[Neue Oder-Zeitung, No. 79, February 16, 1855] 

London, February 12. Lord Palmerston is incontestably the most 
interesting phenomenon of official England. Although an old 
man, and almost uninterruptedly upon the public stage since 
1807, he has contrived to remain news and to keep alive all the 
hopes commonly associated with promising and untried youth. 
With one foot in the grave, he is supposed to be still on the 
threshold of his true career. Were he to die tomorrow, all England 
would be surprised to learn that he had been a Minister for half a 
century. Though he is not a universal statesman, he is certainly a 
universal actor—equally successful in the heroic and the comic, 
the sublime and the vulgar style, in tragedy and in farce, although 
the last is, perhaps, better attuned to his nature. He is not a 
first-class orator, but is accomplished in debate. With a wonderful 
memory, great experience, consummate tact, never-failing pres- 
ence of mind, refined flexibility and the most intimate knowledge 
of parliamentary artifices, intrigues, parties and personalities, he 
handles difficult cases with winsome ease, adapting himself to the 
prejudices of each audience in turn, shielded against all surprise 
by his nonchalance, against all self-betrayal by his egoistical facility, 
against impassioned ebullitions by his profound frivolity and 
aristocratic indifference. His happy wit enables him to insinuate 
himself with all and sundry. Because he always remains cool- 
headed, he impresses hot-headed opponents. If a general stand- 
point be wanting, he is ever prepared to spin a web of elegant 
generalities. If incapable of mastering a subject, he contrives to toy 
with it. If afraid to join issue with a powerful foe, he contrives to 
improvise a weak one. 

Submitting to foreign influence in practice, he combats it in 
words. Since he has inherited from Canning—who, however, 
warned against him on his death-bed—England’s mission of 
disseminating constitutional propaganda on the Continent, he 
never, of course, lacks a theme with which to flatter national 
prejudice while simultaneously keeping alive the jealous suspicions 
of foreign powers. Having thus conveniently become the béte notre 
of continental courts, he could hardly fail to figure at home as a 
“truly English Minister”. Although originally a Tory, he has 
succeeded in introducing into his conduct of foreign affairs all 
those “shams”? and contradictions that constitute the essence of 
Whiggism. He contrives to reconcile democratic phraseology with 
oligarchic views; to offset the bourgeoisie and their advocacy of 
peace with the overbearing language of England’s aristocratic past; 
to seem an aggressor when he assents and a defender when he 
betrays; to spare an ostensible enemy and embitter an alleged ally; 
to be at the decisive moment of the dispute on the side of the 
stronger against the weak, and to utter courageous words in the 
very act of turning tail. 

Accused by one side of being in Russta’s pay, he is suspected by 
the other of Carbonarism.' If, in 1848, he had to defend himself 
in Parliament against a motion calling for his impeachment for 
acting in collusion with Russia, he had the satisfaction in 1850 of 
being the object of a conspiracy between foreign embassies which 
succeeded in the House of Lords but came to grief in the House 
of Commons.'* When he betrayed foreign nations, it was always 
done with extreme courtesy. While the oppressors could always 
count on his active support, the oppressed never wanted for the 
pageantry of his noble rhetoric. Poles, Italians, Hungarians, etc., 
invariably found him at the helm when they were vanquished, but 
their conquerors always suspected him of having conspired with 
the victims he had allowed them to make. Having him for a foe 
has, in every instance up till now, spelled a likelihood of success, 
having him for a friend, the certainty of ruin. But though the art 
of his diplomacy is not manifest in the actual results of his 
negotiations abroad, it shines forth all the more brightly in the 
manner in which he has succeeded in [inducing] the English 
people to accept phrase for fact, fantasy for reality and 
high-sounding pretexts for shabby motivation. 

Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, was appointed 

Junior Lord* of the Admiralty in 1807, when the Duke of 
at War* and retained this post until May 1828 in the Ministries of 
Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich and Wellington. It is 
certainly strange to find the Don Quixote of “free institutions”, 
the Pindar of the “glories of the constitutional system”, as an 
eminent and permanent member of the Tory administration 
which promulgated the Corn Laws,"* stationed foreign mer- 
cenaries on English soil, every now and then—to use an 
expression of Lord Sidmouth’s—“‘let the people’s blood”, gagged 
the Press, suppressed meetings, disarmed the nation at large, 
suspended regular courts of justice along with individual free- 
dom—in a word declared a state of siege in Great Britain and 
Ireland! In 1829 Palmerston went over to the Whigs who, in 
November 1830, appointed him Secretary for Foreign Affairs. 
Save for the intervals between November 1834 and April 1835 
and between 1841 and 1846, when the Tories were at the helm, 
he was in sole charge of England’s foreign policy from the time of 
the revolution of 1830 to the coup d’état of 1851. We shall survey 
his achievements during that period in another letter. 

[Neue Oder-Zeitung, No. 83, February 19, 1855]° 

London, February 14. In recent weeks Punch has been wont to. 
present Lord Palmerston in the guise of the clown of the puppet 
show. As everyone knows, that clown is a mischief-monger by 
profession, who loves noisy ructions, a concocter of pernicious 
misunderstandings, a virtuoso of rowdyism, at home only in the 
general hurly-burly he has created, in the course of which he 
throws wife, child and, at last, even the police out of the window, 
ending up, after much ado about nothing, by extricating himself 
from the scrape more or less intact and full of malicious glee at 
the turn the rumpus has taken. And, from a picturesque point of 
view, Lord Palmerston does indeed appear thus—a restless and 
untiring spirit who seeks out difficulties, imbroglios and confusion 
as the natural element of his activity and hence creates conflict 
where he does not find it ready-made. Never has an English 
Foreign Secretary shown himself so busy in every corner of the 
earth—blockades of the Scheldt, the Tagus, the Douro,” 

blockades of Mexico and Buenos Aires, Naples expeditions, 
Pacifico expeditions, expeditions to the Persian Gulf,'’ wars in Spain 
for “liberty” and in China for the importation of opium,’? North 
American border disputes,” Afghanistan campaigns, bombardment 
of Saint-Jean-d’Acre,”° squabbles over the right to search shipping 
off West Africa,”! discord even in the “Pacific”, and all this to the 
accompaniment of and supplemented by innumerable minatory 
notes, stacks of minutes and diplomatic protests. On average, all this 
noise would seem to dissipate itself in heated parliamentary debates 
which provide as many ephemeral triumphs for the noble lord. He 
appears to handle foreign conflicts like an artist who is prepared to 
go so far and no further, withdrawing as soon as they threaten to 
become too serious, and have provided him with the dramatic 
stimulus he requires. In this way, world history itself takes on the.air 
of a pastime expressly invented for the private satisfaction of the 
noble Viscount Palmerston of Palmerston. This is the first 
impression Palmerston’s chequered diplomacy makes on the 
impartial observer. A closer examination reveals, however, that, 
strange to say, one country has invariably profited from his 
diplomatic zigzag course, and that country was not England but 
Russia. In 1841 [Joseph] Hume, a friend of Palmerston’s,declared: 

“Were the Tsar of Russia* to have an agent in the British Cabinet, his interests 
could not be better represented than they are by the noble Lord.” 

In 1837 Lord Dudley Stuart, one of Palmerston’s greatest 
admirers, apostrophised him as follows: 

“How much longer [...] did the noble lord propose to allow Russia thus to insult 
Great Britain, and thus to injure British commerce? [...] The noble lord was 
degrading England in the eyes of the world by holding her out in the character of a 

At any rate it cannot be denied that all treaties favourable to 
Russia, from the Treaty of Adrianople to the Treaty of 
Balta-Liman” and the Treaty of the Danish Succession,” were 
concluded under Palmerston’s auspices. True, the Treaty of 
Adrianople found Palmerston in opposition, not in office; but for 
one thing he was the first to give the treaty his blessing, though in 
an underhand way and, for another, being then the leader of the 

