IN the Memoirs of Henry Reeve Professor Laughton included some letters written to Reeve by Sir Arthur Gordon (now Lord Stanmore) shortly after the publication of the third series of Greville's Memoirs. In these letters Lord Stanmore says that in several cases within his own knowledge Greville knew nearly all about the secret transactions of which he writes, but not quite all. For instance: "He was kept specially in the dark about the real history of Lord Palmerston's resignation in 1853, which is all the odder because he very nearly found it out. Hardly anybody does know what lay behind, though the difference about Reform was a very real one so far as it went, and quite sufficient to justify, at all events ostensibly, Lord Palmerston's virtual dismissal." Again: "I have never known a secret better guarded than the fact, which after a lapse of four and thirty years one may, I think, mention, that Lord Palmerston's resignation on that occasion was not voluntary, and that he was, in fact, extruded. But to be sure half the Cabinet did not know this; and it was their ignorance, coupled with Newcastle's and Gladstone's dislike of Lord John, that brought him back again." And in a later letter, Lord Stanmore wrote: "He had given great offence to the Queen; and his colleagues, at least his most important colleagues, distrusted his action in reference to pending negotiations, Lord Clarendon especially resenting the intrigues he was carrying on. Things being in this state he announced his hostility to Reform,

and it was determined to take advantage of this announcement to remove him; and removed he would have been, but for the two causes I have noted." Ten years have elapsed since this was written, but the true story has never yet been fully told. Lord Stanmore himself, in the Life of his father, the Earl of Aberdeen (which he wrote for the Prime Ministers Series), touched upon the subject very briefly, here again using the phrase virtual dismissal.

Some of the papers of Lord Aberdeen, and of others concerned in the transaction, have not yet been given to the public; but so many memoirs of the period have now been issued that it is possible, in the light of Lord Stanmore's disclosure, to construct, with some care and inquiry, what may be considered an authentic narrative of events which must form an important chapter in the history of the relations between the Crown and its Ministers during the present reign. No statesman in British history can match with Lord Palmerston in length of ministerial service. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the annals of any constitutional country would disclose another instance of a man who held office in so many administrations, extending over so long a period; yet he is, so far as is publicly known, the only Cabinet Minister who has been dismissed from office by Queen Victoria, and now it appears that two years after that historic occurrence he was "virtually dismissed" again.

Entering Parliament in 1807, on the fall of Grenville's Ministry of All

the Talents, Palmerston, then twentythree years of age, was at once appointed a Lord of the Admiralty in the Tory Government of the Duke of Portland. Two years later, when Spencer Perceval, with much trial and trouble, formed his Cabinet, Palmerston might have been a member of it as Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he mistrusted his immature powers and took the office of Secretary at War outside the Cabinet. All through the fifteen years' Administration of the Earl of Liverpool he remained in this position, apparently without any desire for promotion; but when Canning came in he took a seat in the Cabinet, remained there during the brief reign of Goderich, and continued under the Duke of Wellington, still in the same post of Minister at War. After twenty-two years of office he seceded, with other friends of Canning, when the Duke in 1829 got rid of the moderate element in his Government. Throwing off his Toryism in the nick of time, he qualified for admission in the following year to the Reform Ministry of Earl Grey as Foreign Secretary; and in this office he remained (with the intervals of Peel's two Administrations) until his downfall at the close of 1851. Then men thought his career was at an end. 66 Palmerston is smashed," said the men in the clubs after the Parliamentary explanations in February, 1852; and Disraeli, meeting Lord Dalling on the staircase of Ashburnham House, said in his peculiar manner (as Lord Dalling records), "There was a Palmerston."

But the clubmen were mistaken. They did not yet know the extent of that judicious intrepidity (or should it be called good luck ?) which constantly brought Palmerston to the surface. He had his "tit for tat with John Russell" and was in Lord

Aberdeen's Ministry before 1852 was out. Recovering quickly from his slip in December, 1853, he was in the Cabinet all the rest of his life with the exception of a year and a quarter, and was Prime Minister for nearly ten years. He was, in fact, a member of every Administration from 1807 till his death in 1865, except the two of Sir Robert Peel and two of Lord Derby (which extended altogether over less than eight years) and three of these four he was invited to join. It would be difficult indeed to find a parallel to this extraordinary career.

The question involved in the crisis of 1851 has been generally regarded as one of high constitutional principle; and not without reason, as one would think that nothing less could justify the ignominious dismissal of the second man in the Government; but after considering all that can be said for the Court, for the Prime Minister, and for the Foreign Secretary, the reasonable conclusion appears to be that the question was after all rather one of expediency and of temperament than of principle. On the one hand, it cannot be denied that on some occasions the Foreign Minister must act on his own responsibility, without consulting either Crown or Cabinet; on the other it is admitted that he should not commit the country to a definite line of policy on any important matter. The question is

how far the principle of collective decision should be modified in practice by the expediency of individual action.

