included in king otho’s garden without payment, whereas a britisher should, of course, have been paid,—and mr. finlay demanded about ￡1,500. he did ultimately get ￡1,000. and lastly there was don pacifico, the jew. it had been the custom of the greeks at a certain festival to burn the figure of judas; but one of the rothschilds had come to athens, and it was thought that this christian ceremony would be distasteful to him. therefore the greeks omitted to burn the judas, but did burn don pacifico’s house, and among the rioters who burnt it was the son of the greek minister of war. now, don pacifico, though his relations were supposed to have been portuguese-jews, had resided at gibraltar, or, as some said, had been born there. he had at any rate made out for himself some claim to british citizenship. it sufficed for lord palmerston; but the amount of compensation claimed by don pacifico was, among the many absurdities, the most absurd. there were certain portuguese documents which were represented as of immense value. they had been burned, and ￡26,000 had been charged for them, though they seem to have consisted only of letters from don pacifico in which he made his claim, and from the portuguese government denying that anything was due to him. all these points lord stanley exposed, and he ended by moving; “that, while the house fully recognizes the right and duty of the government to secure to her{115} majesty’s subjects residing in foreign states the full protection of the laws of those states, it regrets to find, by the correspondence recently laid upon the table by her majesty’s command, that various claims against the greek government, doubtful in points of justice, or exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by coercive measures, directed against the commerce and people of greece, and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with other powers.” he carried his motion, as i have said, by thirty-seven votes. during the debate, lord aberdeen spoke of the “cry of indignation” which had been called forth throughout europe by the doings of our fleet; and lord cardigan threatened the peers with a great war.
the joy was great among lord palmerston’s enemies; and it will be understood that they were numerous. he had against him generally the diplomacy of europe. first of all the french were very hostile to him. the hostility of thiers and guizot still remained, kept warm among the archives of the french foreign office. and the austrians and the prussians and the russians were all hostile to him;—and the bavarians, of whose king, otho, the young king of greece, was son. the french, as he complains, were treating him with gross ingratitude. when the french were making demands on morocco, which palmerston himself describes as “unusual and exaggerated,” had not our consul, “first spontaneously, and then by instructions from me,” and “by an infinity of trouble,” talked the moors into paying? but, he tells lord normanby, that when we ask for our own, “we find the french minister, faithful to the course which french diplomacy has for years past pursued in greece, encouraging the greek government to refuse,{116} and thus doing all he can to drive us to the necessity of employing force to obtain redress.” and even among englishmen a strong party has been made against him. even his own friend lord normanby, his own ambassador in paris, does not seem to have assisted him with his whole heart in what he was doing. “as to the melodrama which you talk of, it seems to me to have been the right course.” “but we have all along been thwarted in greece by the intrigues and cabals of french agents, who have encouraged the greek government to ill-use our subjects and to refuse us satisfaction, and of course thouvenel is frantic that at last we have lost patience.” and russia is as hostile as france. he writes to lord bloomfield; “we do not mind the russian swagger and attempt to bully about greece. we shall pursue our own course steadily and firmly, and we must and shall obtain the satisfaction we require.” “i have been so busy fighting my battle with france, that i have been obliged to put off for a time taking up again my skirmish with russia.” “there have been in london within the last week letters from madame lieven to friends of hers here, abusing me like a pickpocket.” and he complains of our own newspapers. in writing to the prime minister, he talks of “the boastful threats made by the times newspaper as to what russia would do to put a stop to our proceedings in greece.” then again he writes to lord john as to a question which is to be brought before the cabinet on the next day. he has already obtained a deposit from the greek government, and the question is mooted whether the deposit shall not be returned. “normanby’s conversation with the president brings another question under the consideration of the cabinet. louis napoleon would be satisfied,{117} as i infer, if to the arbitration we added the restitution of the deposit, and this the cabinet will have to consider to-morrow. the reasons for and against seem to me to be much as follows.” he then proceeds to explain why he thinks the deposit should be kept in hand, and he evidently feels that the cabinet may be against him. indeed, he fears that many are opposed to him who should be his friends, as well as all who are naturally his enemies. and we can see that it is not about this affair of don pacifico that his mind is anxious. don pacifico is such a flea as that which disturbed the slumbers of the british ionians. and greece, with its freedom, of which by this time palmerston had become nearly sick, was not much more. shall he, or shall he not, be able to hold his head on high amidst the deep court waters, in which he had so long been struggling? for the battle with him was one against the absolutism of rulers, on behalf of the constitutional rule of nations. with the rulers were their favourites and ministers,—and indeed masters; for who need be told that a metternich was, in fact, master in the court of vienna? “we have long had all these things in our own hands,” we can imagine they would say to themselves. “all the glory and the power, and the silks and the satins, and the soft words and courtly shows of imperial rule; and here is this man, who has crept in among us; and has become by his own audacity the first of our order, and is daily lecturing us as to the way in which we shall do our business! and at the bottom is he not as abominable a revolutionist as any of them? are we not, among us, able to put him down; and shall we not use the power which, by the excess of his own arrogance, he has now given us?” thus it is we can imagine that they spoke{118} among themselves, not without sundry endeavours to inveigle his own servants in their own courts. and we can imagine also in what language palmerston spoke to himself, when he looked round about him in the world and saw what was going on. he had been continually prompted to arrogance by the conviction that in no other way could he withstand the counts and barons, the duchesses and princesses. he must have known of himself that he was arrogant; but he must have known also that when he would yield an inch he would at once fall, an ell at a time. the motives in men’s minds are mixed. we do believe that with him a true love of liberty had grown up amidst his foreign office duties, forcing him to think rather of the english nation than of the ways of courts. but there had grown with it a lust of personal power and a desire to rule from his desk in downing street as much of europe as he could get into his hands. so should the turk do under certain circumstances, and so the austrian, so the russian, so the greek, and the spaniard,—and so, also, as far as might be possible, the frenchman. of course, with so many efforts, he often failed; but as he went on he saw, or thought he saw, that where he failed there had come misfortune to the world at large; and where he had succeeded, prosperity.