Whig Opposition, he attacked Aberdeen for his Austro-Turkish 
bias and declared Russia to be the champion of civilization. (Cf., 
for instance, the sittings of the House of Commons of June 1, 
1829, June 11, 1829,* February 16, 1830, etc) On this occasion, - 
Sir Robert Peel told him in the House of Commons that “he did 
not know whom Palmerston really represented”. In November 
1830 Palmerston took over the Foreign Office. Not only did he 
reject France’s offer of joint intervention on Poland’s behalf 
because of “the relations between the Cabinet of St. James and the 
Cabinet of St. Petersburg”; he also forbade Sweden to arm and 
threatened Persia with war should she fail to withdraw the army 
she had already dispatched to the Russian frontier. He himself 
helped to defray the cost of Russia’s campaign in as much as, 
without parliamentary authorisation, he continued to pay out 
principal and interest on the so-called Russian-Dutch loan after 
the Belgian revolution had invalidated the stipulations governing 
that loan.** In 1832 he allowed the mortgage on state demesnes 
which the National Assembly of Greece had guaranteed the 
English contracting party to the Anglo-Greek Loan of 1824, to be 
repudiated and transferred as security for a new loan effected 
under Russian auspices. His despatches to Mr. Dawkins, English 
representative in Greece, invariably read: “You are to act in 
concert with the agents of Russia.” “ On July 8, 1833, Russia extorted 
from the Porte the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi whereby the 
Dardanelles were closed to European warships, and Russia 
(cf. second article of the treaty) was assured of an eight years’ 
dictatorship in Turkey.”° The Sultan‘ was forced to sign the treaty by 
the presence of a Russian fleet in the Bosphorus and of a Russian 
army outside the gates of Constantinople— allegedly as a protection 
against Ibrahim Pasha. Palmerston had repeatedly refused Turkey’s 
urgent plea that he intervene on her behalf, and had thus forced her 
into accepting the help of Russia. (He himself said as much in the 
House of Commons on July 11, August 24, etc., 1833 and March 17, 
1834.) When Lord Palmerston entered the Foreign Office he found 
English influence clearly preponderant in Persia. His standing order 
to English agents was that they should “in all cases act in concert with 

the Russian Ambassador”. With his support, Russia placed a Russian 
pretender on the Persian throne.* Lord Palmerston sanctioned the 
Russo-Persian expedition against Herat.”° Only when this had failed 
did he order an Anglo-Indian expedition into the Persian Gulf, a 
stratagem that strengthened Russia’s influence in Persia. In 1836, 
under the noble lord, Russia’s usurpations in the Danubian Delta, 
her quarantines, her customs regulations,”’ etc., were recognized by 
England for the first time. In the same year the confiscation of a 
British merchant vessel, the Vixen—and the Vixen had been sent out 
at the instigation of the British government—by a Russian warship 
in the Circassian Bay of Soujouk-Kale was used by him as a pretext to 
accord official recognition to Russian claims to the Circassian littoral. 
It transpired on this occasion that, as much as six years previously, he 
had secretly recognized Russia’s claims to the Caucasus. On this 
occasion the noble Viscount escaped a vote of censure in the House 
of Commons by a slender majority of sixteen. One of his most 
‘vehement accusers at the time was Sir Stratford Canning, now Lord 
Redcliffe, English Ambassador at Constantinople. In 1836 one of the 
English agents” in Constantinople concluded a trade agreement with 
Turkey which was advantageous to England. Palmerston delayed 
ratification and, in 1838, substituted another treaty so greatly to 
Russia’s advantage and England’s detriment that a number of 
English merchants in the Levant decided they would in future trade 
under the aegis of Russian firms. The death of King William IV gave 
rise to the notorious Portfolio scandal. At the time of the Warsaw 
revolution * a collection of secret letters, despatches, etc. by Russian 
diplomats and ministers had fallen into the hands of the Poles when 
they captured the palace of the Grand Duke Constantine. Count 
Zamoyski, Prince Czartoryski’s nephew, took them to England. 
There, on the orders of the King and under Urquhart’s editorship 
and Palmerston’s supervision, they were published in The Portfolzo. 
No sooner was the King dead than Palmerston denied al] connection 
with The Portfolio, refused to pay the printer’s‘ bills, etc. Urquhart 
published his correspondence with Backhouse, Palmerston’s Under- 
Secretary of State.“ Upon this The Times (26 January, 1839) 
comments: 

dT he Times, No. 16948, January 25, 1839.— Ed. © 

“It is not for us to understand how Lord Palmerston may feel, but we are sure 
there is no misapprehending how any other person in the station of a gentleman, 
and in the position of a Minister, would feel, after the notoriety given to the 
correspondence....”