Chapter XXIII: Clouds in the East and Elsewhere

Political Wreckage--Force triumphs over Opinion--The State of
France--Election of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte as
Prince-President--The Sad Plight of Italy--Palmerston’s
Anti-Austrian Policy--Defeat of Piedmont--The Fall of Venice--Fall
of the Roman Republic--A Cromwellian Struggle in Prussia--The
Queen’s Partisanship--Her Prussian Sympathies--The Hungarian
Refugees in Turkey--A Diplomatic Conflict with Russia--Opening of
Parliament--Mr. Disraeli and Local Taxation--Parliamentary
Reform--The Jonahs of the Cabinet--The Dispute with Greece--Don
Pacifico’s case--Coercion of Greece--Lord Palmerston meekly accepts
an Insult from Russia--French Intervention--A Diplomatic Conflict
in France--Recall of the French Ambassador--False Statements in
Parliament--The Queen’s Indignation--The Don Pacifico Debate--The
_Civis Romanus sum_ Doctrine--Palmerston’s Victory--The West
African Slave Trade.

When the year 1850 opened the counter-revolution had been accomplished. Much political and social wreckage disfigured the Continent, but the tempest which had produced it was over. What remained was an uneasy after-swell agitating the restless ocean of discontent. Force had, in fact, triumphed over opinion, and Europe was at last tranquil.

In France, after Louis Philippe fell, the country was left a prey to four factions or parties. One demanded an absolute monarchy; another demanded a parliamentary monarchy; a third demanded a military empire, based on universal suffrage; a fourth demanded a republic. The partisans of the republic triumphed in the first instance. But it fell, a victim to the voracity of its own children. The Government of Lamartine was poetic and Utopian,

and its experiment of creating national workshops in which the workers were to be paid by the State, was not only fantastic but fatal. The State found it had no work to give. It found it had no money to spend in wages; and the artisans of the national establishments were accordingly advised to join the army. This disastrous adventure in Socialism was followed by another insurrection in Paris--in which, by the way, the Archbishop of Paris and thousands of less eminent persons were slain. What Prince Bismarck would call the “psychological moment” for the interposition of a clever adventurer with a suggestion of compromise had manifestly arrived. Accordingly, the advent of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte was hailed with a sense of relief by all parties--wearied to despair by the futile conflicts of factions. Although M. Grévy vainly endeavoured by a motion in the Chamber to procure the proscription of the Prince, his Highness was elected President of the Republic on the 10th of December, 1848, by five and a half million out of seven and a half million votes. He took the oath to preserve the Republic, without compunction. But when the year 1850 opened, he was busily plotting for its destruction, and manufacturing failure for its institutions.

The plight of Italy was a sad one. Austria had successfully met the attempt to seize her Italian provinces. She had crushed Piedmont so completely that, in 1849, there was danger lest she might be tempted to invade that State, and thus provoke the interference of Republican France. Lord Palmerston accordingly endeavoured to mediate between Austria and Piedmont. The idea of mediation was chimerical, for Austria, having made heavy sacrifices to hold her Cisalpine territories, and having succeeded in doing so by force, could hardly be expected to accept with equanimity Lord Palmerston’s favourite dogma, that the Italian provinces of Austria were to her not a source of strength, but of weakness. Austria repudiated all proposals for a conference of mediation, unless they were limited to discuss what Piedmont owed her as an indemnity, and the guarantees which could be given against Piedmontese turbulence. Diplomacy had well-nigh exhausted its resources in endeavouring to bring Austria to submit the points at issue to a Congress at Brussels, when the whole situation was suddenly changed. Joseph Mazzini and his school, convinced that Austria was checked by France and England, overthrew the Governments of Florence and Rome, which were under Austrian tutelage. Revolution headed by a monarch had failed. Its victory, argued Mazzini, under Republican leadership, would be a signal triumph for the Republican idea. The success of Mazzini and his followers led to the formation of a violent anti-Austrian Ministry in Piedmont.

But again Austria triumphed. Piedmont was crushed at Novara on the 23rd of March, 1849. Venice was on the eve of surrender, and when the Pope, who had fled to Gaeta, appealed to the Catholic Powers for aid, Austria was thus quite free to help him. The prospect of Austria bringing Central as well as North Italy under her sway alarmed France, and accordingly the Republican Government in Paris sent an army under Oudinot, which suppressed the Republican Government at Rome. The Grand Duke of Tuscany was restored, the revolution in the Sicilies quenched in blood, and the dream of Italian independence dissipated. Nor was this the only triumph of Absolutism under Austria. The revolution in Hungary was suppressed, but not till Russia came to the assistance of Austria.

