palmerston’s great merit as a governing man arose from his perfect sympathy with those whom he was called upon to govern;—and his demerit, such as it was, sprang from the same cause. he was bold, industrious, honest, strong in purpose as in health, eager, unselfish, and a good comrade. he was at the same time self-asserting, exacting, never doubting himself when his opinion had been formed, and confident against the world in arms. we cannot be surprised that such a one should have been loved by us, and still less so that he should have been hated by others. he was an enemy to the ministers of other courts, not only because he was bold, honest, and eager, but also because he showed himself plainly to have those qualities, and was never tired of asserting himself because of them. who is this man that claims to himself to be more hardworking and honester than any among us,—and who is making good his pretensions? such were not the spoken words of any foreign statesman of the day; but they describe the feelings on which they seem to have acted. and these men at the same time did believe themselves, and truly believed themselves, to be intellectually his superiors. let us take guizot as one of the number, who had much to do with palmerston, and with whom palmerston was much concerned. guizot{201} must have been conscious of brighter faculties and greater thinking power. but he must have been aware that in all discussions among men of the same class palmerston’s word was the strongest, because of his probity, and truth, and industry.
the same idea occurs to us in reading what has been written of him since his death. he is called “stupid” and “blundering” by those who have been opposed to his politics as a war minister. but such as his politics were, they were always those of his countrymen for the time being; and in a country professing to be ruled under the constitution which here prevails, i do not know what higher praise can be given to a minister. let the people change their principles; let the cobdens and brights teach them that war is altogether a bad thing, and that commerce will suffice to procure for us the respect of other nations. i do not say that it may not be so, and that the teaching of cobden and bright may not approve itself in the long run. but such has not yet become the opinion of englishmen generally; and until cobden and bright have taught their countrymen, the country requires such a minister as was lord palmerston. they liked his honesty; they liked his self-assertion, and they did not like it the less, because he expressed himself with a hectoring tongue.
mr. morley, in his “life of cobden,” vol. ii. p. 189, has said of palmerston, that sir john bowring was wrong in the affair of the arrow, and should have been recalled. he then goes on as follows; “it was not, however, to be expected from the statesman, whose politics never got beyond civis romanus, especially when he was dealing with a very weak power.” the charge here made is manifestly unjust. had he said{202} that palmerston had preached the doctrine of civis romanus against all nations, weak or strong,—usque ad nauseam,—there might have been some truth in the saying. but the sting of the reproach lies in the assertion that he had preached it especially when the weak were opposed to him. he has intended to imply that when greece or portugal were concerned, then, on behalf of britons, palmerston exclaimed, civis romanus; but that he lowered his colours and bated his breath when he had to deal with france or austria, with russia or prussia. against this i protest. take all the matters in which he was engaged with other countries,—the creation of belgium, the spanish marriages, his treatment of metternich and buol, and his life-long battle with nicholas, and then say whether he was civis romanus “especially with the weaker powers!” the word has escaped mr. morley in the pride of his contempt, and should be recalled from a work destined to live long because of merits which his prejudice cannot obscure.
but we do know that lord palmerston was unpopular among the foreigners, especially in the early part of his career. mr. greville thus wrote of him in his journal in 1834; “madame de lieven told me that it was impossible to describe the contempt as well as dislike which the whole corps-diplomatique had for palmerston, and, pointing to talleyrand, who was sitting close by, ‘surtout lui.’ they have the meanest opinion of his capacity, and his manners are the reverse of conciliatory.” again, he says, in 1835; “palmerston is beaten in hants, at which everyone rejoices.” but by degrees mr. greville mends his verdict. “the other night i met some clerks in the foreign office to whom the very name of palmerston is hateful. but i was surprised to hear them,—mellish{203} particularly, who can judge both from capacity and opportunity,—give ample testimony to his abilities.”
it will be seen from this that even among englishmen likely to be intimate with the diplomatic circle in london, so late as 1835 lord palmerston was supposed to have been generally unpopular, and his want of punctuality is spoken of, a fault likely to interfere much with the comfort of others. but at that time he was a man of fashion, and though he had been for many years specially noted for his industry in mastering all the details of his office,—at the war office for instance, through his many years of service before he was appointed to the foreign office,—it may be surmised that he preferred to work at such hours as best suited himself. if this was so, it only gives an additional proof of that determination to have his own way which governed him through all his life. but his popularity as a minister did not commence even among englishmen till after the dates above quoted from mr. greville’s journal;—nor that respect among foreigners, did in fact mean a reverence for the power he exercised. it was not in truth known to the world at large how great had been his influence in regard to the creation of belgium, nor how powerful had been his policy as to the quadruple alliance, till long after the period in question. and though he was sowing the seed for that respect which afterwards grew till he had become the arbiter of european politics generally, the men in whose minds the seed was growing would not, to themselves, admit the growth until the full plant was there, ripe for the use of the nations. in such a career it was necessary that the man should be hated before he was esteemed. therefore it was that madame de lieven spoke of him with contempt, and told of him{204} how talleyrand specially disliked him. had he been courteous and servile, and fit to take a place among themselves, the russian lady and the french gentlemen would have loved the polished man of fashion well enough.
