CRISIS OF 1855 AND BREAK-UP OF THE PEELITES

(1855)

Party has no doubt its evils; but all the evils of party put together would be scarcely a grain in the balance, when compared with the dissolution of honourable friendships, the pursuit of selfish ends, the want of concert in council, the absence of a settled policy in foreign affairs, the corruption of certain statesmen, the caprices of an intriguing court, which the extinction of party connection has brought and would bring again upon this country. EARL RUSSELL.

The administrative miscarriages of the war in the Crimea during the winter of 1854-5 destroyed the coalition government. When parliament assembled on January 23, 1855, Mr. Roebuck on the first night of the session gave notice of a motion for a committee of inquiry. Lord John Russell attended to the formal business, and when the House was up went home accompanied by Sir Charles Wood. Nothing of consequence passed between the two colleagues, and no word was said to Wood in the direction of withdrawal. The same evening as the prime minister was sitting in his drawing-room, a red box was brought in to him by his son, containing Lord John Russell’s resignation. He was as much amazed as Lord Newcastle, smoking his evening pipe of tobacco in his coach, was amazed by the news that the battle of Marston Moor had begun. Nothing has come to light since to set aside the severe judgment pronounced upon this proceeding by the Universal opinion of contemporaries, including Lord John’s own closest political allies. That a minister should run away from a hostile motion upon affairs for which responsibility was collective, and this without a word of consultation with a single colleague, is a transaction happily without a precedent in the history of modern English cabinets. It opened an intricate and unexpected chapter of affairs.

The ministerial crisis of 1855 was unusually prolonged; it was interesting as a drama of character and motive; it marked a decisive stage in the evolution of party, and it was one of the turning points in the career of the subject of this biography. Fortunately for us, Mr. Gladstone has told in his own way the whole story of what he calls this ‘sharp and difficult passage in public affairs,’ and he might have added that it was a sharp passage in his own life. His narrative, with the omission of some details now dead and indifferent, and of a certain number of repetitions, is the basis of this chapter.

I

LORD JOHN’S RESIGNATION

On the day following Lord John’s letter the cabinet met, and the prime minister told them that at first he thought it meant the break-up of the government, but on further consideration he thought they should hold on, if it could be done with honour and utility. Newcastle suggested his own resignation, and the substitution of Lord Palmerston in his place. Palmerston agreed that the country, rightly or wrongly, wished to see him at the war office, but he was ready to do whatever his colleagues thought best. The whigs thought resignation necessary. Mr. Gladstone thought otherwise, and scouted the suggestion that as Newcastle was willing to resign, Lord John might come back. Lord John himself actually sent a sort of message to know whether he should attend the cabinet. In the end Lord Aberdeen carried all their resignations to the Queen. These she declined to accept, and she ’urged with the greatest eagerness that the decision should be reconsidered.’ It is hard at this distance of time to understand how any cabinet under national circumstances of such gravity could have thought of the ignominy of taking to flight from a motion of censure, whatever a single colleague like Lord John Russell might deem honourable. On pressure from the Queen, the whigs in the government, Lord John notwithstanding, agreed to stand fire. Mr. Gladstone proceeds:

Lord John’s explanation, which was very untrue in its general effect, though I believe kindly conceived in feeling as well as tempered with some grains of policy and a contemplation of another possible premiership, carried the House with him, as Herbert observed while he was speaking. Palmerston’s reply to him was wretched. It produced in the House (that is, in so much of the House as would otherwise have been favourable), a flatness and deadness of spirit towards the government which was indescribable; and Charles Wood with a marked expression of face said while it was going on, ‘And this is to be our leader!’ I was myself so painfully full of the scene, that when Palmerston himself sat down I was on the very point of saying to him unconsciously, ’Can anything more be said?’ But no one would rise in the adverse sense, and therefore there was no opening for a minister. Palmerston [now become leader in the Commons] had written to ask me to follow Lord John on account of his being a party. But it was justly thought in the cabinet that there were good reasons against my taking this part upon me, and so the arrangement was changed.

