Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/213

 PALMERSTON 195 formidable a rebellion against the Ottoman power. But France, though her ambassador had signed the collec tive note in the previous year, declined to be a party to measures of coercion against the pasha of Egypt. Palmerston, irritated at her Egyptian policy, flung himself into the arms of the Northern powers, and the treaty of the 15th July 1840 was signed in London without the knowledge or concurrence of France. This measure was not taken without great hesitation, and strong opposition on the part of several members of the British cabinet. Lord Holland and Lord Clarendon and some other ministers thought that, whatever might be the merits of the quarrel between the sultan and the pasha, our interfer ence was not worth the price we were paying for it an alliance with Russia and the rupture of our alliance with France ; and the Government was more than once on the point of dissolution. Lord Palmerston himself declared in a letter to Lord Melbourne that he should quit the ministry if his policy was not adopted ; and he carried his point. His consummate knowledge of details, his administrative ability, his impetuous will, and his conviction that France could not declare war against the four great powers of Europe prevailed over the resistance of an indolent premier and hesitating colleagues. The operations were conducted with extraordinary promptitude, good fortune, and success. The bombardment of Beirut, the fall of Acre, and the total collapse of the boasted power of Mohammed Ali followed in rapid succession, and before the close of the year Lord Palmerston s policy, which had convulsed and terrified Europe, was triumphant, and the author of it was regarded as one of the most powerful statesmen of the age. At the same time, though acting with Ptussia in the Levant, the British Government engaged in the affairs of Afghanistan to defeat her intrigues in Central Asia, and a contest with China was terminated by the conquest of Chusan, afterwards exchanged for the island of Hong Kong. Seldom has Great Britain occupied a prouder posi tion abroad, although by a singular contrast the cabinet was in the last stage of decrepitude at home. Within a few months Lord Melbourne s administration came to an end, and Lord Palmerston remained for five years out of office. The crisis was past, but the change which took place by the substitution of M. Guizot for M. Thiers in France, and of Lord Aberdeen for Lord Palmerston in England, was a fortunate event for the peace of the world. Lord Palmerston had adopted the opinion that peace with France was not to be relied on, and indeed that war between the two countries was sooner or later inevitable. France was in his eyes a power likely to become an enemy ; and he encouraged the formation of an English party to thwart her influence all over the world. Had he remained in office, the exasperation caused by his Syrian policy and his harsh refusal to make the slightest conciliatory conces sion to France, in spite of the efforts of his colleagues, would probably have led to fresh quarrels, and the emperor Nicholas would have achieved his main object, which was the complete rupture of the Anglo-French alliance. Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot inaugurated a different policy; by mutual confidence and friendly offices they entirely succeeded in restoring the most cordial understanding between the two Governments, and the irritation which Lord Palmerston had inflamed gradually subsided. During the administration of Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston led a retired life, but he attacked with characteristic bitter ness the Ashburton treaty with the United States, which closed successfully some other questions he had long kept open. In all these transactions, whilst full justice must be done to the force and patriotic vigour which Lord Palmerston brought to bear on the questions he took in hand, it was but too apparent that he imported into them an amount of passion, of personal animosity, and imperious language which rendered him in the eyes of the queen and of his colleagues a dangerous minister. On this ground, when Lord John Russell attempted, in December 1845, to form a ministry, the combination failed because Lord Grey refused to join a Government in which Lord Palmerston should resume the direction of foreign affairs. A few months later, however, this difficulty was surmounted : the Whigs returned to power, and Palmerston to the foreign office, with a strong assurance that Lord John Russell should exercise a strict control over his proceed ings. A few days sufficed to show how vain was this expectation. The French Government regarded the appointment of Palmerston as a certain sign of renewed hostilities, and they availed themselves of a despatch in which Palmerston had put forward the name of a Coburg prince as a candidate for the hand of the young queen of Spain, as a justification for a departure from the engage ments entered into between M. Guizot and Lord Aberdeen. However little the conduct of the French Government in this transaction of the Spanish marriages can be vindicated, it is certain that it originated in the belief that in Palmerston France had a restless and subtle enemy. The efforts of the British minister to defeat the French marriages of the Spanish princesses, by an appeal to the treaty of Utrecht and the other powers of Europe, were wholly unsuccessful ; France won the game, though with no small loss of honourable reputation. Not long after wards Sir Henry Bulwer was expelled from the Peninsula for an attempt to lecture General Narvaez on his duties, and for his notorious intrigues with the opposition ; and in Paris the British embassy became the centre of every species of attack on the king s Government, so that friendly diplomatic relations were temporarily interrupted with both countries. No doubt the rupture of the Anglo-French alliance and the tension existing between the two Govern ments contributed in some degree to the catastrophe of 1848, which drove Louis Philippe from the throne, and overthrew the constitutional monarchy in France ; but Palmerston did not regret the occurrence or foresee all its consequences. The revolution of 1848 spread like a conflagration through Europe, and shook every throne on the Continent except those of Russia and Spain and Belgium. Palmerston sympathized, or was supposed to sympathize, openly with the revolutionary party abroad. No state was regarded by him with more aversion than Austria. Prince Metternich he abhorred ; and, with some inconsistency, after the fall of Metternich he still pursued a policy of unrelenting hostility to his successors. Yet his opposition to Austria was chiefly based upon her occupation of great part of Italy and her Italian policy, for Palmerston maintained that the existence of Austria as a great power north of the Alps was an essential element in the system of Europe. Antipathies and sympathies had a large share in the political views of Lord Palmerston, and his sympathies had ever been passionately awakened by the cause of Italian independence. He knew the country; he knew the language ; and in London some of his closest friends were Italians, actively engaged in the national cause. Hence he threw all the moral support he could give into the Italian revolution. He supported the Sicilians against the king of Naples, and even allowed arms to be sent them from the arsenal at Woolwich ; and, although he had endeavoured to restrain the king of Sardinia from his rash attack on the superior forces of Austria, he obtained for him a reduction of the penalty of defeat. Austria, weakened by the revolution, sent an envoy to London to request the mediation of England, based on a large cession of Italian territory; Lord Palmerston rejected the -terms