and in those days palmerston was a tory, though he was a member of a whig government. it must be remembered that the death of mr. pitt was still nearer than the death of lord palmerston himself. there had to run more than thirty years before the latter event came. it was less than thirty years since pitt had died. and palmerston was still regarded as a man brought up in the courtly manner; and the fashion after which he was prepared to form a way of living for himself was not yet deciphered or understood. it was not believed that he intended to be so wise, so plastic, and so attentive a politician. in this respect he was running the same career which canning had taken before him, and which gladstone has taken since;—and which indeed peel may be said to have adopted in the last year or two of his life. he had grown into accord with the people of whom he was one. but neither did he do this as canning had done, with whom it was an affair of genius, of impulse, and of anger; nor as peel, with whom it was conscience; nor as gladstone, on whose versatile mind all motives which are not ignoble seemed to have acted with dangerous rapidity. palmerston changed slowly without knowing that he changed, and learned to wear the common garb of an englishman because englishmen around him wore it. “it is a brave spectacle,” says the edinburgh, in an eloquent article on his death, written in january, 1866;—“it is a brave spectacle to look back on, to see the skill and courage with which nearly single-handed he fought and baffled continental{205} despotism for more than thirty years.” “since cromwell’s time no other british statesman has had the honour of having his name made a bugbear to frighten children and despot-ridden lands.” “he was accused of being insolent and aggressive; he was accused of being truckling and cowardly. but now that he is gone there is not a man of us but would say, with his generous antagonist, ‘we are all proud of him,’” the generous antagonist had been sir robert peel; and the words he then spoke were the last which he uttered in the house of commons. the writer then goes on;—“he is gone; peace to his ashes! it is sad to think we shall never see again that pleasant face, that jaunty air, still dashed by a tinge of the dandyism of the regency, that never-failing figure on the treasury bench which drew all eyes; never hear the cheery trumpet tone, not unmusical in its cadences; never learn from his graver wisdom, nor meet his old familiar smile again. we laid him in westminster abbey with pride as well as sorrow, side by side with the dust of his great compeers, not dearer or mightier than he. he was a great man. he loved his country and his country loved him. he lived for her honour, and she will cherish his memory.”
as i am now quoting what was said of him shortly after his death, i will give an extract from an article which appeared in august, 1868, in the saint paul’s magazine, and was from the hand of mr. peter bayne;—
“when we were at war with russia, and when the nation, after trying statesman after statesman, continued in the distressing consciousness that the administration lacked vigour, the man who, for a quarter of a century, had been checkmating the policy of russia was naturally called for. in no spirit of confidence or enthusiasm,—{206}feeling clearly that others had failed, but by no means certain that the right man was yet discovered,—england said, ‘try palmerston.’ it was on the 8th of february, 1855, that the earl of derby withdrew, and that he took the helm. on the 16th he explained his position to the house. already all the machinery of an energetic administration was at work, and as the new prime minister glanced at department after department, detailing what had been done and what was planned, members felt that a new spirit of energy was already penetrating the framework of government. the country looked on in hope, beginning to breathe more freely. month after month went by; month after month the public watched. troubles came at first in threatening battalions upon the ministry; but the practical instinct of the nation gradually decided that palmerston was the man to whom the business of the war could be committed, and in whose hands the name of england was safe. it was astonishing with what ease he held the reins at that noisy time, and with what lightness and self-possession he encountered the obstacles in his path. in may the opposition made a determined attempt to unseat him, and a long and stormy debate took place. mr. disraeli, anxious to avail himself of the uneasy and disconted feeling which still widely prevailed, and to make the most of the inarticulate shouting of a number of ill-informed people who called themselves administrative reformers, moved a resolution to the effect that the language of her majesty’s government was ‘ambiguous and uncertain.’ the opposition maintained the attack with spirit and animosity, and the men below the gangway on the liberal side, in whose eyes lord palmerston never found favour, kept up a raking fire of argument, taunt{207} and invective. mr. disraeli closed the attack in one of his most impassioned philippics. one can still see him with the mind’s eye as his sentences rang through the house, his right arm coming down with fierce emphasis at each rhetorical close, while he asked, in impetuous torrent of interrogatives, whether the prime minister had not done this, that, and the other evil thing? it was beautiful to observe lord palmerston sitting in fixed and placid attention, cool as an old admiral cut out of oak, the figure-head of a seventy-four gun ship in a biscay squall. at last, as the hours of morning stole on, he placed his hat quietly on the table, and, amid the intense excitement of the house, sprang to his feet. not a shade of agitation or anxiety could