Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/64

 58 had met with at his Majesty's Court?"—(House of Com­mons, August 28, 1833.)

The papers entrusted by the dying King and his secre­tary, the late Sir Herbert Taylor, to Mr. Urquhart, "for the purpose of vindicating, upon the fitting opportunity, the memory of William IV.," will, when published, throw a new light upon the past career of the noble lord and the Whig oligarchy, of which the public generally know little more than the history of their pretensions, their phrases, and their so-called principles—in a word, the theatrical and fictitious part—the mask.

This is a fitting occasion to give his due to Mr. David Urquhart, the indefatigable antagonist for twenty years of Lord Palmerston, to whom he proved a real adversary—one not to be intimidated into silence, bribed into connivance, charmed into suitorship, while, what with cajoleries, what with seductions, Alcine Palmerston contrived to change all other foes into fools. We have just heard the fierce denun­ciation of his lordship by Mr. Anstey:

On February 23, 1848, the same Mr. Anstey had com­pared the noble viscount to "the infamous Marquis of Carmarthen, Secretary of State to William III., whom, during his visit to his Court, the Czar, Peter I., found means to corrupt to his interests with the gold of British merchants."—(House of Commons, February 23, 1848.)

Who defended Lord Palmerston on that occasion against the accusations of Mr. Anstey? Mr. Sheil; the same Mr. Sheil who had, on the conclusion of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, in 1833, acted the same part of accuser against his lordship as Mr. Anstey in 1848. Mr. Roebuck, once his strong antagonist, procured him the vote of confidence in 1850. Sir Stratford Canning, having denounced during a decennium, the noble lord's connivance with the Czar, was