1 



PALMERSTON, VISCOUNT. 



PALOMINO Y VELASCO, DON ACI8LO ANTONIO. 



Mr. Perceval, be wss appointed (thoogh then only in his twenty. fifth 

 yrar) a junior lord of the Admiralty. In tbii capacity he made 

 prrtups hia first important parliamentary appearance as a speaker in 

 opposing a motion of Mr. Ponsonby (February* 1808) for the pro- 

 duction of paper* relative to Lord Cathcart's expedition to Copen- 

 hagen and the ditto-notion of the Danish fleet imosurrs which had 

 teen ordered by the government for fear of an active co-operation of 

 Denmark with Napoleon I. On this occasion Lord Palmerston 

 broached those notions aa to the necessity of secrecy in diplomatic 

 affairs on which he has ever since acted. In 1809, when Lord Cattle- 

 reagh resigned the office of Moretary of war under the Perceval ministry, 

 Lord Palmerston succeeded him; and in February 1810 he for the 

 first time moved the Army estimates in the House. It seemed as if 

 the secretaryship at war was the post in which Lord Palmerston was 

 to live and die. He held it uninterruptedly through the Perceval 

 administration ; he continued to hold it through the long Liverpool- 

 Castlereagh administration which followed (1812-27), the first three 



ministry of Lord Goderich (August 1827 to January 1828); and he 

 held it for a while under the -succeeding administration of the Duke 

 of Wellington. Under this last ministry however he found himsrlf 

 unable to act. Never appearing to interest himself much in general 

 politics, but confining himself as much as possible to the business of 

 his own department, he had yet, towards the close of the Liverpool 

 administration especially after Canning's accession to the Foreign 

 secretaryship on the death of Castlereogh in 1822 shown a more 

 liberal spirit than was general among his colleague*. He seemed to 

 attach himself to Canning and to share his opinions : like him, he was 

 a friend to Koman Catholic emancipation, and to the cause of consti- 

 tutional as distinct from despotic government on the Continent; 

 though, like him also, he opposed for the time all projects of Parlia- 

 mentary Reform at home. These tendencies, growing more decided 

 after Canning's death, unfitted him for co-o|>eration with the Duke of 

 Wellington's government, and in May 1S2S he seceded from it along 

 with Huskiseon and others of ' Canning's party.' Meantime he had 

 spoken much on foreign affairs, and with such ability that, after 

 Canning's death, he was felt to be the greatest parliamentary master 

 of that order of subjects. Before leaving the Wellington ministry he 

 had opposed the Test and Corporation Bills ; but he hod done so on 

 the principle that he could not relieve Protestant Dissenters till the 

 emancipation of the Koman Catholics had taken place. 



As an independent member, Lord Palmerston devoted himself 

 especially to foreign questions. He kept up the character of being Mr. 

 Canning's successor, the inheritor of his mantle. His speech on the 10th 

 of March 1830, in which, in moving for papers respecting the relations of 

 Kngland with Portugal, he developed Canning's idea of the necessity of 

 increased sympathy on the part of England with the cause of struggling 

 nationality abroad, was accounted a great parliamentary success. The 

 motion was lost by a majority of 150 to 73 ; but it marked out 

 Lord Palmerston as the future foreign secretary, as toon as a ministry 

 should be formed of which he could become a member. Such a ministry 

 was formed in November 1880, when the Duke of Wellington resigned, 

 and the Whigs came into office. Twenty years secretary at war as a 

 Tory, Lord Palmerston now became foreign secretary as a. Whig; but 

 his known attachment to the liberalised Toryism which Canning had 

 professed and introduced, was felt to constitute a sufficient transition. 

 Roman Catholic Emancipation, of which he had always been a supporter, 

 bad already been carried ; and the only question where a modification 

 of his previous opinions was requisite was that of Parliamentary Reform 

 the very question which the Whig ministry had been formed to 

 settle. Lord Palmerston's assent to the Reform Bill policy of his 

 colleagnes led to a disagreement with the Cambridge University elec- 

 tors ; and, losing his neat for Cambridge, he fell back (1831) on his old 

 borough of BUtchingley. Representing first this borough, and then 

 (after the Reform Hill in 1832), the county of South Hants, Lord 

 Palmerston remained foreign minister till December 1834, when the 

 Whig* went out of office, and were succeeded by the Conservative 

 ministry of Sir Robert IVel. This ministry lasted only till April 1835, 

 when the new Whig administration of Lord Melbourne was formed, 

 and Lord Palmerston (who had lost his seat for South Hants at the 

 general election, and been returned for the borough of Tiverton) 

 resumed his functions as foreign minister. He continued to exercise 

 them till September 1 84 1 ; and these six years were perhaps the period 

 during which he attained that reputation for brilliancy, alertness, and 

 omniscience as a foreign minister, which has made his name a word of 

 exultation to his admirers, and of execration and fear to some foreign 

 governments. It was during this time that over the Continent from 

 Spain to Turkey, th< nnme ' Palmorston ' began to be tised as synony- 

 moos with English di] ' -i'y; and it was during the same 



time that a party of erratic politicians sprang up in Kngland, l:.i 

 sought to prove that be was a voluntary tool of Russia, and argued 

 for his impeachment Records of this state of feeling with respect to 

 Lord I'ulmerston may be found in the pamphlets of Mr. Urqnhart and 

 his friends, as regards home, and in Count Fioquclmont's ' Lord Pal- 

 merston, 1'Angleterre, et la Continent* (1852), as regards Europe at 

 large. The opposition of the Conservatives in parliament was a more 



normal matter. It was during this period of his foreign secretaryship 

 under the Melbourne administration that Lord Palmerston marrieil. 