you trace on that brave, clear, splendidly intelligent face. the forehead, broad and expansive, the eye frank, fearless, and sparkling, the whole countenance radiant with energy, courage, good temper, spoke assurance to his party and defiance to the opposition. he had got into the heart of his subject,—eleven and a half columns of hansard had been spoken,—when the cry of ‘black rod’ echoed through the house, and the usher who rejoices in that mysterious title summoned the commons to the bar of the lords, to receive her majesty’s assent by commission to certain bills. lord palmerston was interrupted; the speaker left the chair, and, with as many of the members as chose to accompany him, proceeded to the upper house. after a while the speaker returned, and lord palmerston resumed. ‘i think,’—these were his first words,—‘i have some reason to complain of the impatience of the other house in not waiting for the censure which the right honourable gentleman opposite is desirous of inflicting, but in prematurely administering the rod.’ the{208} opposition, joining in the titter which ran along every bench, learned that the tempest they had so passionately raised had agitated the mind of lord palmerston to no greater extent than was consistent with its wafting towards them a jest so feather-light as this. the next second he was grappling with the arguments of his opponents, and in one or two minutes all recollection of the interruption had passed from the memory of the house. his speech may be pronounced one of the noblest ever uttered in parliament. simple, manly, luminous, convincing, high in tone and unanswerable in reasoning, it told upon the intellect not only of parliament, not only of england, but of the civilized world. some of its sentences deserve to be remembered. ‘i feel that, in whatever hands the government is placed, the will of the country must and will be obeyed. i know that will is that england, having engaged in a war necessary and just, in concert with our great ally and neighbour, france, must and shall succeed.’ from the moment he was prime minister, lord palmerston felt that he held a trust higher than the interests of party, and not in the utmost fervour of debate, not in the most unguarded moment of social converse, could an expression pass his lips which, in discrediting his adversaries, cast a slur upon the name of england. in a still loftier tone, one seldom assumed by lord palmerston, and never except in a spirit of deep reverence and sincerity, is the following: ‘the fate of battle is in the hands of a higher power. it is not in our power to command success, but it is enough for us to do all in our power to obtain it. that we have done. in a cause which we consider to be just, necessary, and honourable, we confidently place our trust in a higher power.’ mr. disraeli was beaten by a majority of one hundred, and{209} the government confirmed in the hands of lord palmerston.
“from that night he was a kind of monarch in england. we learned to call him old pam, and to love him better than any prime minister was ever loved throughout the three kingdoms. all parties in the house took to him. it was pleasant to sit under his parliamentary government, and though there were liberals more liberal than he, and conservatives more conservative, the majority both of liberals and conservatives secretly preferred him to their special chiefs. he had not the slowness and heavy decorum of earl russell; he did not startle country gentlemen with extravagances, paradoxes, and freaks of intellectual rope-dancing, like mr. disraeli; and his virtue was not of that grim and earnest kind which rebukes a worldly-minded legislature in the person of mr. gladstone. the great neutral party in and out of the house discovered that the firebrand palmerston would not kindle dangerous conflagrations, but was opulent in the heat that warms without burning.”
and further on he says;—
“perhaps no single word goes so far in the description of lord palmerston as the word ‘manly.’ the feminine element is strong in some men,—they are vehement, impulsive, meekly obstinate, prone to extremes, apt to call whims principles, breaking down all fences of logic in their teacup storms of feeling. in every respect lord palmerston was masculine, not feminine. in one of those wise, well-packed bits which you meet with in the writings of goethe, it is observed that the key to the female character, as distinguished from that of the man, is found in a reference to the personal and private nature of the interests of women as{210} contrasted with the wider interests of men. her husband, her children, her household,—these are a woman’s own, and within the circle of these nature has ordained that her affections shall have their heartfelt play. these interests are essentially disjunctive; they pertain to the woman alone, and they isolate, while they intensify, her sympathies. the gregariousness of humankind, on the other hand, comes out where man acts in association with man; and man’s institution is not the family circle, but the nation. the masculine interests are common to the race, and the mental operation of the man is the impersonal reason which knows no prepossession and rejects all colouring of emotion. the duke of wellington occurs to one as specially illustrating goethe’s conception of the masculine mind; and lord palmerston was at all points a man. no sentimental egotism, no moral irritability, no sweet feminine cant about him. a genial stoicism,—not the stoicism of the cynic,—an inestimable faculty of taking the good and leaving the bad alone, an invincible serenity and lightness and brightness of soul, distinguished him. hopeful in adversity, cool in prosperity, ready for any fate, horace would have smiled approval on him, and mildly exclaimed, ‘bene preparatum pectus!’”
