CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY 



his confidence and flippancy often helped a situa- 

 tion. Palmerston began his career as a Tory. He 

 occasionally amused himself at the expense of the 

 Whigs, and was once told for his pains by a Whig 

 Leader that he resembled a favourite footman on 

 easy terms with his mistress. He left the Duke 

 of Wellington in 1828, and was forthwith accepted 

 seriously by Brooks's Club and the Reformers. 

 Thereafter, his official and political position was 

 assured. He dreaded the enlargement of the 

 electorate, and the long respite from 1832 to 

 1867 was mainly due to his influence. He was 

 sustained in office by the Tories because he was 

 known to stand between them and the growing 

 demands of a democracy which claimed that the 

 Constitution should be so developed as to give a 

 wider scope to the play of social forces. While 

 he had a considerable familiarity with the com- 

 plicated labyrinth of foreign Chanceries, his 

 hterary attainments were extremely slender. When 

 Monckton Milnes was asked how Palmerston got 

 on at the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, 

 he replied : " For a man who never read a book 

 in his life, I think he did very well." Although 

 he never acquired the art of fluent or perspicuous 

 speech, he had a Parliamentary authority out of 

 all proportion to his political and official abilities. 

 The truth was that he represented the fundamental 

 tastes of his countrymen, at a time, moreover, 

 when the Throne was under the unpopular and 

 unbounded influence of an alien Prince and his 

 German tutor. Palmerston became Prime Minister 

 in 1855 at the age of seventy-one, and with one brief 

 interval continued in that position until his death. 



26 



