Palmerston's Resignation[366]

Lord Palmerston secedes from his friends of the Coalition just as Austria has eagerly seized the proposition for new conferences: just as the Czar[a] is spreading wider his nets of intrigue and war, effecting an armed collision between the Servians and Bosnians, and threatening the reigning prince of Servia[b]) with deposition should he persist in remaining neutral in the conflict; just as the Turks, relying on the presence of the British and French fleets, have suffered the destruction of a flotilla and the slaughter of 5,000 men by a Russian fleet three times as powerful; when Russian captains are allowed to defy the British law in British ports, and on board of British vessels; when the dynastic intrigues of the "spotless Queen" and her "German Consort"[c] have become matters of public notoriety; and, lastly, when the dull British people, injured in their national pride abroad, and tortured by strikes, famine, and commercial stagnation at home, begin to assume a threatening attitude, and have nobody upon whom to avenge themselves but their own pitiful Government. By retiring at such a moment, Lord Palmerston throws off all responsibility from his own shoulders upon those of his late partners. His act becomes a great national event. He is transformed at once into the representative of the people against the Government from which he secedes. He not only saves his own popularity, but he gives the last finish to the unpopularity of his colleagues. The inevitable downfall of the present Ministry appearing to be his work, he becomes a necessary element of any that may succeed it. He not only deserts a doomed Cabinet, but he imposes himself on its successor.

Besides saving his popularity and securing a prominent place in the new administration, Lord Palmerston directly benefits the cause of Russia by withdrawing at the present momentous crisis. The Coalition Cabinet, at whose procrastinating ingenuity Russian diplomacy has mocked, whose Orleanist and Coburg predilections have ever been suspected by Bonaparte, whose treacherous and pusillanimous weakness begins even to be understood at Constantinople—this Ministry will now lose what little influence it may have retained in the councils of the world. An administration disunited, unpopular, not relied upon by its friends, nor respected by its foes; considered as merely provisional, and on the eve of dissolution; whose very existence has become a matter of doubt—such an administration is the least adapted to make the weight of Great Britain felt in the balance of the European powers. Lord Palmerston's withdrawal reduces the Coalition, and with it England herself, to a nullity as far as foreign policy is concerned; and never has there existed an , epoch when the disappearance of England from the public stage, even for a week or a fortnight, could do so much for the Autocrat. The pacific element has triumphed over the warlike one in the councils of Great Britain. Such is the interpretation that must be given at the courts of Berlin, Paris and Vienna to Lord Palmerston's resignation; and this interpretation they will press upon the Divan, already shaken in its self-confidence by the last success of Russia, and consulting under the guns of the united fleets.

It should not be forgotten that since Lord Palmerston became a member of the Coalition Ministry, his public acts, as far as foreign policy is concerned, have been limited to the famous gunpowder plot[d], and the avowed employment of the British police as spies against the political refugees; to a speech wherein he jocosely treated the obstruction by Russia of the navigation of the Danube as of no account[e]; and, lastly, to the oration with which he dismissed Parliament[f], assuring the Commons that all the Government had done in the Eastern complication had been right—that they might quietly disband since the Ministers remained at their posts, and pledging himself "for the honor and good faith of the Emperor of Russia."

Besides the general causes we have enumerated, Lord Palmerston has had a special reason for surprising the world with this last act of self-sacrificing patriotism. He has been found out. His prestige has begun to wane, his past career to be known to the public. The people of England, who had not been undeceived by his avowed participation in the conspiracy of the 2d of December, which overthrew the French Republic[368], and by his gunpowder comedy, have been aroused by the revelations of Mr. David Urquhart, who has vigorously taken his Lordship in hand. This gentleman, by a recently published work called the Progress of Russia, by articles in the English journals, and especially by speeches at the anti-Russian meetings held throughout the Kingdom, has struck a blow at the political reputation of Lord Palmerston which future history will but confirm. Our own labors in the cause of historical justice have also had a share, which we were far from counting upon, in the formation of a new opinion in England with regard to this busy and wily statesman. We learn from London, quite unexpectedly, that Mr. Tucker has reprinted there and gratuitously circulated fifty thousand copies of an elaborate article in which, some two months since, we exposed his Lordship's true character and dragged the mask from his public career[g]. The change in a public feeling is not a pleasing one for its subject, and he thinks perhaps, to escape from the rising tide of reprehension, or to suppress it by his present coup. We predict that it will not succeed, and that his lengthened career of official life will ere long come to a barren and unhappy end.

Notes

As Home Secretary in Aberdeen's Coalition Government formed in December 1852, Palmerston instigated police persecutions, harassment in the press and lawsuits against political refugees in Britain. His department communicated information about their activities to the police of Austria and other continental powers. While carrying on this policy, Palmerston professed loyalty to constitutional and democratic principles.