the question has often been mooted whether he was or was not an orator. before that question be answered, the man who asks it must decide what it is to be an orator. an orator such as bright and gladstone, or even as were disraeli and lord derby, as were in former days mr. fox, mr. burke, or mr. pitt, he certainly was not. he would not, like some of these men, have arranged his words with studious care, and have committed the chosen gems of them to his memory; nor, as others have{211} done, could he have burst out under the inspiration of genius into a sudden flow of words to which no study and no memory could have lent anything. to him it seems that oratory was an evil only to be encountered for the sake of certain purposes which could not be otherwise attained. how shall men know a fact unless they be told? or how shall a man tell a fact so as to induce belief unless he be instructed in the way of doing so? such was lord palmerston’s oratory. in the longest, and most telling speeches which he made, he seems never to have thought of the reflex effect upon himself. in his great effort on the don pacifico impeachment, or in his reply to mr. disraeli in the attack made on lord russell in regard to denmark, his object was to leave such an impression on men’s minds that they should ultimately be brought to show their agreement with his side of the question by the votes which they were to give. it was for this reason that he did his best, and not that he might achieve for himself any palm of oratory. gladstone bursts into speech that the brightness and splendour and marvel of the moment may be his own. bright is enabled by his intellect and study, and industry, to carry his admiring hearers along with him. in both cases there seems to be left on the hearer’s mind a feeling that the orator has without doubt established his right to the name. in the latter there is the sense, perhaps, of too great an expenditure of oil in avoiding a superfluous word. with the other, words run riot with such glorious fecundity as to leave an impression that some oil might have been expended in pruning their abundance. in palmerston there was neither the one nor the other; but in producing the effect which he generally did{212} achieve, there was always an idea present to the hearer, first, that he did not know exactly the words which would best suit his purpose, and then a feeling that he had fallen into their use by some celestial and godlike aid. it was not palmerston who had made the speech, but some goddess fortune who had put the words on to his lips.
by lord palmerston his capacity for speaking was only a means used for an end. the same may be said of all orators. to persuade others is the art to be achieved. but this is done in most cases by teaching an audience, or teaching the country to believe that the speaker should be credited with the power he seeks to gain because he is great as an orator. it was not simply because fox was wise that men ranged themselves on his side; but because from his tongue words flowed sweeter than honey. but with palmerston there was no thought of words flowing sweet. he had come to a special crisis of some difficulty, and men had to be made to vote as he wished them. when that was done, the speech and all belonging to it was, for his purposes, a thing of the past. he thought not at all that men should be rapt in wonder at his words. but the thing that he was doing, the attempt that he was making, the lesson that he was teaching,—the lesson, for instance, that palmerston was in truth the man in europe who best understood how europe might be governed,—that was his object in view, with as little of speech as might be possible, but still with a sufficiency, as such is the mode of governing in england.
but other means were wanting before any credence could be given to the immense claim he made on the confidence of those of his own country and of others.{213} he had to show that he had learned the lesson he attempted to teach, and could do this only by daily industry and indomitable perseverance. and it must be understood that the industry and the perseverance had come before his ambition had formed itself in reference to the management of europe. we must go back to his early days, when, after spending two years at the admiralty, he had been, still a lad, transferred to the war office, to perceive how resolutely he had begun the work of his life. england was at war, and he determined at once to learn all the ways and all the needs of a warfaring nation. but our wars brought us among foreign people;—to spain, to portugal, to france, and to the low countries. and in this way palmerston achieved his knowledge of what they wanted and of what we wanted. he had begun to see the claims of other diplomats, and to contest them before he had won his place at our own foreign office. he had been a young man of fashion; but that had been added on, out of the superabundance of his nature. hard work was to him the first necessity of his existence. he loved to be brilliant at almack’s, but he did not care to carry his brilliance into the house of commons. it followed him there in his latter years; but that too came from the superabundance of his nature. some one has said that palmerston, when at his greatest, was powerful and imperious only with a pen in his hand. we feel that this was so. but it is thus that the official work of a man in office should be done. and as he wrote the scathing letters to his own ambassadors which were intended to be read for the keeping in order of foreign ministers, we feel that he was very great. in the course of time they became too bitter. the arbiter of the politics of{214} europe became like other arbiters, its bully. they who shall hereafter be desirous of saying severe words against him, must if they desire their words to be effectual, confine themselves to this charge. against his honesty, his industry and his courage we feel that no true word can be said.
