Central figure
NORMAN GASH
Palmerston Jasper Ridley (Constable 63s) -or
Mr Ridley's new biography of Palmerston has two great merits. It is the first to make systematic use of the Broadlands archives, and it brings a cool, critical and percipient eye to bear on Palmerston's character and achievements. The weakness of the book is
the inadequate knowledge of the political background. This leads the author into many minor errors and makes the other contem-
porary politicians pale shadows compared
with the dominant central figure. Neverthe- less all studies of Palmerston will now he judged by the standards Mr Ridley has set.
His subject is of perennial interest. Except for Disraeli perhaps, Palmerston was the greatest political illusionist of the Victorian period. What was important was not what he did. It was how he did it and the effect he created. The personality was so striking. the words so impressive, the manner so distrac- ting, that the public of his day hardly noticed what the great political conjuror was doing with his hands. The famous Don Pacifico incident was a case in point. The issue was indefensible, the conduct of it reprehensible.
the outcome a diplomatic rebuff for Palmers- ton and a triumph for France. But what most contemporaries remembered' and all
that many histories record is the great speech from dusk to dawn, the oratorical success
of the 'civis Romanus sum' debate. and the victory in the division lobby. That for Palmerston was what mattered. The image
was that of the bluff John Bull, the pugilistic champion of oppressed people and inch% i- dual British citizens against dastardly foreign
tyrants. The reality was a little different. The same year the British negro Bowers was taken off a British ship in Charleston har- bour and imprisoned for entering South Carolina territorial waters. But Palmerston was not going to risk a quarrel with the us for that. What British subjects were to be regarded as Roman citizens depended a good deal on geography. Palmerston in fact was a superb politician —tough, resilient, cynical and realistic, ready to recognise superior force, careless of con- sistency, cheerfully changing direction, swim- ming vigorously with currents of popular opinion. An adept at publicity, he made more skilful use of the press than any con- temporary statesman. He was unscrupulous. offensive and sometimes brutal in his - methods and yet on occasion could accept ignominious defeats and humiliations almost lightheartedly. Above all he had stamina and endurance. Between 1809 and 1855 he served under every prime minister except Peel and Derby. After a long slow start as a junior Tory minister in the obscurity of the War Office, he gradually emerged as an indis- pensable figure for the aristocratic Whig party and outlasted nearly all his Re- gency contemporaries to die in harness at the age of eighty-one. He will always be remembered . for his unprecedently long- period as Foreign Secretary. Hated by most of his clerks, the despair of his cabinet col- leagues, the Ole noire of all foreign govern- ments,he becathe the darling of the middle- class public and a hero with the Radicals. Whether he was a great Foreign Secretary is another matter. His one notable success came early in his Aiploinatic career with Belgian independence. For the rest he was fortunate in that during his lifetime RI itain was a prosperous.and sated power, having no great objectives and faced with no great dan- gers; still wearing 'a little incongruously the faded laurels of Waterloo.
To say that Palmerston's constant concern was for British interests is as platitudinous as to praise% polieethan .for defending law and order. What elseis a Foreign Secretary for? The .question is, what were those interests and hoW did he advance theme There was-a Foreign -Office tradition dating back to Castlereagh' that the true policy for Britain was to preserve the continental balance of power by protecting the weak central area of Europe against the great military powers of France and Russia. Palmerston himself frequently asserted that the preservation of the Austrian Empire was a vital British interest. But very often his actual conduct of policy was opporttinistic and popular. He made up his lines as he went along. Tactics were more to him than strategy and the net result of his European diplomacy was to weaken Austria rather than strengthen her. The flamboyance of British diplomacy abroad effectively concealed from the public' at home a practical ineffectiveness. But this was never really exposed until the Schleswig- Holstein episode at the end of his career.
It could easily be argued that Palmerston in his mellow old age was a better prime minister than he had been foreign secretary. Bumf even that was only because what was needed in the middle decades of the century was a tactful jovial management of a loose House of Commons in an age when great issues and strong parties were equally at a discount. Palmerston will not be ranked among the creative statesmen of the nine- teenth century. But he was a great English- man and a great public personality, and when he died it seemed the end of an epoch. It is not given to many men to embody so many of the basic, enduring characteristics of their own society that they can for a time hold up the restless forces of change. But Palmerston did and he knew that after he had gone would come the deluge.
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