Roebuck brought forward his motion. Mr. Gladstone resisted it on behalf of the government with immense argumentative force, and he put the point against Lord John which explains the word ‘untrue’ in the passage just quoted, namely, that though he desired in November the substitution of Palmerston for Newcastle as war minister, he had given it up in December, and yet this vital fact was omitted. It was not for the government, he said, either to attempt to make terms with the House by reconstruction of a cabinet, or to shrink from any judgment of the House upon their acts. If they had so shrunk, he exclaimed, this is the sort of epitaph that he would expect to have written over their remains: ’Here lie the dishonoured ashes of a ministry that found England in peace and left in it war, that was content to enjoy the emoluments of office and to wield the sceptre of power, so long as no man had the courage to question their existence: they saw the storm gathering over the country; they heard the agonising accounts that were almost daily received of the sick and wounded in the East. These things did not move them, but so soon as a member of opposition raised his hand to point the thunderbolt, they became conscience-stricken into a sense of guilt, and hoping to escape punishment, they ran away from duty.’ Such would be their epitaph. Of the proposed inquiry itself, an inquiry into the conduct of generals and troops actually in the field, and fighting by the side of, and in concert with, foreign allies, he observed ’Your inquiry will never take place as a real inquiry; or, if it did, it would lead to nothing but confusion and disturbance, increased disasters, shame at home and weakness abroad; it would convey no consolation to those whom you seek to aid, but it would carry malignant joy to the hearts of the enemies of England; and, for my part, I shall ever rejoice, if this motion is carried to-night, that my own last words as a member of the cabinet of the Earl of Aberdeen have been words of solemn and earnest protest against a proceeding which has no foundation either in the constitution or in the practice of preceding parliaments; which is useless and mischievous for the purpose which it appears to contemplate; and which, in my judgment, is full of danger to the power, dignity, and usefulness of the Commons of England.’ A journalistic observer, while deploring the speaker’s adherence to ’the dark dogmatisms of medieval religionists,’ admits that he had never heard so fine a speech. The language, he says, was devoid of redundance. The attitude was calm. Mr. Gladstone seemed to feel that he rested upon the magnitude of the argument, and had no need of the assistance of bodily vehemence of manner. His voice was clear, distinct, and flexible, without monotony. It was minute dissection without bitterness or ill-humoured innuendo. He sat down amid immense applause from hearers admiring but unconvinced. Mr. Gladstone himself records of this speech: ’Hard and heavy work, especially as to the cases of three persons: Lord John Russell, Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Raglan.’ Ministers were beaten (January 29) by 325 to 148, and they resigned.

Jan 30, 1855. Cabinet 1-2. We exchanged friendly adieus. Dined with the Herberts. This was a day of personal light-heartedness, but the problem for the nation is no small one.

END OF THE COALITION

The Queen sent for Lord Derby, and he made an attempt to form a government. Without aid from the conservative wing of the fallen ministry there was no hope, and his first step (Jan 31) was to call on Lord Palmerston, with an earnest request for his support, and with a hope that he would persuade Mr. Gladstone and Sidney Herbert to rejoin their old political connection; with the intimation moreover that Mr. Disraeli, with a self-abnegation that did him the highest credit, was willing to waive in Lord Palmerston’s favour his own claim to the leadership of the House of Commons. Palmerston was to be president of the council, and Ellenborough minister of war. In this conversation Lord Palmerston made no objection on any political grounds, or on account of any contemplated measures; he found no fault with the position intended for himself, or for others with whom he would be associated. Lord Derby supposed that all would depend on the concurrence of Mr. Gladstone and Herbert. He left Cambridge House at half-past two in the afternoon, and at half-past nine in the evening he received a note from Lord Palmerston declining. Three hours later he heard from Mr. Gladstone, who declined also. The proceedings of this eventful day, between two in the afternoon and midnight, whatever may have been the play of motive and calculation in the innermost minds of all or any of the actors, were practically to go a long way, though by no means the whole way, as we shall see, towards making Mr. Gladstone’s severance from the conservative party definitive.

Jan 31. Lord Palmerston came to see me between three and four, with a proposal from Lord Derby that he and I, with S. Herbert should take office under him; Palmerston to be president of the council and lead the House of Commons. Not finding me when he called before, he had gone to S. Herbert, who seemed to be disinclined. I inquired (1) whether Derby mentioned Graham? (2) Whether he had told Lord Palmerston if his persevering with the commission he had received would depend on the answer to this proposal. (3) How he was himself inclined. He answered the two first questions in the negative, and said as to the third, though not keenly, that he felt disinclined, but that if he refused it would be attributed to his contemplating another result, which other result he considered would be agreeable to the country. I then argued strongly with him that though he might form a government, and though if he formed it, he would certainly start it amidst immense clapping of hands, yet he could not have any reasonable prospect of stable parliamentary support; on the one hand would stand Derby with his phalanx, on the other Lord J. Russell, of necessity a centre and nucleus of discontent, and between these two there would and could be no room for a parliamentary majority such as would uphold his government. He argued only rather faintly the other way, and seemed rather to come to my way of thinking.

I said that even if the proposition were entertained, there would be much to consider; that I thought it clear, whatever else was doubtful, that we could not join without him, for in his absence the wound would not heal kindly again, that I could not act without Lord Aberdeen’s approval, nor should I willingly separate myself from Graham; that if we joined, we must join in force. But I was disposed to wish that if all details could be arranged, we should join in that manner rather than that Derby should give up the commission, though I thought the best thing of all would be Derby forming a ministry of his own men, provided only he could get a good or fair foreign secretary instead of Clarendon, who in any case would be an immense loss....

