he found himself in the midst of a Swiss difficulty. A majority of the Cantons had ordered the Jesuits to retire from Switzerland; the Catholic-Cantons resisted the order, and the Catholic States seemed not unwilling to assist the minority by force of arms. By very skilful negotiations, and by a promptitude and decision which distanced every attempt to keep up with him, Lord Palmerston settled the difficulty, holding the Catholic States back with a promise of joint intervention, until the Protestants of Switzerland had fairly put down their adversaries, scattered their forces in a single engagement, and left no question open for the interference of an European Congress. Then came the affair of the Spanish marriages, in which Louis Philippe was supposed to have outwitted the Foreign Secretary. If in this business Louis Philippe had a triumph, it was a short lived one; for in the following February the dynasty which he thought to strengthen and make sure for ever was banished from France. In that tempestuous year 1848 every one of the Continental Thrones was shaken, the oppressed nationalities of Europe arose, and there seemed to be every likelihood of universal Democracy. The attitude which our Foreign Secretary assumed in this conjuncture was that of’a judicious bottle-holder,’ to use a term which was constantly applied to him, – in plain English, was that of cautious sympathy. He was too sympathetic to please those whose watchword was the law, and who frowned on constitutional liberty, – he was too cautious, too much a friend to order, too little disposed for forcible interferences, to please those who wished for subsidies as well as opinions, soldiers as well as advice, and so falling between two stools, his conduct gave satisfaction to very few on the Continent. The Germans sang—
‘Hat der Teufel einen sohn,
So ist er, sicher, Palmerston,’
because he refused to help them. So, also, he gave his support to Turkey when Austria and Russia with threats demanded the extradition of Kossuth and other refugees who had fled to the dominions of the Sultan, and he ventured to express great sympathy with the Hungarians; but, because he would not consent to go further, and wage war with Austria in behalf of the Hungarian and Italian nationalities he was denounced as a traitor. His conduct in the affair of Pacifico gave still greater offence on the Continent and not a little offence at home. He sent a powerful fleet to Athens in order to compel the Greek Government to pay up the ‘little bill’ of a certain Jew of the Ionian Islands, and of some others, for losses which they had sustained through outrages committed by the Greeks. There was something so amusingly disproportionate in the spectacle of the British fleet being sent to bombard Athens in order to force the payment of a disputed debt – of a British fleet dunning a Royal city for the recovery of a Jew’s pots and pans and chamber crockery – that nobody can wonder at the earnestness with which the policy that led to such a result was assailed in both Houses of Parliament. The debates on Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy which arose out of this incident are among the ablest and most important upon record, and, although his policy was entirely condemned in the House of Lords, it received the sanction of the House of Commons by a considerable majority. It was in reference to the vote of censure passed in the Upper House that Lord John Russell made the memorable statement – ‘So long as we continue the Government of this country, I can answer for my noble friend that he will act not as Minister of Austria, or of Russia, or of France, or of any other country, but as the Minister of England,’ – a statement which seemed to suggest that the question in dispute was something much deeper than that of a petty debt, and infringed on far more important rights affecting our relative position in the balance of power. The question was decided by the speech of Lord Palmerston himself, which was the ablest oration he ever made; and a very masterly, as well as very eloquent exposition of his whole foreign policy it is. The peroration is particularly effective, and when he came to that concluding passage in which he compared the British to the Roman citizen, reminded his audience of the protection which the latter could invoke in the simple phrase – ‘Civis Romanus sum’ – and asked why the former should not claim a similar protection in a similar formula, the enthusiasm of his supporters rose to its height, he was tumultuously cheered, and for that night the debate closed with this miracle of a speech, which, said Sir Robert Peel, ‘made us proud of the man who delivered it.’
Lord Palmerston gained the day, but the seeds of distrust were sown in the Cabinet, and soon bore their fruit. In December, 1851, he was forced to resign, because on his own authority he had pronounced in favour of Louis Napoleon when he assumed the dictatorship of France. It had been arranged that no important step in our foreign affairs should be taken without the assent of the whole Cabinet as well as of the Queen, and Lord Palmerston had – perhaps without knowing it – violated this arrangement, which was a restriction upon his powers. Lord John’s Cabinet, however, did not long survive the dismissal of the Foreign Secretary, who quietly kicked it over on a Militia Bill. Lord Derby’s Government succeeded, when, strangely enough, the Premier offered to Lord Palmerston that very post in the Foreign-office from which he had been dismissed by Lord John Russell, and for his conduct in which the House of Lords had, at the instigation of Lord Derby, passed a vote of censure. Lord Palmerston declined the offer, chiefly on account of the equivocal position which the Tory party maintained on the subject of Free Trade; and the consequence was that the Derby Ministry only held office until the more Liberal statesmen could compose their differences and make up an alliance. An alliance was soon formed under the auspices of Lord Aberdeen, who entered upon office at the head of the strongest Cabinet which has ever controlled the destinies of England. Lord Palmerston consented to serve in the Home-office under his old rival, while to propitiate the Whigs, Lord Clarendon was placed in the Foreign-office. The Russian War was the leading incident of this coalition. It finally broke down in consequence of those Crimean disasters which introduced an element of strife between the Conservatives and Liberal sections of the Ministry. In the meantime Lord Palmerston was plodding at the Home-office as if there were no such thing as foreign politics, and as if smoke nuisances and sewer nuisances were the only great themes of Ministerial anxiety. He dilated upon manure, and informed the world that dirt was only ‘a good thing in the wrong place;’ he discussed the subject of the cholera, and informed the English public that cleanliness is a more certain preventive than prayer. In this last piece of administration it was wittily said that the Foreign Secretary peeped out – he treated Providence as a foreign Power. There were not a few who in those days wished that he were indeed Foreign Secretary, – that he occupied a post which would bring more directly under his control the real work of the Aberdeen Cabinet, either the conduct of our negotiations for peace or the conduct of our military operations; and when he succeeded Lord Aberdeen as Prime Minister he more than justified the public expectation by the vigour which he threw into the war and the tact with which he concluded a peace.
It was certainly a proud day for him when, in answer to the long series of attacks upon him, he was elevated to the highest office in the State, as the only man able and ready to carry out that very policy of a war with Russia and an alliance with the French Emperor, which had been the source of misunderstandings innumerable and recriminations without end. It showed also immense courage on his part that he was willing to undertake this arduous task with the assistance of a Cabinet which Lord Brougham is said to have characterized as ‘a staff of eleventh-rate men.’ He was feebly supported both in administration and in debate; and the effects soon became visible in little incidents which do not come before the public, but which in the undercurrents of the Legislature tell with great force on the credit of a Government. The weakness of some of his colleagues compelled them into occasional discourtesies, which were nothing more than the natural refuge of incapacity, but which left a bad impression on political opponents and wavering allies; and the Prime Minister had so much to do to cover the deficiencies of his Cabinet that he was known to have given offence to certain of the Liberals by the assumed airiness of his manner and the levity of his answers to serious questions, while others reported to his discredit that he, the kind of heart and light of soul – he who had not one particle of bitterness in his nature – he who had been notorious for his good humour under the most trying circumstances – he who had won the hearts of the country gentlemen by refusing to side with the rest of the Liberal party in demanding from them a humiliating confession of the advantages of Free Trade, had on one occasion lost his temper and spoke angrily. The House of Commons was slipping from his grasp, and on the Chinese question he lost his majority. Nor did he recover it without an appeal to the country, from which he received the most enthusiastic support. He returned to Parliament with an enormous increase