Lord Palmerston. Anthony Trollope
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and 108 against it;—and yet Palmerston complained to his sister that the division was not so good as he had expected. He tells us he was half an hour on his legs, and did “not feel so much alarmed as I expected to be.”
He had opened his lips but once in the House of Commons, when, in October 1809, there came a break up of the Cabinet, on the duel between Canning and Castlereagh. Mr. Percival undertook the office of Prime Minister, and offered to Palmerston the place of Chancellor of the Exchequer, from the duties of which he was desirous of saving himself. The fact that he did so will chiefly be of use to us as showing the idea which was then held of Lord Palmerston by his elders, and the idea which he held himself. He writes to Lord Malmesbury for advice, but he himself gives the advice on which he means to act “I have always thought it unfortunate for any one, and particularly a young man, to be put above his proper level, as he only rises to fall the lower. Now, I am quite without knowledge of finance, and never but once spoke in the House.” “A good deal of debating must of course devolve upon the person holding the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. All persons, not born with the talents of Pitt or Fox, must make many bad speeches at first, if they speak a great deal on many subjects, as they cannot be masters of all; and a bad speech, though tolerated in any person not in a responsible situation, would make a Chancellor of the Exchequer exceedingly ridiculous.” And so that matter of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer was decided. He had not possessed the gifts which would have enabled him to be a second Pitt, but he had the gift of knowing that he could not be so. He settled down at last as Secretary at War, and, by his own judgment, decided on taking the office without a seat in the Cabinet. Writing again to Lord Malmesbury, he says: “Percival having very handsomely given me the option of the Cabinet with the War Office (if I go to it), I thought it best on the whole to decline it; and I trust that, although you seemed to be of a different opinion at first, you will not, on the whole, think I was wrong.” He tells us that he entered on his new functions on the 27th of October, 1809. He was then twenty-five years old.
Having thus made his choice against the Cabinet, he did not enter those sacred doors till May, 1827. An apprenticeship of eighteen years was more, probably, than he had anticipated when he made his choice. But it was no doubt well for his future fame and his stability as a Government servant, that it should have been so. During these eighteen years he was thoroughly learning his duty as a Minister of the Crown;—learning, as some will say, how to exaggerate those duties, and to absorb into his own hands more of power and potentiality than had been intended by those who had appointed him. But by himself, though he thought probably but little about it while he was learning it, the lesson had to be learned; and the lesson taught seems to have been this, that he would interfere with the duties of no other office than his own, but with those duties he would put up with no interference. There may have been danger in this; but such was his theory of official life. And it can hardly be denied that as a Minister of State no Englishman has been more successful.
Than Mr. Percival, who thus offered to Lord Palmerston a seat in his Cabinet, no Englishman who has become Prime Minister, was ever a more prejudiced, more antiquated Tory. He was, especially, a determined Protestant, regarding any Catholic claims to the privileges of citizenship with all the bigotry of religious conviction. At this time the Regency began, King George III. having given place to his son, who became Prince Regent, and ten years afterwards George IV. But in Lord Palmerston’s early speeches, or in his parliamentary conduct, there is no allusion to any peculiar political bias, and apparently no thought of it. He had joined the Government, as other young men in lower ranks of life join this or the other profession, and as other young men do—or neglect to do—did the work that came to his hands. In none of his letters that are published does there appear any strong political feeling, as there would be nowadays, in the letters of young men who look to parliament for distinction. He had been brought up among Tories, and was therefore a Tory; but with no violence of predilection. He was keen rather as to the delights of the life of fashion in which he lived; but he seems to have known that such delights cease to be delightful if they be not accompanied by work, and therefore he worked, having always before his eyes the future which might possibly be open to him—and which did eventually come to him. Throughout the next twenty years he will be found constant at his office, for the most part silent in Parliament, but speaking, when he did speak, always with a mind gradually, but very gently, tending towards liberal principles.
Then there came a change in the Government. In May, 1812, Mr. Percival was murdered in the lobby of the House of Commons, and Lord Liverpool became Prime Minister. Under him there came a period of so great a glory for England that the weakness of his administration has been forgotten in the military annals of the country. But Lord Palmerston held his place as Secretary at War till 1827, and, on the death of Lord Liverpool, he came into the Cabinet. That such a man as Lord Liverpool should have been head of the Government for fifteen years is not more wonderful than that such another as Lord Palmerston should during the same long period have filled a subordinate office under him. And during this time Waterloo had taken place, and the occupation of Paris. But our concern is here with the subordinate, and not with the Prime Minister. He had at last been elected by the University of Cambridge in 1812, and was re-elected in 1818, 1820, and 1825. Very little is heard of him during the whole of this period as a public man, and yet it was by his mouth that the taxes were suggested by which the enormous war estimates and foreign subsidies of 1813, 1814, and 1815 were supplied. He seems to have submitted tamely to whatever Lord Liverpool proposed, and to have considered that, if he did his duty according to his own theory in his own office, he need not trouble his head with the political feelings of other members of the Government. He contested with Sir David Dundas and the Duke of York the question of the power and supremacy which was invested in them as Commanders-in-Chief, and in himself as Secretary of War, with a determination of purpose quite worthy of the future Foreign Secretary. On these occasions neither did the Commander-in-Chief nor the Secretary at War gain any victory, the Prime Minister of the day feeling himself to be too weak to decide against either disputant; but Palmerston seems to have held his own and to have well maintained the prestige and influence of his office.
When the name of “Cupid” was first given to him I am unable to learn, but it was probably during this period, and tells a tale only of the sort of life which he then led. He was the “enfant gâté” of society; but he was not “spoiled” as regarded his official and parliamentary duties. He was called “Cupid,” and enjoyed a peculiar popularity in all assemblies in which fashion held the sway. Men seemed to believe in him, and women too, as having a position peculiarly his own.
He was a member of a Tory Government, and yet since 1812 had voted in favour of the Catholics whenever questions in their favour came before the House. It seems that in 1825, when at a general election he had to stand again for the University, he expected that the influence of the Government would be given to Copley—the future Lord Lyndhurst—and to Goulburn. “I had complained,” he said, “to Lord Liverpool and the Duke of Wellington and Canning, of being attacked, in violation of the understanding upon which the Government was formed, and by which the Catholic question was to be an open one; and I told Lord Liverpool that if I was beaten I should quit the Government. This was the first decided step towards a breach between me and the Tories, and they were the aggressors.” And that the influence of the Government was so given there can be no doubt, as Copley came in at the head of the poll; but still, as Lord Palmerston was enabled to keep his seat, he and Lord Liverpool went on together in office as long as Lord Liverpool remained. “The Whigs have behaved most handsomely to me,” he says further on; “they have given me hearty and cordial support, and, in fact, bring me in. Liverpool has acted as he always does to a friend on personal questions—shabbily, timidly and ill. If I am beat, I have told him he must find another Secretary at War, for I certainly will not continue in office.”
During this long period we have glimpses of his life from letters to his sister Elizabeth and to his brother William, who was afterwards for some years our Minister at Naples. He went to Paris soon after Waterloo, but not till the Sovereigns and the Duke of Wellington had decided on surrendering to their old owners those works of art which Napoleon had brought to Paris. “But I rejoice most exceedingly in the thing, and would have foregone the sight of every work of art in the gallery sooner than have left them there. The French, however—that is, the Royalists—are furious; and Lady Malmesbury, who lives almost entirely with