The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-19 00:00:00

to those squibs of his which appeared in the John
Bull. On the whole, the satire in which the Tories
indulged in those days was more remarkable
for its personality and bluffness than for either
wit or elegance, and very little of it deserves to
live. Satire is the great weapon of Opposition, and
when a party firmly seated in power resorts to it
they are generally driven to extremities, and goaded
into anger. In that case they are apt to be unspar-
ing in their abuse, they are inclined to tread on the
opponent whom they have managed to trip, and
they hope to win by bullying what they lose in fair
fight. This is the character of most of those shafts
launched by the Tories against the Liberal party ;
and if we are forced to make such a statement
with regard to men of great ability, it is but right
to add that much of what is so distasteful to us
now was due, not to the coarseness of the men, but
to the temptations of their position ; and that had
they changed places with the Whigs, the latter,
even with such men as Sydney Smith and Thomas
Moore among their number, might have been
guilty of the same excesses. The Whigs were at
a discount in the eyes of the nation ; they were
therefore compelled to be circumspect; they found
it necessary to guard against the imputation of
using insolence for invective and personality for
logic ; they were obliged to rest their came on its
merits, and to attack the Government with genuine
arguments and genuine wit ; whereas the Tories,
rioting in power, were less nice in their choice of
missiles, and found it for their interest to show upon
some occasionsthat the sole difference between them
and their opponents was one of personalities.
The turning point in Lord Palmerston's career
was now fast approaching. Hitherto he had been a
member of the Government only in a subordinate
capacity ; he had never been a member of the Ca-
binet. Lord Liverpool's Ministry was in its later
years divided into two sections, the principal point
of difference being elicited by the claims of the Ca-
tholics to emancipation. At the head of the one sec-
tion was Canning, and he had followers in Mr. Ro-
binson (Lord Goderich), in Hnskisson, in Sir John
Copley, and in Lord Palmerston. At the head of the
other section was the Premier himself, while among
thosh who sided with him were Lord Eldon, the
Duke of Wellington, and Mr. Peel. Canning, it is
well known, was the advocate of Catholic emanci-
pation—therefore, up to a certain limit, of consti-
tutional reform ; while, on the other hand, Peel
bore the standard of commercial and juridical reform.
The Canning party fully accepted the Peel reforms,
but the Peel party had the utmost horror of any at-
tempt to meddle with the Constitution, and were
determined to stop the way. Therefore, when Lord
Liverpool was struck down by paralysis, and when
Canning, as the most popular man in the Cabinet,
was requested to form a Ministry, his colleagues,
who were opposed to the very small measure of con-
stitutional reform implied in Catholic emancipation,
refused to stand by him, and he was compelled to
look for aid in the first place from the subordinates
of the Government, among whom was Palmerston,
and in the second place from the more moderate
Whigs, among whom were Lord Lansdowne and W.
Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne. It was under
these difficult circumstances, which forced Canning to
the dubious expedient of a coalition, that Lord Pal-
merston was called to the Cabinet and put upon his
mettle. Unfortunately, the Coalition Ministry of
1827 shared the fate of all coalitions, and after it
had put Canning to death, and Goderich, his suc-
cessor, to his wits' end, it went the way of all flesh.
It served its purpose, however, in preparing the
way for a new race of Ministers, of whom by far
the most remarkable was Lord Palmerston. Of all
the Tory Ministers who on this occasion coalesced
with the Whigs he was attached to his party by the
fewest number of ties, and was drawn to his politi-
cal opponents by the greatest number. He was
ripe for a quarrel with the men who had hunted his
friend Canning to death, and he was ripe for a
union with the men who had been his own com-
panions at College and had sat with him at the feet
of the eloquent professor of Whiggism. At first,
however, his junction with the Whigs was not such
as to preclude, when the Coalition fell to pieces, an
acceptance of office under the Duke of Wellington,
whose Government was pledged to oppose Reform.
In the Duke's Cabinet the Canningities found that
they occupied by no means so high a place as in the
previous Government ; but it was less on personal
grounds than on grounds of principle that Lord
Palmerston felt the necessity of seceding from it;
and it may be worth while to trace the steps by
which he was led finally to change sides.
The Canningites agreed with the Whigs in their
I desire to emancipate Dissenters, both Catholic and
Protestant ; but they agreed with the Tories in their
opposition to Parliamentary Reform. It was the
opinion of Huskisson and Palmerston that by miti-
gating the more palpable abuses—by, for example,
giving a member to Manchester—itmight be possible
to stave off a more Radical measure of Reform. "I am
anxious," said the latter, "to express my desire that
the franchise should be extended to a great town,
not because I am a friend to Reform in principle,
but because lam its decided enemy. I-think that
extending the franchise to large towns is the only
mode in which the house can avoid the adoption
at some time or other of a general plan of Reform."
Therefore, when East Retford and Penryn were to
be disfranchised, and the Opposition proposed that
the power of electing members should be transferred
to Manchester and Birmingham, it so happened that
by a curious shuffling of the question at issue Hus-
kisson and Palmerston found themselves in the
division lobby voting against the Government of
which they were members. The real proint of diffe-
rence between themselves and the Government was
quite unimportant, since they were all agreed on
the Tory side of the house to give to a large town—
Birmingham was the favourite—the franchise which
had been taken from one of the corrupt boroughs,
and to give that which was taken from the other to
the neighbouring hundred. But in this particular
division to which we refer, Mr. Huskisson and the
Canningites, as fate would have it, were found
voting the franchise of East Retford to Manchester,
while their colleagues were voting it to the hundred
in which the borough was situate. Poor Huskisson,
with considerable ability and the best possible in-
tentions, was all his life a bungler. He was al ways
in difficulties through his clumsiness, which was
physical as well as moral. He was always stumbling
over chairs, tripping against ropes as he landed
from steamboats, breaking his shins upon stones,
until at last he was knocked down and killed out-
right by the first railway train. On the present
occasion he sent in his resignation and didn't send
it in, explained and tried to retract without retract-
ing. " There is no mistake, there can be no mistake,
there shall be no mistake," said the Duke, in his
most oracular style. Palmerston and some others
followed Huskisson, and it will be observed that
they had the credit of retiring from the Ministry as
the advocates of a certain measure of Reform. When
afterwards Palmerston became the member of a
Whig Cabinet pledged to Reform, he could say this
in his defence, that he had been anxious to avoid a
Radical measure by the application of partial reme-
dies, but that the time had long passed for piece-
meal legislation, and that nothing less than sweep-
ing changes would satisfy the country.
_

To sit in the House of Commons no longer as a I
Minister was a novelty for Lord Palmerston. it
was also a novelty that he now turned his attention
especially to foreign politics. How came this about ?
The care of foreign politics devolved upon him as
the ablest of Canning's disciples. Upon him the
mantle of the master fell. Add to this, that among
the eventualities to be foreseen was the chance of
his one clay taking a seat in a Whig Cabinet.
Which of the great offices of State could he hold in
that Cabinet with most satisfaction to himself and
to his colleagues? Evidently the post in which he
should find himself most enjoying the sympathy of
the party would be the Foreign Secretaryship. The
Whigs were always enthusiastic in praise of Can-
ning's foreign policy, and they would back Palmer-
ston as the successor of Canning. In quitting the
Tory ranks, however, at once com-
he was not all
mitted to the 'Whigs.
The Duke of Wellington tried
to win him back to the Cabinet, but although he
might conscientiously, and even triumphantly, have
joined it whop its leading members came round to
his opinions on Catholic Emancipation, the position
of the Government was so unsatisfactory that he