when he had found, or thought that he had found, that a thing was just, he would have his own way, and was not unfrequently earned astray from justice in the pursuit of power. greece had become to him a very stumbling-block of offences. prince otho of bavaria, who had been sent there to be king, hardly with palmerston’s assent, had not at all answered the purpose of his mission. the constitutional government which was{119} promised had been delayed, and was never really established under king otho. misrule of all kinds became rampant; and matters arose which, with all his patience, must have driven palmerston nearly mad in his efforts to keep men—not right, but from drifting into recognized illegality. that mr. finlay, who had bought his bit of ground, and had had it taken from him without payment and could get not even an answer when he sent in his bill, must have been a provoking stumbling-block. so also was don pacifico, with his abominable pettifogging levant lies and his jew villanies. i can imagine that, though it did not suit lord palmerston openly to abuse don pacifico, he must have hated him in the core of his heart. and those flea-bitten ionians, and even the silly english sailors, must have been distasteful to him. such a bill as don pacifico sent in! there were sofas, ottomans, and consoles of most portentous manufacture; and, above all things, there was a lit conjugal, which must have been surely kept for the expected arrival of a young duke and duchess. lord stanley says he prefers, in giving the inventory of the furniture, the language of don pacifico to the more homely phrase, a double-bed. and then those portuguese documents,—invaluable, not to be replaced, and now gone for ever!
lord palmerston of course knew, as well as did lord stanley, that don pacifico’s bill was a hideous levant fraud from beginning to end, having its only base of justice in the fact that the greek government had refused to acknowledge it at all. a greek, of some position in his country, had been present in the streets encouraging the rioters when the house had been burnt down, and the police had refused to notice the matter. application over{120} and over again had been made for redress,—that due inquiries should at any rate be made; but nothing had been done, and lord palmerston would not put up with it don pacifico was the last ounce which broke the camel’s back. no doubt greece was a difficulty to him, and specially a difficulty because she was powerless to protect herself. king otho and his ministers were probably instigated by others to use their own weakness. when great britain finds a difference between herself and france or the united states, no doubt she must bide her time and wait till just inquiries have been made before true justice shall have been,—or shall not have been, discovered. but with greece,—with greece who was there as a separate nation, partly, if not mainly, by his own efforts,—it was out of the question that great britain should allow herself to be laughed at. it was at any rate, out of the question with lord palmerston. so he sent a fleet,—perhaps larger than was necessary,—to exact damages. certainly it was larger if it would have sufficed at the date of trafalgar to beat the united navies of france and spain;—but we doubt the fact. “even this pacifico,—this vile portuguese jew, this scum of the mediterranean,—shall have such justice as he may deserve; and if he have much more than justice, that will be the fault of those who refused to inquire into the matter when some inquiry was possible.” it was thus, that we can imagine palmerston to have spoken to himself.