 His wife, the present Lady Palineraton, was the daughter of the first 

 Lord Melbourne ami the widow of the fifth Karl downer. On the 

 re-accession of Sir Robert Peel to office in 1841, Lord Palmerston 

 retired from the foreign secretaryship ; and he continued in opposition 

 till 1846, when on the retirement of Sir Robert P< el after the abolition 

 of the Corn Laws (July 1846) he again became foreign secretary, as a 

 member of the new Whig ministry of Lord John Rut; ell. He continued 

 to direct the diplomacy of the country in this capacity steering the 

 policy of Britain in his characteristic fashion through the many difficult 

 nnd intricate foreign questions which arose, and, amongst them, through 

 the many questions connected with the European revolutionary move- 

 ment of 1848-49, including the Italian and Hungarian wars till the 

 year 1851, when differences with Lord John Russell and with his 

 other colleaguts induced him to resign. The year 1851, in fact, closed 

 that part of Lord Palmerston's history which is connected with his 

 tenure of the foreign secretaryship in particular. 



But such a man could not remain long out of office. Broken up 

 mainly by Lord Palmerston's secession from it, the ministry of Lord 

 John Russell gave place (December 1852) to the coalition ministry of 

 Lord Aberdeen. As Lord Aberdeen had been the foreign mi 

 under previous Conservative government*, and was therefore rei- 

 ns the rival and in some respects the antagonist of Lord Palmeniton 

 in this particular department, Lord Palmorston in joining the coalition 

 ministry took the office of home secretary, while the foreign secretary- 

 ship was taken by Lord John Russell. The business of his new office 

 was discharged by Lord Palmerston with his customary activity 

 (allowing for a short period of threatened rupture with his colleagues 

 in 1853) till the dissolution of the Aberdeen ministry in 1855, when 

 his lordship ascended to the apex of power as the First Lord of the 

 Treasury and Prime Minister of Britain. In that capacity it ha) fallen 

 to him to conduct the greatest war in which the country has been 

 engaged since 1815 the war with Russia ; and in the conduct of that 

 war to establish that system of alliances with continental powers, more 

 especially with France, which still holds. From the time of the coup- 

 dVtat in France, Lord Palmerston had always expressed his respect for 

 Louis Napoleon ; and consequently in the conduct of the war, and of 

 the negotiations which concluded it, Napoleon III. and Lord Palmerston 

 are supposed to havo deferred to each other, and to have acted syste- 

 matically in concert As regards other powers, consequently, there 

 has not been on the part of Lord Palmerston, while premier, any strong 

 direction of the policy of England one way or the other. Thus, whilo 

 always keeping up the language of Canning as to the propriety of 

 encouraging freedom and constitutional government abroad, and while 

 using this language more especially of late with respect to Italy, ho 

 has never ceased to assert the maintenance of the integrity and power 

 of the Austrian empire to be n necessity in the European system. 

 This principle appears to have regulated his conduct also as foreign 

 minister in the matter of the Hungarian wars of 1848-49. He gave no 

 approbation to the popular movements ; but ho supported Turkey in 

 refusing to give up the refugees, and advised the governments to 

 leniency when the movements were suppressed, and to more moderate 

 rule afterwards. 



The history of Lord Palmerstou of bis acts, opinions, and views 

 arc to be gathered in detail from the parliamentary reports of t 1 

 fifty years ; but more especially from the Blue Books of our t 

 diplomatic correspondence since he went into the foreign secretaryship 

 thirty-six years ago. Among summary works where tho spirit and 

 results of his political career are discussed, may bo mentioned (in 

 addition to those of Ficquelmont and Mr. Urquhart already spoken 

 of as hostile) tho two following : ' Opinions and Policy of the Right 

 Hon. Viscount Palmerston as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, 

 with a Memoir, by O. H. Francis* (1852) ; and 'Thirty Years of Foreign 

 Policy : a History of the Secretaryships of the Earl of Aberdeen and 

 Lord I'.ilm- -rston' (1855). The former w chiefly a collection of extracts 

 from his lordship's speeches, exhibiting his opinions; the other is a 

 general review of his policy. On special questions there have been 

 scores of pamphlets for and againxt him. No collected rditinn of his 

 speeches hag been published; nor perhaps would the lii;ht, off-hand, 

 nnd conversational yet energetic orations with which ho charms the 

 House, and often baffles and provokes an opponent, besr this test ; but 

 some of his more important speeches have been published separately 

 at the time of their delivery in the form of pamphlets. The others 

 remain more or less vividly in the memories of those who heard them, 

 or lie Imrii- 1 in ' Hansard ' and the newspapers. His speeches are 

 generally shorter than those of other parliamentary leaders ; and his 

 occasional letter* show the same light and easy energy as his speeches. 

 Since 1 835 ho has sat uniformly for the borough of Tiverton, and has 

 never sought to represent a larger constituency ; and some of his most 

 -it manifestoes havo been in the form of addresses to the 

 Tiverton eleotow. 



PALOMi 'No Y VKLASCO, DON ACIBLO ANTONIO, an eminent 

 Spanish painter, wa horn in l<i.'> ' (somo say 1658), nt Bnjal-incn, near 

 (' 'irduva, in the university of which city ho became a student, but his 

 predilection for the arts induced him to take instruction in painting 

 from Don Juan do Valdes Leal, in whose company ho went in 1676 to 

 Madrid to make himself acquainted with the styles of different school*. 