I went off to speak to Lord Aberdeen, and Palmerston went to speak to Clarendon, with respect to whom he had told Derby that he could hardly enter any government which had not Clarendon at the foreign office. When we reassembled, I asked Lord Palmerston whether he had made up his mind for himself independently of us, inasmuch as I thought that if he had, that was enough to close the whole question? He answered, Yes; that he should tell Derby he did not think he could render him useful service in his administration. He then left. It was perhaps 6.30. Herbert and I sat down to write, but thought it well to send off nothing till after dinner, and we went to Grillion’s where we had a small but merry party. Herbert even beyond himself amusing. At night we went to Lord Aberdeen’s and Graham’s, and so my letter came through some slight emendations to the form in which it went. I had doubts in my mind whether Derby had even intended to propose to Herbert and me except in conjunction with Palmerston, though I had no doubt that without Palmerston it would not do; and I framed my letter so as not to assume that I had an independent proposal, but to make my refusal a part of his.

Feb 2. I yesterday also called on Lord Palmerston and read him
my letter to Lord Derby. He said: ‘Nothing can be better.’

LORD DERBY’S PROPOSALS

Lord Derby knew that, though he had the country gentlemen behind him, his own political friends, with the notable and only half-welcome exception of Mr. Disraeli, were too far below mediocrity in either capacity or experience to face so angry and dangerous a crisis. Accordingly he gave up the task. Many years after, Mr. Gladstone recorded his opinion that here Lord Derby missed his one real chance of playing a high historic part. ‘To a Derby government,’ he said, ’now that the party had been drubbed out of protection, I did not in principle object; for old ties were with me more operatively strong than new opinions, and I think that Lord Derby’s error in not forming an administration was palpable and even gross. Such, it has appeared, was the opinion of Disraeli. Lord Derby had many fine qualities; but strong parliamentary courage was not among them. When Lord Palmerston (probably with a sagacious discernment of the immediate future) declined, he made no separate offer to the Peelites. Had Lord Derby gone on, he would have been supported by the country, then absorbed in the consideration of the war. None of the three occasions when he took office offered him so fine an opportunity as this; but he missed it.’

On the previous day, Mr. Gladstone records: ’Saw Mr. Disraeli in the House of Lords and put out my hand, which was very kindly accepted.’ To nobody was the hour fraught with more bitter mortification than to Mr. Disraeli, who beheld a golden chance of bringing a consolidated party into the possession of real power flung away.

II

ERROR OF REFUSING LORD LANSDOWNE

Next, at the Queen’s request, soundings in the whig and Peelite waters were undertaken by Lord Lansdowne, and he sent for Mr. Gladstone, with a result that to the latter was ever after matter of regret.

Feb 2. In consequence of a communication from Lord Lansdowne, I went to him in the forenoon and found him just returned from Windsor. He trusted I should not mind speaking freely to him, and I engaged to do it, only premising that in so crude and dark a state of facts, it was impossible to go beyond first impressions. We then conversed on various combinations, as (1) Lord J. Russell, premier, (2) Lord Palmerston, (3) Lord Clarendon, (4) Lord Lansdowne himself. Of the first I doubted whether, in the present state of feeling, he could get a ministry on its legs. In answer to a question from him, I added that I thought, viewing my relations to Lord Aberdeen and to Newcastle, and his to them also, the public feeling would be offended, and it would not be for the public interest, if I were to form part of his government (i.e. Russell’s). Of the second I said that it appeared to me Lord Palmerston could not obtain a party majority. Aloof from him would stand on the one hand Derby and his party, on the other Lord J. Russell, who I took it for granted would never serve under him. Whatever the impression made by Russell’s recent conduct, yet his high personal character and station, forty years career, one-half of it in the leadership of his party, and the close connection of his name with all the great legislative changes of the period, must ever render him a power in the state, and render it impossible for a government depending on the liberal party to live independently of him. I also hinted at injurious effects which the substitution of Palmerston for Lord Aberdeen would produce on foreign Powers at this critical moment, but dwelt chiefly on the impossibility of his having a majority. In this Lord Lansdowne seemed to agree.

Lastly, I said that if Lord Lansdowne himself could venture to risk his health and strength by taking the government, this would be the best arrangement. My opinion was that at this crisis Derby, if he could have formed an administration, would have had advantages with regard to the absorbing questions of the war and of a peace to follow it, such as no other combination could possess. Failing this, I wished for a homogeneous whig government. The best form of it would be under him. He said he might dare it provisionally, if he could see his way to a permanent arrangement at the end of a short term; but he could see nothing of the sort at present.

