to the English statesman on account of their antipathy to Constitutional government. The claims of the two Queens to their respective crowns were asserted by the Liberal Cabinets at Paris and London, and for the preservation of their rights the Quadruple Alliance was established. More than this, Lord Palmerston placed certain English forces at the disposal of the Peninsular Governments, and consequently engaged in armed as well as moral interference in the Affairs of two foreign States. Here was an opening for the enemy. Lord Aberdeen objected entirely to The Palmerstonian policy, and pertinently asked how the Foreign Secretary could work out the Quadruple Treaty, supposing – what was not at all unlikely – that Don Carlos should make his way to Madrid, should seize upon the throne, and should expel his niece from the country? What right had we to interfere in such a case? What business was it of ours to impose a Sovereign upon a foreign State? What voice had we in the election of a Peninsular potentate? The logic of debate evidently belonged to Lord Aberdeen; but Lord Palmerston had the still more convincing logic of success. He violated the principle of neutrality; but the principle could never be absolute; the violation was necessary, and it proved to be beneficial. In defending his policy long afterwards, in that great speech which he delivered in the Don Pacifico debate, Lord Palmerston observed:– ‘As long as England is England, as long as the English people are animated by the feelings, and spirit, and opinions which they possess, you may knock down twenty Foreign Ministers one after another, but, depend upon it, none will keep the place who does not act upon the same principles.’
The most brilliant of Lord Palmerston’s exploits, however, during the first period of his Foreign Secretaryship was an armed interference to prevent the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire. It is well known that Mehemet Ali, from being the mere vassal of the Grand Seignior, had by his great ability raised himself as Pasha of Egypt into a position of real, though not nominal independence. Not content, however with the Pashalic of Egypt, he wished to add to it Syria, and, with the assistance of his son Ibrahim, proceeded to carry out his plans. Turkey, which had from its weakness been for many years an object of anxiety to European statesmen, was apparently in a very critical position. It had practically lost Egypt, and it was now to lose another great province. The beginning of the end seemed to have come, as more than a dozen years later it seemed to have come again, when the Emperor Nicholas proposed that the European Powers should dispose of the sick man’s effects. Lord Palmerston determined to avert this catastrophe if it were possible, and he made the utmost efforts to draw the great Powers into a league for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire in its integrity. Thiers at that time held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in Paris, and, probably from some lingering sympathy with the Napoleonic designs on Egypt, kept aloof from the movement while he continued to play with it. The results of all M. Thiers’s objections and doubts and despatches, however was that Mehemet Ali was gaining time; he was planting himself firmly in Syria, and the object for which the league was started was slipping from their grasp. Lord Palmerston saw through this Fabian policy, and set to work to counteract it. A treaty was suddenly signed by England, Austria, and Turkey, on the strength of which a fleet was sent to the Syrian coast with orders to co-operate in driving the Egyptian troops out of the country. The squadron was principally composed of English ships, and was under the command of Sir Robert Stopford, with Sir Charles Napier as second in command. In a very short time the intruders were driven from every position which they held in Syria, with the exception of the fortress of St. Jean d’Acre; and the defences of this town were so very strong that the Admiral declined the responsibility of an attack upon it. Sir Charles Napier’s plans for its reduction, however, were forwarded to Lord Palmerston, who, at once accepting the responsibility, took the unusual course of giving orders to Sir Robert Stopford for the attack in accordance with the views of his second in command. Who does not know the rest? The fortress, which had defied Napoleon, was taken in the most brilliant style, and Mehemet Ali was finally driven from the country and compelled to give up his claims.
The rapidity with which the exploit was conceived and executed, the daring of the attempt, and the magnitude of the result gave a lustre to the reputation of Lord Palmerston, and rendered him at once the most popular statesman in England. The energy and skill which he displayed on this and other occasions were really marvellous, and we can have little idea of it unless we remember at the same time the precarious condition of the Government to which he belonged. With a straggling party, which barely contrived to present the appearance of a majority, Lord Melbourne’s Administration was by its weakness forced into inaction and the most miserable expedients. The dashing Foreign Secretary, however, so far from acting as the member of a tottering Cabinet, went to work as if he had invincible majorities at his back, and could boast of being the most formidable Minister in Europe. He was, perhaps, the most active Minister then living, and his activity was felt in ways which but seldom came under the observation of the public. His exertions for the suppression of the slave trade, to give a single example, were of the most effectual, but also of the most unobtrusive, kind. He worked in that cause with the warmest zeal; others might wax cold in their endeavours, or might change their opinions, but he never altered – his interest in the negro never flagged, his desire to suppress the nefarious traffic amounted to a passion; and those who are fond of showing their own wisdom by talking of Lord Palmerston’s insincerity in the cause of constitutional liberty might acquire a further insight into his character by turning their attention to his ceaseless but silent efforts in this sacred cause. To crown all, let it be added that in the midst of all these labours Lord Palmerston found time to marry. The most active Minister in the world was the lightest of heart and the freest from care. He married in 1839 the sister of Lord Melbourne, and the widow of the fifth Earl Cowper. There never was a happier union, and Lord Palmerston owed to it not only the comfort of a happy home, but also much of that public influence which comes of an extended social intercourse and which in the end raised him to the Premiership. It was delightful to see him in public with his wife, and to note the interest which the pair excited. At the opera a thousand glasses would be levelled at his box, and all his little attentions to Lady Palmerston would be studiously observed, and criticized as if he were different from other men. If he differed from other men in this respect, it was in being the most devoted and attentive of husbands and in asserting his resemblance to those conjugal models, the first Lady Palmerston and the second Lord Palmerston.
At length the Whigs were driven from office; Peel became Premier, and Lord Aberdeen ruled at the Foreign-office. Sir Robert Peel had no sooner attained the object of his ambition than Lord Palmerston made a remarkable prediction, which we must record in his own words. ‘The right hon. baronet,’ he observed, ‘has said that he is not prepared to declare that he will never propose a change in the Corn Laws, but that he certainly shall not do so unless at the head of a united Cabinet. Why, looking at the persons who form his Administration, he must wait something near five years before he can do it.’ Lord Palmerston waited something near five years, and, perhaps, to his own astonishment, beheld the prediction verified. It will be remembered that when Sir Robert Peel proposed to abolish the Corn Laws he soon felt the necessity of handing over that work to the Whigs and of resigning his Premiership, but that the Whigs were unable to form a Government, through the refusal of Lord Grey to sit in the same Cabinet with Lord Palmerston. The first Earl Grey was the only one of the Whigs who stubbornly refused to coalesce with the Canningites in 1827, and now his son imitated his example by refusing to become the colleague of the last of the Canningites, if the direction of the Foreign-office was to be in his hands. This was too much for Lord Palmerston, who expressed his willingness to retire from office altogether, but insisted on being placed in the Foreign-office if he was to have a place at all. In the following year Lord Grey got over his scruples, and, under Lord John Russell, a Whig Ministry was formed, with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary. But, this preliminary complication seemed to indicate that even his colleagues began to doubt the policy of him who was at once the most popular and best abused statesman in England; and in the end Lord John Russell’s Cabinet was overturned through its resistance to Lord Palmerston. Six years of office, however, is a long lease of power as Cabinets go; and in Lord Palmerston’s department they were six very eventful years. The repeal of the Corn Laws had sweetened the political atmosphere of England, and had removed all anxiety from the administration of our domestic affairs. But, unfortunately, that which had brought peace and plenty to England – the repeal, which had done so much to alter the face of the country – had, by contrast, been the signal for revolution and disturbances of every kind throughout Europe.