In Prussia, too, the monarchy, after a Cromwellian struggle with a factious Parliament, had completely restored its authority, and to Prussia the smaller German States now began to turn for leadership in consolidating themselves into a German Empire. Unhappily the King of Prussia failed to respond to this feeling when Austria was struggling with the revolution in Italy. At the beginning of 1850 he accordingly found the feeling in favour of unifying Germany opposed by three great Powers--France, Russia, and Austria, the last, indeed, claiming, on behalf of the Archduke John, to be the executive head and heir of the defunct German Confederation of 1815. By the Constitution of Kremsir, Austria had consolidated her possessions--German, Magyar, Sclavonic, and Italian--into one federal State, and, in a sense, she had thereby withdrawn from the German Confederation. Her policy of obstructing consolidation in disintegrated Germany was therefore alike ungenerous and unjust.

Through this maze of difficulty the Queen and Prince Albert steered a clear course. They were both partisans--one might say strong and zealous partisans--of Teutonic consolidation under Prussia. Austria, they held, had played for her own hand, and, by adopting Schwarzenberg’s policy of consolidating her dominions in purely Austrian interests, she had abandoned her claim to guide the destinies of the smaller German States, in purely German interests. But, however strongly the Queen felt on this point, her influence was used to moderate the extravagant anti-Austrian antipathies of Lord Palmerston, and it largely contributed to keep the country out of war. At last, however, a cloud rose in the East which threatened us with calamity.

When Austria, by summoning to her aid the armed hordes of Russia, stamped out the movement for Hungarian independence, several Hungarian and Polish patriots--Kossuth, Ban, and others--fled to Turkey. Austria and Russia demanded their extradition. The Sultan refused to surrender the refugees, and De Titoff and Stürmer, Russian and Austrian ambassadors, suspended diplomatic relations with the Porte. The Sultan appealed to Britain and France against this outrageous violation of the unity of nations. Britain remonstrated in firm but courteous language, and Austria and Russia both withdrew their demands, but not before the British fleet had moved within the forbidden limits of the Dardanelles, in anticipation of a refusal. Lord Palmerston’s apology for thus violating the treaty of 1841 was that the fleet had been driven into forbidden waters by “stress of weather.” As there was notoriously no “stress of weather,” this explanation merely irritated the Czar, and planted in his heart the germ of that fierce hatred of England, which culminated in the Crimean War.

Parliament was opened on the 31st of January, 1850, by Commission, and, as had been anticipated, the Protectionists made, not an attack, but rather a reconnoissance in force against the Government. During the recess they had gone through the country painting the darkest pictures of the condition of England. According to their speeches, one would have imagined that another famine had smitten the nation; and for all this pessimism there was but one justification. No doubt everybody who depended on the soil for a livelihood was suffering from distress. Prices had fallen, and farmers had not taken kindly to the new order of things. But the masses of the people, especially in industrial centres, were enjoying greater comfort than ever. The revenue was showing signs of buoyancy; the foreign trade of the

country had increased, and pauperism had diminished. All these cheering facts were concealed from the public by the Conservative agitators, who concentrated attention on one point--the admitted and deplorable distress of the landed interest. The real desire of the Tory party at this time was to turn out the Government and restore Protection. The Duke of Richmond’s indiscreet speech on the Address in the House of Lords proves that. But, conscious of the difficulty of suddenly upsetting the fiscal system which was based on Free Trade, they concealed their real purpose. Mr. Disraeli therefore supported a Protectionist amendment to the Address in reply to the Queen’s Speech, on the ground that the landed interests were entitled to a certain amount of relief from public burdens, in compensation for the loss of Protection. On the 19th of February, Mr. Disraeli had to show his hand. He then moved for a committee to revise the Poor Law so as to mitigate distress among the agricultural class. This debate is worth noticing, because it may be said to have definitely originated the perennial movement for local taxation reform, which is always an object of enthusiasm to what may be called the country party, when out of office. Mr. Disraeli’s idea was to transfer from local rates to the Imperial Treasury (1), Poor Law establishment charges; (2), rates which had nothing to do with the relief of the poor, and were only raised by

