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

LORD PALttIERS TOY

The fears which for months past the state of
Lord Palmerston's health has excited have at length
been realized. The great statesman is no more.
Many who saw him towards the close of last Par-
liament, broken and bent by a recent attack of ill-
ness, shook their heads and whispered to each other
that he could never meet another Parliament. That
fear has been quickly and fatally verified. The
bulletins we have published will have prepared most
persons for the sad news which we have to announce
to-day, that Lord Palmerston died yesterday morn-
ing, at a quarter to 11.
There never was a statesman who more truly re-
presented England than Lord Palmerston. His
name is now added to that splendid but very short
list of Ministers, from Walpole to Pitt and from
Pitt to Peel, who in times of great difficulty have
rendered England prosperous at home and famous
abroad, and who, .while obtaining place from the
Court, derived their chief power from the country.
Pitt, properly speaking, belonged to the last century,
and there have been but three men in the present
century who attained to the same enviable position.
The first was Canning, a great spirit, but greater
in what he devised than in what he accomplished ;
for no sooner had he reached the pinnacle of power,
and excited the brightest hopes of the nation, than,
sick at heart, he fell before the intrigues of rivals,
leaving it to others to avenge his death and to pro-
secute his policy. After Canning, two statesmen
from among his colleagues, the one his rival the
other his disciple—Peel and Palmerston—gradually
rose to the highest offices in the realm, and won, as
only great characters win, the sweet voices of the
multitude. They have this in common—both were
trained in the Tory camp, both forsook the tradi-
tions of Toryism, both have been decried as the most
inconsistent statesmen that ever lived. Yet no two
men could be more unlike, and the inconsistency of
each was so different, that what in the one was a fail-
ing in the other was a virtue. Sir Robert Peel gave up
his principles ; Lord Palmerston merely relinquished
his party. Less sociable than Palmerston, and less
capable of forming new alliances, Peel clung to the
Tories while rejecting their dogmas, and compelled
them again and again to follow a course which they
had learnt from his own lips to regard as the road
to destruction. Free and frank, of a jovial nature,
hail fellow with good men and true of every rank
and politicians of every shade, Lord Palmerston was
less fettered by party ties, and, so the objects dearest
to his heart were attained, cared little whether the
men with whom he sat on the Treasury benches
were styled Whigs or Tories, Liberal-Conservatives,
or Conservative-Liberals. His very consistency in
this respect has been denounced as a fault. It has
been said that he was constant only in the retention
of office ; that he was fixed only to the Treasury
bench ; that his one principle was that of the Vicar
of Bray. He was a member of every Government
since 1807, with the exception of those years in
which Sir Robert Peel, and subsequently Lord
Derby, held the reins. He began life as a Pittite ;
gradually he developed into a Canningite ; when the
Whigs came into power he renewed his youth ; when
they had fallen into disrepute he expanded into a
Conservative-Liberal; afterwards he stood forward
as the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet ; and he
closed his wonderful career at the head of a Minis-
try with the motto of " Rest and be thankful." In
all these changes there may be traced a consistency
of purpose, which, when the clue to it is perceived,
becomes entitled to our highest respect ; and this
clue is furnished in the fact that, whatever changes
come over the domestic or colonial policy of Eng-
land, her foreign policy is unalterable. That policy
is, indeed, more or less modified by the circum-
stances of the time, by the amount of our resources,
by the temper of our allies, by the spirit of the
nation ; but in principle it is always the same.
Our domestic reforms are for the most part carried
in the face of a formidable Opposition ; but our
foreign policy is supported by overwhelming majo-
rities, and by a national enthusiasm which nothing
can resist. We have never a dispute about the prin-
ciple; it is a tradition based on the universal senti-
ment of patriotism, and handed from generation to
generation—from Cabinet to Cabinet. The Minister
of such a policy may through all changes adhere to
the Treasury bench if he can: nothing need remove
him from it but his personal relations with its other
occupants; and he who, like Lord Palmerston, can
preserve his seat there through the vicissitudes of
half a century, is indeed a great man as well as a
great statesman.
