Lord Palmerston BOOKS OF THE DAY
By E. L. WOODWARD
A BIOGRAPHER who attempts to do justice to Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, must have a great deal of vitality.
Palmerston sat in sixteen parliaments ; he fought his first general election in the year after Austerlitz, and his last five years before Sedan. He was a member of every administra- tion except three between 1807 and 1865. In an age when the royal house was not popular, and there were few figures to dispute with leading politicians the foremost place in public attention, Palmerston was marked out by tempera-, ment, by place, by continuity of tenure for popularity among the English people. This popularity came to him later in life than to many of his contemporaries, but it was extra- ordinarily wide. His gaiety, his love of horses, his easy- going courage and good temper, his fine bearing and full- blooded confidence stood in his favour with a high-spirited and over-confident nation. Moreover, Palmerston won his position by industry. He told Queen Victoria in 1838 that "in England the Ministers. . . are liable any day to defend themselves in Parliament ; in order to do this they must be minutely acquainted with all the details of their offices, and the only way of being constantly armed with such information is to conduct and direct these detail.3 them- selves." He was as good as his word. He decided questions as far apart as the disposal of an unserviceable horse and the future of Belgium. He tried to rid London of the smoke nuisance and to settle the Eastern question. Thus he left behind him an immense quantity of letters, dispatches, memoranda, and all the paraphernalia of Whitehall, Downing Street, and the House of Commons. A large number of
people wrote to Palmerston, or wrote about him ; his career brought him into the centre of English politics, and, for a third of a century, into the centre of European politics. Dr. Bell points to this vast mass of material, and explains, modestly, that he has made his study in order "to find out how Palmerston regarded the issues which he faced,- rather
than how he handled them." He adds :
In deference to the limitations of space and of special knowledge wider which I have written, I have often contented myself with bhowing how Palmerston bore himself at certain critical junctures without following the general story to its issue."
This method has certain disadvantages. It may tend to lack of depth ; it may not give the full measure of the development of a man or a problem. Dr. Bell is aware of the risks. It is a pleasure to say that he has escaped them as far as any man could 'escape them. The subject indeed is not exhausted. Dr. Bell has left more material, and, in particular, more archival material, than he has taken, and a wide field is open to other scholars writing on a different plan ; but this fact does not affect the merits of Dr. Bell's own book. He has written a good book, the very book on Palmerston which the "general reader" will enjoy. It is a fair book, set out in clear English; although here and there it has not escaped Palmerston's jauntiness ; it is well- proportioned, in spite of the fact that Palmerston's 20 years at the War Office are summed up in 17 pages. Above all, the book is full of life ; that is to say, full of Palmerston.
In his final pages Dr. Bell attempts an interpretation- of Palmerston. He describes him as "an exponent of early and mid-nineteenth century-nationalism." With a careful definition of this type of nationalism the interpretation may stand ; but one must remember that the nationalists of :a hundred years ago were not gangsters. They were humane—witness Palmerston's efforts to suppress the slave trade, and to save the Hungarian refugees. They were enlightened—witness
his dislike of despots, his popularity with liberals all over
Lord Palmerston. By H. U. F. Bell. Two vols. (Longmans. 42s.)
Europe. In 1851 Prince Schwarzenberg gave a ball at Vienna to celebrate Palmerston's dismissal ; he could have paid Palmerston no greater compliment. It is true that Palmerston's high-handedness and studied contempt were not always directed against the overbearing and the strong, and that there is a certain aptness in one at least of his many nicknames ; Lord Pumicestone. Dr. Bell is sometimes inclined to give Palmerston too good a case in questions of policy ; he is plain-spoken about this roughness of manner. Palmerston was hated by the clerks of the Foreign Office. He worked them outrageously, but they complained more of his bad manners than of the burden of work laid on them. The Queen's views on Palmerston are well known. Here again there is much to be said on Palmerston's side. The Queen's dislike was largely Prince Albert's dislike, and Prince Albert's views on the place of the Crown in the determination of foreign policy were Coburg rather than British views. George IV, who, for all his faults, was not a bad judge of men, called Leopold of Coburg "Marquis Peu-a-Peu." Albert shared the family characteristics.
Again, many of Pahnerston's high-handed acts have some excuse. The Don Pacifico episode was almost absurd, and Palmerston made it absurd by his bombastic defence- Civis Romanus. Sum, and so On ; but the trouble lay in the absence of proper international machinery for settling minor disputes. Either - you left things alone, • or you brought in the British fleet. It must be remembered that there were people, bondholders, for example, whose claims Palmerston did not think himself bound to support. As for the " meddling " in European affairs, there is no justification for Palmerston's loud words of encourage- ment to the Dane 3 over Schleswig-Holstein. A Prime Minister must consider his words before he encourages a small Power into war in the belief that the war will have British support.' If Palmerston had had his way, the history of Europe would have been different ; there might have been no Bismarck. Yet he ought to have known, with his long experience, that in 1863 he was not speaking with the country behind him.
It is tempting, after reading Dr. Bell's book, to compare this nationalist of the earlier years of the nineteenth century with- the man who did so mtich to create a more sinister nationalist type. In many ways Palmerston and Bismarck are surprisingly alike. They were grands seigneurs, alike in their pungency of phrase, their rough, rasping, common sense, their indifference to the feelings of others, their disinterested and passionate cult of national greatness. Neither man identi- fied himself for long with any one political party;* it is impossible to call Palmerston a party man. They were alike in their poitial opportunism. Bismarck and Palmerston would have agreed that "flu nations n'ont pas de cousins," and, as a corollary, that a great Power has no eternal friendships and no eternal enmities. They were alike in taking the scheme of things as they found it, and in assuming that, politically, Europe would remain, in Bismarck's words, a "notion geographique." So far the two men march together ; but there are deep and fundamental differences of character and tradition. Palmerston had a- more delicate sense of honour in public affairs, a more gentle mind, a more buoyant humour. Above'all, he believed in liberty. It is well to remember that he was a pupil of Canning. Such a man was not inclined to give heady support to revolution ; but he would see nothing Jacohinical in an attempt to get rid of authority when authority was Misused . . . One cannot imagine Bismarck describing the Polish question. as "that sad inheritance of
triuMphant wrong." -
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