An autobiographic note of 1897 gives a further detail of moment: He asked whether I would continue to hold my office as chancellor of the exchequer in the event of his persevering. He said that if I gave an affirmative reply he would persevere with the commission, and I think intimated that except on this condition he would not. I said that the working of the coalition since its formation in December 1852 had been to me entirely satisfactory, but that I was not prepared to co-operate in its continuation under any other head than Lord Aberdeen. I think that though perfectly satisfied to be in a Peelite government which had whigs or radicals in it, I was not ready to be in a whig government which had Peelites in it. It took a long time, with my slow-moving and tenacious character, for the Ethiopian to change his skin.

In the paper that I have already mentioned, as recording what, when all was near an end, he took to be some of the errors of his life, Mr. Gladstone names as one of those errors this refusal in 1855 to join Lord Lansdowne. ‘I can hardly suppose,’ he says, more than forty years after that time, ’that the eventual failure of the Queen’s overture to Lord Lansdowne was due to my refusal; but that refusal undoubtedly constituted one of his difficulties and helped to bring about the result. I have always looked back upon it with pain as a serious and even gross error of judgment. It was, I think, injurious to the public, if it contributed to the substitution as prime minister of Lord Palmerston for Lord Lansdowne, a personage of greater dignity, and I think a higher level of political principle. There was no defect in Lord Lansdowne sufficient to warrant my refusal. He would not have been a strong or very active prime minister; but the question of the day was the conduct of the war, and I had no right to take exception to him as a head in connection with this subject. His attitude in domestic policy was the same as Palmerston’s, but I think he had a more unprejudiced and liberal mind, though less of motive force in certain directions.’

III

FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS

The next day Mr. Gladstone called on Lord Aberdeen, who for the first time let drop a sort of opinion as to their duties in the crisis on one point; hithertofore he had restrained himself. He said, ’Certainly the most natural thing under the circumstances, if it could have been brought about in a satisfactory form, would have been that you should have joined Derby.’ On returning home, Mr. Gladstone received an important visitor and a fruitless visit.

At half-past two to-day Lord John Russell was announced; and sat till three his hat shaking in his hand. A communication had reached him late last night from the Queen, charging him with the formation of a government, and he had thought it his duty to make the endeavour. I repeated to him what I had urged on Lord Lansdowne, that a coalition with advantages has also weaknesses of its own, that the late coalition was I thought fully justified by the circumstances under which it took place, but at this juncture it had broken down. This being so, I thought what is called a homogeneous government would be best for the public, and most likely to command approval; that Derby if he could get a good foreign minister would have had immense advantages with respect to the great questions of war and peace. Lord John agreed as to Derby; thought that every one must have supported him, and that he ought to have persevered.

I held to my point, adding that I did not think Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston represented opposite principles, but rather different forms of the same principles connected with different habits and temperaments. He said that Lord Palmerston had agreed to lead the House of Commons for him, he going as first minister to the Lords; but he did not mention any other alteration. Upon the whole his tone was low and doubtful. He asked whether my answer was to be considered as given, or whether I would take time. But I said as there was no probability that my ideas would be modified by reflection, it would not be fair to him to ask any delay.

With the single exception of Lord Palmerston, none of his colleagues would have anything to do with Lord John, some even declining to go to see him. Wood came to Mr. Gladstone, evidently in the sense of the Palmerston premiership. He declared that Aberdeen was impossible, to which, says Mr. Gladstone, ‘I greatly demurred.’

IV

Thus the two regular party leaders had failed; Lord Aberdeen, the coalition leader, was almost universally known to be out of the question; the public was loudly clamouring for Lord Palmerston. A Palmerston ministry was now seen to be inevitable. Were the Peelites, then, having refused Lord Derby, having refused Lord John, having told Lord Lansdowne that he had better form a system of homogeneous whigs, now finally to refuse Lord Palmerston, on no better ground than that they could not have Lord Aberdeen, whom nobody save themselves would consent on any terms to have? To propound such a question was to answer it. Lord Aberdeen himself, with admirable freedom from egotism, pressed the point that in addition to the argument of public necessity, they owed much to their late whig colleagues, ’who behaved so nobly and so generously towards us after Lord John’s resignation.’

‘I have heard club talk and society talk,’ wrote an adherent to Mr. Gladstone late one night (February 4), ’and I am sure that in the main any government containing good names in the cabinet, provided Lord John is not in it, will obtain general support. Lord Clarendon is universally, or nearly so, looked on as essential. Next to him, I think you are considered of vital importance in your present office. After all, rightly or wrongly, Lord Palmerston is master of the situation in the country; he is looked upon as the man. If the country sees you and Sidney Herbert holding aloof from him, it will be said the Peelites are selfish intriguers.’ The same evening, another correspondent said to Mr. Gladstone: ’Two or three people have come in since eleven o’clock with the news of Brooks’s and the Reform. Exultation prevails there, and the certainty of Palmerston’s success to-morrow. There is a sort of rumour prevalent that Lord Palmerston may seek Lord J. Russell’s aid.... This would, of course, negative all idea of your joining in the concern. Otherwise a refusal would be set down as sheer impracticability, or else the selfish ambition of a clique which could not stand alone, and should no longer attempt to do so. If the refusal to join Palmerston is to be a going over to the other side, and a definite junction within a brief space, that is clear and intelligible. But a refusal to join Lord Palmerston and yet holding out to him a promise of support, is a half-measure which no one will understand, and which, I own, I cannot see the grounds to defend.’

