The political opinions of Lord Palmerston at that time, and perhaps through life, were those of the school of Pitt —not the effete Toryism of the Pitt clubs, which he always treated with disdain, but the enlarged Conservative views of the great minister himself, as represented after Pitt’s death by Canning. Lord Palmerston never was a Whig, still less a Radical; he was a statesman of the old English aristocratic type, liberal in his sentiments, favourable to the cause of justice and the march of progress, but entirely opposed to the claims of democratic government. Thus he supported from the first the cause of Catholic emancipation, and he sympathized warmly with the constitutional party throughout the world, but he was opposed to the extension of the franchise in England, and he regarded the impulse of popular power as a force to be directed and controlled rather than obeyed. So successfully did he practise the art of governing a free people that he lived to be regarded as a popular minister, though he had been for twenty years a member of a Tory Government, and never materially altered his own opinions.

In the later years of Lord Liverpool’s administration, after the death of Lord Londonderry in 1822, strong dissensions existed in the cabinet. The Liberal section of the Government was gaining ground. Canning became foreign minister and leader of the House of Commons. Huskisson began to advocate and apply the doctrines of free trade. Catholic emancipation was made an open question. Although Lord Palmerston was not in the cabinet, he cordially supported the measures of Canning and his friends. Upon the death of Lord Liverpool, Canning was called to the head of affairs; the Tories, including Peel, withdrew their support, and an alliance was formed between the Liberal members of the late ministry and the Whigs. In this combination the chancellorship of the exchequer was first offered to Lord Palmerston, who accepted it, but this appointment was frustrated by the king’s intrigue with Herries, and Palmerston was content to remain secretary at war with a seat in the cabinet, which he now entered for the first time. The Canning administration ended in four months bv the death of its illustrious chief, and was succeeded by the feeble ministry of Lord Goderich, which barely survived the year. But the “Canningites,” as they were termed, remained, and the duke of Wellington hastened to include Palmerston, Huskisson, Charles Grant, Lamb, and Dudley in his Government. A dispute between the duke and Huskisson soon led to the resignation of that minister, and his friends felt bound to share his fate. In the spring of 1828 Palmerston found himself, for the first time in his life, in opposition. From that moment he appears to have directed his attention closely to foreign affairs; indeed he had already urged on the duke of Wellington a more active interference in the affairs of Greece; he had made several visits to Paris, where he foresaw with great accuracy the impending revolution; and on the 1st June 1829 he made a speech on foreign affairs of such excellence that never but once in his long career did he surpass it. For it may here be remarked that Lord Palmerston was no orator; his language was unstudied, and his delivery somewhat embarrassed; but he generally found words to say the right thing at the right time, and to address the House of Commons in the language best adapted to the capacity and the temper of his audience. An attempt was made by the duke of Wellington in September 1830 to induce Palmerston to re enter the cabinet, which he refused to do without Lord Lansdowne and Lord Grey, and from that time forward he may be said to have associated his political fortunes with those of the Whig party. It was therefore natural that Lord Grey should place the department of foreign affairs in his hands upon the formation of the great ministry of 1830, and Palmerston entered with zeal on the duties of an office over which he continued to exert his powerful influence, both in and out of office, for twenty years.

The revolution of July 1830 had just given a strong shock to the existing settlement of Europe. The kingdom of the Netherlands was rent asunder by the Belgian revolution; Portugal was the scene of civil war; the Spanish succession was about to open and place an infant princess on the throne. Poland was in arms against Russia, and the Northern powers formed a closer alliance, threatening to the peace and the liberties of Europe. In presence of these varied dangers, Lord Palmerston was prepared to act with spirit and resolution. The king of the Netherlands had appealed to the powers who had placed him on the throne to maintain his rights; and a conference assembled accordingly in London to -settle the question, which involved the independence of Belgium and the security of England. On the one hand, the Northern powers were anxious to defend the king of Holland; on the other hand a party in France aspired to annex the Belgian provinces. The policy of the British Government was a close alliance with France, but an alliance based on the principle that no interests were to be promoted at variance with the just rights of others, or which could give to any other nation well-founded cause of jealousy. If the Northern powers supported the king of Holland by force, they would encounter the resistance of France and England united in arms; if France sought to annex Belgium she would forfeit the alliance of England, and find herself opposed by the whole continent of Europe. In the end the policy of England prevailed; numerous difficulties, both great and small, were overcome by the conference; although on the verge of war, peace was maintained; and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was placed upon the throne of Belgium, which enjoyed for half a century the benefits of his enlightened rule, followed with equal success by that of his son and successor. Upon the whole this transaction may be regarded as the most important and most successful of Lord Palmerston’s public life.

