FIRST DIFFERENCE WITH LORD J. RUSSELL.

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CHAPTER VII.

REMOVAL FROM THE GOVERNMENT-EXPLANATIONS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Cassio, I love thee,

But never more be officer of mine-Othello, Act. II. Sc. 3.

We now arrive at a critical period in the lives of two of the most eminent statesmen of their day. Lord John Russell, from the traditional recollections of his family, from the course of his own studies, and from the tendency of his own opinions, was the statesman whom the Liberal party of his own time most trusted in domestic affairs. Lord Palmerston, on the other hand, from long experience, decided character, and enlarged views, enjoyed the confidence of the same party in foreign

affairs.

Both statesmen were said to have their faults; and now and then a portion of their general followers broke off from one or from the other. But, on the whole, taking each in his own specialty, there were no men in the country to match them; and they had hitherto, though not always agreeing, stood firmly together. But circumstances had of late tended to dissolve this union. Lord John Russell, not only as Prime Minister, but as leader of the Liberal party, felt himself to be invested not only with great authority, but great responsibility, and was not unfrequently reproached by some of his colleagues, who, without considering our foreign policy in its general aspect, were prone to criticise its details, for allowing the Foreign Office too much 'To Lord Normanby, November 28.

VOL. II.

independence. On the other hand, Lord Palmerston, who had acquired a complete mastery over the business of his department, who always acted on a thorough conviction that his views were undeniably right, and who refrained from any interference in the internal policy of the country, was disposed to think that very great latitude within the sphere of his own attributes should be allowed to him. His notion was that a Foreign Minister ought to be strictly bound to pursue the policy of the Cabinet he belonged to, but that he ought to be left free to follow out that policy in the ordinary details of his office, without having every despatch he wrote submitted to criticism and comment. There is this, moreover, to be said, that whereas in home affairs nothing important is done without the decision of a Cabinet, and the leader in Parliament has only to explain the resolutions of the Cabinet, in foreign affairs a Minister is called upon every day of the week and at any time to write and speak to foreign Governments, or their representatives, on current business. If he could not do this with a certain degree of promptitude and freedom, he would lose all weight and influence with his own agents and with the agents of other Powers.

If, then, there is to be a Minister of Foreign Affairs fit for his post, he must have the thorough confidence of the Premier, and act as if he had it.

Lord Palmerston especially required this; first, because he held an important post in a Whig Cabinet, not being a Whig; and, second, because his policythat of constantly maintaining the dignity, power, and prestige of England unimpaired-was not only one of constant attention, but, necessarily, of constant action.

Nor was this all: Lord Palmerston had not merely to satisfy Lord John Russell, he had also to satisfy the Sovereign under whom Lord John held his appointment. Foreign policy is that policy in which Sovereigns, who are thus brought into competition with their equals, take the most interest. The Prince Consort, with whom Her Majesty lived on such terms of confidence as ren

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dered her application to him on questions of importance a matter of course, was not only a Prince of considerable ability, but one who gave a minute and scrupulous attention to any business on which he was consulted. He was naturally slow and cautious of judgment; and although his opinions were conscientiously and entirely directed towards English objects, he had not entirely an English mind; and in a German gentleman (Baron Stockmar) much in his confidence, and who deserved, from his great knowledge and abilities, to be so, he had for adviser a man who, though well qualified to have taken a place amongst the first statesmen in Europe, was clearly no admirer of popular or Parliamentary control over foreign affairs, which he regarded as the special concerns of royal and imperial minds.

Sufficient has thus been said to show that the royal authority was likely to be exercised in our foreign relations, and that the decided views which Lord Palmerston was accustomed to form or be disposed at once to carry out, and the strength of the language in which he often embodied those views, jarred at times with the disposition towards more consideration and deliberation at Windsor. More caution, more deliberation was required of him; and, in fact, Lord John Russell, with a double view, I am quite ready to suppose, of paying due deference to the Crown and of serving his colleague, made Lord Palmerston a communication in 1850 to this effect. Such restrictions could not be agreeable to the person on whom they were imposed, and, though conformable with the spirit of our Constitution, were hardly compatible with the prompt and practical despatch of business which every day was complicating and increasing, and which frequently required for a successful issue the transmitting of an immediate reply. During the discussions about the Spanish marriages Lord Palmerston lost three weeks in answering a communication from Guizot, by having to send drafts backwards and forwards while the Court was moving about in a cruize on the Western Coast.

Guizot, in his subsequent notes and despatches, was always throwing this delay in his face; but his tongue was tied, and he was obliged to accept the rebuke in silence.

It is not necessary to discuss here the exact constitutional position of the Crown in these matters, because that was not really at issue on the occasion to which reference is about to be made. It will suffice to emphatically repudiate the doctrine which has been recently approved in certain anonymous quarters, that the Head of the State is entrusted in a special manner with the decisions upon foreign affairs, and to claim for a free people a voice in their foreign equally as in their domestic concerns. But much has also been said and written lately about the share which the Sovereign takes, or ought to take, in the daily conduct of our foreign negotiations. The truth is that, with a pliant minister and under ordinary circumstances, the Crown has very great opportunities for impressing upon foreign affairs that tone and direction which it, for the moment, desires. Even when an important difference between Crown and Cabinet on a question of general policy has disappeared, by the former yielding to the representations of the latter, there still remain to the Sovereign many ways of influencing the course of negotiations in accordance with his original views. Draft despatches, embodying the Cabinet policy, must be sent to him for approval. They may be returned accompanied by objections to such and such passages, as not fairly representing the decisions arrived atby complaints of one paragraph as being too strongwhile another is pronounced too weak. The Cabinet may be scattered, as, indeed, it always is during a portion of the year; or, if all its members are at hand, still the occasion may not be deemed by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary sufficiently grave to warrant the issue of a summons. The peccant paragraphs are accordingly recast and a doubtful instead of a clear and strong expression of opinion or intention is transmitted

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to the foreign Court. Nor is this all: the Secretary of State, in such a supposed case, knows when preparing his draft that it is about to be submitted to a hostile critic-hostile, I mean, in the sense of being adverse to the policy of which he is the exponent-a critic moreover who must be heard and answered, not one who can be met by real or simulated indifference. He begins, therefore, insensibly by a compromise, and prepares, subject to further modification, an already modified version of the views of his Government. How great an influence may be exercised by means of this censorship will be evident to any person conversant with diplomatic language, and therefore aware of the important difference which even a slight alteration may imply.

Now, it is not contended that, on the whole, within its proper limits, the existence of this warning and criticising power, outside of party ranks, is otherwise than beneficial especially as a good Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is one of the rarest of our various political species. It is, however, certain that to Lord Palmerston, conscious of his knowledge and patriotism, earnest and eager in his aims, and thoroughly confident that his ways of attaining the end proposed were the surest, the delays and obstacles not unfrequently thus placed in his way were most irksome; and in the ardour of the chase he was too often tempted to leap the gate sooner than lose the time necessary to stop and open it. It must also be remembered that he had, off and on, held the seals of the Foreign Office for a long term of years, during the greater part of which he had been accustomed to be left very much alone. He was, indeed, already a veteran in foreign administration at the time when his two able German critics first appeared on the scene. But, whatever opinion may be formed as to his independence and promptness of action, his motives at any rate must be admired, and it is not possible for anybody who was acquainted with his character to clothe it with any colour of disrespect for the Crown.