The Queen's views on foreign affairs were those of the Prince Consort, and on broad principles of policy the Prince and the Minister seem to have differed rather in degree than in esBoth favoured a more active policy of intervention in the affairs of other nations than would be

sence.

sanctioned by public opinion in these days, the Prince approaching nearest to modern ideals. "We are frequently inclined," he wrote to Stockmar in September, 1847, "to plunge States into constitutional reforms towards which they have no inclination. This I hold to be quite wrong (vide Spain, Portugal, Greece) although it is Lord Palmerston's hobby; but on the other hand I maintain that England's true position is to be the defence and support of States whose independent development is sought to be impeded from without." A few months later, in the House of Commons, Palmerston said: "I hold that the real policy of England is to be the champion of justice and right, pursuing that course with moderation and prudence, not becoming the Quixote of the world, but giving the weight of her moral sanction and support wherever she thinks justice is, and wherever she thinks wrong has been done." One would have thought that the authors of these declarations would have no difficulty in reconciling their policy, the warmth of the Minister being moderated by the caution of the Prince.

But the methods of the Minister and of the Court were not the same. "Lord Palmerston," says Sir Theodore Martin, writing from the Court's point of view, was somewhat prone to forget, in his enthusiasm for constitutional freedom, that as England was not prepared to wrest it for other countries from their sovereigns by force of arms, despatches full of unpleasant truths unpleasantly put could only occasion sore and angry feelings towards this country, without advancing in any degree the cause which they were intended to serve." In these circumstances the Queen insisted that all despatches should be submitted to her and to the Prime

Minister in ample time for consideration, and that her objections and suggestions should receive attention. But it was here that the practical difficulty arose. It appears, from a letter written by Lord John Russell to the Prince Consort, that during the year 1848 no fewer than twenty-eight thousand despatches were received or sent out at the Foreign Office. Mr. Ashley (in his LIFE OF PALMERSTON) gives an illustration of the galling effect which sometimes attended the necessity of submitting so many documents to the Queen. During the discussion on the Spanish Marriages in 1847 he says: "Lord Palmerston lost three weeks in answering a communication from Guizot by having to send drafts backwards and forwards while the Court was moving about in a cruise on the Western Coast. Guizot, in his subsequent notes and despatches, was always throwing this delay in his face, but his tongue was tied and he was obliged to accept the rebuke in silence."

Early in 1845 we find Lord John Russell, in reply to one of the complaints, suggesting that Her Majesty "should give every facility for the transaction of business by attending to drafts as soon as possible after their arrival;" to which the reply was that the Queen only requires "that she should not be pressed for an answer within a few minutes, as is now done sometimes." Lord Palmerston assented to the arrangement, but still complaints were made from time to time of despatches being sent without submission, or altered after approval, or not altered as required. As Sir Theodore Martin points out, the Queen recognised that policy was beyond her control, that her duty was fulfilled when she had pointed out the probable mischiefs of a policy at once irritating and unfruitful, but she did claim the right to be consulted; and the Prince did not

mince matters in a letter of April 2nd, 1850, written on behalf of Her Majesty to the Prime Minister :

The Sovereign has a right to demand from Lord Palmerston that she be made thoroughly acquainted with the whole object and tendency of the policy to which her consent is required, and having given that consent that the policy be not arbitrarily altered from the original line ; that important steps be not concealed from her, nor her name used without sanction. In all these respects Lord Palmerston has failed towards her, and not from oversight or negligence, but upon principle and with astonishing pertinacity against every effort of the Queen. Besides which Lord Palmerston does not scruple to let it appear in public as if the Sovereign's negligence in attending to the papers sent to her caused delays and complications.

No instance is given of this, and it is clearly at odds with the aforesaid quotation from Mr. Ashley. It will probably strike the reader as strange that such a letter as this could be received by any Premier without leading to the resignation of the Minister accused. Indeed, this seems to have been the Prince's view, for in the following month, on learning that the proceedings in connection with the Don Pacifico claims had led to the recall of the French Minister in England, he wrote as follows to Lord John Russell: "Both the Queen and myself are exceedingly sorry at the news your letter contained. We are not surprised, however, that Lord Palmerston's mode of doing business should not be borne by the susceptible French Government with the same good humour and forbearance as by his colleagues." Lord John seems to have felt the sting of this laconic communication, for three days afterwards he wrote to the Queen expressing his determination no longer to remain in office with Lord Palmerston

as Foreign Minister." So says Sir

Theodore Martin, but there is no trace of such a determination to be found in Sir Spencer Walpole's Life of Lord John. At any rate nothing came of it, and in the following month Palmerston raised himself to a high pinnacle of fame and popularity by his Don Pacifico speech, consolidated the power of the Ministry, scattered all the elements of opposition, and stamped himself upon upon the minds of the English people, according to Lord John's own long-remembered words, as emphatically a Minister of England.

It was probably owing to this firm re-establishment of Palmerston that the Queen now determined to send to the Premier a Memorandum which, Sir Theodore Martin says, had been drawn up "after the most serious deliberation, long kept back by a feeling of kindness, and only forced from the Sovereign by the continued imprudence and insubordination of the Minister." It was the subsequent reading of this document in Parliament (or rather the last three paragraphs, for the preamble was never made public until the LIFE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT appeared) that, more than anything else, led to the conclusion that Palmerston was finally "smashed." It was dated from Osborne August 12th, 1850, and was as follows:

With reference to the conversation about Lord Palmerston which the Queen had with Lord John Russell the other day, and Lord Palmerston's disavowal that he ever intended any disrespect to her by the various neglects of which she has had so long and so often to complain, she thinks it right, in order to prevent any mistake for the future, to explain what it is she expects from the Foreign Minister. She requires:

1. That he will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction.

2. Having once given her sanction to