Henry John Temple was the third Viscount Pal-
merston, and was born at Broadlands, near B.omsey,
on the 20th October, 1784. Although an Irish Peer,
his descent is traced to Saxon earls anterior to the
Conquest. In the arms of his family may be seen
the eagle displayed of that Leofric, Earl of Mercia,
who is remarkable chiefly for his treatment of his
wife, the Lady Godiva. Lord Palmerston, however,
bears a nearer resemblance to another and less my-
thological member of his family, of whom his father
was the heir male—Sir William Temple, the friend
of William 111., the patron of Dean Swift, the author
of that triple alliance which bound England, Sweden,
and the States-General to prevent France from en-
tering the Netherlands, and, singularly enough, a
statesman who, while he remained in public life, was
always on the winning side, and had the credit of
all the popular acts of the Government after the
Restoration. M. Capefigue, in noting this resem-
blance, has been pleased to observe that the chief
point of similarity between the Minister of William
111. and the Minister of Queen Victoria lies in the
utter hatred which both had to everything French,
and thinks that on one occasion, as he was dining
with Lord Palmerston, he made a terrible homethrust
when he recalled the unpleasant fact that Sir William
Temple, in bequeathing his property to his grand-
daughters, stipulated that they should not marry
Frenchmen. ' It gave M. Capefigue considerable
satisfaction that Lord Palmerston could only laugh
at the remark ; it never entered into his head that
the statement is quite unfounded, there being no
mention of such a condition in the will of Sir W.
Temple. Not from Sir Wm. Temple, however—it
was from Sir John Temple, younger
Archbishopbrotherosfhethle-
diplomatist, and the same of whom
Shel-
don said, "He has the curse of the Gospel, for all
men speak well of him," that Lord Palmerston
was theton-svas
descended. The first viscount of the name
grandson of Sir John Temple,sto b
ande said of him than
was createda
peer in 1722. Little more has
was regarded
lv
beingas a
ci quoted perfect
otedmwo
with
othfisconjugal
hisaff
ee wifet
on, her
admiration in the Annual Register. The second
viscount, the father of our great statesman, was
grandson of the first, and, like his grandmother, has
been regarded as a pattern of conjugal tenderness.
The epitaph which he wrote on the death of his first
wife is said to be the most pathetic ever penned ;
and written at a time when our poetry had reached
its lowest ebb, when all was artifice and platitude,
phrase and frippery, it must be admitted that the
lines have a genuine tenderness which it is almost
impossible to find in other compositions of the period.
To his father, indeed, Lord Palmerston owes much
of that taste for literature which furnished many a
happy illustration in his speeches in Parliament, be-
sides enabling him in his younger days to join with
Croker and Peel in assailing the Whigs with literary
satire. Of his father's lively humour the late Lord
Palmerston himself gave an amusing illustration in
one of those anecdotes with which he, of all men,
knew best how to parry the questions of political
opponents or the entreaties of troublesome deputa-
tions. He said that it was his father's habit, in
placing wine before his guests, to say, " Here is
claret, gentlemen ; here is sherry ; but I cannot an-
swer for them ; I can only give you the word of my
wine merchant for them. Here is port, however, for
which I can give my own word,—it is very good
—I made it myself." If he was a bad judge of
wine, he was considered a good jitund r
bequeathing
lohufaedapti
paintingsnuh gri pictures.
He collected in Broadlands a gallery of
which, at the beginning oftnhosece,nu
repute, and Sir Joshua Reyld
his friends the works of his own easel unsold at the
time of his death, gave to the Earl of Upper Ossory
the first choice and to Lord Palmerston the second.
He enjoyed the gift of his artistic friend ten years,
and,in 1802, left by his second wife, who did
not l dying
survive him, two sons and two daughters.
Of these sons, Henry John Temple, the elder, is the