to you privately that he has great objection to the introduction of any Gallicism into a despatch which may have to be laid before Parliament. He observes, for instance, that you use the word adhesion, which he says is not an English word in the sense in which you use it; and he considers the same remark applicable to the phrase, It may be permitted to doubt, which is also employed.1

To the Home Secretary he conveys a common-sense view about the supposed claims of civic functionaries to marks of royal favour :

November 18, 1862.

My dear Grey,-It seems to me that there are strong objections to giving Baronetcies to Mayors and Lord Mayors. In the first place, it would be opening a door without being able to say how many would have to enter by it; for if once you begin, it would be difficult to draw a line of distinction between cases to be accepted and cases to be refused. But in fact it would be handing over to municipal corporations the power of disposing of dignities granted by the Crown; and no wonder that all the magistrates of Edinburgh express a wish that they may be allowed to make a Baronet.

Municipal corporations exercise their own prerogative in conferring upon one of their members the dignity of Mayor; and the Crown exercises its prerogative in conferring upon those whom it deems worthy of it the dignity of Baronet.

But each party should keep within its own bounds; and corporations should not try to make Baronets, any more than the Crown should try to make Mayors.

He declines to forward an oft-repeated recommendation from the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in a note which is quite a model of brevity, because though curt

So, also, once in a speech in the House of Commons, he raised his voice against a common error of expression:-'We have heard the term ally and allies rung in our ears by those who either must be ignorant of the slipslop expression they were using, or who, through what I must admit to have been its general acceptation, forgot that they were using a totally unmeaning term. Why, what is an ally? An ally is a Power allied by treaty engagements in carrying on some active operation, political or otherwise. But to call a country an ally merely because it is in a state of friendship with you, is to use an expression that has no meaning whatever, because it is applicable to every other Power in the world with whom you may happen not to be in a state of war.'-July 21, 1849,

J

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it is civil-a point in the letter being that the 'sarcastic critic' whom he was 'remembering' happened to be Lord Carlisle himself to whom he was writing :Broadlands: April 24, 1862.

My dear Carlisle,-I have received your letter of the 19th. I remember a sarcastic critic exclaiming, 'Here comes Dudley Stuart with his eternal Poles.' I shall parody the exclamation by saying, Here comes Carlisle with his eternal X; but I think the Poles better entitled to their freedom than X- is to the Commandership, and so let us adjourn the debate.

He was often very happy in the phrases with which he described a man's failings. Of a diplomatist who would obstinately stick to his own idea in spite of instructions from home, and for whom he was meditating a rebuke, he says, 'S- is like a bad retriever, that will not let go his game till he gets a rap on the nose.' Of another, whose charity was not so large as his egotism :

I wish B's letters were not so full of backbiting: however, he makes up for his disparagement of others by his praises of himself.

There is a whole type of diplomatists described in the following sketch of a foreign ambassador :

Colloredo is agreeable in private society, but diplomatically he is a very unsatisfactory man to deal with. He seems always in a fright lest he should say anything that would commit him ; he is ever on the defensive, and there is no discussing any matter on equal terms with him. He ends a long conversation by saying, Mais souvenez-vous que je ne vous ai rien dit,' and while he is talking seems to fancy that there is a shorthand writer behind the screen taking down what he says.'

'What energy,' he once said, speaking of the Turks, can be expected of a people with no heels to their shoes?' And when a message was sent to him from a foreign sovereign, asking that a baronetcy might be conferred on an Englishman for whom that sovereign professed an attachment, the only remark he made was 1 To Lord Ponsonby, October 19, 1849.

that while titles and honours were said to be the cheap rewards bestowed by princes, they certainly were cheapest of all when borrowed from a neighbour.

Sir John Bligh, our Minister at Hanover, writes to complain that the King will persist in giving balls on Sunday, and asks for Lord Palmerston's approval if he leaves the palace when the band strikes up. The Foreign Secretary, in reply, sanctions the conduct of the English Minister, but so words his communication as to check any disposition that might exist to make too grave a matter of the affair:

It is certainly somewhat singular that the King of Hanover, who lays so much stress upon religion, should choose Sunday of all days in the week for his ball-night, and in this respect he seems to be the reverse of Lord Fitzhardinge, who said to somebody, that, to be sure, he had not much religion, but that what little he had was of the best quality. The King of Hanover professes to have a great deal; but its quality seems rather indifferent, and I should think that his friends in England would not be much edified by hearing of his Sunday-evening polkas. However, I think you are quite right in making your bow at these parties, and in then going away.

