For the truth of what is here said, I must refer the reader to the records of the man’s life, as about to be given;--as, indeed, they have been given to the same effect, but at much greater length, by Mr. Ashley. Lord Palmerston proved the unassailable strength of his position by the rapidity with which he vanquished his old friend, Lord John, who had dismissed him. How far this dismissal had been carried out by Lord John himself, and how far he had been urged on by the Prince and the Prince’s foreign adviser, it is not necessary that I should say. The blow had come from the hands of Lord John, and Lord Palmerston at once hit back at him. On the 19th of December, 1851, he was told to go. On the 24th of February, 1852, he thus wrote to his brother: “I have had my tit for tat with John Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last.”
Two months had done it. And how had it been done? Lord Palmerston had found himself called upon to fight the Prime Minister,--and the Ministers who remained in the Cabinet from which he had been dismissed,--backed by all the powers of the Crown. And certainly he could depend in no degree on the House of Lords. It was by the House of Commons,--by his own influence there as opposed to that of Lord John Russell so supported,--that he won his victory. Having won it, he (Lord John) was at once deposed. This, at any rate, showed what was the opinion of those to whom England had confided the political power of the country. The mode of the battle and the cause which created it, must be told further on. It soon became evident that Lord Palmerston had not been “smashed,” as had been declared during those months. “There was a Palmerston,” had been said by a witty statesman of the opposite party. But it came to pass very soon that Lord Palmerston stood higher than ever in the councils of his country. The war, of which many men said that it would annihilate us, had come upon us; and in four years’ time the various Prime Ministers of the day,--Lord Aberdeen and Lord John and Lord Derby,--were calling for help to the “Palmerston that was.” Indeed, he had been one of the Cabinet again since December, 1852; and then in February, 1855, himself became Prime Minister, as being the only man in England to whom England could trust the awful responsibility of that period. That was the man on whose dismissal from his councils the Prince had congratulated the then Prime Minister, telling him that England’s influence was rendered null by the hatred abroad which the dismissed one had created. This, I think, is strong proof that England did not agree with him. Nor was the Sovereign slow to express her approval of the man who had been so lately dismissed. “It would give her particular satisfaction if Lord Palmerston would join in this formation,”[C]--the formation of a new Cabinet. Then he was called on himself to form a Cabinet, and we are told, in a page or two further on, that “Lord Palmerston had good reason to appreciate the generosity with which his old chief had interposed to remove this formidable impediment to his success. Nor was her Majesty less grateful.” So was he welcomed back to the highest seat. Nor was the Prince slow to show himself alive to the fact that the country was best served by him whom the country had selected for its servant. But he must surely then have acknowledged to himself that the dismissal of a Minister of whom England thoroughly approves, though it may be effected for a few months, can hardly be maintained.