TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PALMERSTON, PREMIER.
PALMERSTON has at last attained the summit of his anibition, and the Public has that which it has desired, if it did not ask, of the Crown. Both ought to be satisfied, and we hope that both will be so in the end. The place-enjoying Viscount, who has flourished some forty years in the public offices—whose political life spans the long peace and connects one war with the other—has seen many vicissitudes, has worked harder than men of less genius, and his successful career is full of seeming contradictions. The post of supremacy, for which he has longed, he obtains by eceident. Few men have provoked more mistrust ; and yet the
very reason why he stands where he does, is, that he is believed in. Why everybody, from the late President of the Council to Mrs. Grundy herself, pitched upon Palmerston to rescue the state out of the dead-lock, it would be difficult to determine; since some of Lord Palmerston's adroitest feats, both at home and abroad, have consisted in setting one Power against another, and in producing a dead-lock. The public has not reasoned out its conclusion ; yet perhaps, after all, the instinct is right.
In one respect Lord Palmerston's Cabinet is essentially stronger
than Lord Aberdeen's; it is relieved of a disintegrating influence that existed in the late Ministry. In that Cabinet there were three Premiers,—one in ease, one dispossessed, and one in posse. Lord John Russell's clientele cherished a constant sense that he had been disrated : last summer, he went about the country re- minding an admiring public of himself, and it was felt that he could not be at rest in any office below the chief. Palmerston, on the other hand, had reached a greater age than that of inferior men who had already arrived at the Premiership; and by his ex- hibitions to the public in the summer before last, it was evident that he felt the chief post to be his due, and over-due. Lord, Aberdeen's prudent weight helped to condense and moderate conflicting parties in the Coalition; but, independently of his honest convictions against war, he was resumed, perhaps justly, not to possess the genius of activity requisite for the time; and he had rivals beneath, constantly threatening, if not by their own overt acts, yet by undermining processes on their behalf, to super- sede him. Palmerston has nobody to fear : Aberdeen has passed, not to return ; Russell has gone into isolation; and unless Palmer- ston supersede himself, he is master of the situation for a term not yet limited. If he has been working for the promotion, it has come to him without any recent, overt, or invidious effort on his part. Lord John did it for him. He assuages more than one feud, by accepting a post in which almost every other man would challenge -.objection. He is there by universal suffrage.
If we were to ask for the substantial and specific evidence to justify this confidence, we say, it might be difficult to discover or
arrange. Lord Palmerston's character, like his career, presents remarkable contradictions. It is thought that he will stand to his pledges, notwithstanding the experience of Sicily. It is sup- posed that be is decided, although he has undecided many more questions besides the King of Holland's award in the Boundary question. He is to this day believed to be the ablest of adminis- trators, although the last experience of him in the Home Office was not satisfactory. He is regarded as the most energetic of statesmen at work, although he is seventy-one years of age. He is trusted, although it is not known what his principles are.
The fact is, however, that the public has generally obtained from Lord Palmerston at any time that which it distinctly wanted. His own character seems a thing apart. He is gayety incor- • poste, frankness itself, and diligence personified. Give him a specific employment, and there is not a public servant who can execute it with a greater show of work done, and nicely done, and with admirable ease to the operator. Call him to account, and he will pour forth a convincing defence, so gay, so witty, so pleasantly vindictive in its sarcasms, that we know no match for it except the model footman of comedy. If be does not evince enthusiastic devotion for any particular "cause," he always shows excellent zeal to serve the public, or his party, or his colleagues, or his friends. And the fidelity to personal relations accompanies him
into quarters that do not come conspicuously before the public— into humbler grades, where subordinates retain for him a regard -amounting to affection. No man takes up with a subject more ably, or cordially. Originally a Tory, and a recent stickler in the `Cabinet against a Russell Reform, he has won the regard of outside Reformers by the ability with which on occasion he has advocated their objects. Never suspected of deep thinking on subjects of poli- tical economy, he found the stream in favour of Free-trade too stiff to be opposed as difficult to be turned back as the Exe to its source. If he is not Liberal on political conviction, he is Liberal in feeling,
„generous in act. He may not be ardent on religions questions, but the public admires his open contempt of cant, and the wit with which he dashes off a profound truth that other men labour 'At. While setting down an opponent, he will reconcile the de- -tested man to himself. Even in his slashing arbitrary pushing of 'sanitary improvement, he can elevate to its place in the creation the foulness which he would drive from civilized economy ; and if -" dirt is but matter in the wrong place," so a political malfeasant may be guilty of zeal in the wrong direction. The contradiction which has mystified the public on his character, seems to have been his enjoyment as well as his forte. He has been like a man hiding, who laughs at others seeking in vain where to have him; and Urquhart, labouring to bring his head to the-block for selling the state to Russia, is just one of those living antitheses to an acclaiming public nominating-him leader of the war against Russia, which have been the staple and sport of his life. His exhaustless power of frankness is accompanied by an unwearied power of reserve ; and the public, which cannot find his principles, some- times thinks that he has none, at other times that they lie too deep for common apprehension.
If he has been faithful to humbler adherents, thereis one servant whose fidelity he has repaid : Viscount Palmerston has never for- gotten Henry John Temple. But the experienced official is ac- tuated by no sordid, no purely selfish ambition. Probably he chuckles over clever Henry John's progress in life, as he blurted out his admiration of Louis Napoleon's sudden success in the year of the coup d'etat. It is an artistic egotism. He sympathizes in- stinctively with self-wrought prosperity. Hence he has a living as well as an official sympathy with our ally in France. Hence old scores with vexatious old Austria are wiped off, and he is free to reciprocate confidence with new Austria. Hence he must be unable any longer to admire Russia guilty of a coup manqué, or to abide Prussia successful only in a certain fidelity to voluntary failure. But this love of success, of excitement, and of action, is probably the stimulus that our sluggard Administration most wants ; and the unreasoning public instinctively feels, that to place Lord Palmerston with the new field of glorious action before him is like placing a high-mettled hunter before an open country.
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