PALMERSTON FORMS A MINISTRY

We shall now find how after long and strenuous dubitation, the Peelite leaders refused to join on the fifth of February, and then on the sixth they joined. Unpromising from the very first cabinet, the junction was destined to a swift and sudden end. Here is the story told by one of the two leading actors.

Sunday, Feb 4. Herbert came to me soon after I left him, and told me Palmerston had at last got the commission. He considered that this disposed of Lord Lansdowne; and seemed himself to be disposed to join. He said we must take care what we were about, and that we should be looked upon by the country as too nice if we declined to join Palmerston; who he believed (and in this I inclined to agree), would probably form a government. He argued that Lord Aberdeen was out of the question; that the vote of Monday night was against him; that the country would not stand him.

No new coalition ought to be formed, I said, without a prospect of stability; and joining Lord Palmerston’s cabinet would be a new coalition. He said he rather applied that phrase to a junction with Derby. I quite agreed we could not join Derby except under conditions which might not be realised; but if we did it, it would be a reunion, not a coalition. In coalition the separate existence is retained. I referred to the great instances of change of party in our time; Palmerston himself, and Stanley with Graham. But these took place when parties were divided by great questions of principle; there were none such now, and no one could say that the two sides of the House were divided by anything more than this, that one was rather more stationary, the other more movable. He said, ‘True, the differences are on the back benches.’

I said I had now for two years been holding my mind in suspense upon the question I used to debate with Newcastle, who used to argue that we should grow into the natural leaders of the liberal party. I said, it is now plain this will not be; we get on very well with the independent liberals, but the whigs stand as an opaque body between us and them, and moreover, there they will stand and ought to stand.

Lord Palmerston came a little after two, and remained perhaps an hour. Lord Lansdowne had promised to join him if he formed an administration on a basis sufficiently broad. He wished me to retain my office; and dwelt on the satisfactory nature of my relations with the liberal party. He argued that Lord Aberdeen was excluded by the vote on Monday night; and that there was now no other government in view. My argument was adverse, though without going to a positive conclusion. I referred to my conversation of Wednesday, Ja, in favour of a homogeneous government at this juncture.

At half-past eleven I went to Lord Aberdeen’s and stayed about an hour. His being in the Palmerston cabinet which had been proposed, was, he said, out of the question; but his velleities seemed to lean rather to our joining, which surprised me. He was afraid of the position we should occupy in the public eye if we declined....

Feb 5. The most irksome and painful of the days; beginning with many hours of anxious consultation to the best of our power, and ending amidst a storm of disapproval almost unanimous, not only from the generality, but from our own immediate political friends.

At 10.30 I went to Sir James Graham, who is still in bed, and told him the point to which by hard struggles I had come. The case with me was briefly this. I was ready to make the sacrifice of personal feeling; ready to see him (Lord Aberdeen) expelled from the premiership by a censure equally applicable to myself, and yet to remain in my office; ready to overlook not merely the inferior fitness, but the real and manifest unfitness, of Palmerston for that office; ready to enter upon a new venture with him, although in my opinion without any reasonable prospect of parliamentary support, such as is absolutely necessary for the credit and stability of a government upon the one sole and all-embracing ground that the prosecution of the war with vigour, and the prosecution of it to and for peace, was now the question of the day to which every other must give way. But then it was absolutely necessary that if we joined a cabinet after our overlooking all this and more, it should be a cabinet in which confidence should be placed with reference to war and peace. Was the Aberdeen cabinet without Lord Aberdeen one in which I could place confidence? I answer, No. He was vital to it; his love of peace was necessary to its right and steady pursuit of that great end; if, then, he could belong to a Palmerston cabinet, I might; but without him I could not.

In all this, Sir J. Graham concurred. Herbert came full of doubts and fears, but on the whole adopted the same conclusion. Lord Aberdeen sent to say he would not come, but I wrote to beg him, and he appeared. On hearing how we stood, he said his remaining in the cabinet was quite out of the question; and that he had told Palmerston so yesterday when he glanced at it. But he thought we should incur great blame if we did not; which, indeed, was plainly beyond all dispute.