Poor Law machinery as a matter of convenience--such as rates for registration of births, deaths, and marriages, for getting up jury lists, and the like; and (3), the rate for supporting the casual poor. His case was not decided on its merits. Members did not look to what was in the motion, but to what was behind it, namely, the restoration of Protection, or an increase in Income Tax to provide funds for the relief of local burdens. Sir James Graham’s frank admission, as a landlord, that relief in the rate would be swallowed by an increase in the rents, and that it was the landlord and not the tenant who would profit, determined many, who did not deny the abstract justice of Mr. Disraeli’s contention, to vote against him. The sensational incident in the debate was the speech of Mr. Gladstone, who supported Mr. Disraeli against his own leaders. In fact, he replied to Sir James Graham. Despite the support of Peel, the Government, instead of having a majority of forty, as they expected, were saved from defeat only by a majority of twenty. From that day till now a clever debater, by a skilful motion in favour of relief of local taxation, has always been able to weaken the majority of the strongest of Ministries. Local taxation is the vulnerable point of Governments, and it is the one subject with which they all seem afraid to deal in a bold and comprehensive spirit. All they do is to denounce the evil in Opposition, and palliate its existence when in Power.

The agitation for Parliamentary Reform had increased. Some of the Peelites, notably Sir J. Graham, had warned Lord John Russell that they were in favour of an extension of the franchise, and Lord John himself had abandoned the doctrine of finality. Mr. Hume, therefore, brought forward his annual motion on the 28th of February, hinting plainly that he would have no objection to extend its scope so as to include female franchise, and the substitution of an elective for a hereditary House of Lords. It was quite certain that Lord John Russell was by this time of opinion that some safe concessions might be made to the Radicals. Several of his colleagues, however--_e.g._, Mr. Labouchere--were of a different opinion, and it is accordingly right to say that those who denounced Lord John’s “apostasy,” when he opposed Mr. Hume, were somewhat unfair. Had the Prime Minister produced a Reform Bill this Session, every question which it might be possible to deal with would have been put aside. But as he was not likely to carry his own colleagues with him in advocating reform, not only would this sacrifice have been made in vain, but a Government which, in the existing state of parties, was indispensable to the nation, would have fallen. Mr. Hume was beaten by a vote of 242 against 96, though the Prime Minister’s argument against him was rather a plea for delay, than a defiant “_Non possumus_.”

Writing on the 10th of February, Mr. Greville says in his Journal, “The brightness of the Ministerial prospect was very soon clouded over, and last week their disasters began. There was first of all the Greek affair, and then the case of the Ceylon witnesses--matters affecting Lord Palmerston and Lord Grey”--the Jonahs of the Cabinet. “The Greek case,” continues Mr. Greville, “will probably be settled, thanks to French mediation, but it was a bad and discreditable affair, and has done more harm to Palmerston than any of his greater enormities. The other Ministers are extremely annoyed at it, and at the sensation it has produced.” The Greek case was briefly this: Mr. Finlay, a British subject in Athens, alleged that King Otho had enclosed a bit of his land in the Royal Garden, and demanded compensation. The King offered him the same compensation that had been accepted as fair by other owners of enclosed land in Mr. Finlay’s position. This Mr. Finlay refused, and he demanded £1,500 for the land which, it was admitted, he had bought for £10. Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew from Gibraltar, sought damages for the pillage of his house by the Athenian mob. He claimed £31,534. The value of his furniture was shown to be £2,181. The balance was supposed to represent the value of documents proving that he had a claim on the Portuguese Government for £27,000. Mr. Finlay and Don Pacifico had not raised their claims in the ordinary law courts, and to the amazement of everybody, Lord Palmerston proposed to employ the mailed might of England to collect their bad debts. He peremptorily ordered the Greek Government to pay these exaggerated claims, on pain of inflicting on Greece a blockade and reprisals within twenty-four hours. On the 18th of January, Admiral Parker, with the Mediterranean Fleet, blockaded the Piræus--for, contrary to Lord Palmerston’s expectations, Greece refused to comply with his demands. The Greek Government appealed for protection to France and Russia--whose Governments being with that of Britain joint guarantors for the independence of Greece, were justly annoyed that their good offices had not been invoked by Lord Palmerston. Count Nesselrode, burning to avenge the defeat of the Czar over the question of the Hungarian refugees in Turkey, sent a remonstrance to Lord Palmerston, which was couched in the language of bitter contempt and studied insolence. The French Government, on the other hand, pretending that our agent in Athens had blundered, courteously offered to extricate Lord Palmerston from his difficulties by using the influence of France, to compose the dispute with Greece. On the 12th of February Lord Palmerston ordered the British Envoy to inform Admiral Parker that he must suspend coercive operations. It was not till the 2nd of March that these instructions arrived, and in the interval the Admiral had been vigorously coercing the Greeks. France was naturally irritated at this untoward incident, all the more that Lord Palmerston’s explanation of the delay was deemed unsatisfactory. Ultimately, the matter was settled on Greece agreeing to pay Mr. Wyse, the British Minister, £8,500 to be distributed by him as he thought just among the claimants--the value of Don Pacifico’s lost vouchers against the Portuguese Government to be determined by arbitration.

