The Times Great Victorian Lives - Ian Brunskill

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and Palmerston – gradually rose to the highest offices in the realm, and won, as only great characters win, the most sweet voices of the multitude. They have this in common – both were trained in the Tory camp, both forsook the traditions of Toryism, both have been decried as the most inconsistent statesmen that ever lived. Yet no two men could be more unlike, and the inconsistency of each was so different, that what in the one was a failing in the other was a virtue. Sir Robert Peel gave up his principles; Lord Palmerston merely relinquished his party. Less sociable than Palmerston, and less capable of forming new alliances, Peel clung to the Tories while rejecting their dogmas, and compelled them again and again to follow a course which they had learnt from his own lips to regard as the road to destruction. Free and frank, of a jovial nature, hail fellow with good men and true of every rank and politicians of every shade, Lord Palmerston was less fettered by party ties, and, so the objects dearest to his heart were attained, cared little whether the men with whom he sat on the Treasury benches were styled Whigs or Tories, Liberal-Conservatives, or Conservative-Liberals. His very consistency in this respect has been denounced as a fault. It has been said that he was constant only in the retention of office; that he was fixed only to the Treasury bench; that his one principle was that of the Vicar of Bray. He was a member of every Government since 1807, with the exception of those years in which Sir Robert Peel, and subsequently Lord Derby, held the reins. He began life as a Pittite; gradually he developed into a Canningite; when the Whigs came into power he renewed his youth; when they had fallen into disrepute he expanded into a Conservative-Liberal; afterwards he stood forward as the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet; and he closed his wonderful career as the head of a Ministry with the motto of ‘Rest and be thankful.’ In all these changes there may be traced a consistency of purpose which, when the clue to it is perceived, becomes entitled to our highest respect; and this clue is furnished in the fact that, whatever changes come over the domestic or colonial policy of England, her foreign policy is unalterable. That policy is indeed, more or less modified by the circumstances of the time, by the amount of our resources, by the temper of our allies, by the spirit of the nation; but in principle it is always the same. Our domestic reforms are for the most part carried in the face of a formidable Opposition; but our foreign policy is supported by overwhelming majorities, and by a national enthusiasm which nothing can resist. We have never a dispute about the principle; it is a tradition based on the universal sentiment of patriotism, and handed from generation to generation – from Cabinet to Cabinet. The Minister of such a policy may through all changes adhere to the Treasury bench if he can; nothing need remove him from it but his personal relations with its other occupants; and he who, like Lord Palmerston, can preserve his seat there through the vicissitudes of half a century is indeed a great man as well as a great statesman.