THE PEELITES JOIN

At length, when I had written and read aloud the rough draft of an answer, Lord Aberdeen said he must strongly advise our joining. I said to him, ’Lord Aberdeen, when we have joined the Palmerston cabinet, you standing aloof from it, will you rise in your place in the House of Lords and say that you give that cabinet your confidence with regard to the question of war and peace?’ He replied, ’I will express my hope that it will do right, but not my confidence, which is a different thing.’ ‘Certainly,’ I answered, ’and that which you have now said is my justification. The unswerving honesty of your mind has saved us. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred in your position at the moment would have said, “Oh yes, I shall express my confidence.” But you would not deviate an inch to the right or to the left.’

Herbert and I went to my house and despatched our answers. Now began the storm. Granville met us driving to Newcastle. Sorry beyond expression; he almost looked displeased, which for him is much. Newcastle: I incline to think you are wrong. Canning: My impression is you are wrong. Various letters streaming in, all portending condemnation and disaster. Herbert became more and more uneasy.

Feb 6. The last day I hope of these tangled records; in which we have seen, to say nothing of the lesser sacrifice, one more noble victim struck down, and we are set to feast over the remains. The thing is bad and the mode worse.

Arthur Gordon came early in the day with a most urgent letter from Lord Aberdeen addressed virtually to us, and urging us to join. He had seen both Palmerston and Clarendon, and derived much satisfaction from what they said. We met at the admiralty at twelve, where Graham lay much knocked up with the fatigue and anxiety of yesterday. I read to him and Lord Aberdeen Palmerston’s letter of to-day to me. Herbert came in and made arguments in his sense. I told him I was at the point of yesterday, and was immovable by considerations of the class he urged. The only security worth having lies in men; the man is Lord Aberdeen; moral union and association with him must continue, and must be publicly known to continue. I therefore repeated my question to Lord Aberdeen, whether he would in his place as a peer declare, if we joined the cabinet, that it had his confidence with reference to war and peace? He said, much moved, that he felt the weight of the responsibility, but that after the explanation and assurances he had received, he would. He was even more moved when Graham said that though the leaning of his judgment was adverse, he would place himself absolutely in the hands of Lord Aberdeen. To Herbert, of course, it was a simple release from a difficulty. Palmerston had told Cardwell, ’Gladstone feels a difficulty first infused into him by Graham; Argyll and Herbert have made up their minds to do what Gladstone does.’ Newcastle joined us, and was in Herbert’s sense. I repeated again that Lord Aberdeen’s declaration of confidence enabled me to see my way to joining....

I went to Lord Aberdeen in his official room after his return from Palmerston. It was only when I left that room to-day that I began to realise the pang of parting. There he stood, struck down from his eminence by a vote that did not dare to avow its own purpose, and for his wisdom and virtue; there he stood endeavouring to cure the ill consequences to the public of the wrong inflicted upon himself, and as to the point immediately within reach successful in the endeavour. I ventured, however, to tell him that I hoped our conduct and reliance on him would tend to his eminence and honour, and said, ’You are not to be of the cabinet, but you are to be its tutelary deity.’

I had a message from Palmerston that he would answer me, but at
night I went up to him.

V

THE COMMITTEE REVIVED

The rush of events was now somewhat slackened. Lord John called on Graham, and complained of the Peelites for having selfishly sought too many offices, alluding to what Canning had done, and imputing the same to Cardwell. He also thought they had made a great mistake in joining Palmerston. He seemed sore about Mr. Gladstone, and told Graham that Christopher, a stout tory, had said that if Gladstone joined Derby, a hundred of the party would withdraw their allegiance. At the party meeting on Fe, Lord Derby was received with loud cries of ’No Puseyites; No papists,’ and was much reprehended for asking Gladstone and Graham to join.

‘I ought to have mentioned before,’ Mr. Gladstone writes here, ’that, during our conferences at the admiralty, Lord Aberdeen expressed great compunction for having allowed the country to be dragged without adequate cause into the war. So long as he lived, he said with his own depth and force, it would be a weight upon his conscience. He had held similar language to me lately at Argyll House; but when I asked him at what point after the fleet went to Besika Bay it would have been possible to stop short, he alluded to the sommation, which we were encouraged however, as he added, by Austria to send; and thought this was the false step. Yet he did not seem quite firm in the opinion.’

Then came the first cabinet (Feb 10). It did not relieve the gloom of Mr. Gladstone’s impressions. He found it more ‘acephalous’ than ever; ‘less order; less unity of purpose.’ The question of the Roebuck committee was raised, on which he said he thought the House would give it up, if government would promise an investigation under the authority of the crown. The fatal subject came up again three days later. Palmerston said it was plain from the feeling in the House the night before, that they were set upon it; if they could secure a fair committee, he was disposed to let the inquiry go forward. On this rock the ship struck. One minister said they could not resign in consequence of the appointment of the committee, because it stood affirmed by a large majority when they took office in the reconstructed cabinet. Mr. Gladstone says he ’argued with vehemence upon the breach of duty which it would involve on our part towards those holding responsible commands in the Crimea, if we without ourselves condemning them were to allow them to be brought before another tribunal like a select committee.’