Tn 1833 and 1834 the youthful queens Donna Maria of Portugal and Isabella of Spain were the representatives and the hope of the constitutional party in those countries, —assailed and hard pressed by their absolutist kinsmen Don Miguel and Don Carlos, who were the representatives of the male line of succession. Lord Palmerston conceived and executed the plan of a quadruple alliance of the constitutional states of the West to serve as a counterpoise to the Northern alliance. A treaty for the pacification of the Peninsula was signed in London on the 22d April 1834; and, although the struggle was somewhat prolonged in Spain, it accomplished its object. France, however, had been a reluctant party to this treaty. She never executed her share in it with zeal or fidelity. Louis Philippe was accused of favouring the Carlists underhand, and he positively refused to be a party to direct interference in Spain. It is probable that the hesitation of the French court on this question was one of the causes of the extreme personal hostility Lord Palmerston never ceased to show towards the king of the French down to the end of his life, if indeed that sentiment had not taken its origin at a much earlier period. Nevertheless, at this same time (June 1834) Lord Palmerston wrote that “Paris is the pivot of my foreign policy.” Μ. Thiers was at that time in office. Unfortunately these differences, growing out of the opposite policies of the two countries at the court of Madrid, increased in each succeeding year; and a constant but sterile rivalry was kept up, which ended in results more or less humiliating and injurious to both nations.

