Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

“ Sir, in pursuing that course, and in pursuing the more limited direction of our own particular interests, my conviction is, that as long as England keeps herself in the right, as long as she wishes to permit no injustice, as long as she wishes to countenance no wrong, as long as she labours at legislative interests of her own, and as long as she sympathizes with right and justice, she never will find herself altogether alone. She is sure to find some other state, of sufficient power, influence, and weight, to support and aid her in the course she may think fit to pursue. ”

“ The efforts of the British minister to defeat the French marriages of the Spanish princesses, by an appeal to the treaty of Utrecht and the other powers of Europe, were wholly unsuccessful; France won the game, though with no small loss of honourable reputation.
The revolution of 1848 spread like a conflagration through Europe, and shook every throne on the Continent except those of Russia, Spain, and Belgium. Palmerston sympathized, or was supposed to sympathize, openly with the revolutionary party abroad. No state was regarded by him with more aversion than Austria. ”

“ We are responsible for all the consequences which that advice may bring on the country. We are not dealing with our own affairs; it is not a question of what we may do with our private property; but when a Minister finds he cannot do a particular act without compromising the interests of the country, and that these will suffer from his executing his intention, it is his duty to give up that intention, and to consult the interests of the country in preference to every other consideration. ”

“ I hold with respect to alliances, that England is a Power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful, to steer her own course, and not to tie herself as an unnecessary appendage to the policy of any other Government. I hold that the real policy of England—apart from questions which involve her own particular interests, political or commercial—is to be the champion of justice and right ”

“ It is a matter which concerns not merely the tenure of office by one individual, or even by a Government; it is a question that involves principles of national policy, and the deepest interests as well as the honour and dignity of England. ”

“ I think I have shown that the foreign policy of the Government, in all the transactions with respect to which its conduct has been impugned, has throughout been guided by those principles which, according to the resolution of the honourable and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield, ought to regulate the conduct of the Government of England in the management of our foreign affairs. I believe that the principles on which we have acted are those which are held by the great mass of the people of this country. ”

“ On two former occasions, in 1833 and in 1835, the policy of Lord Palmerston, who proposed to afford material aid to the Porte against the pasha of Egypt, was overruled by the cabinet; and again, in 1839, when Baron Brunnow first proposed the active interference of Russia and England, the offer was rejected. But in 1840 Lord Palmerston returned to the charge and prevailed. The moment was critical, for Mehemet Ali had occupied Syria and won the battle of Nezib against the Turkish forces, and on the 1st of July 1839 the sultan Mohammed expired. ”

“ I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which this House, as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional country, is to give on the question now brought before it; whether the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow subjects abroad, are proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the Government of England ”

“ Before he was four-and-twenty he had stood two contested elections for the university of Cambridge, at which he was defeated, and he entered parliament for a pocket borough, Newtown, Isle of Wight, in June 1807. ”

“ We may not, perhaps, in this matter or in that, have acted precisely up to the opinions of one person or of another — and hard indeed it is, as we all know by our individual and private experience, to find any number of men agreeing entirely in any matter, on which they may not be equally possessed of the details of the facts, and circumstances, and reasons, and conditions which led to action. ”

“ One of the evils of the absence of constitutional institutions was, that the whole system of government grew to be full of every kind of abuse. Justice could not be expected where the judges of the tribunals were at the mercy of the advisers of the Crown. ”

“ But, on the other hand, Her Majesty cannot permit that Her Subjects residing abroad should be treated with violence, and be exposed to insult and injustice; and when wrong is done to them, Her Majesty will see that they obtain redress. ”

“ It is often more convenient to treat matters with ridicule, than with grave argument; and we have had serious things treated jocosely; and grave men kept in a roar of laughter, for an hour together, at the poverty of one sufferer, or at the miserable habitation of another; at the nationality of one injured man, or the religion of another; as if because a man was poor he might be bastinadoed and tortured with impunity; as if a man who was born in Scotland might be robbed without redress; or, because a man is of the Jewish persuasion, he is fair game for any outrage. ”

“ The Undersigned has now stated and explained to the Chinese Minister, without reserve, the causes of complaint on the part of Great Britain; the reparation which Great Britain demands, and the nature of the measures which the British officer commanding the Expedition has been instructed in the first instance to take. The British Government fervently hopes that the wisdom and spirit of Justice for which The Emperor is famed in all parts of the World, will lead the Chinese Government to see the equity of the foregoing demands ”

“ With regard, however, to the question put by your Majesty as to what would be the course pursued by the Government in the event of a defeat, Viscount Palmerston could hardly answer it without deliberation with his colleagues. His own firm belief is that the present Government has the confidence of the country in a greater degree than any other Government that could now be formed would have, and that consequently upon a Dissolution of Parliament, a House of Commons would be returned more favourable to the Government than the present. ”

“ The first two volumes of a ‘Life of Viscount Palmerston’ appeared in 1870. Four years afterwards a third volume was issued from the press posthumously. He died very suddenly on 23 May 1872 at Naples. As he died without issue, his title became extinct. The sweetness of his disposition and his high-bred manner rendered him a universal favourite. Habitually sauntering through society with an air of languor, he veiled the keenest observation under an aspect of indifference. Whenever in his more delicate negotiations he was in reality the most cautious, he was seemingly the most negligent. ”