Dining the same evening at the palace, Mr. Gladstone had a conversation on the subject both with the Queen and Prince Albert. ’The latter compared this appointment of a committee to the proceedings of the Convention of France; but still seemed to wish that the government should submit rather than retire. The Queen spoke openly in that sense, and trusted that she should not be given over into the hands of those “who are the least fit to govern.” Without any positive and final declaration, I intimated to each that I did not think I could bring my mind to acquiesce in the proposition for an inquiry by a select committee into the state of the army in the Crimea.’

Time did not remove difficulties. Mr. Gladstone and Graham fought with extreme tenacity, and the first of them with an ingenuity for which the situation gave boundless scope. To the argument that they accepted office on reconstruction with the decision of the House for a committee staring them in the face, he replied: ’Before we were out, we were in. Why did we go out? Because of that very decision by the House of Commons. Our language was: The appointment of such a committee is incompatible with the functions of the executive, therefore it is a censure on the executive; therefore we resign! But it is not a whit more compatible with the functions of the executive now than it was then; therefore it is not one whit less a censure; and the question arises, (1) whether any government ought to allow its (now) principal duty to be delegated to a committee or other body, especially to one not under the control of the crown? (2) whether that government ought to allow it, the members of which (except one) have already resigned rather than allow it? In what way can the first resignation be justified on grounds which do not require a second?’ He dwelt mainly on these two points That the proposed transfer of the functions of the executive to a select committee of the House of Commons, with respect to an army in the face of the enemy and operating by the side of our French allies, and the recognition of this transfer by the executive government, was an evil greater than any that could arise from a total or partial resignation. Second, that it was clear that they did not, as things stood, possess the confidence of a majority of the House. ’I said that the committee was itself a censure on the government. They had a right to believe that parliament would not inflict this committee on a government which had its confidence. I also,’ he says, ’recited my having ascertained from Palmerston (upon this recital we were agreed) on the 6th, before our decision was declared, his intention to oppose the committee....’

PEELITES RESIGN

Graham did not feel disposed to govern without the confidence of the House of Commons, or to be responsible for the granting of a committee which the cabinet had unanimously felt to be unprecedented, unconstitutional, and dangerous. Lord Palmerston met all this by a strong practical clincher. He said that the House of Commons was becoming unruly from the doubts that had gone abroad as to the intentions of the government with respect to the committee; that the House was determined to have it; that if they opposed it they should be beaten by an overwhelming majority; to dissolve upon it would be ruinous; to resign a fortnight after taking office would make them the laughingstock of the country.

Mr. Gladstone, Herbert, and Graham then resigned. Of the Peelite group the Duke of Argyll and Canning remained.

Feb 22. After considering various sites, we determined to ask the Manchester school to yield us, at any rate for to-morrow, the old place devoted to ex-ministers. Sir J. Graham expressed his wish to begin the affair, on the proposal of the first name [of the committee].

Cardwell came at 4 to inform me that he had declined to be my successor; and showed me his letter, which gave as his reason disinclination to step into the cabinet over the bodies of his friends. It seems that Palmerston and Lord Lansdowne, who assists him, sent Canning to Lord Aberdeen to invoke his aid with Cardwell and prevail on him to retract. But Lord Aberdeen, though he told Canning that he disapproved (at variance here with what Graham and I considered to be his tone on Monday, but agreeing with a note he wrote in obscure terms the next morning), said he could not make such a request to Cardwell, or again play the peculiar part he had acted a fortnight ago. The cabinet on receiving Cardwell’s refusal were at a deadlock. Application was to be made, or had been made, to Sir Francis Baring, but it seems that he is reluctant; he is, however, the best card they have to play.

Feb 28. On Sunday, Sir George Lewis called on me, and said my office had been offered him. This was after being refused by Cardwell and Baring. He asked my advice as to accepting it. This I told him I could not give. He asked if I would assist him with information in case of his accepting. I answered that he might command me precisely as if instead of resigning I had only removed to another department. I then went over some of the matters needful to be made known. On Tuesday he came again, acquainted me with his acceptance, and told me he had been mainly influenced by my promise.

