E 45 ·P17 S

PREFATORY NOTE.

THE chief authority for Lord Palmerston's life is the biography of which the first three volumes were written by Lord Dalling-better known, perhaps, as Sir Henry Bulwer-and the fourth and fifth by Mr. Evelyn Ashley (1870-76). A condensed, and in many respects improved, edition of the whole was published by Mr. Ashley in 1879. It is a mine of information to the student of political history, and we may hope that the value of the concluding chapters may one day be increased by the publication of that fuller documentary evidence which has hitherto been apparently withheld from the necessity of keeping secrets of State. A small biography of Lord Palmerston was published by Anthony Trollope in 1881, but it contains little that is not to be found in Mr. Ashley's volumes.

Apart from this main source of knowledge, there is a very large quantity of matter illustrative of Lord Palmerston's private and public life. Lady Enfield tells us something about his youth in her Life and Letters of the First Earl of Minto; and much that is of interest,

about his personal character especially, is to be found in Sir Henry Holland's Recollections, Abraham Hayward's Letters, and his article in Fraser's Magazine, vol. xviii., and the Life of Lord Shaftesbury by Mr. Hodder. For an account of his career as a Tory statesman we have his own short autobiography, published as an appendix to the first volume of Lord Dalling's Life, which has been proved to be inaccurate on various points by Mr. E. Herries, in his Memoir of the Right Hon. J. C. Herries; and incidental notices in Plumer Ward's Memoirs, Lord Colchester's Diary, also in the Croker Papers, which continue to illustrate his official life down to 1855. With the formation of the Grey ministry commences the severe criticism of Greville, and with the beginning of the present reign the hardly less hostile comments of Sir Theodore Martin; still the evidence of both of these writers cannot be neglected by anyone who wishes to form a fair judgment of Lord Palmerston's merits. Scattered notices of his foreign policy during the Grey, Melbourne, and Russell ministries are to be found in the third volume of Lord Brougham's Life and Times, Earl Russell's Reminiscences and Suggestions, the Life of Lord Melbourne by Mr. McCullagh Torrens, and Raikes's Journal; while towards the close of this period, Lord Malmesbury's Memoirs of an Ex-Minister and Mr. Morley's Life of Cobden begin to be valuable sources of fact. The continental view of his policy is to be found particularly in the Memoirs of Prince Metternich and Baron Stockmar, the Life of Count Saldanha, and in Guizot's

Mémoires and L'Histoire de Dix Ans, besides works like Theodore Juste's Memoirs of Leopold I., the histories of the Revolution of 1848 by Lamartine and Garnier Pagès, and Mr. Spencer Walpole's admirable History of England, which includes also the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. On the crisis of 1845 much valuable information is to be found in an article by A in the Historical Review; and the Spanish marriage intrigue is to be traced at length in the correspondence between Louis Philippe and Guizot, published by Taschereau in the Revue Rétrospective in 1848. Mr. Kinglake's views on Lord Palmerston's conduct as a member of the Aberdeen Cabinet may be compared with advantage with those set forth in the Quarterly Review of April 1877. During Lord Palmerston's first premiership and onwards, Lord Malmesbury and Mr. Morley continue to be instructive critics, and they are reinforced by Bishop Wilberforce, and Mr. Walter Bagehot in his sketch of The English Constitution. An excellent précis of English foreign policy from 1859 to 1865 is given by Lord Russell in the preface to the second part of his Selected Speeches and Despatches. On Lord Palmerston's later Italian policy abundant information may be found in Bianchi's Storia Documentata della Diplomazia Europea in Italia, in Mazade's Vie de Cavour, Cavour's Letters and Despatches, notably the private letters to Azeglio published by Bianchi under the title of La Politique du Comte Camille de Cavour. Not much original information, as far as Lord Palmerston is concerned, is to be

found in Blanchard Jerrold's Life of Napoleon III., but his attitude towards German politics generally, and the Schleswig-Holstein question in particular, are abundantly illustrated in Count Beust's Memoirs, Count Vitzthum's St. Petersburg and London, which contains many personal reminiscences of Lord Palmerston, and Busch's Our Chancellor (Eng. trans., 1884).

L. C. S.