 CHAPTER XXII The death of Sir Robert Peel had left Lord Palmerston the most prominent, if not actually the most influential, among the statesmen of England. Palmerston's was a strenuous self-asserting character. He loved whenever he had an opportunity to make a stroke as he frequently put it himself off his own bat. He had given himself up to the study of foreign affairs as no minister of his time had done. He had a peculiar capacity for understanding foreign politics and people as well as foreign languages and he had come somewhat to peek himself upon his knowledge. As Bacon said that he had taken all learning for his province, Palmerston seemed to have made up his mind that he had taken all European affairs for his province. His sympathies were markedly liberal. As opinions went, then, they might have been considered among statesmen almost revolutionary, for the conservative of our day is to the full as liberal as the average liberal of 1848 and 1850. In all the popular movements going on throughout the continent, Palmerston's sympathies were generally with the peoples and against the government, while he had on the other hand a very strong contempt which he took no pains to conceal even for the very best class of the continental demagogue. It was not, however, in his sympathies that Palmerston differed from most of his colleagues. He was not more liberal even in his views of foreign affairs than Lord John Russell. He was probably not so consistently and on principle a supporter of free and popular institutions. But Lord Palmerston's energetic, heedless temperament, his exuberant animal spirits and his profound confidence in himself and his opinions made him much more liberal and spontaneous in his expressions of sympathy than a man of Russell's colder nature could well have been. Palmerston seized a conclusion at once and hardly ever departed from it. He never seemed to care who knew what he thought on any subject. He had a contempt for men of more deliberate temper and often spoke and wrote as if he thought a man slow in forming an opinion must needs be a dull man, not to say a fool. All opinions not his own he held in good-humored scorn. In some of his letters we find him writing of men of the most undoubted genius and wisdom whose views have since stood all the test of time and trial is if they were mere blockheads for whom no practical man could feel the slightest respect. It would be almost superfluous to say in describing a man of such a nature that Lord Palmerston sometimes fancied he saw great wisdom and force of character and men for whom neither then nor since did the world in general show much regard. As with a man so with a cause Lord Palmerston was to all appearance capricious in his sympathies. Calmer and more earnest minds were sometimes offended at what seemed a lack of deep-seated principle in his mind and his policy, even when it happened that he and they were in accord as to the course that ought to be pursued. His levity often shocked them. His blunt brusque ways of speaking and writing sometimes gave downright offence. In his later years Lord Palmerston's manner in Parliament and out of it had greatly mellowed and softened and grown more genial. He retained all the good spirits and the ready, easy, marvelously telling humor, but he had grown more considerate of the feelings of opponents in debate, and he allowed his genuine kindness of heart a freer influence upon his motive speech. He had grown to prefer on the whole, his friend, or even his honourable opponent to his joke. They who only remember Palmerston in his very later years in the House of Commons, and who can only recall to memory that bright, racy humor which never offended, will perhaps find it hard to understand how many enemies he made for himself at an earlier period by the levity and flippancy of his manner. Many grave statesmen thought that the levity and flippancy were far less dangerous even when employed in irritating his adversaries in the House of Commons than when exercised in badgering foreign ministers and their governments and sovereigns. Lord Palmerston was unsparing in his lectures to foreign states. He was always admonishing them that they ought to lose no time in at once adopting the principles of government which prevailed in England. He not uncommonly put his admonitions in the tone of one who meant to say, if you don't take my advice you will be ruined and your ruin will serve you right for being such fools. While therefore he was a conservative in home politics and never even professed the slightest personal interest in any projects of political reform in England, he got the credit all over the continent of being a supporter, promoter, and patron of all manner of revolutionary movements and a disturber of the relations between subjects and their sovereigns. Lord Palmerston was not inconsistent in thus being a conservative at home and something like a revolutionary abroad. He was quite satisfied with the state of things in England. He was convinced that when a people had got a well-limited suffrage and a respectable House of Commons elected by open vote, a House of Lords and a constitutional sovereign they had got all that in a political sense man has to hope for. He was not a far-seeing man, nor a man who much troubled himself about what a certain class of writers and thinkers are fond of calling problems of life. It did not occur to him to think that as a matter of absolute necessity the very reforms we enjoy in one day are only putting us into a mental condition to aspire after and see the occasion for further reforms as the days go on. But he clearly saw that most continental countries were governed on a system which was not only worn out and decaying, but which was the source of great practical and personal evils to their inhabitants. He desired therefore, for every country, a political system like that of Great Britain and neither for Great Britain nor for any other country, did he desire anything more. He was accordingly looked upon by continental ministers as a patron of revolution and by English radicals as the steady enemy of political reform. Both were right from their own point of view. The familiar saying among continental conservatives was expressed in the well-known German lines which affirm that if the devil had a son he must be surely Palmerston. On the other hand, the English radical party regarded him as the most formidable enemy they had. Mr. Cobden deliberately declared him to be the worst minister that had ever governed England. At a later period, when Lord Palmerston invited Cobden to take office under him, Cobden referred to what he had said of Palmerston and gave this as a reason to show the impossibility of his serving such a chief. The good-natured statesman only smiled and observed that another public man who had just joined his administration had often said things as hard of him in other days. Yes, answered Cobden quietly, but I meant what I said. Palmerston therefore had many enemies among European statesmen. It is now certain that the Queen frequently winced under the expressions of ill-feeling which were brought to her ears as affecting England and as she supposed herself and which she believed to have been drawn on her by the inconsiderate and impulsive conduct of Palmerston. The Prince consort on whose advice the Queen very naturally relied was a man of singularly calm and earnest nature. He liked to form his opinions deliberately and slowly, and disliked expressing any opinion until his mind was well made up. Lord Palmerston, when Secretary for Foreign Affairs was much in the habit of writing and answering dispatches on the spur of the moment and without consulting either the Queen or his colleagues. Palmerston complained of the long delays which took place on several occasions when in matters of urgent importance he waited to submit dispatches to the Queen before sending them off. He was of opinion that during the memorable controversy on the Spanish marriages the interests of England were once in danger of being compromised by the delay thus forced upon him. He contended, too, that where the general policy of his state was clearly marked out and well known, it would have been idle to insist that a foreign secretary capable of performing the duties of his office should wait to submit for the inspection and approval of the sovereign and his colleagues every scrap of paper he wrote on before it was allowed to leave England. If such precautions were needful, Lord Palmerston contended, it could only be because the person holding the office of foreign secretary was unfit for his post, and he ought therefore to be dismissed and some better qualified man put in his place. Of course there is some obvious justice in this view of the case. It would perhaps have been unreasonable to expect that at a time when the business of the foreign office had suddenly swelled to unprecedented magnitude the same rules and formalities could be kept up which had suited slower and less busy days. But the complaint made by the Queen was not that Palmerston failed to consult her on every detail and to submit every line relating to the organization of the foreign office for her approval before he sent it off. The complaint was clear and full of matter for very grave consideration. The Queen complained that on matters concerning the actual policy of the state, Palmerston was in the habit of acting on his own independent judgment and authority, and that she found herself more than once thus pledged to a course of policy which she had not had an opportunity of considering and would not have approved if she had had such an opportunity, and that she hardly ever found any question absolutely intact and uncompromised when it was submitted to her judgment. The complaint was justified in many cases. Lord Palmerston frequently acted in a manner which almost made it seem as if he were purposely ignoring the authority of the sovereign. In part this came from the natural impatience of a quick man confident in his own knowledge of a subject and chafing at any delay which he thought unnecessary and merely formal. But it is not easy to avoid a suspicion that Lord Palmerston's rapidity of action sometimes had a different explanation. Two impressions seem to have had a place deeply down in the mind of the foreign secretary. He appears to have felt sure that, roughly speaking, the sympathies of the English people were with the continental movements against the sovereigns, and that the sympathies of the English court were with the sovereigns against the popular movements. In the first belief he was undoubtedly right. In the second he was probably right. It is not likely that a man of Prince Albert's peculiar turn of mind could have admitted much sympathy with revolution against constituted authority of any kind. Even his liberalism undoubtedly a deep and genuine conviction did not lead him to make much allowance for any disturbing impulses. His orderly intellectual nature, with little of fire or passion in it, was prone to estimate everything by the manner in which it stood the test of logical argument. He could understand arguing against a bad system better than he could understand taking the risk of making things worse by resisting it. Some of the published memoranda or other writings of Prince Albert are full of a curious interest as showing the way in which a calm, intellectual, and earnest man could approach some of the burning questions of the day with the belief apparently that the great antagonisms of systems and of opposing national forces could be argued into moderation and persuaded into compromise. In Prince Albert there were two tendencies counteracting each other. His natural sympathies were manifestly with the authority of thrones. His education taught him that thrones can only exist by virtue of their occupants recognizing the fact that they do not exist of their own authority and taking care that they do not become unsuited to the time. The influence of Prince Albert would therefore be something very different from the impulses and desires of Lord Palmerston. It is hardly to be doubted that Palmerston sometimes acted upon this conviction. He thought he understood better than others not only the tendencies of events in foreign politics, but also the tendencies of English public opinion with regard to them. He well knew that so long as he had public opinion with him no influence could long prevail against him. His knowledge of English public opinion was something like an instinct. It could always be trusted. It had indeed no far reach. Lord Palmerston never could be relied upon for a judgment as to the possible changes of a generation or even a few years. But he was an almost infallible guide as to what a majority of the English people were likely to say if asked at the particular moment when any question was under dispute. Palmerston never really guided but always followed the English public even in foreign affairs. He was it seems almost needless to say an incomparably better judge of the direction English sentiment was likely to take than the most acute foreigner put in such a place as Prince