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The Maker of the Universe [he replied] has established certain laws of nature for the planet in which we live, and the weal or woe of mankind depends upon the observance or the neglect of these laws. of these laws connects health with the absence of those gaseous exhalations which proceed from overcrowded human dwellings, or from decomposing substances, whether animal or vegetable; and those same laws render sickness the almost inevitable consequence of exposure to these noxious influences. But it has, at the same time, pleased Providence to place it within the power of man to make such arrangements, as will prevent or disperse such exhalations so as to render them harmless, and it is the duty of man to attend to those laws of nature and to exert the faculties which Providence has thus given to man for his own welfare. . . . When man has done the utmost for his own safety, then is the time to invoke the blessing of Heaven to give effect to his exertions.

During the existence of the unlucky Aberdeen Government, Lord Palmerston not unfrequently acted as chief of the ministerial party in the House of Commons, while Lord John Russell remained at Richmond, "disgusted with the abnormal position of leader without office, which the rearrangement of the Cabinet had compelled him to accept. The Home Secretary's direction of the business of the House was thoroughly goodhumoured and judicious; even Greville is constrained to chronicle his great popularity with all sections of the political world. But within the Cabinet there was but little unanimity on any subject. The views of Lord John Russell and several of the Peelites, especially Lord Aberdeen and Sir John Graham, were far more advanced on the question of Reform than were those of Lord Palmerston and Lord Lansdowne, who disliked the thing itself, and more particularly Lord John's persistency in introducing a Reform Bill at a moment when the aspect of foreign affairs was menacing in the extreme. The Home Secretary swallowed his objections so far as to consent to serve on the committee of the

Cabinet for the preparation of the proposed Bill. But when Lord John stated his scheme, Palmerston, in a letter to Lord Lansdowne, raised a number of objections, which, in the opinion of Lord Aberdeen, as expressed in a letter dated the 14th of December, were so serious as to strike at the most essential principles of the measure," and which were accordingly rejected by the Committee. Palmerston thereupon sent in his resignation, and was out of the Cabinet for ten days. The world naturally jumped to the conclusion that Reform was only a pretext, and that Palmerston had really resigned because of the want of vigour in the Eastern policy of the Cabinet. Mr. Ashley appears to countenance that idea, and Mr. Kinglake, going a step further, actually asserts that Lord Palmerston was "driven from office." But a passage in one of Palmerston's letters to his brother-in-law, Mr. Sulivan, directly contradicts that view; and no one who reads the correspondence between Lord Aberdeen and his dissentient colleague, published in the Quarterly Review of April 1877, can possibly doubt that the Reform Bill was the sole reason for Palmerston's resignation, though the reviewer's suggestion that he hoped that Lansdowne would also withdraw, and so break up the Cabinet, appears to be rather uncharitable.

From the Malmesbury and Greville memoirs it may be gathered that both parties in the Cabinet, that of the Premier and the Home Secretary, were conscious of having made a mistake in failing to come to terms, and that a reconciliation was accordingly not difficult to arrange. Lord Palmerston's withdrawal of his resignation was accepted by the embarrassed Premier; and the Home Secretary, though he was compelled for the moment to accept the obnoxious Bill, was eventually compensated

by its abandonment in the face of the complete indifference of public opinion.

All this while Lord Palmerston, though most conscientious in his discharge of the duties of his multifarious office, and most assiduous in his attendance at the House of Commons, was seldom absent in spirit from the shores of the Golden Horn and the banks of the Danube. Even Mr. Cobden himself could hardly have denied that the ex-Foreign Secretary, though he might be supposed to approach the Eastern Question with prejudice, brought to bear upon it at any rate a considerable amount of knowledge. amount of knowledge. Ever since 1830 he had made an intricate study of Russian diplomacy, and had watched the twists and turns of Russian statesmanship in crises as serious as that of 1840. He was yet at the Foreign Office when, in 1850, the dispute concerning the guardianship of the Holy Places was revived by Louis Napoleon, as a distinct bid against Russia for paramount influence in the East; and he had been duly warned by our Minister at Constantinople, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, that the question at issue, though apparently trivial, might easily develop into one of most serious moment. At the outset he attempted to avert war by directing Lord Normanby to persuade the French Government to moderate its unreasonable demands in favour of the Latin Church. The Catholics

in Turkey, he pointed out, were few in number, there were millions of Greeks; Russia, the protectress of the latter, was a colossal power close on the Sultan's back ;France, the advocate of the Catholics, was a long way off.

As soon, however, as Prince Menschikoff's mission to Constantinople disclosed an entirely new programme of Russian aggression, namely, a claim to a protectorate

over all the Greeks within the Turkish Empire, which was presented in the form of an ultimatum and supported by military demonstrations on the Turkish frontier, Lord Palmerston's tone changed, and he advocated the answering of threat by threat. He was aware, as were the rest of the Ministry, that the Czar had long ago told Sir Hamilton Seymour that the "sick man was at the point of death, and that in the division of the inheritance, although he would not establish himself at Constantinople as proprietor, "as trustee-that he would not say." And though he was not privileged like Count Vitzthum to listen to the wild outbursts of the Czar against ces chiens de Turcs, Palmerston must have been aware that the existence of the fatal agreement to recognise the Russian protectorship of the Greek religion in Syria, between the autocrat on the one hand, and Peel, the Duke, and Aberdeen on the other,* would drive Nicholas to new acts of menace directly Lord Aberdeen returned to power.

Palmerston's description of the methods of Russian encroachment is as true to day as it was when it was written :

The Russian Government [he wrote to Lord Clarendon] has always had two strings to its bow-moderate language and disinterested professions at St. Petersburg and at London; active aggression by its agents on the scene of operations. If the aggression succeed locally, the St. Petersburg Government adopts them as a fait accompli which it did not intend but cannot in honour recede from. If the local agents fail, they are disavowed and recalled, and the language previously held is appealed to as a proof that the agents have overstepped their instructions.

When this system of mingled threats and caresses was followed by the occupation of the Principalities by a Russian army, Palmerston urged that the French and * Lord Malmesbury's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 402.

English fleets should at once be sent up to the Bosphorus to encourage the Porte and give check to the Czar; but the Aberdeen party in the Cabinet was too strong for him. Not that he was under the illusion that such a course of action would prevent war; on the contrary, he was of opinion that the Czar " was bent on a stand-up fight," and felt that to meet the enemy halfway was more consonant with the traditions of English statesmanship, and would be more popular with the country, than bated breath and whispered humbleness. "If he [the Emperor] is determined to break a lance with us," he wrote to Mr. Sidney Herbert, "why then, have at him, say I, and perhaps he may have enough of it before we have done with him." At the same time, he had taken the right measure of the man when he asserted that Nicholas was far more likely to yield to action than to argument. If the Czar had known the crossing of the Pruth would be made a casus belli, it was probably that he would have thought twice about crossing it; when once he had crossed the river, it was difficult to retreat without loss of honour at the bidding of any Power or any collection of Powers.

Lord Palmerston had certainly interpreted the feeling of the country aright. Young England was actually eager for a war with Russia; and nearly everyone was of opinion that the extreme moderation of the English Government was not likely to gain its end, and that a bolder policy would more probably be crowned with success. Lord Palmerston was known to favour a vigorous conduct. Conscious, as he must have been of the immense power that he wielded as the people's man in an inharmonious administration, it is greatly to his credit that he did not attempt to force the hand of our Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, during the anxious period