LORD PALMERSTON AND THE MINISTRY.
IF only for a nine-days wonder, there is much gossiping upon the causes and immediate effects of Lord Palmerston's retirement from the Cabinet—all the more, perhaps, because the causes are very slightly known. " Orane ignotum pro mirifico" : perhaps when they become known, they will seem to be less marvellous, and the only marvel will bethat so much fuss was made about it.
Lord Palmerston is without parallel amongst statesmen. The reasons which account for other men's conduct fail in their appli- cation to him. His position and his action appear to be always inverted: as he was at home in the Foreign Office, and the Home Office was supposed to be foreign to his genius, so he is a states- man without enemies—except one, existing to prove the rule ; and yet, universally courted by political parties, he is without a party. His unceasing activity has given him a great command of exe- cutive business ; while his eccentric career, which has enabled him, by whatever means, to continue some forty years the process of falling in with the Cabinets of different parties,has prevented all parties from feeling an absolute and certainty of confidence in him for a leader. His attractive talents and agreeable manners charm all round—too universally ; everywhere caressed, he is no- where wedded. His graphic and emphatic way of putting any pro- position that comes into his mouth, has made him an advocate de- sired by any party which has propositions to be set forth ; but the facility with which he has embarked on the Ere, whether it was flowing upwards or running downwards, and a certain want of explicitness, made no party feel sure that he belonged to it, or that the proposition which he expressed so beautifully with his lips had found a home in his heart. He was like a crown, without which
the sovereign power itself appears to be incomplete, although it would form the most unstable of stools to stand upon. Every man, however, has a right to his own inborn foibles, and Lord Palmer- ston must not be censured as other men are. Yet the severest censure has been cast upon him for vacating his place, and upon his colleagues for letting him go; although those who censure are really uninformed as to the motives on either side.
One fact, however, is apparent enough; Lord Palmerston had a perfect right to retire. He never was ardent in pursuit of Reform; he did not enter the present Government upon the basis of a Re- form Bill; and to a certain extent it may be said, that a Reform Bill is not essential to the continuance of the Government for any particular session. It was open to debate, as in fact it was made the subject of debate. To a certain extent also he had done his work. We must not forget the circumstances under which the Cabinet was formed. It was constituted, we repeat, not to carry Reform Bill, or to advance any organic measures ; it was con- structed for the purpose of rescuing the administration of her Ma- besty's Government from the discredit into which it had been rought by the worse than incompetency of the men who filled the offices in the interval between Lord John Russell's Ministry and, the present. When the Cabinet of Quarter-Sessions Chairmen broke up, an appeal was made to the leading men of all parties for a combined effort at restoring the credit of the Executive. The frank manner in which the leading men of all parties but the Der- byites placed their services or their absence at the disposal of Lord Aberdeen, whom the Queen had intrusted with the mission of framing the Cabinet, obtained due approbation at the time ; and amongst the leading statesmen who aided in that combined effort Lord Palmerston was distinguished. The object of that combined effort has been achieved : Government was reconstructed on a thoroughly creditable basis ; and the conduct of public affairs had been more than restored to a proper routine before any organic measures came on for discussion. The Cabinet had proved that it could carry on her Majesty's Government in a manner conformable to the dignity of the Crown and country ; that it could accomplish many administrative and legislative improvements in detail, upon which public opinion had been' amply made up, and which only awaited the finishing hand. So much has been actually done; and thus far it may be said, that the liberal and disinterested manner in which Lord Palmerston united with his late colleagues had an- swered every expectation. Of course it remained with each mem- ber of, the Cabinet, and most especially of all with Lord Palmer- ston, *hose union was specially solicited, to consider his occupation of office no longer necessary as soon as the work stipulated by the original contract should be fulfilled ; and still more must that free- dom of egress be recognized in regard to the discussion of organic changes. Independently, however, of that technical right, there is still a question of patriotism for the statesman to consider. However any member of the present Government may have entered the Cabinet, it is an undeniable fact that he is there. The opportunity of serving the Crown and country entails certain moral responsi- bilities. No man, of course, is bound beyond the contract into which he has expressly entered ; but it has been usual with statesmen in office to consider the effects of their retirement. Lord Palmerston might find an example in that friend who is un- derstood more particularly to have procured his adhesion to the present Cabinet—Lord Lansdowne. Just at this season, twenty- six years ago, the Cabinet then in office was in a state of greater discomfort for Ministers than that of our present Government, but certainly at a less momentous crisis than the present for every country in Europe. Canning had involuntarily thrown his col- leagues into difficulties by his sudden death ; Lord Goderich had involuntarily increased the difficulties of the Ministry by his own want of vigour. Lord Lansdowne with some other members of the Whig party, who had been induced by Canning's liberalized peliciftd join the Ministry of 1827, now found himself in a position not very suitable to his political views or his personal comfort; and his own inclination was backed by the importunities of friends
to