This compromise, however, was made by negotiation in London. A French steamer conveyed the purport of it to Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy at Athens, on the 24th of April. He, however, said that he had no instructions from his Government to countermand his original orders, which were to renew coercion if the French Envoy at Athens could not induce the Greeks to submit. Coercion was therefore again applied, and the Greek Government on the 27th submitted to Mr. Wyse’s demands. These were more onerous in some respects than the terms agreed on by the London Convention, and Lord Palmerston persisted in adhering to the Athenian arrangement. M. Gros at Athens, finding he could not persuade Mr. Wyse to act on the London Convention, had on the 21st of April officially intimated that his action as mediator was ended. This, argued Lord Palmerston coolly, left the British Envoy--in the absence of instructions from England--free to renew coercion, and to enter into the Athenian arrangement. Palmerston, in other words, claimed the right to take advantage of his own delay, in notifying to Mr. Wyse the result of the London Convention, to refuse to act on the finding of that Convention. It is but fair to say that the Queen was quite as indignant as the Government of France, at Lord Palmerston’s rude and provocative conduct. Lord John Russell intimated to her the fact that the French Government had met the affront with which Lord Palmerston had rewarded their efforts to extricate him from the effect of his own blunder, by recalling M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Her Majesty promptly directed her husband, who acted as her confidential secretary, to send the Prime Minister one of those curt, cutting notes, which invariably indicate her displeasure.

“MY DEAR LORD JOHN,--Both the Queen and myself are exceedingly
sorry at the news your letter contained. We are not surprised,
however, that Lord Palmerston’s mode of doing business should not
be borne by the susceptible French Government with the same good
humour and forbearance as by his colleagues.

“Ever yours truly,

“ALBERT.

“Buckingham Palace, 15th May, 1850.”[12]

The view which the Queen took was the fair and common-sense one, namely, that we should act on the London Convention. The Convention of London which we made with France gave us certain terms. By an accident, for which Palmerston was responsible, Mr. Wyse at Athens had extorted better ones for us at Athens. It was not high policy, but sharp practice; it was not in the spirit of enlightened diplomacy, but in the spirit of the meanest attorneydom, that any claim to benefit by the “accident” which had given better terms to us at Athens than at London, was pressed by Lord Palmerston.

But the Queen’s troubles did not end here. Her birthday was celebrated on the 15th of May, and the absence of the French and Russian Ambassadors from the usual Foreign Office dinner on that occasion, naturally roused suspicion. It was not known that the French representative had been recalled, and that France and England were in open diplomatic conflict. What was the meaning of the absence of these ambassadors? asked Society at the great rout at Devonshire House on the night of the 19th. Questions to this effect were put to Ministers in both Houses. Lord Lansdowne said that the departure of M. Drouyn de Lhuys was purely accidental; and Lord Palmerston had the effrontery to declare, in reply to Mr. Milner Gibson, that M. de Lhuys had merely gone to Paris as a medium of communication between the two Governments. But the _Times_ reported in due course that General de la Hitte, Minister of War, had intimated from the tribune of the French Assembly that, because Lord Palmerston’s explanations in regard to points at issue between the two Governments were not such as France had a right to expect, “the President had ordered General de la Hitte to recall their Ambassador from London.” Nothing could exceed the mortification of the Queen when she was informed of the almost simultaneous publication of these contradictory official statements. Her detestation of equivocal and shuffling Ministerial explanations has long passed into a proverb. Her Majesty’s theory, in fact, is that the Minister is for the time the trustee of the honour of the Crown, and that, especially in foreign countries, where the relation between the British Sovereign and her Ministers is ill understood, the Crown is held personally responsible for what the Minister says, in all matters affecting