1

His illustrations, often homely, generally went to the root of the matter, as, for instance, when discussing the policy of insisting on reciprocity from France before throwing our markets open to her, he thus condemned the notion :

I look on the tariffs of the two countries as if they were two turnpikes, one on each side of a river dividing two counties, both of which require payment from all passing across. Who would not laugh at county A. if it were to insist on continuing to pay the turnpike on its own side, unless it were also relieved from paying the turnpike on the B. side of the river? But high customs duties are like turnpike tolls, a charge making passage more expensive for everything that comes in.

As a public speaker, Lord Palmerston's success was very great, and surely results are good tests of merit in the art of persuasion. He always contrived to serve up 1 Foreign Office, October 26, 1847.

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food for every palate the best suited to his audience for the moment, whether learned, municipal, political, or artizan. He certainly never aspired to the lofty rank of a great orator, nor to the magic wand of a great master of phrases; but in the power of conveying abundant knowledge in an apt, logical, and convincing form, he yielded the palm to none. I find traces of careful preparation for the speeches of his earlier years; but during the latter half of his life he made little or none. The great changes in the constitution of the House of Commons which successive Reform Bills have made must never be forgotten by those who would compare the Parliamentary speakers of the present with those of a former generation. The House of Commons of the nineteenth century, for a variety of reasons, all perhaps excellent, gives no encouragement to oratory. A man may succeed in spite of it if he possesses knowledge of details sufficient to redeem his defect; but if he cherishes the models studied by Pitt and Fox he bears about him rather a burden than a source of power.

Shortly after Lord Palmerston's death there appeared a short criticism on his public speaking which is so good, as far as it goes, that I here insert it. It is taken from the columns of a newspaper1 which, as a Radical organ, had been very hostile to him. The tribute to his powers is all the more impartial:

Lord Palmerston was successful chiefly because he always made it his business to understand the temper of his audience, and accommodate himself to it. He was not an orator in any critical sense of the word. He never made the slightest attempt to rival such men as Pitt and Fox, as Gladstone and Bright, in eloquence. But few men were ever more successful in effecting, by means of public speaking, the objects at which they aimed. Lord Palmerston never indulged in any attempts at fine language. He studied nothing of elocution except the art of speaking out distinctly. His action was generally monotonous. Although fluent, he had a fashion-perhaps an affectation-of

The late Morning Star.

interjecting occasionally a sort of guttural sound between his words, which must necessarily have been fatal to anything like true oratorical effect, but which somehow seemed to enhance the peculiar effectiveness of his unprepared, easy, colloquial style. Certainly the occasional hesitation, real or affected, often did much to increase the humour of some of the jocular hits in which Lord Palmerston so commonly delighted. The joke seemed to be so entirely unpremeditated; the audience were kept for a moment in such amusing suspense, while the speaker was apparently turning over the best way to give the hit, that when at last it came it was enjoyed with the keener relish. His jokes were always suited to the present capacity of those whom he happened to address.1 If the House seemed in a humour for mere nonsense, then Lord Palmerston revelled in mere nonsense. He had the happy art of making commonplaces seem effective. He never rose above his audience; he never vexed their intellect by difficult propositions or entangled arguments. Unless where he purposely chose to be vague or unintelligible, he always went straight to the mark, and talked in homely, vigorous Saxon English. He never talked too long; he never by any chance wearied his audience. He always knew, as if instinctively, what style of argument would best at any given moment tell upon the House. He brought to bear upon every debate an unsurpassed tact, and a memory hardly rivalled. He could reply with telling effect, and point by point, to a lengthened attack from an enemy, without the use of a note or memorandum of any kind. When argument failed, he employed broad, rough English satire. He was never dull; he was never ineffective; he was never uninteresting. One of his rough and ready speeches helped to carry many a division, when Burke would have turned friends into foes from sheer impatience, and when brilliant eloquence of any kind might have been as dangerous to play with as lightning.2

1 Having, on one occasion, to make an open-air speech to his constituents while suffering from a bad cold, he left aside his ailment, to be guessed by his hearers, and said, amid much laughter, 'I beg that you will allow me to address you with my hat on, in order that I may be your true representative, for I see that you all have your hats on

2 As a chance illustration of his after-dinner speeches, let me give an extract from one of the last he made, namely, at the banquet of the Fishmongers' Company in 1864. He followed another Minister who descanted learnedly on the blessings of the British Constitution. Lord Palmerston spoke more appropriately of the blessings of fish:-'I believe that one of the functions of this ancient corporation is par