“ In England, it is a curious fact that political parties always exhaust their ingenuity in veiling the real issue between them. When a Government is punished by dismissal, it is not dismissed for the blunder it has committed, but because it has done, or refused to do, something else, which is hardly hinted at in public, but which has offended a powerful body of its supporters. Palmerston was a Minister whose ardent, impetuous temperament, and confidence in his own dexterity, rendered him prone to commit blunders. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Lively, well-bred, and unaffected, Lord Palmerston is a man that is so well acquainted with the routine of official duties, performs them so readily and pleasantly, and is so free from the assumption of self-importance that too frequently appertains to adepts in them, that, whether Whig or Tory government has the ascendant in England, his services will be always considered a desideratum to be secured if possible. ”

“ If you do not succeed, and the measure is necessary, you will have to adopt means to make it succeed. If you conjure up the difficulties yourself you cannot, of course, succeed.” One fact may be mentioned as curiously illustrating the shallowness of understanding and feebleness of grasp with which Palmerston approached any great question of State to which Foreign Office formulæ could not be applied. He, or some one at his instigation, seems to have tried to frighten the Queen by warning her that the East India Company would object to keep up such a large addition to her army in India. ”

“ Having gained his point, he laughed, and his public laughed with him, for the usual British—or American—public likes to be amused, and thought it very amusing to see these beribboned and bestarred foreigners caught and tossed and gored on the horns of this jovial, slashing, devil-may-care British bull.
Diplomatists have no right to complain of mere lies; it is their own fault, if, educated as they are, the lies deceive them; but they complain bitterly of traps. Palmerston was believed to lay traps. He was the enfant terrible of the British Government. ”

“ Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and in reply to your Majesty's enquiry as to what the measures would be which Sir William Parker23 would have to take in order to support Mr Wyse's24 demands for redress for certain wrongs sustained by British and Ionian subjects, begs to say that the ordinary and accustomed method of enforcing such demands is by reprisals—that is to say, by seizing some vessels and property of the party which refuses redress,25 and retaining possession thereof until redress is granted. ”

“ In 1863 the Emperor had a great deal of business on hand, but was still convinced, amid all his diplomatic duties that the South should be recognized by the European powers. He was afraid, however, of putting his Mexican expedition in jeopardy by risking a rupture with the North. Finally, he said: “I will make a direct proposition to England for joint recognition. This will effectually prevent Lord Palmerston from misrepresenting my position and wishes on the American question.” Accordingly, he had an interview with those two worthy members of Parliament, Messrs. ”

“ He manages international conflicts like an artist, driving matters to a certain point, retreating when they threaten to become serious, but having got, at all events, the dramatic excitement he wants. In his eyes, the movement of history itself is nothing but a pastime, expressly invented for the private satisfaction of the noble Viscount Palmerston of Palmerston. ”

“ An ignorant young American could not be expected to explain it. Cambridge House was no better for entertaining than a score of others. Lady Palmerston was no longer young or handsome, and could hardly at any age have been vivacious. The people one met there were never smart and seldom young ”

“ Aristocratic prestige is shrinking back before an advancing enlightenment which elevates all to equal dignity.
The present ministry is a fair type of the selfishness of British statesmanship. The antecedents of its principal members are those of timeserving politicians. Lord Palmerston, starting on his career as a Tory of the Wellington stamp, has veered round as the tide has turned against his former associates, and is the still distrusted representative of the Liberal party. ”

“ He was a devoted follower of Lord Palmerston, and both by conviction and temperament averse to political innovation. He was personally popular both in the house and among his constituents; his abilities were considerable, his legal and financial knowledge extensive, but he lacked energy and ambition. ”

“ The one thing in the world which he loved supremely was power, and, as long as this was secured, he did not trouble himself much about the political complexion of his associates. "Palmerston does not care how much dirt he eats, so long as it is gilded dirt;" and, if gilded dirt be the right description of office procured by flexible politics, Palmerston ate, in his long career, an extraordinary amount of it. ”

“ No man trusted him or cared to serve under or with him. The Queen, however, in her letter to Lord John, very shrewdly and gracefully held out the olive branch to Palmerston by saying that it would give her great pleasure if he would join the new Government. Palmerston, feeling that the crisis was one which also called for sacrifices on his part, offered to serve even under Lord John as Secretary for War, if he could thereby extricate the Crown from its difficulties. But he deemed it imperative that Lord Clarendon should join the Ministry, and this Lord Clarendon stoutly refused to do. ”

“ But when, after twenty-five years of his unquestioned reign, the time for his own departure drew nigh, men asked how the Liberal party in the House of Commons would ever hold together after it had lost a leader of such consummate capacity. Seldom has a prediction been more utterly falsified than that of the Whig critics of 1864. They had grown so accustomed to Palmerston’s way of handling the House as to forget that a man might succeed by quite different methods. And they forgot also that a man may have many defects and yet in spite of them be incomparably the fittest for a great place. ”