The Times Great Victorian Lives. Ian Brunskill

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СКАЧАТЬ become Chancellor of the Exchequer in room of the ‘heaven-born Minister’ and who thus came to the election with a weight of Ministerial influence which his rival found it vain to withstand. That rival, however, was not to be discouraged. He presented himself again as a candidate in 1807, when he failed of success by only two votes; and in 1811 he tried his fortune a third time, in this case attaining the object of his ambition so unmistakably that he continued to represent the University until, in 1831, he gave mortal offence to his constituents by joining the Whigs. In the meantime, however, he found his way into Parliament, at first through the pocket borough of Bletchingley, and then through the borough of Newport, in the Isle of Wight. Nor was he long in Parliament before he enjoyed the sweets of office. The notorious Ministry of ‘All the Talents’ soon fell to pieces; and, as if in mockery of that splendid coalition, a Ministry succeeded to power headed by a nobleman whose natural incapacity was aided by a natural indolence, and whose indolence was aggravated not only by sickness, but also, to make assurance doubly sure, by continual opiates, under the influence of which he would fall asleep over his papers. Not able to touch animal food, not caring to open his mouth, often found sleeping at his desk, it would be one of the marvels of government that the Duke of Portland contrived to keep a Cabinet together for more than a couple of years, were we not too well acquainted with the truth of Oxenstiern’s commonplace regarding the wisdom of rulers. It was in this singular Ministry, whose great achievement was the Walcheren disaster, that Lord Palmerston first entered upon office. He entered on the office which his father had long enjoyed, as a Lord of the Admiralty; and when, on the quarrel of Castlereagh and Canning on the subject of the Walcheren expedition, the Duke of Portland resigned, and Perceval was called upon to form a Government, Lord Palmerston became Secretary at War. A number of writers, in recording this fact, have fallen into the mistake of confounding the Secretary at War with the Secretary for War, and thence inferring that Lord Palmerston at the early age of five-and-twenty succeeded Lord Castlereagh as War Minister while we were engaged in the gigantic contest with Napoleon. Castlereagh was Colonial Secretary, as such was Secretary for War, and in that double office was succeeded by Lord Liverpool. Palmerston succeeded Sir James Pulteney as Secretary at War, doubtless a very important post, but one which by no means implied a seat in the Cabinet.

      For some 20 years, amid all sorts of changes, he held the same appointment. Lord Liverpool succeeded Perceval as Premier – still Palmerston held to the War-office. Canning reigned in the room of Lord Liverpool – still Palmerston was found at the War-office. Lord Goderich assumed the position of Canning-still Palmerston remained at the War-office. The Duke of Wellington displaced Lord Goderich – still Palmerston and the War-office seemed to be inseparable. The secret of this devotion to the one office is partly to be found in the Secretary’s want of ambition, but chiefly in his perfect mastery of the business of his office at a time when it was of peculiar importance to his colleagues that it should be well represented in the House of Commons. During the first few years of his appointment he was the financer of the army, while we were engaged in the most costly war on which this country had ever entered, and when it was of the greatest moment that our resources should be turned to the best account. When the war came to an end, the Whigs, who had always been lukewarm in supporting it, joined with the Radicals in their outcry against standing armies and in their demand for retrenchment. As in our time the Manchester school of politicians required that our military establishments should be reduced to their condition in 1835, so, on the conclusion of peace, the refrain of many a debate through many a year of Parliament was that we should reduce our military establishments to their condition in 1792. It was in urging this policy of retrenchment that Joseph Hume first signalized himself; and it must be evident that, to meet the attacks of such an opponent, Lord Palmerston had a still more difficult game to play than when, backed with all the enthusiasm of the nation, he regulated the expenses of an army whose victories continually appealed to the national pride. He fought the battle of the Government with consummate skill, and by the accuracy of his information, the readiness of his wit, and the abundance of his good humour, sorely troubled honest Joseph Hume, who, compelled to take his seat silenced and discomfited, but neither convinced nor discouraged, would return to the charge on the following night, would read out sum upon sum, and would announce the ‘tottle of the whole’ with all the assurance of a man born with the multiplication table in his head but only to undergo a renewal of the process at the hands of his adroit adversary. If Lord Palmerston was thus successful in parrying the thrusts of his arithmetical opponents, it was in a great measure because he had a good case to defend, and because, being, as Hume termed him, ‘the alpha and the omega of the War-office, ’ he had imbued that department with his own spirit, introducing order where before there had been only confusion, efficiency where there had been only stagnation, and economy where all hadbeen profusion and waste. On one occasion, in reply to the attack of his indefatigable foe, he had the satisfaction of announcing a miracle which so staggered honest Joseph that he refused to believe it. He said that, by a careful supervision of past accounts and calling-up of arrears, he had for the two previous years been able to conduct the enormous business of his office without cost or charge to the country. Poor Hume, who was in those days very unpopular in the House, could not understand it, and insisted that the expenses had been increased; but it was only to see Lord Palmerston get up, and hear him, to the enjoyment of his audience, quote in his airiest style the ancient saying that there are but two things over which the immortal gods have no control – past events and arithmetic. Although Mr. Hume refused what the immortal gods are compelled to accept, the announcement of Lord Palmerston regarding the management of the War-office is by no means incredible to any one acquainted with the financial position of the various public departments during the early years of the present century. The state of our accounts was disgraceful. When Lord Henry Petty was Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1806, he brought forward a Bill for the better auditing the public accounts, and on that occasion somewhat startled the House of Commons by the assertion that in some of the offices there had been no audit for more than 20 years, that in all the offices the accounts were more or less in arrear and apparently without check, and that, taking altogether, public money had been expended to the amount of 455,000,000l. which had never been accounted for, a sum at that time larger than the National Debt. The arrear and confusion, the peculation and the waste which Lord Palmerston found at the War-office were but a part of this extravagant system. He brought his clear head and his vigorous habit to bear upon it, and succeeded in repelling the attacks of Hume not less by the fact that he had of his own accord effected the most important reforms in his department than by that art offence of which he had the most perfect mastery.

      Lord Palmerston in those days, we have said, rarely opened his mouth in the House of Commons, unless to propose the Army Estimates or to answer some question relating to the army. Whatever he did in this way was always remarkable for clearness and brevity, but otherwise his colleagues obtained from him very little assistance in debate. Canning in vain expressed the wish that he could bring ‘that three-decker Palmerston into action.’ Palmerston held to his post, thought only of the army, and refrained from general discussion so entirely that one of the many names which in his lifetime have been given to him was ‘the silent friend.’ In his first 20 years of office he probably did not rise to address the House of Commons on any subject beyond his own department more than a dozen times; and, curiously enough, on those rare occasions, it was not to questions of foreign policy, in which as a War Minister it might be supposed that he would be chiefly interested, that his attention was turned. He spoke of the Catholic claims, of the law of copyright, of the game laws, of usury laws, of church extension, of slavery, of electioneering. Only once did he canvass our foreign policy, and that was in the first speech which he delivered in Parliament. The speech was a defence of the celebrated expedition to Copenhagen-an expedition of which the only defence that could then be offered to the country was that the result had been most successful, while the information on the strength of which it had been projected could not on any account be divulged. It was a good speech, terse, clear, forcible; and we may remark, as something characteristic of Lord Palmerston’s first Parliamentary effort, that it was not only devoted to a question of foreign policy, it was also devoted to a defence of official secrecy, and it was a following of Canning’s lead.

      This portion of Lord Palmerston’s career may be dismissed with the record of two more facts. The first is that on the 8th of April, 1818, as he was mounting the СКАЧАТЬ