Albert's could possibly hope to be. It may be assumed then that some at least of Lord Palmerston's actions were dictated by the conviction that he had the general force of that sentiment to sustain him in cases mode of conducting the business of the foreign office should ever be called into account. A time came when it was called into account. The Queen and the Prince had long chafed under Lord Palmerston's cavalier way of doing business. So far back as 1849 Her Majesty had felt obliged to draw the attention of the Foreign Secretary to the fact that his office was constitutionally under the control of the Prime Minister and that the dispatches to be submitted for her approval should therefore pass through the hands of Lord John Russell. Lord John Russell approved of this arrangement only suggesting and the suggestion is of some moment in considering the defensive is conduct afterwards made by Lord Palmerston that every facility should be given for the transaction of business by the Queens attending to the draft dispatches as soon as possible after their arrival. The Queen accepted the suggestion good humbly only pleading that she should not be pressed for an answer within a few minutes as is done now sometimes. One can see tolerably well what a part of the difficulty was even from these slight hints. Lord Palmerston was rapid informing his judgments as in all his proceedings and when once he had made up his mind was impatient of any delay which seemed to him superfluous. Prince Albert was slow, deliberate, reflective, and methodical. Lord Palmerston was always sure he was right in every judgment he formed even if it were adopted on the spur of the moment. Prince Albert loved reconsideration and was open to new argument and late conviction. However, the difficulty was got over in 1849. Lord Palmerston agreed to every suggestion and for the time all seemed likely to go smoothly. It was only for the time. The Queen soon believed she had reason to complain that the new arrangement was not carried out. Things were going on, she thought, in just the old way. Lord Palmerston dealt as before with foreign courts according to what seemed best to him at the moment and his sovereign and his colleagues often only knew of some important dispatch or instruction when the thing was done and could not be conveniently or becomingly undone. The Prince, at her Majesty's request, wrote to Lord John Russell complaining strongly of the conduct of Lord Palmerston. The letter declared that Lord Palmerston had failed in his duty toward her and not from oversight or negligence but upon principle and with astonishing pertinacity against every effort of the Queen. Besides which, Lord Palmerston does not scruple to let it appear in public as if the sovereign's negligence in attending to the papers sent to her caused delay and annoyance. Even before this it seems that the Queen had drawn up a memorandum to lay down in clear and severe language the exact rules by which the Foreign Secretary must be bound in his dealings with her. The memorandum was not used at that time as it was thought that the remonstrances of the sovereign and the Prime Minister alike could hardly fail to have some effect on the Foreign Secretary. This time, however, the Queen appears to have felt that she could no longer refrain, and accordingly the following important memorandum was addressed by her Majesty to the Prime Minister. It is well worth quoting in full, partly because it became a subject of much interest and controversy afterwards and partly because of the tone of peculiar sternness rare indeed from a sovereign to a minister in our times in which its instructions are conveyed. Osborn, August 12, 1850 With reference to the conversation about Lord Palmerston which the Queen had with Lord John Russell the other day, and Lord Palmerston's disavowal that he ever intended any disrespect to her by the various neglects of which she has had so long and so often to complain, she thinks it right in order to prevent any mistake for the future to explain what it is she expects from the Foreign Secretary. She requires, first, that he will distinctly state what he proposes to do in a given case in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she has given her royal sanction. Second, having once given her sanction to a measure that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister, such an act she must consider as failure in sincerity toward the Crown and justly to be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken based upon that intercourse, to receive the foreign dispatches in good time and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off. The Queen thinks it best that Lord John Russell should show this letter to Lord Palmerston. The tone of the memorandum was severe, but there was nothing unreasonable in its stipulations. On the contrary, it simply prescribed what everyone might have supposed to be the elementary conditions on which the duties of a sovereign and a foreign Minister can alone be satisfactorily carry on. Custom as well as obvious convenience demanded such conditions. The Duke of Wellington declared that when he was Prime Minister no dispatch left the Foreign Office without his seeing it. No sovereign one would think would consent to the responsibility of rule on any other terms. We have perhaps got into the habit of thinking, or at least of saying, that the sovereign of a constitutional country only rules through the Ministers. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the sovereign has no constitutional functions whatever provided by our system of government, and that the sole duty of a monarch is to make a figure in certain state pageantry. It has sometimes been said that the sovereign in a country like England is only the signet ring of the nation. If this were true it might be asked, with unanswerable force, why a veritable signet ring costing a few pounds and never requiring to be renewed would not serve all purposes quite as well and save expense. But the position of the sovereign is not one of meaningless inactivity. The sovereign has a very distinct and practical office to fulfill in a constitutional country. The monarch in England is the Chief Magistrate of the State, specially raised above party and passion and change, in order to be able to look with a clearer eye to all that concerns the interests of the nation. Our constitutional system grows and develops itself year after year as our requirements and conditions change, and the position of the sovereign like everything else has undergone some modification. It is settled now beyond dispute that the sovereign is not to dismiss ministers, or a minister, simply from personal inclination or conviction, as until a very recent day it was the right and the habit of English monarchs to do. The sovereign now retains in virtue of usage, having almost the force of constitutional law, the ministers of whom the House of Commons approves. But the crown still has the right, in case of extreme need, of dismissing any minister who actually fails to do his duty. The sovereign is always supposed to understand the business of the state, to consider its affairs, and to offer an opinion and enforce it by argument on any questions submitted by the ministers. When the ministers find that they cannot allow their judgment to bend to that of the sovereign, then indeed the sovereign gives way or the ministers resign. In all ordinary cases the sovereign gives way, but it was never intended by the English constitution that the ministers in the country were not to have the benefit of the advice and judgment of a magistrate who is purposely placed above all the excitements and temptations of party, its triumphs and its reverses, and who is assumed therefore to have no other motive than the good of the state in offering an advice. The sovereign would grossly fail in public duty and would be practically disappointing the confidence of the nation, who consented to act simply as the puppet of the minister, and to sign mechanically and without question every document he laid on the table. In the principles which she laid down therefore the Queen was strictly right, but the memorandum was nonetheless a severe and a galling rebuke for the foreign secretary. We can imagine with what emotions Lord Palmerston must have received it. He was a proud, self-confident man, and it came on him just in the moment of his greatest triumph. Never before, never since, did Lord Palmerston win so signal and so splendid a victory as that which he had extorted by the sheer force of his eloquence in his genius from a reluctant house of commons in the Don Pacifico debate. Never probably in our parliamentary history did a man of years so advanced accomplish such a feat of eloquence, argument, and persuasion as he had achieved. He stood up before the world the foremost English statesman of the day. It is easy to imagine how deeply he must have felt the rebuke conveyed in the memorandum of the Queen. We know as a matter of fact from what he himself afterwards said that he did feel it bitterly. But he kept down his feelings. Whether he was right or wrong in the matter of dispute he undoubtedly showed admirable self-control and good temper in his manner of receiving the reprimand. He wrote a friendly and good humored letter to Lord John Russell saying, I have taken a copy of this memorandum of the Queen and will not fail to attend to the directions which it contains. The letter then gave a few lines of explanation about the manner in which delays had arisen in the sending of dispatches to the Queen, but promised to return to the old practice and expressing a hope that if the return acquired an additional clerk or two the Treasury would be liberal in allowing him that assistance. Nothing could be more easy and pleasant. It might have seemed the ease of absolute carelessness, but it was nothing of the kind. Lord Palmerston had acted deliberately and with a purpose. He afterwards explained why he had not answered the rebuke by resigning his office. The paper, he said, was written in anger by a lady as well as by a sovereign, and the difference between a lady and a man could not be forgotten even in the case of the occupant of the throne. He had no reason to suppose that this memorandum would ever be seen by or be known to anybody but the Queen, John Russell and myself. Again, I had lately been the object of violent political attack and had gained a great and signal victory in the House of Commons and in public opinion. To have resigned then would have been to have given the fruits of victory to antagonists Sumayah defeated, and to have abandoned my political supporters at the very moment when by their means I had triumphed. But beyond all that Lord Palmerston said that by suddenly resigning I should have been bringing for decision at the bar of public opinion a personal quarrel between myself and my sovereign, a step which no subject ought to take if he can possibly avoid it, for the result of such a course must be either fatal to him or injurious to the country. If he should prove to be in the wrong he would be irretrievably condemned. If the sovereign should be proved to be in the wrong the monarchy would suffer. It is impossible not to feel a high respect for the manner in which having come to this determination Lord Palmerston had once acted upon it. As he had resolved not to resent the rebuke he would not allow any gleam of feeling to creep into his letter which should show that he felt any resentment. Few men could have avoided the temptation to throw into a reply on such an occasion something of the tone of the injured, the unappreciated, the martyr, the wronged one who endures much and will not complain. Lord Palmerston felt instinctively the bad taste and unwisdom of such a style of reply. He took his rebuke in the most perfect good humor. His letter must have surprised Lord John Russell. Macaulay observes that Warren Hastings, confident that he knew best and was acting rightly, endured the rebuke of the East India Company with the patience which was sometimes mistaken for the patience of stupidity. It is not unlikely that when the Prime Minister received Lord Palmerston's reply he may have mistaken its patience for the patience of downright levity and indifference. Lord Palmerston went a step farther in the way of conciliation. He asked for an interview with Prince Albert and he explained to the Prince in the most emphatic and indignant terms that the accusation against him of being purposely wanting in respect to the sovereign was absolutely unfounded. Had it been deserved he ought to be no longer tolerated in society. But he does not seem in the course of the interview to have done much more than argue the point as to the propriety and convenience of the system he had lately been adopting in the business of the Foreign Office. So for the hour the matter dropped. Other events interfered. There were many important questions of domestic policy to be attended to and for some time Lord Palmerston's policy and his way of conducting the business of the Foreign Office did not invite any particular attention. But the old