Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/15

Rh in need of a theme to pique the national prejudices, to counteract revolution abroad, and, at the same time, to keep awake the suspicious jealousy of foreign powers. Having succeeded in this easy manner in becoming the bête noire of the continental courts, he could not fail to be set up as the truly English minister at home. Although a Tory by origin, he has contrived to introduce into the management of foreign affairs all the shams and contradictions that form the essence of Whiggism. He knows how to conciliate a democratic phraseology with oligarchic views, how to cover the peace-mongering policy of the middle classes with the haughty language of England's aristocratic past—how to appear as the aggressor where he connives, and as the defender where he betrays—how to manage an apparent enemy, and how to exasperate a pretended ally—how to find himself, at the opportune moment of the dispute, on the side of the stronger against the weak, and how to utter brave words in the act of running away.

Accused by the one party of being in the pay of Russia, he is suspected by the other of Carbonarism. If, in 1848, he had to defend himself against the motion of impeachment for having acted as the minister of Nicholas, he had, in 1850, the satisfaction of being persecuted by a conspiracy of foreign ambassadors, which was successful in the House of Lords, but baffled in the House of Commons. If he betrayed foreign peoples, he did it with great politeness—politeness being the small coin of the devil, which he gives in change for the life-blood of his dupes. If the oppressors were always sure of his active support, the oppressed never wanted a great ostentation of his rhetorical generosity. Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Germans, found him in office whenever they were crushed, but their despots always suspected him of secret conspiracy with the victims he had allowed them to make. Till now, in all instances, it was a probable chance of success to have him for one's adversary, and a sure chance of ruin to have him for one’s friend. But, if his art of diplomacy does not shine in the actual results of his foreign negotiations, it shines the more brilliantly in the construction he has induced the English