The affairs of the East interested Lord Palmerston in the highest degree. During the Greek War of Independence he had strenuously supported the claims of the Hellenes against the Turks and the execution of the treaty of London. But from 1830 the defence of the Ottoman empire became one of the cardinal objects of his policy. He believed in the regeneration of Turkey. “All that we hear,” he wrote to Mr Bulwer, “about the decay of the Turkish empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure unadulterated nonsense.” The two great aims he had in view were to prevent the establishment of Russia on the Bosphorus and the establishment of France on the Nile, and he regarded the maintenance of the authority of the Porte as the chief barrier against both these aggressions. Against Russia he had long maintained a suspicious and hostile attitude. He was a party to the publication of the “Portfolio” in 1834, and to the mission of the “Vixen” to force the blockade of Circassia about the same time. He regarded the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi which Russia extorted from the Porte in 1832, when she came to the relief of the sultan after the battle of Konieh, with great jealousy; and, when the power of Mohammed Ali in Egypt appeared to threaten the existence of the Ottoman dynasty, he succeeded in effecting a combination of all the powers, who signed the celebrated collective note of 27th July 1839, pledging them to maintain the independence and integrity of the Turkish empire as a security for the peace of Europe. On two former occasions, in 1833 and in 1835, the policy of Lord Palmerston, who proposed to afford material aid to the Porte against the pasha of Egypt, was overruled by the cabinet; and again, in 1839, when Baron Brunnow first proposed the active interference of Russia and England, the offer was rejected. But in 1840 Lord Palmerston returned to the charge and prevailed. The moment was critical, for Mohammed Ali had occupied Syria and won the battle of Nezib against the Turkish forces, and on the 1st July 1839 the sultan Mohammed expired. The Egyptian forces occupied Syria, and threatened Turkey; and Lord Ponsonby, then British ambassador at Constantinople, vehemently urged the necessity of crushing so formidable a rebellion against the Ottoman power. But France, though her ambassador had signed the collective note in the previous year, declined to be a party to measures of coercion against the pasha of Egypt. Palmerston, irritated at her Egyptian policy, flung himself into the arms of the Northern powers, and the treaty of the 15th July 1840 was signed in London without the knowledge or concurrence of France. This measure was not taken without great hesitation, and strong opposition on the part of several members of the British cabinet. Lord Holland and Lord Clarendon and some other ministers thought that, whatever might be the merits of the quarrel between the sultan and the pasha, our interference was not worth the price we were paying for it—an alliance with Russia and the rupture of our alliance with France; and the Government was more than once on the point of dissolution. Lord Palmerston himself declared in a letter to Lord Melbourne that he should quit the ministry if his policy was not adopted; and he carried his point. His consummate knowledge of details, his administrative ability, his impetuous will, and his conviction that France could not declare war against the four great powers of Europe prevailed over the resistance of an indolent premier and hesitating colleagues. The operations were conducted with extraordinary promptitude, good fortune, and success. The bombardment of Beirût, the fall of Acre, and the total collapse of the boasted power of Mohammed Ali followed in rapid succession, and before the close of the year Lord Palmerston’s policy, which had convulsed and terrified Europe, was triumphant, and the author of it was regarded as one of the most powerful statesmen of the age. At the same time, though acting with Russia in the Levant, the British Government engaged in the affairs of Afghanistan to defeat her intrigues in Central Asia, and a contest with China was terminated by the conquest of Chusan, afterwards exchanged for the island of Hong Kong. Seldom has Great Britain occupied a prouder position abroad, although by a singular contrast the cabinet was in the last stage of decrepitude at home. Within a few months Lord Melbourne’s administration came to an end, and Lord Palmerston remained for five years out of office. The crisis was past, but the change which took place by the substitution of Μ. Guizot for Μ. Thiers in France, and of Lord Aberdeen for Lord Palmerston in England, was a fortunate event for the peace of the world. Lord Palmerston had adopted the opinion that peace with France was not to be relied on, and indeed that war between the two countries was sooner or later inevitable. France was in his eyes a power likely to become an enemy; and he encouraged the formation of an English party to thwart her influence all over the world. Had he remained in office, the exasperation caused by his Syrian policy and his harsh refusal to make the slightest conciliatory concession to France, in spite of the efforts of his colleagues, would probably have led to fresh quarrels, and the emperor Nicholas would have achieved his main object, which was the complete rupture of the Anglo-French alliance. Lord Aberdeen and Μ. Guizot inaugurated a different policy; by mutual confidence and friendly offices they entirely succeeded in restoring the most cordial understanding between, the two Governments, and the irritation which Lord Palmerston had inflamed gradually subsided. During the administration of Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston led a retired life, but he attacked with characteristic bitterness the Ashburton treaty with the United States, which closed successfully some other questions he had long kept open. In all these transactions, whilst full justice must be done to the force and patriotic vigour which Lord Palmerston brought to bear on the questions he took in hand, it was but too apparent that he imported into them an amount of passion, of personal animosity, and imperious language which rendered him in the eyes of the queen and of his colleagues a dangerous minister. On this ground, when Lord John Russell attempted, in December 1845, to form a ministry, the combination failed because Lord Grey refused to join a Government in which Lord Palmerston should resume the direction of foreign affairs. A few months later, however, this difficulty was surmounted; the Whigs returned to power, and Palmerston to the foreign office, with a strong assurance that Lord John Russell should exercise a strict control over his proceedings. A few days sufficed to show how vain was this expectation. The French Government regarded the appointment of Palmerston as a certain sign of renewed hostilities, and they availed themselves of a despatch in which Palmerston had put forward the name of a Coburg prince as a candidate for the hand of the young queen of Spain, as a justification for a departure from the engagements entered into between Μ. Guizot and Lord AberdeeU. However little the conduct of the French Government in this transaction of the Spanish marriages can be vindicated, it is certain that it originated in the belief that in Palmerston France had a restless and subtle enemy. The efforts of the British minister to defeat the French marriages of the Spanish princesses, by an appeal to the treaty of Utrecht and the other powers of Europe, were wholly unsuccessful; France won the game, though with no small loss of honourable reputation. Not long afterwards Sir Henry Bulwer was expelled from the Peninsula for an attempt to lecture General Narvaez on his duties, and for his notorious intrigues with the opposition; and in Paris the British embassy became the centre of every species of attack on the king’s Government, so that friendly diplomatic relations were temporarily interrupted with both countries. No doubt the rupture of the Anglo-French alliance and the tension existing between the two Governments contributed in some degree to the catastrophe of 1848, which drove Louis Philippe from the throne, and overthrew the constitutional monarchy in France; but Palmerston did not regret the occurrence or foresee all its consequences.

The revolution of 1848 spread like a conflagration through Europe, and shook every throne on the Continent except those of Russia and Spain and Belgium. Palmerston sympathized, or was supposed to sympathize, openly with the revolutionary party abroad. No state was regarded by him with more aversion than Austria. Prince Metternich he abhorred; and, with some inconsistency, after the fall of Metternich he still pursued a policy of unrelenting hostility to his successors. Yet his opposition to Austria was chiefly based upon her occupation of great part of Italy and her Italian policy, for Palmerston maintained that the existence of Austria as a great power north of the Alps was an essential element in the system of Europe. Antipathies and sympathies had a...