question was destined to come up again in more serious form than before. CHAPTER 22 Palmerston PART II The failure of the Hungarian rebellion through the intervention of Russia called up a wide and deep feeling of regret and indignation in this country. The English people had very generally sympathized with the cause of the Hungarians and rejoiced in the victories which up to a certain point the arms of the insurgents had won. When the Hungarians were put down at last, not by the strength of Austria but by the intervention of Russia, the anger of Englishmen in general found loud-spoken expression. Louis Koshut, who had been dictator of Hungary during the greater part of the insurrection and who represented in the English mind at least the cause of Hungary and her national independence, came to England. He was about to take up his residence as he then intended in the United States and on his way there he visited England. He had applied for permission to pass through French territory and had been refused the favour. The refusal only gave one additional reason to the English people for welcoming him with special cordiality. He was accordingly received at Southampton, in Birmingham, in London, with an enthusiasm such as no foreigner except Gadibaldi alone had ever drawn in our time from the English people. There was much in Koshut himself as well as in his cause to attract the enthusiasm of popular assemblages. He had a strikingly handsome face and a stately presence. He was picturesque and perhaps even theatric in his dress and his bearing. He looked like a picture. All his attitudes and gestures seemed as if they were meant to be reproduced by a painter. He was undoubtedly one of the most eloquent men who ever addressed an English popular audience. In one of his imprisonments Koshut had studied the English language chiefly from the pages of Shakespeare. He had mastered our tongue as few foreigners have ever been able to do. But what he had mastered was not the common colloquial English of the streets in the drawing-rooms. The English he spoke was the noblest in its style from which a student could supply his eloquence. Koshut spoke the English of Shakespeare. He could address a public meeting for an hour or more with a fluency, not inferior seemingly to that of Gladstone, with a measured dignity and well restrained force that was not unworthy of bright and incuriously expressive, stately, powerful, pathetic English, which sounded as if it belonged to a higher time and loftier interests than ours. Viewed as a mere performance the achievement of Koshut was unique. It may well be imagined what the effect was on a popular audience when such eloquence was poured forth and glowing eulogy of a cause with which they sympathized, and in denunciation of enemies and principles they detested. It was impossible not to be impressed by the force of some of the striking and dramatic passages in Koshut's fervid, half-oriental orations. He stretched out his right hand and declared that the time was when I held the destinies of the House of Hapsburg in the hollow of that hand. He apostrophized those who fought and fell in the rank and file of Hungary's champions as unnamed demigods. He prefaced a denunciation of the papal policy by an impassioned lament over brief hopes that the pope was about to lead the liberal movement in Italy and reminded his hearers that there was a time when the name of Pio Nono, coupled with that of Louis Koshut, was thundered in vivas along the sunny shores of the Adriatic. Every appeal was vivid and dramatic, every illusion told. Throughout the whole there ran the threat of one distinct principle of international policy to which Koshut endeavored to obtain the assent of the English people. This was the principle that if one state intervenes in the domestic affairs of another for the purpose of putting down revolution, it then becomes the right and may even be the duty of any third state to throw in the weight of her sword against the unjustifiable intervention. As a principle, this is nothing more than some of the ablest and most thoughtful Englishmen had advocated before and have advocated since. But in Koshut's mind and in the understanding of those who heard him, it meant that England ought to declare war against Russia or Austria or both, the former for having intervened between the emperor of Austria and the Hungarians, and the latter for having invited and profited by the intervention. The presence of Koshut and the reception he got excited, a wild anger and alarm among Austrian statesmen. The Austrian minister was all sensitiveness and remonstrance. The relations between this country and Austria seemed to become every day more and more strained. Lord Palmerston regarded the anger and the fears of Austria with a contempt which he took no pains to conceal. Before the Hungarian exile had reached this country, while he was still under the protection of the Sultan of Turkey, and Austria was in wild alarm lest he should be set at liberty and should come to England, Lord Palmerston wrote to a British diplomatist saying, What a childish, silly fear this is of Koshut! What great harm could he do to Austria while in France or England? He would be the hero of half a dozen dinners in England, at which would be made speeches not more violent than those which have been made on platforms here within the last four months, and he would soon sink into comparative obscurity, while on the other hand, so long as he is a state d'étendue in Turkey, he is a martyr in the object of never ceasing interest. Lord Palmerston understood thoroughly the temper of his countrymen in general. The English public never had any serious notion of going to war with Austria in obedience to Koshut's appeal. They sympathized generally with Koshut's cause or with the cause which they understood him to represent. They were taken with his picturesque appearance and his really wonderful eloquence. They wanted a new hero, and Koshut seemed positively cut out to supply the want. The enthusiasm cooled down after a while as was indeed inevitable. The time was not far off when Koshut was to make vain appeals to almost empty halls, and when the eloquence that once could cram the largest buildings with excited admirers was to call allowed to solitude. There came a time when Koshut lived in England forgotten and unnoticed, when his passing away from England was unobserved as his presence there had long been. There seems one can hardly help saying something cruel in this way of suddenly taking up the representative of some foreign cause, the spokesman of some mission, and then when he has been filled with vain hopes, letting him drop down to disappointment and neglect. It was not perhaps the fault of the English people if Koshut mistook as many another man in like circumstances has done the meaning of English popular sympathy. The English crowds who applauded Koshut at first meant nothing more than general sympathy with any hero of continental revolution and personal admiration for the eloquence of the man who addressed them. But Koshut did not thus accept the homage paid to him. No foreigner could have understood it in his place. Lord Palmerston understood it thoroughly and knew what it meant and how long it would last. The time, however, had not yet come when the justice of Lord Palmerston's words was to be established. Koshut was the hero of the hour, the comet of the season. The Austrian statesmen were going on as if every word spoken at a Koshut meeting were a declaration of war against Austria. Lord Palmerston was disposed to chuckle over the anger thus displayed. Koshut's reception, he wrote to his brother, must have been gall and warm wood to the Austrians and to the absolutists generally. Some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, however, became greatly alarmed when it was reported that the Foreign Minister was about to receive a visit from Koshut in person to thank him for the sympathy and protection which England had accorded to the Hungarian refugees while they were still in Turkey and without which it is only too likely they would have been handed over to Austria or Russia. It was thought that for the Foreign Secretary to receive a formal visit of thanks from Koshut would be regarded by Austria as a recognition by England of the justice of Koshut's cause and an expression of censure against Austria. If Koshut were received by Lord Palmerston, the Austrian ambassador it was confidently reported would leave England. Lord John Russell took alarm and called a meeting of the cabinet to consider the momentous question. Lord Palmerston reluctantly consented to appease the alarms of his colleagues by promising to avoid an interview with Koshut. It does not seem to us that there was much dignity in the course taken by the cabinet. Lord Palmerston actually used and very properly used all the influence England could command to protect the Hungarian refugees in Turkey. He had intimated very distinctly and with the full approval of England that he would use still stronger measures if necessary to protect at once the Sultan and the refugees. It seems to us that having done this openly and compelled Russia and Austria to bend to his urgency there could be little harm in his receiving a visit from one of the men whom he had thus protected. Austria's sensibilities must have been of a peculiar nature indeed. If they could bear Lord Palmerston's very distinct and energetic intervention between her and her intended victim but could not bear to hear that the rescued victim had paid Lord Palmerston a formal visit of gratitude, at all events it does not seem as if an English minister was bound to go greatly out of his way to conciliate such very eccentric and morbid sensibilities. We owe to a foreign state with which we are on friendly terms a strict and honourable neutrality. Our ministers are bound by courtesy, prudence, and good sense not to protrude any expression of their opinion touching the internal dissensions of a foreign state on the representatives of that state or the public. But they are not by any means bound to treat the enemies of every foreign state as our enemies. They are not expected to conciliate the friendship of Austria, for example, by declaring that anyone who is disliked by the Emperor of Austria shall never be admitted to speech of them. If Coshute had come as the professed representative of an established government and had sought an official interview with Lord Palmerston in that capacity, then indeed it would have been proper for the English foreign secretary to refuse to receive him. Our ministers, with perfect propriety, refuse to receive Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidel, the emissaries of the Southern Confederation, as official representatives of any state. But it is absurd to suppose that when the civil war was over in America an English statesman in office would be bound to decline receiving a visit from Mr. Jefferson Davis. We know in fact that the ex-king of Naples, the ex-king of Hanover, Don Carlos, and the royal representatives of various lost causes are constantly received by English ministers and by the Queen of England, and no representatives of any of the established governments would think of offering a remonstrance. If the Emperor of Austria was likely to be offended by Lord Palmerston's receiving a visit from Coshute, the only course of an English minister as it seems to us was to leave him to be offended and to recover from his anger whenever he chose to allow common sense to resume possession of his mind. The Queen of England might as well have taken offence at the action of the American government who actually gave not merely private receptions, but public appointments to Irish refugees after the outbreak of 1848. Lord Palmerston, however, gave way and did not receive the visit of Coshute. The hoped-for result, that of sparing the sensibilities of the Austrian government, was not attained. In fact, things turned out a great deal worse than they might have done if the interview between Lord Palmerston and Coshute had been quietly allowed to come off. Meetings were held to express sympathy with Coshute and addresses were voted to Lord Palmerston thanking him for the influence he had exerted in preventing the surrender of Coshute to Austria. Lord Palmerston consented to receive these addresses from the hands of deputations at the Foreign Office. The deputations represented certain metropolitan parishes and were the exponents of markedly radical opinions. Some of the addresses contained strong language with reference to the Austrian government and the Austrian sovereign. Lord Palmerston observed in his reply that there were expressions contained in the addresses with which he could hardly be expected to concur, but he spoke in a manner which conveyed the idea that his sympathies generally were with the cause which the deputations had adopted. This was the speech containing a phrase which was identified with Palmerston's name and held to be specially characteristic of his way of speaking and indeed of thinking for many years after in fact to the close of his career. The