the external relations of the kingdom. In plain English, the Queen has always held that if a Minister tells a lie in Parliament, nine people out of ten on the Continent will suspect that she has ordered or induced him to tell it. Hence her indignation on reading Lord Palmerston’s reply to Mr. Milner Gibson’s question was tinged with a feeling of personal humiliation and shame. Public opinion was similarly excited when the newspapers were studied, and fuller questions were immediately put to Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell. They gave evasive and prevaricating answers, attempting to explain away the French Ambassador’s letter of recall, much to the disgust of all parties in Parliament. The tide of anger rose higher every day that the scandal was discussed. Lord John Russell told his brother, the Duke of Bedford, that Ministers must defend Palmerston on this occasion, but, after the dispute came to an end, he would have Palmerston dismissed from the Foreign Office. “He is,” writes Mr. Greville on the 19th of May, “to see the Queen on Tuesday, who will of course be boiling over with indignation;” for by this time Baron Brunnow, the Russian Ambassador, had warned Lord John that he, too, must ask to be relieved from his post, as “it was impossible for him to stay here to be on bad terms with Palmerston.”

The question has often been asked, Why did English statesmen get up in both Houses of Parliament and tell a series of falsehoods which they knew must be discovered in forty-eight hours by official refutation from France? The fact is, Lord Palmerston had deceived his colleagues. He assured them that M. de Lhuys had taken back to Paris explanations so conciliatory, that his letter of recall would be quietly cancelled. Assured by Palmerston that he had made the cancelling of the recall a certainty, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell assumed that the letter of recall was suppressed, and they both answered as if it never had existed. On the 25th of May, Mr. Greville writes:--“The morning before yesterday the Duke of Bedford came here again. He had seen Lord John since, and heard what passed with the Queen. She was full of this affair, and again urged all her objections to Lord Palmerston. This time she found Lord John better disposed than heretofore, and he is certainly revolving in his mind how the thing can be done. He does not by any means contemplate going out himself, or breaking up the Government. What he looks to is this, that the Queen should take the initiative, and urge Palmerston’s removal from the Foreign Office. She is quite ready to do this as soon as she is assured of her wishes being attended to.”[13]

Lord John Russell screwed up his courage to the point of contemplating the removal of Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office to some other department of State, he himself undertaking the duties of Foreign Secretary along with those of the Premiership. Such a combination is never a wise one. Even in recent times, when Lord Salisbury attempted to unite in his own person the two offices, the strain was found to be greater than his strength could bear; and in the case of Lord John, whose health was at this time capricious and precarious, it was perhaps as well that at the eleventh hour he shrank from proposing the change to Lord Palmerston. Lord John has been accused of lack of courage in connection with this affair. The truth is, that a perverted chivalry prompted him to stand by Lord Palmerston. The Greek affair was hardly defensible. But it was bruited about that the Opposition, under cover of condemning Lord Palmerston in that special case, meant to direct a severe attack on the foreign policy of the Government as a whole. Lord Palmerston’s colleagues had, however, permitted themselves not only to be identified with that policy, but had thought fit to defend every blunder he had made in carrying it out. Lord John Russell, then, cannot be blamed for considering that to desert the Foreign Secretary on the Greek Question, would have been tantamount to making him the scapegoat of the Cabinet. Hence, in spite of the Queen’s strong feeling in the matter, it was agreed that Palmerston should not be “thrown over.”

After much fencing between the leaders of the two parties, the first of the attacks, which led to a series of debates almost unparalleled in our history as displays of sustained Parliamentary eloquence, was made in the House of Lords on the 17th of June. Lord Stanley moved a vote of censure on the Ministry for their coercive measures in Greece, affirming, however, the general proposition that it was the right and duty of the Government to secure to British subjects in foreign States, the full protection of the laws of those States. The scene was a memorable one. The House was crowded in every part, and the conflict began with an amusing farce. The Peeress’s Gallery was crammed to overflowing, and when Lady Melbourne and Lady Newport, under Lord Brougham’s escort, went to their places, they found them filled, and were ignominiously turned away. Brougham, however, espied Bunsen, the Prussian Minister, in the gallery, and requested him to retire to his proper seat in the Ambassadors’ quarter, but he refused. Then Brougham went down to his own place, and avenged himself on Bunsen by calling the attention of their lordships to the fact that there was “a stranger in the Peeress’s Gallery,” adding, “if he does not come down, I shall move your lordships to enforce the order of the House. It is the more intolerable as he has a place assigned to him in another part, and he is now keeping the room of _two Peeresses_.” As Bunsen was notoriously a fat, overgrown man, Brougham’s malicious personality was received with shouts of laughter. But it had no effect on the stolid Prussian, who kept his seat till Sir Augustus Clifford, Usher of the Black Rod, made him retire.[14]

