the Pitt party in the University being broken up, he found himself, as he had expected, at the bottom of the poll. William Wilberforce, in his diary, ascribes Palmerston's defeat in a great measure to the fact that he was supposed, though wrongly, to be an Anti-Abolitionist, whereas Lord Henry Petty was a staunch supporter of the negro cause. Anti-Abolitionist Palmerston can hardly have been, if his subsequent efforts for the suppression of the slave-trade are any criterion. At the general election of 1806 he was elected for Horsham with Lord FitzHarris, the son of his guardian, Lord Malmesbury; but they were unseated on petition, and thought themselves lucky in being so, for, as he wrote in an autobiographical sketch of his early life, "in a short time came the change, and the dissolution in May 1807, and we rejoiced in our good fortune in not having paid £5,000 for a three months' seat." He then stcod again for Cambridge, and again without success; though had he not, with great straightforwardness, persuaded his friends to divide their votes, according to the understanding with his Tory colleague, Sir Vicary Gibbs, instead of plumping, he would have been returned. Soon after this he came into Parliament for Newtown in the Isle of Wight, a borough of Sir Leonard Holmes. One condition was that he should never set foot in the place, even for the election, so jealous was the patron of the introduction of a new interest in the borough.

Palmerston had just before been nominated a Lord of the Admiralty through the interest of Lord Malmesbury. He was gazetted on the 3rd of April 1807, but it was not until the following February that he ventured to break the ice in the House of Commons. Though silent, however, he was not unobservant; for a journal

begun in June of the previous year, contains some very acute and detailed observations on the great events of the time, notably on the hideous ruin and combustion of the Austrian and Prussian armies at Ulm, Austerliz, and Jena. Very true is his remark that Napoleon, so far from concealing his designs, published even the most violent of his projected innovations; for instance, the formation of the Rhenish Confederacy, some time before they were put in execution, whereby the world became by degrees reconciled to them. Less fair is his sneer at the conduct of the Grenville ministry on the question of Catholic Emancipation: "They insisted," he says, "in retaining both their places and opinions."

It was upon continental affairs that the future Foreign Secretary made his maiden speech. Acting on secret information, which they were unable to produce, the Government had anticipated Napoleon by sending an expedition to seize the fleet of the Danes, with whom England was nominally at peace. It was entirely successful, but the Danes resisted, and Copenhagen was bombarded. On February 3, 1808, Mr. Ponsonby, the leader of the Opposition, moved for the production of papers. Canning, in a brilliant speech of three hours, demolished Ponsonby's arguments; and Palmerston, following somewhat on Canning's lines, pointed out that it would be impossible to produce the papers without breach of honour, and without shutting up future sources of information; while in answer to Windham, who had urged that England had been guilty of a violation of the law of nations, he made the telling rejoinder: "In the case before the House the law of nature is stronger even than the law of nations. It is to the law of self-preservation that England appeals for the justification of her proceedings.”

3

"It was impossible," wrote the débutant to his sister, to talk very egregious nonsense in so good a cause,' and the speech was a success, though not thought worthy of a report in the Times. Palmerston was regarded as one of the rising men on the Tory side of the House; nevertheless, he was "infinitely surprised" when, in October, 1809, Mr. Perceval, obliged, owing to the quarrels in the party, to form his ministry out of untried material, offered him successively the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, a Lordship of the Treasury, and the Secretaryship at War, in the alternative of their being any of them declined by "Orator" Milnes, the father of the late Lord Houghton.* Palmerston consulted Lord Mulgrave and Plumer Ward on the point, and wrote to Lord Malmesbury for advice. As the seat in the Treasury was only offered with the understanding that its occupant should speedily be advanced to the Chancellorship, the choice practically lay between the latter appointment and the Secretaryship at War. With admirable discretion he determined to risk nothing by premature ambition, and accepted the War Office without a seat in the Cabinet, rather than the more exalted position of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Cabinet minister.

Of course [he writes to Lord Malmesbury], one's vanity and ambition would lead one to accept the brilliant offer first proposed; but it is throwing for a great stake, and where much is to be gained, very much also is to be lost. I have always thought it unfortunate for anyone,

* So Palmerston told his friend Plumer Ward (Memoirs of R. P. Ward, Esq., edited by the Hon. E. Phipps, vol. i. p. 249). In his autobiography Palmerston says, evidently incorrectly, "he [Perceval] said he had offered it [the Chancellorship] to Milnes, who had declined it." See also Palmerston's letters to Lord Malmesbury in Bulwer's Palmerston.

and particularly a young man, to be put above his proper level, as he only rises to fall the lower. Now, I am quite without knowledge of finance, and never but once spoke in the House.

The fear of a breakdown in the House of Commons seems, indeed, to have been his chief deterrent. Besides, he thought that the Government would not last long, and that it was therefore not advisable to be identified with it more closely than was absolutely necessary. "I left him," wrote Plumer Ward, "inclining to the Secretary at War, and admired his prudence, as I have long done the talents and excellent understanding, as well as the many other good qualities as well as accomplishments, of this very fine young man."

To the War Office, accordingly, the very fine young man went, and at the War Office he remained contentedly for nearly twenty years. During this long period he had several chances of advancement; the Secretaryship for Ireland was offered him in 1812, and after Lord Liverpool became Prime Minister he was twice offered. the Governor-Generalship of India, and at another time the Post Office and an English peerage. The simple explanation of this disinclination to move was that, though fond of official life and extremely reluctant to quit it, he had very little personal ambitition at any period of his career, and probably none at its commencement. In a letter about Lord Palmerston's character, which Lord Shaftesbury wrote at the request of his biographer, Mr. Evelyn Ashley, it is stated that as late as 1826, "he passed for a handy clever man who moved his estimates very well, appeared to care but little for public affairs in general, went a good deal into society, and never attracted any other remark but one of wonder, which I often heard, that he had been so long in the same office." He was, in short, content to do carefully

and thoroughly what lay before him, but made no attempt to get out of the groove. Mr. E. Herries in his Memoir of the Right Hon. J. C. Herries, accuses Palmerston of "dilatoriness and laxity" at the War Office. But he adduces very feeble evidence to support the charge, and the statement is quite the reverse of what may be gathered from other quarters.

I continue to like this office very much [he writes to Lord Malmesbury in 1809]. There is a good deal to be done, but, if one is confined, there is some satisfaction to have some real business to do; and if they leave us in long enough, I trust much may be accomplished in arranging the interior details of the office, so as to place it on a respectable footing. Its inadequacy to get through the current business that comes before it is really a disgrace to the country, and the arrear of regimental accounts unsettled is of a magnitude not to be conceived. We are now working at the Treasury to induce them to agree to a plan, proposed originally by Sir James Pulteney, and reconsidered by Granville Levison, by which, I think, we shall provide for the current business, and the arrear must be got rid of as well as we can contrive to do it.

This is not the letter of a lax official, and his annual speeches on the Army Estimates show a great power of grappling with details, both during the period of the war and during the years after the peace, when he bad to resist the Whig demands for a reduction of the forces. But on subjects unconnected with his department he was for the most part silent. Brougham, indeed, went so far as to inform him that he seldom troubled the House with his observations on any subject; but the statement, like so many of Brougham's, has to be taken with several grains of salt. Besides moving the Army Estimates, Palmerston is frequently to be found in the pages of Hansard during these years defending flogging in the army, the employment of foreign mercenaries, and so forth; doing sometimes a good deal of not very enviable work, for instance,