the matter took wide proportions and loomed large as though it would assume european greatness. baron gros was sent from france as a mediator, and the french ambassador was actually withdrawn from london. it is hardly necessary now to make all the ins and outs{121} intelligible to the reader. at last the matter was settled. mr. finlay was paid and don pacifico received compensation. lord palmerston had so far been victorious. but the time had come in which the contest was to be transferred from the pir?us, and to be fought out in london. it has been told how lord stanley, whom we remember better now as lord derby, and lord aberdeen, had risen in their wrath, backed by lord cardigan and the majority of the peers generally. what influence had been at work who can say? but it was natural that such influence should prevail. that lord stanley did blush for his country, and that lord aberdeen did hear a cry of indignation, and lord cardigan fear a general war, was, perhaps, true. but the blushes and the cry and the fears were extended only to a limited area. the princes and the countesses blushed and feared. the lords having carried their resolution showed no purpose of going any further. but lord palmerston having been so treated could not allow the matter to rest there. he was not a man specially fond of making speeches; but here was a case in which, unless a speech could be made to some effect, he must acknowledge himself to have been beaten. in the house of lords viscount canning, the son of lord palmerston’s old master in politics, and who afterwards served in the cabinet with him and was his governor-general for india, finished his speech as follows; “if it was fated that a page in their history must be defaced by the record of a policy founded on injustice, conducted with arrogance, and closed without dignity, let them at least have the consolation to know that the same page would bear witness that their policy received, at the earliest opportunity circumstances would permit, its direct, deliberate, and unqualified condemnation{122} in a censure of the house of lords.” lord canning was not then so great a man as he became afterwards; but it was necessary that language such as this should receive a direct refutation in the house of commons, seeing that it had been asserted in the house of lords. if this could not have been made to come to pass lord palmerston must have retired.
on june 17, 1850, the debate took place in the house of lords. as no hostile motion was intended to follow up in the house of commons the hostility of the lords, the matter must be met by a movement on the other side. there was a consultation, no doubt, between palmerston and certain of his friends, and it was decided that the service of mr. roebuck should be employed,—more especially as mr. roebuck had more than once opposed the foreign policy of the great foreign minister. there was some flattery in the selection no doubt, but it availed. on june 24, therefore the member for sheffield moved that “the principles on which the foreign policy of her majesty’s government have been regulated have been such as were calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country; and, in times of unexampled difficulty, to preserve peace between england and the various nations of the world.” mr. roebuck, though his speech was long and somewhat inflated, did represent the matter well, looking at it from lord palmerston’s side.
then arose a debate as of the gods,—remarkable among debates for the length and strength of the speakers, as also, in the case of many of them, for the excellence of their speeches. sir frederick thesiger was longer than mr. roebuck, and sir james graham almost as long. they were men conspicuous then among tories, and{123} they both did their best against the foreign secretary. that lord john manners should have done so, and sidney herbert, and sir robert peel,—who now, alas, spoke for the last time in that house,—and mr. disraeli, the lion and the lamb thus lying down together, was what we should have expected to find on looking back to the debate. but sir w. molesworth spoke on the same side, and mr. cobden, both, no doubt, moved by high ideas of conscience. the strongest speech of all, however, as against the government, and the most damning to lord palmerston, was that spoken by mr. gladstone, who, sitting on the tory benches, rose in his rage, and laid about him with all that damaging passion of which he was then, when a tory, almost as great a master as he has since proved himself in the liberal ranks. as this is a short memoir of lord palmerston’s life, i cannot deal at length with mr. gladstone’s speech on that occasion. we can see him, however, and hear him as he rebukes the weary house. “what, sir, are there gentlemen in this house who can pursue their idle chat while words like these are sounding in their ears? if there are, i must tell them frankly that i am not a little mortified at their withholding from myself the compliment of their attention.” and again, he is gladstone himself, as he speaks of what the mighty owe to the feeble. “no, sir, let it not be so. let us recognize, and recognize with frankness, the equality of the weak with the strong, the principles of brotherhood among nations and of their sacred independence.” there were giants also on the government side of the house. bernal osborne, sir george grey, monckton milnes, and lord john russell all spoke well. but among those who supported lord palmerston, mr. cockburn, our lord chief justice{124} afterwards, was the most effective. his speech to this day is admirable reading, as indeed were many of the speeches then made. baillie cochrane, now lord lamington, who had long been a popular member of the house, had written a pamphlet strongly condemnatory of greece and of the gross injustice which prevailed there. but mr. cochrane was a tory,—a very decided tory,—and had spoken against palmerston in this debate with violence, and he now heard the words he had printed read to him with great effect by mr. cockburn. a more telling speech on mr. roebuck’s side could not have been made than this quotation, as showing the impossibility of obtaining redress by law in greece.
but the one speech of the occasion was that delivered by lord palmerston, and it was the greatest speech he ever made. it proved that had he chosen to devote himself to that branch of politics, he could have become a great orator. the debate lasted for four nights, and this speech occupied four hours and a half. he was, in truth, pleading for his life. and yet he seemed to take it quite calmly, and did not, during the whole of the four hours, allow himself to be carried into any violence. he went on with his arguments, never allowing them to fall flatly, but seldom attempting to rise to any excessive height. he laid down his idea as to the redress to which an englishman is entitled. “i say, then, that our doctrine is, that, in the first instance, redress should be sought from the law courts of the country; but that in cases where redress cannot be so had,—and those cases are many,—to confine a british subject to that remedy only would be to deprive him of the protection which he is entitled to receive.”