      Henry John Temple was the third Viscount Palmerston, and was born at Broadlands, near Romsey, on the 20th of October, 1784. Although an Irish Peer, his descent is traced to Saxon earls anterior to the Conquest. In the arms of his family may still be seen the eagle displayed of that Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who is remarkable chiefly for his treatment of his wife, the Lady Godiva. Lord Palmerston, however, bears a nearer resemblance to another and less mythological member of his family, of whom his father was the heir male – Sir William Temple, the friend of William III, the patron of Dean Swift, the author of that triple alliance which bound England, Sweden, and the States-General to prevent France from entering the Netherlands, and, singularly enough, a statesman who, while he remained in public life, was always on the winning side, and had the credit of all the popular acts of the Government after the Restoration. M. Capefigue, in noting this resemblance, has been pleased to observe that the chief point of similarity between the Minister of William III and the Minister of Queen Victoria lies in the utter hatred which both had to everything French, and thinks that on one occasion, as he was dining with Lord Palmerston, he made a terrible home thrust when he recalled the unpleasant fact that Sir William Temple, in bequeathing his property to his grand-daughters, stipulated that they should not marry Frenchmen. It gave M. Capefigue considerable satisfaction that Lord Palmerston could only laugh at the remark; it never entered into his head that the statement is quite unfounded, there being no mention of such a condition in the will of Sir W. Temple. Not from Sir William Temple, however – it was from Sir John Temple, younger brother of the diplomatist, and the same of whom Archbishop Sheldon said, ‘He has the curse of the Gospel, for all men speak well of him,’ that Lord Palmerston was descended. The first viscount of the name was the grandson of Sir John Temple, and was created a peer in 1722. Little more has to be said of him than this, – that his wife was regarded as a perfect model of conjugal affection, her will being quoted with admiration in the Annual Register. The second viscount, the father of our great statesman, was grandson of the first, and, like his grandmother, has been regarded as a pattern of conjugal tenderness. The epitaph which he wrote on the death of his first wife is said to be the most pathetic ever penned; and written at a time when our poetry had reached its lowest ebb, when all was artifice and platitude, phrase and frippery, it must be admitted that the lines have a genuine tenderness which it is almost impossible to find, in other compositions of the period. To his father, indeed, Lord Palmerston owes much of that taste for literature which furnished many a happy illustration to his speeches in Parliament, besides enabling him in his younger days to join with Croker and Peel in assailing the Whigs with literary satire. Of his father’s lively humour the late Lord Palmerston himself gave an amusing illustration in one of those anecdotes with which he, of all men, knew best how to parry the questions of political opponents or the entreaties of troublesome deputations. He said that it was his father’s habit, in placing wine before his guests, to say, ‘Here is claret, gentlemen; here is sherry; but I cannot answer for them, I can only give you the word of my wine merchant for them. Here is port, however, for which I can give my own word, – it is very good – I made it myself.’ If he was a bad judge of wine, he was considered a good judge of pictures. He collected in Broadlands a gallery of paintings which, at the beginning of the century, had a high repute, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in bequeathing to his friends the works of his own easel unsold at the time of his death, gave to the Earl of Upper Ossory the first choice and to Lord Palmerston the second. He enjoyed the gift of his artistic friend ten years, and, dying in 1802, left by his second wife, who did not long survive him, two sons and two daughters. Of these sons, Henry John Temple, the elder, is the subject of the present sketch; the younger was afterwards known as Sir William Temple, the British Envoy at the Court of Naples.

      Not much is known regarding the early life of Henry John Temple. He was one of the late flowering plants. Always remarkable for his ability, and generally successful in his undertakings, he rejoiced in a splendid constitution, and had to get rid of a certain excess of animal spirits before his ambition could rise to the level of his powers. There is a long period of some five and forty years – considerably more than the half of a man’s life – which Lord Palmerston passed in comparative inactivity, and which is a puzzle to the biographer whose idea of the man is derived from the later glories of his career. To account for this anomaly, it has by some of his eulogists been asserted that he was never at heart a Tory, that he was out of his element in the Ministry of Liverpool and Castlereagh, and that he never truly lived until he escaped from the thraldom of Tory ideas and joined the friends of liberality and progress. This theory is quite unfounded. Lord Palmerston was at the last what he was at the first. There is no real difference between Palmerston Secretary-at-War, Palmerston Foreign Secretary, Palmerston Home Secretary, and Palmerston Prime Minister. The explanation of his backwardness lies wholly on the surface, and is what we have already indicated. He was never what would be called an ambitious man; and, delighting in society, he found in the pleasures of private life what, together with the cares of his particular office, was sufficient in his hot youth, if not fully to occupy his powers, at all events to employ his time. Whatever he had to do he did well, but it is quite evident in his parliamentary history that he never cared to go out of his way for work. As Secretary-at-War for some 20 years, he hardly ever made a speech except on the subject of the army, and then only when he was compelled to do so. As Foreign Secretary for a period little less, he in like manner confined his attention to the business of his own department. At a time when he was the most popular statesman in England, he was content to serve now under his junior, and now under his rival. On the dissolution of the Aberdeen Cabinet he consented to serve even under Lord Derby if certain of his colleagues could be induced to follow the same course. It was not until every possible combination had been tried, and every possible Premier

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