noble Lord told the deputation that the past crisis was one which required on the part of the British government much generalship and judgment and that a good deal of judicious bottle-holding was obliged to be brought into play. The phrase bottle-holding borrowed from the prize ring offended a good many persons who thought the past crisis far too grave and the issues it involved too stern to be properly described in language of such levity. But the general public was amused and delighted by the words and the judicious bottle-holder became more of a popular favorite than ever. Some of the published reports put this a good deal more strongly than Lord Palmerston did, or at least than he intended to do, and he always insisted that he had said no more to the deputations that he had often said in the House of Commons in that he had expressly declared he could not concur in some of the expressions contained in the addresses. Still the whole proceeding considerably alarmed some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues and was regarded with distinct displeasure by the Queen and Prince Albert. The Queen specially requested that the matter should be brought up before a cabinet council. Lord John Russell accordingly laid the whole question before his colleagues and the general opinion seemed to be that Lord Palmerston had acted with want of caution. No formal resolution was adopted. It was thought that the general expression of opinion from his colleagues and the known displeasure of the Queen would be enough to impress the necessity for greater prudence on the mind of the Foreign Secretary. Lord John Russell, in communicating with Her Majesty as to the proceedings of the cabinet council expressed a hope that it will have its effect upon Lord Palmerston to whom Lord John Russell has written urging the necessity of a guarded conduct in the present very critical condition of Europe. This letter was not written when startling evidence was on its way to show that the irrepressible Foreign Secretary had been making a stroke off his own bat again, and a stroke this time of capital importance in the general game of European politics. The possible indiscretion of Lord Palmerston's dealing with the deputation or two from Finsbury and Islington became a matter of little interest when the country was called upon to consider the propriety of the Foreign Secretary's dealings with the new ruler of a new state system with the author of the coup d'etat. End of Section 11. Section 12 of A History of Our Own Times, Volume 2 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 22 Palmerston, Part 3 The news of the coup d'etat took England by surprise. A shock went through the whole country. Never probably was public opinion more unanimous, for the hour at least, then in condemnation of the stroke of policy ventured on by Louis Napoleon and the savage manner in which it was carried to success. After a while, no doubt, a considerable portion of the English public came to look more leniently on what had been done. Many soon grew accustomed to the sight of the massacres along the boulevards of Paris and lost all sense of their horror. Some disposed of the whole affair, after the satisfactory principle so commonly adopted by English people in judging of foreign affairs, and assumed that the system introduced by Louis Napoleon was a very good sort of thing for the French. After a while, a certain admiration, not to say adulation of Louis Napoleon began to be a kind of faith with many Englishmen, and the coup d'etat was condoned and even approved by them. But there can be no doubt that when the story first came to be told in England, the almost universal voice of opinion condemned it as strongly as nearly all men of genuine enlightenment and feeling condemned it then and since. The Queen was particularly anxious that nothing should be done by the British ambassador to commit us to any approval of what had been done. On December 4th, the Queen wrote to Lord John Russell from Osborn, expressing her desire that Lord Norman B. R. Ambassador at Paris should be instructed to remain entirely passive and say no word that might be misconstrued into approval of the action of the Prince President. The Cabinet met that same day and decided that it was expedient to follow most closely Her Majesty's instructions. But they decided also, and very properly, that there was no reason for Lord Norman B. suspending his diplomatic functions. Lord Norman B. had in fact applied for instructions on this point. Next day Lord Palmerston, as Foreign Secretary, wrote to Lord Norman B. informing him that he was to make no change in his diplomatic relations with the French Government. Lord Norman B.'s reply to this dispatch created a startling sensation. Our Ambassador wrote to say that when he called on the French Minister for Foreign Affairs to inform him that he had been instructed by Her Majesty's Government not to make any change in his relations with the French Government, the Minister, Monsieur Tougault, told him that he had heard two days before from Count Walewski the French Ambassador in London that Lord Palmerston had expressed to him his entire approval of what Louis Napoleon had done and his conviction that the Prince President could not have acted otherwise. It would not be easy to exaggerate the sensation produced among Lord Palmerston's colleagues by this astounding piece of news. The Queen wrote at once to Lord John Russell asking him if he knew anything about the approval which the French Government pretend to have received, declaring that she could not believe in the truth of the assertion as such an approval given by Lord Palmerston would have been in complete contradiction to the line of strict neutrality and passiveness which the Queen had expressed her idea to see followed with regard to the late convulsions at Paris. Lord John Russell replied that he had already written to Lord Palmerston, saying that he presumed there was no truth in the report. The reply of Lord Palmerston was delayed for what Lord John Russell thought an unreasonable length of time at such a crisis, but when it came it left no doubt that Lord Palmerston had expressed to Count Walewski his approval of the coup d'etat. Lord Palmerston observed indeed that Walewski had probably given to Monsieur Tougault a somewhat highly colored report of what he had said and that the report had lost nothing in passing from Monsieur Tougault to Lord Normanby, but the substance of the letter was a full admission that Lord Palmerston approved of what had been done and had expressed his approval to Count Walewski. The letters of explanation which the Foreign Minister wrote on the subject, whether to Lord Normanby or to Lord John Russell, were elaborate justifications of the coup d'etat. They were in fact exactly such arguments as a minister of Louis Napoleon might with great propriety addressed to a foreign court. They were full of an undisguised and characteristic contempt for anyone who could think otherwise on the subject than as Lord Palmerston thought. In replying to Lord John Russell the contempt was expressed in a quiet sneer. In the letters to Lord Normanby it was obtrusively and offensively put forward. Lord John Russell in vain endeavored to fasten Palmerston's attention on the fact that the question was not whether the action of Louis Napoleon was historically justifiable, but whether the conduct of the English Foreign Minister in expressing approval of it without the knowledge and against the judgment of the Queen and his colleagues was politically justifiable. Lord Palmerston simply returned to his defense of Louis Napoleon and his assertion that the Prince President was only anticipating the intrigues of the Orléans family and the plans of the Assembly. Lord Palmerston indeed gave a very minute account of a plot among the Orléans princes for a military rising against Louis Napoleon. No evidence of the existence of any such plot was ever discovered. Louis Napoleon never pleaded the existence of such a plot in his own justification. It is now we believe universally admitted that Lord Palmerston was for once the victim of a mere canard. But even if there had been an Orléanist plot or twenty Orléanist plots, it never has been part of the duty or the policy of an English government to express approval of anything and everything that a foreign ruler may do to anticipate or put down a plot against him. The measures may be unjustifiable in their principle or in their severity. The plot may be of insignificant importance, utterly inadequate to excuse any extraordinary measures. The English government is not in ordinary cases called upon to express any opinion whatever. It had in this case deliberately decided that all expression of opinion should be scrupulously avoided, lest by any chance the French government should be led to believe that England approved of what had been done. Lord Palmerston endeavored to draw distinction between the expressions of a foreign secretary in conversation with an ambassador and a formal declaration of opinion. But it is clear that the French ambassador did not understand Lord Palmerston to be merely indulging in the irresponsible gossip of private life, and that Lord Palmerston never said a word to impress him with the belief that their conversation had that colorless and unmeaning character. In any case it was surely a piece of singular indiscretion on the part of a foreign minister to give to the French ambassador, even in private conversation, an unqualified opinion in favor of a stroke of policy of which the British government as a whole, and indeed with the one exception of Lord Palmerston, entirely disapproved. To give such an opinion without qualification or explanation was to mislead the French ambassador in the grossest manner and to send him away, as in fact he was sent, under the impression that the conduct of his chief had the approval of the sovereign and government of England. Let it be remembered further that the foreign secretary who did this had been again and again rebuked for acting on his own responsibility, for saying in doing things which pledged or seemed to pledge the responsibility of the government without any authority, that a formal threat of dismissal actually hung over his head in the event of his repeating such indiscretions, and we shall be better able to form some idea of the sensation which was created in England by the revelation of Lord Palmerston's conduct. Many of his colleagues had cordially sympathized with his views on the occasion of former indiscretions, and even while admitting that he had been indiscreet yet acknowledged to themselves that their opinion on the broad question involved was not different from his. But even these drew back from any approval of his conduct in regard to the coup d'etat. The almost universal judgment was that he had gone surprisingly wrong. Not a few finding it impossible to account otherwise for such a proceeding came to the conclusion that he must have been determined somehow to bring about a rupture with his colleagues of the cabinet, and had chosen this high-handed assertion of his will as the best means of flinging his defiance in their teeth. Lord John Russell made up his mind. He came to the conclusion that he could no longer go on with Lord Palmerston as a colleague in the Foreign Office, and he signified his decision to Lord Palmerston himself. While I concur, thus Lord Russell wrote, in the foreign policy of which you have been the advisor, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings perpetually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have followed from a sound policy and able administration. I am therefore most reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to the country. Rather, unfortunately, Lord John Russell endeavored to soften the blow by offering, if Lord Palmerston should be willing, to recommend him to the Queen, to fill the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. This was a proposal which we agree with Mr. Evelyn Ashley, Lord Palmerston's biographer, in regarding as almost comical in its character. Lord Palmerston's whole soul was in foreign affairs. He had never affected any particular interest in Irish business. He cared little even for the home politics of England. It was out of the question to suppose that he would consent to bury himself in the vice regal court of Dublin and occupy his diplomatic talents in composing disputes for precedence between Protestant deans and Catholic bishops and indoling out the due proportion of invitations to the various ranks of aspiring traders and shopkeepers and their wives. Lord Palmerston declined the offer with open contempt, and indeed it can hardly be supposed for a moment that Lord John Russell expected he would have seriously entertained it. The quarrel was complete. Lord Palmerston ceased for the time to be foreign secretary and his place was taken by Lord Granville. Seldom has a greater sensation been produced by the removal of a minister. The effect which was created all over Europe was probably just what Lord Palmerston himself would have desired. The belief