Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/169

 ourselves. This brought them into political conflict just as their characters brought them into personal conflict. Two or three instances will suffice to illustrate what Palmerston was at the Foreign Office. In 1849, the Neapolitans being in insurrections against the infamous misgovernment under which they suffered, Lord Palmerston supplied them with war material out of the stores of the English Government without the knowledge or consent of his colleagues. Now it may be right or wrong to sympathize with insurgents; but for a Government of another country to supply them with arms is an act of war, of which no single Minister has the right to undertake the responsibility. On this occasion Palmerston was compelled to make a formal official apology to the King of Naples. A question asked in the House of Commons was the first intimation the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, had of what his colleague had done.

One of the special objects of Palmerston's abhorrence was Austria; and it was a state of mind with which there was much sympathy in England. Neither in Italy nor in Hungary could the English people regard the Austrian Government otherwise than as a cruel and perfidious tyranny. This national feeling had burst out in England on the occasion of the visit to London in 1850 of the Austrian General Haynau. In Italy and Hungary the name of this man was associated with acts of barbarous cruelty in putting down the national movement. He was especially charged, and the charge was universally believed in England, with the responsibility of having ordered the flogging of women among the Hungarian insurgents. When in London he made a visit to Barclay's brewery. The draymen and other employés got wind who their foreign visitor was; they gathered together in the