The issue before the House was simple enough. (1), Lord Palmerston had agreed with M. Drouyn de Lhuys that if the terms which M. Gros, the French Envoy at Athens, proposed on behalf of Greece were rejected by Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy, coercion should not be again applied without special orders from Britain. But if M. Gros threw up his office of mediator because the Greeks declined to let him offer fair terms, then of course Mr. Wyse was to

resort to coercion without further instructions. (2), M. Drouyn de Lhuys and Lord Palmerston in London agreed on a settlement, the terms of which were less onerous than those demanded by Mr. Wyse. (3), Though this was informally communicated by the French to Mr. Wyse, he rejected the terms which M. Gros offered on behalf of Greece, contending that he had no instructions from Lord Palmerston as to the adoption of any other course. (4), M. Gros then dropped the negotiations. Mr. Wyse, again arguing that he was without instructions, ordered coercion to be applied, upon which the Greek Government yielded. The pith of the dispute centred in one point. Did Palmerston or did he not send Mr. Wyse instructions as to the arrangement made in London with M. Drouyn de Lhuys? The French said that their Envoy abandoned negotiations because Mr. Wyse was unreasonable. Lord Palmerston contended that Mr. Wyse was of opinion that M. Gros had dropped mediation because the

Greeks were unreasonable, and that therefore, in terms of the arrangement made in London, Mr. Wyse was justified in resorting to coercion without further instructions. Mr. Wyse may have been mistaken in supposing that M. Gros retired from the negotiations in the circumstances which, according to the London Convention, would have justified a resort to coercion without further reference to Lord Palmerston. If that were the case, the Government had a good defence; for it would have been unfair to censure them for Mr. Wyse’s blunder. But was it the case? How could Mr. Wyse have blundered in interpreting the conditions of the London Convention, if no instructions in accordance with that Convention had been sent to him? The complaint was that the Foreign Secretary had neglected to send these instructions, and a close and careful examination of Palmerston’s own Blue-book, fails to bring to light the slightest proof that they ever were sent. Therefore it was clear (1), that England had broken a binding diplomatic compact with France, and (2), that this breach of faith had enabled Mr. Wyse at Athens to extort by force from a small, weak Power more onerous terms than the English Government had agreed with France to accept in London. The House of Lords took this view of the matter, and when the debate ended, in the grey dawn of a summer’s morning, it was found on division that there was a majority of 37 against the Government.

Some members of the Cabinet were for resignation. Many friends of the Government thought that Palmerston should personally offer the Queen his resignation, begging her not to accept that of his colleagues if they tendered theirs. But the Foreign Secretary made no offer to resign, and at first the Cabinet resolved to take no more notice of the vote of censure in the Upper House. Ultimately, they found that they must notice it, and as their Foreign Policy as a whole was impugned, they decided not to abandon the Foreign Secretary. On the 20th of June, Lord John Russell explained why he would not resign. He gave two reasons--one good and the other bad,--the first being one of which the Queen approved. It was that a change of Government, in consequence of a resolution of the House of Lords, would be unconstitutional, because, in his opinion, it might be dangerous even to the House of Lords to lay upon it the responsibility of controlling her Majesty’s Executive. Two precedents, one a hundred years old, and one taken from 1833, when the Peers, on the motion of the Duke of Wellington, censured Lord Grey’s Foreign Policy in Portugal, were ingeniously cited by Lord John Russell in support of this constitutional doctrine. But his second reason was characteristically Palmerstonian. He said that the House of Lords had laid it down, that it was the duty of the British Government to see that British subjects in Foreign States got full protection from the laws of those States. That was a _limitation_ of duty which Lord John Russell refused to recognise, because, said he, a Foreign State might make bad laws, and it would be the duty of England to prevent her subjects from being injured by those laws. No principle is more clearly established in international law than this--that a Sovereign State has an absolute right to dictate the terms on which any alien shall abide on its soil.[15] If the alien does not like the law of the Foreign State, he has no business to call on his own countrymen to defend him by force of arms in refusing to obey it, seeing that it was not at their request or in their interest, but of his own free will, and in pursuit of his own fortune, he went to live or traffic abroad. In fact, to lay it down that England might levy war on any country, whose laws Englishmen residing in that country considered inequitable, was tantamount to proclaiming her _hostis humani generis_. Yet such was the doctrine which the House of Commons, in spite of the protests of the Tories, of Radicals like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, and Peelites like Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, cheerfully accepted from the Whigs at this period. The only thing that can be said in its defence is that it is a doctrine which the House has never dared to apply to a stronger Power than Greece--never to a Power like Russia, which deports English Jews, nor like Germany, which deports English residents, personally obnoxious to Prince Bismarck, in the most arbitrary manner. It is doubtful if it would even dare to apply it to an autonomous colony like Victoria, had her Government refused, as was threatened, to permit the Irish informer, James Carey, to reside within her frontier.