extricate himself by retiring. On this day twenty-six years, Lord Lansdowne filled the post which Lord Palmerston is vacating —he was Home Secretary ; and on this day twenty-six years, he expressed in the most unreserved manner his opinion on the duty of a statesman in Lord Palmerston's position—the position then being his own. We take the record of the fact from the Diary of Thomas Moore, published this week.* "1827, December 24. Walked to Bowood late. Company at dinner, Charles and Mrs. Fox, Misses Vernon and Fox, and Major Keppel, Lord Al- bemarle's son. A good deal of talk with Lord L. in the evening. On ray remarking that Barnes, I believed, (as well as other of Lord L a Mende) wished him well out of his present connexion, be said, " Yea, ye* ; but it would never do to give up at a moment like this, whets there are such &A. culties to be faced. So far from it, that were I even to be kft alone is office, I would sooner hold all the seals of all the departments, sf that were posaibk, than resign at a juncture so full of difficialty as the present." Although the specific grounds of Lord Palmerston's secession have not been authentically stated, there have not been wanting very confident assertions. It is variously assumed, that he leaves the Ministry solely on account of the Reform Bill ; or that he leaves it, technically, on account of some difference respecting that measure, but virtually on the score of a general dissent from the views of the Cabinet, and more emphatically in regard to the East- ern question. The perfectly distinct statement, however, that the Reform Bill is the real cause, has not been contradicted with any proportionate distinctness ; and we are inclined to believe that the, statement is not untrue. That all the members of the Cabinet agree upon the Eastern question, or upon any other question, we do not imagine ; indeed, it is notorious that the members of a Cabinet seldom do agree. They meet in confidential, council, dis- cuss the subject of their differences, and, waiving individual nice- ties of opinion, agree upon some united course. Such, no doubt, has been the case in the present Cabinet; and Parliament will be told whether or not there has been any essential difference on the subject of the East. We doubt it. As we have already said, the Reform Bill did constitute a subject upon which greater differences of opinion had existed ; and it is well known that the proposition which Lord John Russell felt himself obliged to advance had been referred to a Committee of Ministers in order to itspreliminary discussion. The general character of the measure, so &r as it had advanced through that early stage, has also been indicated, as con- sisting in the disfranchisement of several smaller boroughs, the transfer of the seats to other constituencies, and an extension of the suffrage. It is generally understood that Lord Palmerston had succeeded in persuading the Committee to place a negative on Lord John's proposition for a five-pound franchise, but that he had not succeeded in persuading the Committee to bestow the dis- engaged seats principally upon the counties. We prefer to repeat the statements which have been current in society or in print, rather than to take the opportunity of making any special revela- tion on our own authority. But we may say thus much. From all that reaches us, we are inclined to suspect that no difference had occurred upon any subject, even the Reform Bill, which needed to have occasioned the retirement of Lord Palmerston or any other Minister; and that there did not exist, nor does there exist at the present moment, any more reason why Lord Palmer- ston should stand idOof from the Cabinet than there did from the moment of his joining it. Mistakes, however, will happen in the gravest councils; trifles will occasion the weightiest consequences; and the most discreet and most responsible of men will at times too hastily accept a juncture which might be superseded simply by waiting to see whether the difficulty might notpasa away and die out of itself. A little more patience on all sid.es might have been reasonably expected, since the very measure under considera- tion, the Reform Bill, had not yet come before the full Cabinet. The alleged and credible reason, however, of Lord Palmerston's retirement, will suffice to refute those who have claimed him as the special leader of " the more advanced " Liberals. He has been claimed as the leader of Democracy abroad—a kind of Whig-Con- servative Mazzini, operating from the British Cabinet. He has been assumed as the heaven-descended leader, de haut en has, of the Democracy at home. The Radicals have disceraed ja him a further versatility as yet untried, which would.enable e ob- tain from the very depths of the bureaucratic orders 1 emier such as they could not provide from their own rank% ed in office. Thus Lord Palmerston was destined to be the nex 'Tinier; and, like all heirs-presumptive, when they have any mark or " go " about them, he was clothed by popular assumption with the most popular attributes. He has now marked his own place as a Re- former—as a friend of " the Democracy "—far, very far within the limits to which Lord John Russell would go ; and, by the very reason of his dissidence from the present Cabinet, has shown that he is more remote from the parties which claim him, and from any party with which he could act in honour, than the majority of his colleagues whom he has left in office. There appears to be but one path by which he can bring. himself nearer to any popular partY, and that path lies, back again, through the Cabinet itself.
The alternative project would be to take the course long pre- pared by friends anxious to welcome him back to the old, Tory side. Ever since his equivocal conduct on Mr. Charles Villiers's motion last autumn—indeed, long before-that—the organs of tha residuary have been assiduous ieeetnp distinction between iaratnnatllagn imartingnnt,nntzy
* Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas ]MOore. Edited by Lord John Russell. Volume v, page 210, tint he might take; -bat that he had taken, a separate position, and is hinting, that if hepleased to carve out a newpolicy, not innovating vet not anti-national, he might find a party ready-made to serve under him, reinforced probably by the " Old Whigs." Nor has Lord Pal- taerston's mariner, of dallying with Militia amendments and Re- form rejections, and making separatist speeches in the recess, been meh as to discourage these blandishments and overtures. -Un- questionably that other course may be free to Lord Palmerston, if he haa'tho ambition to march through Coventry.
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