LORD PALMERSTON.

Auckland Examiner, Volume 1, Issue 2, 18 December 1856, Page 3

LORD PALMERSTON.

Concluded from our last. We allow there is no political fault more common than that of demanding the impossible. To succeed in politics one must Eye Nature’s walks shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise: Running full tilt against the mind of a nation is not only dangerous but mischievous. Burke rightly judged it loolish to draw a bill of indictment against a whole people, which thing your conceited,

crotchetty, unpractical, and thoroughly impracticable politician stops not short of. Fie confounds principles with details, likens all manner of unlike things, and demands from this or that Minister v hat no Minister can give.

Between ourselves and such dealers in moonshine there is a great gulph fixed. Yet supple, shifting, slippery, unprincipled politicians are our aversion. Palmerston may not be supple, or shifting, or slippery or unprincipled, but assuredly his politics have been accommodating to an extent unprecedented —absolutely astonishing, even to readers of Hansard. Pure old Whig in one quite clear sense he is ; for your pure old Whig, like the opossum, (pretty well understood in these parts), is a quick climbing animal but in most other respects heavy and helpless. Palmerston proved himself a quick climber, and “ we know the reason why,” and also proved himself heavy and helpless after reaching the topmost height of power. Perhaps he meant well, but certainly he did ill. Strange that one so wise in speech, should be so unfortunase in act I When stating objections to the Foreign Policy of Wellington, he eloquently said, There is in Nature no moving power hut mind, all else is passive ond inert; in human affairs the power is opinion ; and he who can grasp the power with it will subdue the fleshy arm of physical strength, and compel it to work out his purpose. Power being the god of his idolatry nothing else could satisfy him, and for nearly half a century at power he grasped. Palmerston will live in history but history will judge him, and not award the praise belonging only to first-class minds. Without creative instinct, without enthusiasm for any political principle or active, cordial, thorough sympathy with any political party, he cannot be named in the same breath Canning and ranks far below Peel. Fie was pupil as well as successor of Canning ; but the mantel of of the master does not sit gracefully on the pupil. Canning was tenacious of purpose grand in idea, and bold in the doing of that whick he thought should be done,—witness his policy in 1822, when he dared to threaten the holy Alliance with a resuscitation of nationalities, and Ins happy idea so happily expressed in the famous words I called a new world into existence, to redress the balance of the old. Palmerston is not, never was, tenacious of purpose, grand in idea, or bold in doing what he feels ought to be done, —witness his conduct in the matters of Poland, of Italy, of Hungary, and that small bnt once free republic of Cracow, whose occupation by Austrian troops in defiance of treaties he foolishly, perhaps treasonably permitted. With ail States, as well as with all parties, he seems to have “ played fast and loose.” Not so Canning. Not so Peel who conservative in name, was eminently progressive in spirit. Peel grew old zzwlearning ihany things —casting from him many antiquated prejudices —disdaining “ to give up to party what was meant for mankind.”

Palmerston is essentially a party man but, true to the competeiive instinct, a party man who “ buys Lis party in the cheapest market and sells it in the nearest.” ♦ All the world knows that Lord Aberdeen’s government was destroyed by Roebuck’s motion for enquiry into the state of the army before Sebastopol. Palmerston, a member of the government, resisted that motion, declared it inopportune, mischievous, uncalled for, and volunteered more than one defence of the much worried, very much ill-used, Duke of Newcastle. Yet, within a week after “called in” the disgusted Gladstone, Graham, and the other Peelites who had joined his Administration, by yielding that very committee of enquiry against which side by side with those Peelites he had so valiantly fought! This was a paltry piece of political treason, for perpetuating which my Lord Palmerston well deserved to be politically hanged, drawn, and quartered. Peelites went out, and our “ too-clever-by-half” Premier so reconstructed his cabinet that rather than cabinet of all the talents it was cabinet of all the incapacities. Far from putting the right men in the right place, he put the wrong men in the right place, and the right men in the wrong place.

Sir Robert Peel was made a Lord of the Admiralty. Why ? We know not; but suspect he was appointed because he was the son of his father, just as Louis

Napoleon was made President of a certain French Republic because he was the nephew of his uncle. John Ball, known to be an Irishman, but not known to be anything else, was made Undersecretary for the Colonies, probably because if was generally understood that his ignorance of Colonial affairs: was complete. Layard, the world famous traveller, - — <l Nineveh bayard, who by his acts and speeches so largely contributed to break up the Aberdeen government whose peculiar fitness for office was universally acknowledged, and to whom public opinion pointed as precisely the man to act with vigour, therefoie precisely the man for Secretary at War, was offered an Under-Secretaryship in the Board of Trade ; while Frederick Peel, notoriously dominated by routine, and by competent judges pronounced the very incarnation of Red lape was, (heaven save the mark,) made Undersecretary at War. Lord Panmure, who succeeded the Duke of Newcastle as War Minister, refused to act with Layard, and to please Panmure a man eminently qualified for office is set aside.

Layard belongs to the not over numerous class of practical statesmen. Although an indifferent orator his speeches are full of matter and infinitely damaging to any Minister against whom they are directed. To an Administration such as Palmerston’s one Layard is worthy fifty Panmures. But then Panmure is a. Whig, an antiquated imbecile, no doubt, but still a Whig,—more vetthorough Whig aristocrat with great Whig family connections. In any great crisis Chatham would have dictated to the aristocracy —not have allowed the aristocracy to dictate to him. But Chatham was a statesman “ bold enough to be honest, and honest enough to be bold ” which Palmerston is not.

From the year 1806, when he sought to represent Cambridge University down bo the time when he contrived to form the weakest and -worst Administration ever known since Castlereagh, “ dictated to a British Parliament in the language of Mrs. Malaprop,” his attitude has been equivocal his policy timid, uncertain, variable, and vacillating. True it is, nevertheless, that as Foreign Secretary; or indeed anything but First Minister, my Lord Palmerston could dictate terms aud become at will “ master of the situation.” He destroyed the Government of Lord John Russell could not be done without by Lord Aberdeen, and more than any other man contributed to the failure of Lord Derby. He dealt with Governments as Warwick did with Kings. No position could be prouder. How he contrived to achieve it no one exactly knew. His antecedents were, as we have seen, the reverse of satisfactory. A Tory among Tories, a Whig among Whigs, a Radical among Radicals, no one knew where to have him, or how to place him, except, indeed, with that queer class of politicians whom Daniel O’Connell was wont to describe as neither fish nor flesh nor good red-herring.