Having decided to defy the House of Lords, the Government hit on an ingenious plan for neutralising the vote of censure. They put up Mr. Roebuck on the 21st of June to move a vote of confidence in them not touching the Greek dispute, but approving generally of their Foreign Policy as one likely “to preserve untarnished the honour and dignity of this country.” The debate, which lasted five days, was a veritable tournament of Titans. On both sides speeches were made that touch the highest point to which Parliamentary eloquence can reach. Mr. Cockburn, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, delivered an oration by which, at one bound, he leapt into the first rank of British orators. Peel delivered the last speech he was fated to make in the great assembly, on which for years he had played with the easy mastery of a musician on his favourite instrument. Palmerston himself spoke for four hours and a quarter with more than his usual dash and intrepidity, and with surprising moderation and good taste--basing his case virtually on the application of the _civis Romanus sum_ doctrine to British Foreign Policy. This was the point in it which Mr. Gladstone demolished in a passionate protest, that may be said to have become classical. But in the end the Government triumphed by a majority of 46! Yet, on the face of the facts, they had absolutely no case. Why, then, were they victorious? For many reasons. In the then divided state of parties, the Government was felt to be the only possible Government. Palmerston, by adroitly spreading the report that the attack on

him was really fomented by the agents of the despotic Powers, whose policy he had persistently opposed, won strong support from the Radicals. The Whigs felt that as the Foreign Policy of the Government as a whole was attacked, they were bound to defend the Ministry, quite irrespective of Palmerston’s possibly objectionable method of carrying out that policy. Moreover, it was undoubtedly a weak point in the tactics of the Opposition, that they did not venture to submit in the House of Commons, the motion of censure which they had carried in the House of Lords. But though Lord Palmerston’s triumph was complete, the Queen continued to be dissatisfied

with his reckless manner of managing the Foreign Office. Pressure was put on him by the concurrence of Lord John Russell, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Clarendon to take another department, which, however, he refused to do. For the time--confident in his popularity--he was able to hold his position, but ere a year had elapsed her Majesty’s warnings were fulfilled, and Lord John was simply compelled to force him to retire.[16] It must be here told how this whole controversy ended. Before the debate closed, it was announced that we had accepted, with some trifling modifications in detail, the French proposals made on behalf of Greece. The demands of the claimants in support of whom we had been brought to the brink of war with France, were finally assessed at £10,000--about one-thirtieth part of the sum they originally asked!

No other question of Foreign Policy agitated the House of Commons in 1850, save Mr. Hutt’s proposal to withdraw the British war-ships engaged in suppressing the West African slave trade. The cost of the squadron had made its maintenance unpopular even with Liberals, and when Lord John Russell threatened to stake the existence of his Ministry on it, the Queen was distressed to learn that there was every prospect of his being defeated, at a time when a change of Government would have produced the utmost confusion. A meeting of the Liberal Party was convened by the Prime Minister at Downing Street, and pressure, which they hardly dared to resist, induced the malcontents to support the Government. Mr. Hutt’s motion was lost, many Ministerialists, however, complaining bitterly that the Prime Minister had concussed them into voting against their convictions.