His work is incessant, and he can hardly allow himself a few days of holiday when the Session is over. “I may then manage to get down to Broadlands for a week, and I long for a little rest.” At the end of the year he joins a shooting party, but is not able “to get out of town for more than four days at a time. I had three days shooting at Woburn last week, and pretty good sport. An official party, Grey, Brougham, Lansdowne (now combatants), Althorp, Melbourne, Ripon, Graham, John Russell, Auckland, Ellice, myself, young Ellice and Lord Charles Russell, were the sharpshooters.” We see from the names above given, that he had now fallen entirely among the Whigs; for Sir James Graham was then a Whig. “I must say that this reformed House of Commons is growing to be wonderfully like its predecessors; impatient of fools, intolerant of blackguards.” It is much the same thing at present, though now the blackguards have to be tolerated. Then he speaks exultingly of the Quadruple Alliance between England, France, Spain and Portugal for the expulsion of Carlos and Miguel. He speaks almost boastingly of his own power. “I carried it through the Cabinet by a _coup de main_, taking them by surprise, and not leaving them time to make objections.” This is the spirit in which he looks at all his own doings as Minister for Foreign Affairs, and though we may be angry at the boasting, we cannot but acknowledge that it was this spirit which kept him up. Then we have him for a week down in Hampshire among his race-horses. But his papers follow him. “I was a week at Broadlands entirely by myself, working all day, and almost every day, at F. O. boxes and Holmes’s accounts for the last three years, which I had not before been able to look at; they were all right, however.” After this he tells us of that wicked Thresher who only provided sixteen pheasants for five guns to kill in Yew Tree. After that he speaks again of the Quadruple Alliance, and again exults. “This treaty was a capital hit, and all my own doing.” Mr. Ashley, however, adds that “this treaty was a full completion of Mr. Canning’s policy.”
PALMERSTON AS FOREIGN SECRETARY, APRIL, 1835, TO AUGUST, 1841.
Why Lord Grey abandoned the Government in 1834, and why he refused to come back again either in 1834 or in 1835, is a question in English politics which it is difficult to answer. That it was occasioned, as Lord Palmerston says, by Mr. O’Connell and the Irish Coercion Act may be true; but why it should have been occasioned thereby is another question. In the summer of 1834 the Government went out with Lord Grey at its head, and came back with Lord Melbourne instead of Lord Grey. The world was astonished when it saw how good a Prime Minister it had in Lord Melbourne, and how sufficiently clever he was for all the purposes of his position; and the old-fashioned world has hardly yet got over its astonishment as it looks back on the strong and adequate conduct of William Lamb in that position. In July, 1834, the King chose him for the office, and Lord Palmerston, of course, remained with him. But in November, 1834, the Tories came in. “We are all out,” says Lord Palmerston to his brother. “Turned out neck and crop. Wellington is Prime Minister, and we give up the seals, etc., to-morrow at St. James’s at two. I am told Ellenborough succeeds me. The Speaker takes the Home Office, _ad interim_, and till Peel returns from Italy.” Then he adds, “This attempt to re-install the Tories cannot possibly last. The country will not stand it. The House of Commons will not bear it.”