going on to the special case of don pacifico, he then{125} explains the circumstances. “what happened in this case? in the middle of the town of athens, in a house which i must be allowed to say is not a wretched hovel, as some people have described it,—but it does not matter what it is, for whether a man’s home be a palace or a cabin, the owner has a right to be there safe from injury,—well, in a house which is not a wretched hovel, but which, in the early days of king otho, was, i am told, the residence of the count armansperg, the chief of the regency,—a house as good as the generality of those which existed in athens before the sovereign ascended the throne,—m. pacifico, living in that house, within forty yards of the great street, within a few minutes walk of a guard-house where soldiers were stationed, was attacked by a mob. fearing injury when the mob began to assemble, he sent an intimation to the british minister, who immediately informed the authorities. application was made to the greek government for protection. no protection was afforded. the mob, in which were soldiers and gens-d’armes, who even, if officers were not with them, ought, from a sense of duty, to have interfered and to have prevented plunder,—that mob, headed by the sons of the minister of war, not children of eight or ten years old, but older,—that mob for nearly two hours employed themselves in gutting the house of an unoffending man, carrying away or destroying every single thing the house contained, and left it a perfect wreck.”
then he passes on to the general foreign policy of his administration, and answers the charges which had been made against him at great length by sir james graham. we cannot follow him here, as to do so we should be driven to go back over the whole work of his life. but the clearness with which it is all done is of such a nature that no{126} one can now obtain a more lucid statement of the english view of european politics during the period; and he then concludes his view of the manner in which great britain could wish that her foreign affairs should be governed, and in which he thinks that they have been governed by him. “i do not complain of the conduct of those who have made these matters the means of attack upon her majesty’s ministers. the government of a great country like this is undoubtedly an object of fair and legitimate ambition to men of all shades of opinion. it is a noble thing to be allowed to guide the policy, and to influence the destinies of such a country; and, if ever it was an object of honourable ambition, more than ever must it be so at the moment at which i am speaking. for while we have seen, as stated by the right honourable baronet the member for ripon, the political earthquake rocking europe from side to side,—while we have seen thrones shaken, shattered, levelled,—institutions overthrown and destroyed,—while in almost every country of europe the conflict of civil war has deluged the land with blood, from the atlantic to the black sea, from the baltic to the mediterranean, this country has presented a spectacle honourable to the people of england, and worthy of the admiration of mankind.”
the speech was liked by the whole house, foes as well as friends. it was thus that all englishmen felt that they would wish that an english minister of state should defend himself and the government to which he belonged. “it has made us all proud of him,” said poor sir robert peel, who, after that day, never lived to express such pride again. then came the division; and, in a house of five hundred and seventy-four members, lord palmerston was acquitted by a majority of forty-six. on the next day,—{127}or, in truth, on that day, for the division was not taken till nearly four o’clock,—he sent a word of joy over to lord normanby. “our triumph has been complete in the debate, as well as in the division; and, all things considered, i scarcely ever remember a debate which, as a display of intellect, oratory, and high and dignified feeling, was more honourable to the house of commons.”
there never had been a pitched battle fought on that arena in which the thing to be fought for was better understood, in which the combatants were marshalled in fairer order, in which the strategy was of a higher nature, or the courage displayed more brilliant. should the whigs, plus palmerston, be kept in office, or should they be expelled from office because of palmerston’s ungovernable arrogance? the house of commons and the whigs determined to keep palmerston in his place. the victory was very great, and the glory almost unbounded. the house of lords was set at naught, and a majority of forty-six in the house of commons was taken as showing the will of the entire nation.
but it was not to last for long. lord palmerston knew, or asserted that he knew, where lay the real force which he had to encounter; and though he sounded his trumpet loudly on the occasion, and in the moment of his triumph forgot that his enemies still existed, he lived to remember their power. he thus wrote to his brother william; “the attack on our foreign policy has been rightly understood by everybody as the shot fired by a foreign conspiracy, aided and abetted by domestic intrigue.” he goes on in the same letter to tell how he was invited to dinner by two hundred and fifty members of the reform club, and how the banquet might have been extended to a thousand had it not been thought well to limit{128} the demonstration. it was after this victory that the famous portrait of lord palmerston was painted, and presented to lady palmerston, by a hundred and twenty members of the house of commons. this period,—the end, that is, of the session of 1850,—was the culminating point in the fortunes of our great foreign minister. he lived, indeed, to be twice premier, and to have superintended the counsels by which nicholas was beaten to his death in the crimean war; but i do not think that he was ever as great as on the night on which he defended himself for having protected don pacifico. such is the story of don pacifico. how the battle was renewed under other auspices in the next year, and how lord palmerston was then dismissed by the same lord john russell who now had defended him, must be told in the next chapter.
