Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/168

 despatches for the Queen's perusal had been discontinued, owing to pressure of work in the office; "but if it shall require an additional clerk or two, you must be liberal," he wrote to Lord John Russell, "and allow me that assistance." This plea of economy came rather strangely from a Foreign Secretary who in 1841 had appointed five new paid attachés without the smallest necessity, and who in one year had spent £11,000 in coach-hire to convey messages to overtake the mails with his letters. The fact is that Lord Palmerston was the sworn foe of despotism everywhere, except in the Foreign Office, when he was Foreign Secretary. In the Foreign Office he reigned supreme and absolute, and would suffer no control either from his colleagues or his Sovereign. With all this, it was impossible not to like him. He had a jollity, a bonhomie, a complete absence of rancor against those who had wrestled with him and thrown him, an easy elasticity, a buoyant faith in himself and in England, which won the hearts of his countrymen. He made mistakes and went through humiliations that would have crushed or imbittered any other man, without losing a jot of his buoyancy and self-confidence. He pursued his own line of policy with incomparable nerve and tenacity. If he triumphed, he crowed; if he was defeated, no one would guess it from his demeanor; he would be cutting his jokes the next day as "game" as ever. No nature could have afforded a greater contrast to that of the Prince Consort; and while one from sheer force and vigor, and the other by position and character, were prominent among the leading politicians of their day, they were certain to be in sharp and almost perpetual conflict. He thought the Prince's hope of German unity a mere dream, impossible of fulfilment, and an alliance between England and Germany, therefore, entirely useless to