prevailed everywhere that he had been sacrificed to the monarchical and reactionary influences all over the continent. The statesmen of Europe were under the impression that Lord Palmerston was put out of office as an evidence that England was about to withdraw from her former attitude of sympathy with the popular movements of the continent. Lord Palmerston himself fell under a delusion which seems marvellous and a man possessed of his clear strong common sense. He conceived that he had been sacrificed to reactionary intrigue. He wrote to his brother to say that the real ground for his dismissal was a weak truckling to the hostile intrigues of the Orléans family, Austria, Russia, Saxony and Bavaria, and in some degree of the present Prussian government. All these parties, he said, found their respective views and systems of policy thwarted by the course pursued by the British government, and they thought if they could remove the minister they would change the policy. They had for a long time passed effectually poisoned the mind of the Queen and Prince against me, and John Russell giving way rather encouraged than discountenance the desire of the Queen to remove me from the foreign office. So strongly did the idea prevail that an intrigue of foreign diplomatists said overthrown Palmerston that the Russian ambassador, Baron Bruno, took the very ill-advised step of addressing to Lord John Russell a disclaimer of any participation in such a proceeding. The Queen made a proper comment on the letter of Baron Bruno by describing it as very presuming, in as much as it insinuated the possibility of changes of governments in this country taking place at the instigation of foreign ministers. Lord Palmerston was, of course, entirely mistaken in supposing that any foreign interference had contributed to his removal from the foreign office. The only wonder is how a man so experienced as he could have convinced himself of such a thing. At least it would be a wonder if one did not know that the most experienced author or artist can always persuade himself that a disparaging critique is the result of personal and malignant hostility. But that the feeling of the Queen and the Prince had long been against him can hardly admit of dispute. Prince Albert seems not to have taken any pains to conceal his dislike and distrust of Palmerston. Nearly two years before, when the French ambassador was recalled for a time, the Prince wrote to Lord John Russell to say that both the Queen and himself were exceedingly sorry to hear of the recall adding, We are not surprised, however, that Lord Palmerston's mode of doing business should not be born by the susceptible French government with the same good humor and forbearance as by his colleagues. At the moment when Lord John Russell resolved on getting rid of Lord Palmerston, Prince Albert wrote to him to say that the sudden termination of your difference with Lord Palmerston has taken us much by surprise, as we were wont to see such differences terminate in his carrying his points and leaving the defense of them to his colleagues and the discredit to the Queen. It is clear from this letter alone that the court was set against Lord Palmerston at that time. The court was sometimes right where Lord Palmerston was wrong, but the fact that he then knew himself to be an antagonism to the court is of importance both in judging of his career and in estimating the relative strength of forces in the politics of England. Lord Palmerston then was dismissed. The meeting of parliament took place on the third of February following, 1852. It would be superfluous to say that the keenest anxiety was felt to know the full reasons of the sudden dismissal. To quote the words used by Mr. Roebuck, the most marked person in the administration, he around whom all the party battles of the administration had been fought, whose political existence had been made the political existence of the government itself, the person on whose being in office the government rested their existence as a government, was dismissed, their right hand was cut off, their most powerful arm was taken away, and at the critical time when it was most needed. The House of Commons was not long left to wait for an explanation. Lord John Russell made a long speech in which he went into the whole history of the differences between Lord Palmerston and his colleagues, and what was more surprising to the House, into a history of the late foreign secretary's differences with his sovereign and the threat of dismissal which had so long been hanging over his head. The Prime Minister read to the House the Queen's Memorandum which we have already quoted. Lord John Russell's speech was a great success. Lord Palmerston's was, even in the estimation of his closest friends, a failure. Far different indeed was the effect it produced from the almost magical influence of that wonderful speech on the Don Pacifico question which had compelled even unconvinced opponents to genuine admiration. Palmerston seemed to have practically no defense. He only went over again the points put by him and the Correspondents already noticed, contended that on the whole he had judged rightly of the French crisis and that he could not help forming an opinion on it and so forth. Of the Queen's Memorandum he said nothing. He did not even attempt to explain how it came about, that having received so distinct and severe an injunction he had ventured deliberately to disregard it in a matter of the greatest national importance. Some of his admirers were of the opinion, then and long after, that the reading of the Memorandum must have come on him by surprise, that Lord John Russell must have sprung a mine upon him, and Palmerston was taken unfairly and at a disadvantage. But it is certain that Lord John Russell gave notice to his late colleague of his intention to read the Memorandum of the Queen. Besides, Lord Palmerston was one of the most ready and self-possessed speakers that ever addressed the House of Commons. During the very reading of the Memorandum he could have found time to arrange his ideas and to make out some show of a case for himself. The truth, we believe, is that Lord Palmerston deliberately declined to make any reply to that part of Lord John Russell's speech which disclosed the letter from the Queen. He made up his mind that a dispute between a sovereign and a subject would be unbecoming of both, and he passed over the Memorandum in deliberate silence. He doubtless felt convinced that even though such discretion involved him for the moment in seeming defeat, it would in the long run reckon to his credit and his advantage. Lord Dolling, better known as Sir Henry Bulwer, was present during the debate and formed an opinion of Palmerston's conduct which seems in every way correct and far-seeing. I must say, Lord Dolling writes, that I never admired him so much as at this crisis. He evidently thought he had been ill-treated, but I never heard him make an unfair or irritable remark, nor did he seem and anywise stunned by the blow he had received or dismayed by the isolated position in which he stood. I should say that he seemed to consider that he had a quarrel put upon him which it was his wisest course to close by receiving the fire of his adversary and not returning it. He could not, in fact, have gained a victory against the Premier on the ground which Lord John Russell had chosen for the combat, which would not have been more permanently disadvantageous to him than a defeat. The faults of which he had been accused did not touch his own honour nor that of his country. Let them be admitted, and there was an end of the matter. By and by an occasion would probably arise in which he might choose an advantageous occasion for giving battle, and he was willing to wait calmly for that occasion. Lord Dolling judged accurately so far as his judgment went, but while we agree with him in thinking that Lord Palmerston refrained from returning his adversary's fire for the reasons Lord Dolling is given, we are strongly of opinion that other reasons too influenced Palmerston. He knew that he was not at that time much liked or trusted by the Queen and Prince Albert. He was not sorry that the fact should be made known to the world. He thoroughly understood English public opinion and was not above taking advantage of its moods and its prejudices. He did not think a statesman would stand any the worse in the general estimation of the English public than because it was known that he was not admired by Prince Albert. But the almost universal opinion of the House of Commons and of the clubs was that Lord Palmerston's career was closed. Palmerston is smashed, was the common saying of the clubs. A night or two after the debate, Lord Dolling met Mr. Disraeli on the staircase of the Russian Embassy and Disraeli remarked to him that there was a Palmerston. Lord Palmerston evidently did not think so. The letters he wrote to friends immediately after his fall show him as jaunty and full of confidence as ever. He was quite satisfied with the way things had gone. He waited calmly for what he called a few days afterwards, my tit for tat with John Russell, which came about indeed sooner than even he himself could well have expected. We have not hesitated to express our opinion that throughout the whole of this particular dispute Lord Palmerston was in the wrong. He was in the wrong in many, if not most, of the controversies which had preceded it. That is to say he was wrong in committing England as he so often did to measures which had not had the approval of the sovereign or his colleagues. In the memorable dispute which brought matters to a crisis he seems to us to have been in the wrong not less in what he did than in his manner of doing it. Yet it ought not to have been difficult for a calm observer even at the time to see that Lord Palmerston was likely to have the best of the controversy in the end. The faults of which he was principally accused were not such as the English people would find it very hard to forgive. He was said to be too brusque and high handed in his dealings with foreign states and ministers, but it did not seem to the English people in general as if this was an offense for which his own countrymen were bound to condemn him too severely. There was a general impression that his influence was exercised on behalf of popular movements abroad, and an impression nearly as general that if he had not acted a good deal on his own impulses and of his own authority he could hardly have served any popular cause so well. The coup d'état certainly was not popular in England. For a long time it was a subject of general reprehension, but even at that time men who condemned the coup d'état were not disposed to condemn Lord Palmerston over much because acting as usual on a personal impulse he had in that instance made a mistake. There was even in his error something dashing, showy, and captivating to the general public. He made the influence of England felt, people said. His chief fault was that he was rather too strong for those around him. If any grave crisis came he it was murmured, and he alone would be equal to the occasion and would maintain the dignity of England. Neither in war nor in statesmanship does a man suffer much loss of popularity by occasionally disobeying orders and accomplishing daring feats. Lord Palmerston saw his way clearly at a critical period of his career. He saw that at that time there was, rightly or wrongly, a certain jealousy of the influence of Prince Albert, and he did not hesitate to take advantage of the fact. He bore his temporary disgrace with well justified composure. The devil aids him surely, says Sussex, speaking to Raleigh of Lester and Scots Kenilworth, for all that would sink another ten-fathomed deep seems but to make him float the more easily. Some rival may have thought thus of Lord Palmerston. End of Section 12 Section 13 of a History of Our Own Times, Volume 2 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. The year 1852 was one of profound emotion and even excitement in England. An able writer has remarked that the history of the continent of Europe might be traced through the history of England if all other sources of information were destroyed by the influence which every great event and continental affairs produces on the mood and policy of England. As the astronomer infers the existence and the attributes of some star his keenest glass will not reveal, by the perturbations its neighborhood causes to some body of light within his ken, so the student of English history might well discover commotion on the continent by the evidence of a corresponding movement in England. All through the year 1852 the national mind of England was disturbed. The country was stirring itself in quite an unusual manner. A military spirit was exhibiting itself everywhere, not unlike that told of in Shakespeare's Henry IV. The England of 1852 seems to threaten that ere this year expire we bear our civil swords and native fire as far as France. At least the civil swords were sharpened and ordered that the country might be ready for a possible and even an anticipated