TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE STATESMAN.
LORD PALMERSTON has entered the lists with Mr. TAYLOR of the Colonial Office. In a three-hours speech, on Tuesday evening, he developed to the House of Commons, in laborious detail, his views of the qualifications requisite in a diplomatist : he presented the House with a full-length picture of the abstract idea of the Statesman—not, indeed, according to PLATO, but according to Lord PALMERSTON, who, if very long dabbling in affairs of state were a test, ought to know much more about the matter. Lord PALMERSTON objected to the person of the Minister se- lected to settle the North-east boundary with the Cabinet of Washington, because Lord ASHBURTON was " not acquainted with the practice of negotiating." But there was something more that Lord ASHBURTON wanted : Ministers ought to have chosen a person " decorated with honours which have been conferred upon him for his exertions in the service of his country in other courts." Lord PALMERSTON also illustrated, by a criticism of the proceedings of Lord ASHBURTON, the advantages of being "ac- quainted with the practice of negotiating." The noble critic does not appear to object so much to the mutual concessions ultimately agreed upon, as to the British negotiator's want of dexterity in bringing forward his offers and demands in the right order. Lord AHSBUR- TON, having many concessions to make and many to demand, went bluntly to work, and said if you will grant all these, I will grant all those. Now, a practised negotiator of the PALAuntwron school would have brought out his wares one by one—chaffered for each apart—asked and got the highest price for each by a sort of retail barter. Sir ROBERT PEEL'S fault consisted in sending to America a plenipotentiary who had been engaged in trade in the wholesale line, instead of a retail-dealer. A great merchant, like Lord ASHBURTON, cannot make so much profit upon each bale of goods, which he dis- poses of without breaking bulk for a round sum, as a haberdasher, who measures all the yards and nail-breadths, and allows none of the odd farthings to escape him. The glibness with which Lord PALMERSTON contrasted his sharp way of driving a bargain with the softness of Lord ASHBURTON was irresistible : the hearers must have said to themselves, " If he never stood behind a mercer's counter, he must have a natural genius for that vocation." Had the Ex-Secretary for Foreign Affairs spent his whole' life in " carry- ing a pack" across the bleak moors of the Scottish Highlands, " making a trade" with Negroes on the coast of Africa, or bartering rum and gunpowder for paltry in the Oregon territory, he could not have been a greater master in the theory of peddling. Mr. WEBSTER, when he reads Lord PALMERSTON'S speech, will draw a long breath and thank his stars that he had not the British Sam Slick to deal with. But, alas ! theory does not always imply prac- tical ability. Moses, in the Vicar of Wakefield, (and Moses, in conformity with Lord PALMERSTON'S theory, had been most assi- duously " decorated" by his sisters before he set out for the fair,) looked knowing, and told how he would ask at first a higher price than he hoped to receive, and showed himself a proficient in the theory of horse-dealing : yet Moses was bit, and returned with nothing but a gross of green spectacles,—one pair of which Lord PALMERSTON seems to have inherited, and to wear whenever he looks at the Ashburton treaty. Though Lord PALMERSTON kept his own secret, it does ap- pear that the success which attended his ten-years practice of the diplomatic theory was not essentially different from that which Moses met with. The noble Ex-Secretary's plan for arranging the difficulties with America, as revealed by Sir ROBERT PEEL, does somehow smack of the theorist. Lord PALMERSTON, finding that one king could not settle the business—on the principle of a certain class of medical practitioners, who when their prescriptions fail have no resource except to " increase the dose"—proposed to try what three could do. And, to make this triple dose still more effective, be suggested the addition of three learned professors. " The proposal of the noble Lord was that they should attempt to make a settlement ; and then, if that failed, that the King of Prussia, the King of Sardinia, and the King of Saxony, should each name a scientific man, and that these three members of a commission should proceed to arbitrate." The plan is theo- retical enough to have come from the college of Laputa itself. Never did theorist devise such a complicated machine, since the sage who combined the lever, pully, screw, and inclined plane, into an instrument for mincing cabbages; which a jury of cooks acknowledged could have done its work well had it not re- quired a whole day to get it into working order. And the results of Lord PALMERSTON'S ten-years negotiations show how unavailing the most plausible theories may prove. While he went on chaffering and bargaining, he allowed the American Govern- ment to erect two forts on the very ground where Sir HOWARD DOUGLAS, in 1823, had vindicated British jurisdiction by arresting and subjecting to legal trial a Mr. BARER, who had taken upon him to exercise authority in the name of the State of Maine. And the result of Lord PALMERSTON'S dexterous management in Syria, was to leave that country as unsettled as ever, and to arouse a spirit of national hostility in France, that prevented a Government once favourably disposed from ratifying the treaty of July 1840. It is doing but partial justice to Lord PALsteasTort to parallel him with so raw a lad as Moses : he ought rather to be compared with the great Jenkinson, who outwitted Moses ; and who summed up the exploits of his life in prison by confessing, that though he had
contrived to trick his old schoolfellow farmer Flamborough out of some money at least once every year, yet the stupid honest farmer went on getting rich, while he the clever trickster kept growing poorer and poorer.
There is only one touch wanting to complete the picture of the Statesman according to PALMERSTON—who was, of course, "the great sublime he drew." That nobleman, after furnishing materials for diatribes against the " Ashburton capitulation " during the whole of the recess—after declaring in the House of Commons that the view he takes of the negotiation is sufficiently borne out by the communications between Lord ASHBURTON and Mr. WEBSTER—moves, not that the House shall pronounce its opinion on the treaty, but that a class of documents shall be laid upon the table which no Minister has at any time consented to produce. This proceeding is in perfect keeping with Lord PAL- MxRSroe's availing himself of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S protection to escape from an investigation of the Afghan policy of e late Ministry, and the part he afterwards took in pecking at th m- nath " song of triumph," instead of fairly grappling with the gen?%-, ral merits of Lord ELLENBOROUGH'S policy. And Lord PALMER-. ."..- STON'S success in the House of Commons has most deservedly been exactly on a par with his success in foreign countries : on the second night of the debate on his motion, his party allowed the House to be counted out at the dinner-hour! Lord PALateturron's ideal Statesman has been condemned. Great dexterity in driving sharp bargains—even in a person " decorated " with all the orders of Europe—has been tacitly admitted to be as inadequate to the right management of a nation's affairs, as the mere knack of a well-dressed lady in buying wonderfully cheap at auctions and brokers' shops is to keep her husband's estate in order.
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