invasion from France. The volunteer movements sprang into sudden existence. All over the country cores of young volunteers were being formed. An immense amount of national enthusiasm accompanied and acclaimed the formation of the volunteer army which received the sanction of the crown early in the year and thus became a national institution. The meaning of all this movement was explained some years after by Mr. Tennyson in a string of verses which did more honour perhaps to his patriotic feeling than to his poetic genius. The verses are absurdly unworthy of Tennyson as a poet, but they express with unmistakable clearness the popular sentiment of the hour. The condition of uncertainty, vague alarm and very general determination to be ready at all events for whatever might come. Form, form, rifleman, form, wrote the laureate, better a rotten burrow or two than a rotten fleet and a town in flames. True that we have a faithful ally but only the devil knows what he means. This was the alarm and the explanation. We had a faithful ally no doubt, but we certainly did not quite know what he meant. All the earlier part of the year had witnessed the steady progress of the Prince President of France to an imperial throne. The previous year had closed upon his coup d'état. He had arrested, imprisoned, banished or shot his principal enemies and had demanded from the French people a presidency for ten years, a ministry responsible to the executive power himself alone, and two political chambers to be elected by universal suffrage. Nearly five hundred prisoners untried before any tribunal, even that of a drumhead, had been shipped off to Cayenne. The streets of Paris had been soaked in blood. The president instituted a plebiscite or vote of the whole people and of course he got all he asks for. There was no arguing with the commander of twenty legions and of such legions as those that had operated with terrible efficiency on the boulevards. The first day of the new year saw the religious ceremony at Notre Dame to celebrate the acceptance of the ten years presidency by Louis Napoleon. The same day a decree was published in the name of the president declaring that the French eagle should be restored to the standards of the army as a symbol of the regenerated military genius of France. A few days after the Prince President decreed the confiscation of the property of the Orléans family and restored titles of nobility in France. The birthday of the Emperor Napoleon was declared by decree to be the only national holiday. When the two legislative bodies came to be sworn in, the president made an announcement which certainly did not surprise many persons but which nevertheless sent a thrill abroad over all parts of Europe. If hostile parties continued to plot against him, the president intimated and to question the legitimacy of the power he had assumed by virtue of the national vote, then it might be necessary to demand from the people in the name of the repose of France a new title which will irrevocably fix upon my head the power with which they have invested me. There could be no further doubt. The Bonapartist Empire was to be restored. A new Napoleon was to come to the throne. Only the devil knows what he means indeed, so people were all saying throughout England in 1852. The scheme went on to its development and before the year was quite out Louis Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor of the French. Men had noticed, as a curious, not to say ominous coincidence, that on the very day when the Duke of Wellington died the monitor announced that the French people were receiving the Prince President everywhere as the Emperor-Elect and as the elective God, and another French journal published an article hinting not obscurely at the invasion and conquest of England as the first great duty of a new Napoleonic Empire. The Prince President, indeed, in one of the provincial speeches which he delivered just before he was proclaimed Emperor, had talked earnestly of peace. In his famous speech to the Chamber of Commerce of Buckdaw on October 9th he denied that the restored Empire would mean war. I say he declared raising his voice and speaking with energy and emphasis, the Empire is peace. But the assurance did not do much to satisfy Europe. Had not the same voice it was asked, declaimed with equal energy and earnestness the terms of the oath to the Republican Constitution? Never said a bitter enemy of the new Empire, believe the word of a Bonaparte unless when he promises to kill somebody, such indeed was the common sentiment of a large number of the English people, during the eventful year when the President became Emperor and Prince Louis Napoleon was Napoleon III. It would have been impossible that the English people could view all this without emotion and alarm. It had been clearly seen how the Prince President had carried his point thus far. He had appealed at every step to the memory of the Napoleonic legend. He had in every way revived and reproduced the attributes of the reign of the great Emperor. His accession to power was strictly a military and a Napoleonic triumph. In ordinary circumstances the English people would not have troubled themselves much about any change in the form of government of a foreign country. They might have felt a strong dislike for the manner in which such a change had been brought about. But it would have been in no wise a matter of personal concern to them. But they could not see within difference the rise of a new Napoleon to power on the strength of the old Napoleonic legend. The one special characteristic of the Napoleonic principle was its hostility to England. The life of the great Napoleon in its greatest days had been devoted to the one purpose of humiliating England. His plans had been foiled by England. Whatever hands may have joined in pressing him to the ground there could be no doubt that he owed his fall principally to England. He died a prisoner of England and with his hatred of her embittered rather than appeased. It did not seem unreasonable to believe that the successor who had been enabled to mount the Imperial throne simply because he bore the name and represented the principles of the First Napoleon would inherit the hatred to England and the designs against England. Everything else that savored of the Napoleonic era had been revived. Why should this, its principle characteristic, be allowed to lie in the tomb of the First Emperor? The policy of the First Napoleon had lighted up a fire of hatred between England and France which at one time seemed inextinguishable. There were many who regarded that international hate as something like that of the hostile brothers in the classic story the very flames of whose funeral piles refused to mingle in the air or like that of the rival Scottish families whose blood it was said would never commingle though poured into one dish. It did not seem possible that a new Emperor Napoleon could arise without bringing a restoration of that hatred along with him. There were some personal reasons too for particular distrust of the upcoming Emperor among the English people. Louis Napoleon had lived many years in England. He was as well known there as any prominent member of the English aristocracy. He went a good deal into very various society, literary, artistic, merely fashionable, purely rowdy, as well as into that political society which might have seemed natural to him. In all circles the same opinion appears to have been formed of him. From the astute Lord Palmerston to the most ignorant of horse jockeys and ballet girls with whom he occasionally consorted, all who met him seemed to think of the Prince in much the same way. It was agreed on all hands that he was a fatuous, dreamy, moony, impractical, stupid young man. A sort of stolid amiability, not enlightened enough to keep him out of low company and questionable conduct, appeared to be his principal characteristic. He constantly talked of his expected accession somehow and sometime to the throne of France, and people only smiled pityingly at him. His attempts at Strasbourg and Bologna had covered him with ridicule and contempt. We cannot remember one authentic account of any Englishman of mark at that time, having professed to see any evidence of capacity and strength of mind in Prince Louis Napoleon. When the coup d'etat came and was successful the amazement of the English public was unbounded. Never had any plot been more skillfully and more carefully planned, more daringly carried out. Here evidently was a master in the art of conspiracy. Here was the combination of steady caution and boundless audacity. What a subtlety of design! What a perfection of silent self-control! How slowly the plan had been matured! How suddenly it was flashed upon the world and carried to success! No haste, no delay, no scruple, no remorse, no fear! And all this was the work of the dull dodler of English drawing-rooms. The heavy, apathetic, un-moral rather than immoral, haunter of English race-courses and gambling-houses. What new surprise might not be feared! What subtle and daring enterprise might not reasonably be expected, from one who could thus conceal and thus reveal himself and do both with like success. Louis Napoleon, said a member of his family, deceived Europe twice, first when he succeeded in passing off as an idiot and next when he succeeded in passing off as a statesman. The epigram had doubtless a great deal of truth in it. The coup d'etat was probably neither planned nor carried to success by the cleverness and energy of Louis Napoleon. Cooler and stronger heads and hands are responsible for the execution at least of that enterprise. The Prince, it is likely, played little more than a passive part in it, and might have lost his nerve more than once, but for the greater resolution of some of his associates, who were determined to crown him for their own sakes as well as for his. But at the time the world at large saw only Louis Napoleon in the whole scheme, conception, execution, and all. The idea was formed of a colossal figure of cunning and daring, a brutus, a talron, a Philip of Spain, and a Napoleon I, all in one. Those who detested him most admired and feared him not the least. Who can doubt, it was asked, that he will endeavor to make himself the heir of the Revenges of Napoleon. Who can believe any pledges he may give? How enter into any treaty or bond of any kind with such a man? Where is the one that can pretend to say he sees through him and understands his schemes? Had Louis Napoleon any intention at any time of invading England, we are inclined to believe that he never had a regular fixed plan of the kind. But we are also inclined to think that the project entered into his mind with various other ideas and plans, more or less vague, and that circumstances might have developed it into an actual scheme. Louis Napoleon was above all things, a man of ideas, in the inferior sense of the word. That is to say, he was always occupying himself with vague dreamy suggestions of plans that might in this, that, or the other case, be advantageously pursued. He had come to power probably with the determination to keep it and make himself acceptable to France, first of all. After this came doubtless the sincere desire to make France great and powerful and prosperous. At first he had no particular notion of the way to establish himself as a popular ruler, and it is certain that he turned over all manner of plans in his mind for the purpose. Among these must certainly have been one for the invasion of England and the avenging of Waterloo. He let drop hints at times which showed that he was thinking of something of the kind. He talked of himself as representing a defeat. He was attacked with all the bitterness of a not unnatural but very unrestrained animosity in the English press for his conduct in the coup d'état, and no doubt he and his companions were greatly exasperated. The mood of a large portion of the French people was distinctly aggressive. Ashamed, to some degree of much that had been done and that they had had to suffer, many Frenchmen were in that state of dissatisfaction with themselves which makes people eager to pick a quarrel with someone else. Had Louis Napoleon been inclined, he might doubtless have easily stirred his people to the war mood, and it is not to be believed that he did not occasionally contemplate the expediency of doing something of the kind. Assuredly, if he had thought such an enterprise necessary to the stability of his reign he would have risked even a war with England. But it would not have been tried except as the last resource and the need did not arise. No one could have known better the risks of such an attempt. He knew England, as his uncle never did, and if he had not his uncle's energy or military genius he had far more knowledge of the world and of the relative resources and capabilities of nations. He would not have done anything rash without great necessity or the prospect of very certain benefit in the event of success. An invasion of England was not therefore a likely event. Looking back composately now on what actually did happen we may safely say that few things were less likely. But it was not by any means an impossible event. The more composately one looks back to it now the more he will be compelled to admit that it was at least on the cards. The feeling of national uneasiness and alarm was not a mere panic. There were five projects with which public opinion all over Europe specially credited Louis Napoleon when he began his imperial reign. One was a war with Russia. Another was a war with Austria. A third was a war with Prussia. A fourth was the annexation of Belgium. The fifth was the invasion of England. Three of these projects were carried out. The fourth we know was in contemplation. Our combination with France in the first project probably put all serious thought of the fifth out of the head of the French emperor. He got far more prestige out of an alliance with us than he could ever have got out of any quarrel with us and he had little or no risk. We do not count for anything the repeated assurances of Louis Napoleon that he desired above all things to be on friendly terms with England. These assurances were doubtless sincere at the moment when they were made and under the circumstances of that moment. But altered circumstances might at any time have induced an altered frame of mind. The very same assurances were made again and again to Russia, to Austria, and to Prussia. The pledge that the empire was peace was addressed like the Pope's edict, Urbi et Orbi. Therefore we do not look upon the mood of England in 1852 as one of idle and baseless panic. The same feeling broken to life again in 1859, when the emperor of the French suddenly announced his determination to go to war with Austria. It was in this latter period indeed that the volunteer movement became a great national organization and that the laureate did his best to rouse it into activity in the verses of hardly doubtful merit to which we have already referred. By the 1852 the beginning of an army of volunteers was made, and what is of more importance to the immediate business of our history the government determined to bring in a bill for the reorganization of the national militia. Our militia was not in any case a body to be particularly proud of at that time. It had fallen into decay and almost into disorganization. Nothing could have been a more proper work for any government than its restoration to efficiency and respectability. Nothing too could have been more timely than a measure to make it efficient in view of the altered condition of European affairs and the increased danger of disturbance at home and abroad. We had on our hands at the time too one of our little wars, a capri war, which was protracted to a vexatious length and which was not without serious military difficulty. It began in the December of 1850 and was not completely disposed of before the early part of 1853. We could not therefore afford to have our defences in any defective condition, and no labor was more fairly incumbent on the government than the task of making them adequate to their purpose. But it was an unfortunate characteristic of Lord John Russell's government that it attempted so much legislation, not because some particular scheme commended itself to the mature wisdom of the ministry, but because something had to be done in a hurry to satisfy public opinion, and the government could not think of anything better at the moment than the first scheme that came to hand. Lord John Russell accordingly introduced a militia bill, which was in the highest degree an adequate and unsatisfactory. The principal peculiarity of it was that it proposed to substitute a local militia for the regular force that had been in existence. Lord Palmerston saw great objections to this alteration, and urged them with much bristness and skill on the night when Lord John Russell explained his measure. When Palmerston began his speech, he probably intended to be merely critical as regarded points in the measure which were susceptible of amendment, that as he went on, he found more and more that he had the house with him. Every objection he made, every criticism he urged, almost every sentence he spoke drew down increasing cheers. Lord Palmerston saw that the house was not only thoroughly with him on this ground, but thoroughly against the government on various grounds. A few nights after, he followed up his first success by proposing a resolution to substitute the word regular for the word local in the bill, thus in fact to reconstruct the bill on an entirely different principle from that adopted by its framer. The effort was successful. The Peelites went with Palmerston, the protectionists followed him as well, and the result was that 136 votes were given for the amendment and only 125 against it. The government was defeated by a majority of eleven. Lord John Russell instantly announced that he could no longer continue an office as he did not possess the confidence of the country. The announcement took the house by surprise. Lord Palmerston had not himself expected any such result from his resolution. There was no reason why the government should not have amended their bill on the basis of the resolution passed by the house. The country wanted a scheme of efficient defence, and the government were only called upon to make their scheme efficient. But Lord John Russell was well aware that his administration had been losing its authority little by little. Since the time when it had returned to power simply because no one could form a ministry any stronger than itself, it had been only a government on sufferance. Ministers who assumed office in that stop-gap way seldom retained it long in England. The Gladstone government illustrated this fact in 1873 when they consented to return to office because Mr. Disraeli was not then in a condition to come in, and were dismissed by an overwhelming majority at the elections in the following spring. Lord Palmerston assigned one special reason for Lord John Russell's promptness in resigning on the change in the militia bill. The great motive for the step was, according to Palmerston, the fear of being defeated on the vote of censure about the Cape Affairs which was to have been moved to-day, as it is, the late government have gone out on a question which they have treated as a motion merely asserting that they had lost the confidence of the House, whereas if they had gone out on a defeat upon the motion about the Cape they would have carried with them the direct censure of the House of Commons. The letter from Lord Palmerston to his brother from which these words are quoted begins with a remarkable sentence. I have had my tit for tat with John Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last. Palmerston did not expect any such result, he declared, but the revenge was doubtless sweet for all that. This was in February 1852, and it was only in December of the previous year that Lord Palmerston was compelled to leave the foreign office by Lord John Russell. The same influence, oddly enough, was the indirect cause of both events. Lord Palmerston lost his place because of his recognition of Louis Napoleon. Lord John Russell fell from power while endeavoring to introduce a measure suggested by Louis Napoleon's successful usurpation. It will be seen, in a future chapter, how the influence of Louis Napoleon was once again fatal to each statesman in turn. The Russell Ministry had done little and initiated less. It had carried on Peel's system by throwing open the markets to foreign as well as colonial sugar, and by the repeal of the navigation laws enabled merchants to employ foreign ships and seamen in the conveyance of their goods. It had made a mild and ineffectual effort at a reform-bill, and had feebly favored attempts to admit Jews to Parliament. It sank from power with an unexpected collapse in which the nation felt small concern. CHAPTER XXIII BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE DEATH OF THE DUKE PART II Lord Palmerston did not come to power again at that moment. He might have gone in with Lord Darby if he had been so inclined, but Lord Darby, who it may be said had succeeded to that title on the death of his father in the preceding year, still talked of testing the policy of free trade at a general election, and of course Palmerston was not disposed to have anything to do with such a proposition. Nor had Palmerston in any case much inclination to serve under Darby, of whose political intelligence he thought poorly, and whom he regarded principally as what he called a flashy speaker. Lord Darby tried various combinations in vain, and at last he had to experiment with a cabinet of undiluted protectionists. He had to take office not because he wanted to, or because anyone in particular wanted him, but simply and solely because there was no one else who could undertake the task. He formed a cabinet to carry on the business of the country for the moment, and until it should be convenient to have a general election, when he fondly hoped that by some inexplicable process a protectionist reaction would be brought about and he should find himself at the head of a strong administration. The ministry which Lord Darby was able to form was not a strong one. Lord Palmerston described it as containing two men of Mark, Darby and Disraeli, in a number of ciphers. It had not except for these two as single men of any political ability, and had hardly one of any political experience. It had an able lawyer for Lord Chancellor, Lord St. Leonard's, but he was nothing of a politician. The rest of the members of the government were respectable country gentlemen. One of them, Mr. Harris, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in a short-lived government, that of Lord Goderich, in 1827, and he had held the office of Secretary of War for a few months, some time later. He was forgotten by the existing generation of politicians and the general public only knew that he was still living when they heard of his accession to Lord Darby's government. The Earl of Malmsbury, Sir John Packington, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Henley and the rest, were men whose antecedents scarcely gave them warrant for any higher claim in public life than the position of Chairman of Quarter Sessions, nor did their subsequent career in office contribute much to establish a loftier estimate of their capacity. The head of the government was remarkable for his dashing blunders as a politician, quite as much as for his dashing eloquence. His new lieutenant, Mr. Disraeli, had in former days christened him very happily the Rupert of debate, after that fiery and gallant prince whose blunders generally lost the battles which his headlong courage had nearly won. Concerning Mr. Disraeli himself, it is not too much to say that many of his own party were rather more afraid of his genius than of the dullness of any of his colleagues. It is not a pleasant task, in the best of circumstances, to be at the head of a tolerated ministry in the House of Commons, a ministry which is in a minority and only holds its place because there is no one ready to relieve it of the responsibility of office. Mr. Disraeli himself, at a much later date, gave the House of Commons an amusing picture of the trials and humiliations which await the leader of such a forlorn hope. He had now to assume that position without any previous experience of office. Rarely indeed is the leadership of the House of Commons undertaken by anyone who has not previously held office, and Mr. Disraeli entered upon leadership and office at the same moment for the first time. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Among the many gifts with which he was accredited by fame, not a single admirer had hitherto dreamed of including a capacity for the mastery of figures. In addition to all the ordinary difficulties of the ministry of a minority there was, in this instance, the difficulty arising from the obscurity and inexperience of nearly all its members. Facetious persons, dubbed the New Administration the Who-Who Ministry. The explanation of this odd nickname was found in a story, then in circulation about the Duke of Wellington. The Duke, it was said, was anxious to hear from Lord Darby at the earliest moment all about the composition of his cabinet. He was overheard asking the new Prime Minister in the House of Lords the names of his intended colleagues. The Duke was rather deaf, and like most deaf persons spoke in very loud tones, and, of course, had to be answered in tones also rather elevated. That which was meant for a whispered conversation became audible to the whole house. As Lord Darby mentioned each name, the Duke asked in wonder and eagerness, who, who? After each new name came the same inquiry. The Duke of Wellington had clearly never heard of most of the new ministers before. The story went about, and Lord Darby's Administration was familiarly known as the Who-Who Government. Lord Darby entered office with the avowed intention of testing the protection question all over again. But he was no sooner in office than he found that the bare suggestion had immensely increased his difficulties. The formidable organization which had worked the free trade cause so successfully seemed likely to come into political life again, with all its old vigor. The free traders began to stand together again the moment Lord Darby gave his unlucky hint. Every week that passed over his head did something to show him the mistake he had made when he hampered himself with any such undertaking as the revival of the protection question. Some of his colleagues had been unhappily and blunderingly outspoken in their addresses to their constituents seeking for re-election, and had talked as if the restoration of protection itself were the grand object of Lord Darby's taking office. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer had been far more cautious. He only talked vaguely of those remedial measures which great productive interests, suffering from unequal taxation, have a right to expect from a just Government. In truth Mr. Disraeli was well convinced at this time of the hopelessness of any agitation for the restoration of protection, and would have been only too glad of any opportunity for a complete, and at the same time, a safe, disavowal of any sympathy with such a project. The Government found their path bristling with troubles created for them by their own mistake in giving any hint about the demand for a new trial of the free trade question. Any chance they might otherwise have had of making effective head against their very trying difficulties was completely cut away from them. The Free Trade League was reorganized. A conference of Liberal members of the House of Commons was held at the residence of Lord John Russell in Cheshire Place, at which it was resolved to extract or extort from the Government a full avowal of their policy with regard to protection and free trade. The feat would have been rather difficult of accomplishment seeing that the Government had absolutely no policy to offer on the subject and were only hoping to be able to consult the country as one might consult an oracle. The Chancellor of the Exchequer when he made his financial statement accepted the increased prosperity of the few years preceding with an unction which showed that he at least had no particular notion of attempting to reverse the policy which had so greatly contributed to its progress. Mr. Disraeli pleased the Peelites and the Liberals much more by his statement than he pleased his chief or many of his followers. His speech indeed was very clever. A new financial scheme he could not produce, for he had not had time to make anything like a complete examination of the finances of the country, but he played very pridly and skillfully with the facts and figures and conveyed to the listeners the idea of a man who could do wonderful things in finance if he had only had a little time and were in the humour. Everyone outside the limits of the extreme and unconverted protectionists was pleased with the success of his speech. People were glad that one who had proved himself so clever with many things should have shown himself equal to the uncongenial and unwonted task of dealing with dry facts and figures. The House felt that he was placed in a very trying position and was well pleased to see him hold his own so successfully in it. Mr. Disraeli merely proposed in his financial statement to leave things as he found them, to continue the income tax for another year, as a provisional arrangement pending that complete re-examination of the financial affairs of the country to which he intimated that he found himself quite equal at the proper time. No one could suggest any better course, and the new chancellor came off on the whole with flying colours. His very difficulties had been a source of advantage to him. He was not expected to produce a financial scheme at such short notice, and if he was not equal to a financier's task it did not so appear on his first occasion of trial. The government on the whole did not do badly during this period of their probation. They introduced and carried a militia bill for which they obtained the cordial support of Lord Palmerston, and they gave a constitution to New Zealand, and then in the beginning of July the Parliament was pro-rogued and the dissolution took place. The elections were signalized by very serious riots in many parts of the country. In Ireland particularly, party passions ran high. The landlords and the police were on one side, the priests and the popular party on the other, and in several places there was some bloodshed. It was not in Ireland, however, a question about free trade or protection. The great mass of the Irish people knew nothing about Mr. Disraeli, probably had never heard his name, and did not care who led the House of Commons. The question which agitated the Irish constituencies was of tenant right in the first place, and the time had not yet arrived when a great minister from either party was prepared to listen to their demands on this subject. There was also much bitterness of feeling remaining from the discussions on the ecclesiastical titles bill. But it may be safely said that not one of the questions that stirred up public feeling in England had the slightest popular interest in Ireland, and the question which the Irish people considered essential to their very existence did not enter for one moment into the struggles that were going on all over England. The speeches of ministers in England showed the same lively diversity as before on the subject of protection. Mr. Disraeli not only threw protection overboard, but boldly declared that no one could have supposed the ministry had the slightest intention of proposing to bring back the laws that were repealed in 1846. In fact, he declared, the time had gone by when such exploded politics could ever interest the people of this country. On the other hand, several of Mr. Disraeli's colleagues evidently spoke in the fullness of their simple faith that Lord Darby was bent on setting up again the once beloved and not yet forgotten protective system. But from the time of the elections nothing more was heard about protection or about the possibility of getting a new trial for its principles. The elections did little or nothing for the government. The dreams of a strengthened party at their back were gone. They gained a little, just enough to make it unlikely that any one would move a vote of want of confidence at the very outset of their reappearance before Parliament, but not nearly enough to give them a chance of carrying any measure which would really propitiate the Conservative Party throughout the country. They were still to be the ministry of a minority, a ministry on sufferance. They were a ministry on sufferance when they appealed to the country but they were able to say then that when their cause had been heard the country would declare for them. They now came back to be a ministry on sufferance who had made the appeal and seen it rejected. It was plain to every one that their existence as a ministry was only a question of days. Speculation was already busy as to their successors and it was evident that a new government could only be formed by some sort of coalition between the Whigs and the Peelites. Among the noteworthy events of the general election was the return of Macaulay to the House of Commons. Edinburgh elected him in a manner particularly complementary to him and honourable to herself. He was elected without his solicitation, without his putting himself forward as a candidate, without his making any profession of faith or doing any of the things that the most independent candidate was then expected to do, and in fact in spite of his positive declaration that he would do nothing to court election. He had for some years been absent from Parliament. Some difference had arisen between him and certain of his constituents on the subject of the Meneuth Grant. Complaints too had been made by Edinburgh constituents of Macaulay's lack of attention to local interests and of the intellectual score in which they believed he exhibited in his intercourse with many of those who had supported him. The result of this was that at the general election of 1847 Macaulay was left third on the pole at Edinburgh. He felt this deeply. He might have easily found some other constituency, but his wounded pride hastened a resolution he had for some time been forming to retire to a life of private literary labour. He therefore remained out of Parliament. In 1852 the movement of Edinburgh toward him was entirely spontaneous. Edinburgh was anxious to atone for the error of which he had been guilty. Macaulay would go no farther than to say that if Edinburgh spontaneously elected him he would deem it a very high honour, and should not feel myself justified in refusing to accept a public trust offered to me in a manner so honourable and so peculiar. But he would not do anything whatever to court favour. He did not want to be elected to Parliament, he said. He was very happy in his retirement. Edinburgh elected him on those terms. He was not long allowed by his health to serve her, but so long as he remained in the House of Commons it was as member for Edinburgh. On September 14, 1852 the Duke of Wellington died. His end was singularly peaceful. He fell quietly asleep about a quarter past three in the afternoon in Walmer Castle, and he did not wake any more. He was a very old man in his 84th year, and his death had naturally been looked for as an event certain to come soon. Yet when it did come, thus naturally and peacefully, it created a profound public emotion. No other man in our time ever held the position in England which the Duke of Wellington had occupied for more than a whole generation. The place he had won for himself was absolutely unique. His great deeds belonged to a past time. He was hardly anything of a statesman. He knew little and cared less about what may be called statecraft and as an administrator he had made many mistakes. But the trust which the nation had in him as a counselor was absolutely unlimited. It never entered into the mind of any one to suppose that the Duke of Wellington was actuated in any step he took or advice he gave by any feeling but a desire for the good of the state. His loyalty to the sovereign had something antique and touching in it. There was a blending of personal affection with a devotion of a state servant which lent a certain romantic dignity to the demeanor and character of one who otherwise had but little of the poetical or the sentimental in his nature. In the business of politics he had but one prevailing anxiety, and that was that the Queen's government should be satisfactorily carried on. He gave up again and again his own most cherished convictions, most ingrained prejudices in order that he might not stand in the way of the Queen's government and the proper carrying on of it. This simple fidelity, sometimes rather whimsically displayed, stood him often instead of an exalted statesmanship and enabled him to extricate the government and the nation from difficulties in which a political insight far more keen than his might have failed to prove a guide. It was for this true and tried, this simple and unswerving devotion to the national good that the people of England admired and revered him. He had not what would be called a lovable temperament, and yet the nation loved him. He was cold in bruskin manner and seemed in general to have hardly a gleam of the emotional in him. This was not because he lacked emotions. On the contrary, his affections and his friendships were warm and enduring, and even in public he had more than once given way to outbursts of emotion, such as a stranger would never have expected from one of that cold and rigid demeanor. When Sir Robert Peale died, Wellington spoke of him in the House of Lords with the tears which he did not even try to control running down his cheeks. But in his ordinary bearing there was little of the manner that makes a man a popular idol. He was not brilliant or dashing or emotional or graceful. He was dry, cold, self-contained. Yet the people loved him and trusted in him, loved him perhaps especially because they so trusted in him. No face and figure were better known at one time to the population of London than those of the Duke of Wellington. Of late his form had grown stooped and he bent over his horse as he rode in the park or down White Hall like one who could hardly keep himself in the saddle. Yet he mounted his horse to the last, and indeed could keep in the saddle after he had ceased to be able to sit erect in an armchair. He sometimes rode in a curious little cab of his own devising, but his favourite way of going about London was on the back of his horse. He was called par excellence, the Duke. The London working man who looked up as he went to or from his work and cut sight of the bowed figure on the horse, took off his hat and told some passer-by. There goes the Duke. His victories belonged to the past. They were but traditions even to middle-aged men in the Duke's later years. But he was regarded still as an embodiment of the national heroism and success, a modern Saint George in a tightly buttoned frock coat and white trousers. End of Section 14