This day at a quarter to three I attended at the palace to resign the seals, and had an audience of about twenty minutes. The Queen, in taking them over, was pleased to say that she received them with great pain. I answered that the decision which had required me to surrender them had been the most painful effort of my public life. The Queen said she was afraid on Saturday night [Feb 17, when he had dined at the palace] from the language I then used that this was about to happen. I answered that we had then already had a discussion in the cabinet which pointed to this result, and that I spoke as I did, because I thought that to have no reserve whatever with H. M. was the first duty of all those who had the honour and happiness of being her servants. I trusted H. M. would believe that we had all been governed by no other desire than to do what was best for the interests of the crown and the country. H. M. expressed her confidence of this, and at no time throughout the conversation did she in any manner indicate an opinion that our decision had been wrong. She spoke of the difficulty of making arrangements for carrying on the government in the present state of things, and I frankly gave my opinion to H. M. that she would have little peace or comfort in these matters, until parliament should have returned to its old organisation in two political parties; that at present we were in a false position, and that both sides of the House were demoralised the ministerial side overcharged with an excess of official men, and the way stopped up against expectants, which led to subdivision, jealousy, and intrigue; the opposition so weak in persons having experience of affairs as to be scarcely within the chances of office, and consequently made reckless by acting without keeping it in view; yet at the same time, the party continued and must continue to exist, for it embodied one of the great fundamental elements of English society. The experiment of coalition had been tried with remarkable advantage under a man of the remarkable wisdom and powers of conciliation possessed by Lord Aberdeen, one in entire possession too of H. M.’s confidence. They intimated that there were peculiar disadvantages, too, evidently meaning Lord J. Russell. I named him in my answer, and said I thought that even if he had been steady, yet the divisions of the ministerial party would a little later have brought about our overthrow. H. M. seeming to agree in my main position, as did the Prince, asked me: But when will parliament return to that state? I replied I grieved to say that I perceived neither the time when, nor the manner how, that result is to come about; but until it is reached, I fear that Y. M. will pass through a period of instability and weakness as respects the executive. She observed that the prospect is not agreeable. I said, True, madam, but it is a great consolation that all these troubles are upon the surface, and that the throne has for a long time been gaining and not losing stability from year to year. I could see but one danger to the throne, and that was from encroachments by the House of Commons. No other body in the country was strong enough to encroach. This was the consideration which had led my resigning colleagues with myself to abandon office that we might make our stand against what we thought a formidable invasion.... I thought the effect of the resistance was traceable in the good conduct of the House of Commons last night, when another attempt at encroachment was proposed and firmly repelled.... I expressed my comfort at finding that our motives were so graciously appreciated by H. M. and withdrew.

PUBLIC OUTCRY

Loud was the public outcry. All the censure that had been foretold in case they should refuse to join, fell with double force upon them for first joining and then seceding. Lord Clarendon pronounced their conduct to be actually worse and more unpatriotic than Lord John’s. The delight at Brooks’s Club was uproarious, for to the whigs the Peelites had always been odious, and they had been extremely sorry when Palmerston asked them to join his government. For a time Mr. Gladstone was only a degree less unpopular in the country than Cobden and Bright themselves. The newspapers declared that Gladstone’s epitaph over the Aberdeen administration might be applied with peculiar force to his own fate. The short truth seems to be that Graham, Gladstone, and Palmerston were none of them emphatic or explicit enough beforehand on the refusal of the committee when the government was formed, though the intention to refuse was no doubt both stated and understood. Graham admitted afterwards that this omission was a mistake. The world would be astonished if it knew how often in the pressure of great affairs men’s sight proves short. After the language used by Mr. Gladstone about the inquiry, we cannot wonder that he should have been slow to acquiesce. The result in time entirely justified his description of the Sebastopol committee. But right as was his judgment on the merits, yet the case was hardly urgent enough to make withdrawal politic or wise. Idle gossip long prevailed, that Graham could not forgive Palmerston for not having (as he thought) helped to defend him in the matter of opening Mazzini’s letters; that from the first he was bent on overthrowing the new minister; that he worked on Gladstone; and that the alleged reason why they left was not the real one. All the evidence is the other way; that Graham could not resist the obvious want of the confidence of parliament, and that Gladstone could not bear a futile and perilous inquiry. That they both regretted that they had yielded to over-persuasion in joining, against their own feelings and judgment, is certain. Graham even wrote to Mr. Gladstone in the following summer that his assent to joining Palmerston was perhaps the greatest mistake of his public life. In Mr. Gladstone’s case, the transaction gave a rude and protracted shock to his public influence.

LORD PALMERSTON’S REIGN

Lord Palmerston meanwhile sat tight in his saddle. When the crisis first began, Roebuck in energetic language had urged him to sweep the Peelites from his path, and at any rate he now very steadily went on without them. Everybody took for granted that his administration would be temporary. Mr. Gladstone himself gave it a twelvemonth at most. As it happened, Lord Palmerston was in fact, with one brief interruption, installed for a decade. He was seventy-one; he had been nearly forty years in office; he had worked at the admiralty, war department, foreign office, home office; he had served under ten prime ministers Portland, Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, Wellington, Grey, Melbourne, Russell, Aberdeen. He was not more than loosely attached to the whigs, and he had none of the strength of that aristocratic tradition and its organ, the Bedford sect. The landed interest was not with him. The Manchester men detested him. The church in all its denominations was on terms of cool and reciprocated indifference with one who was above all else the man of this world. The press he knew how to manage. In every art of parliamentary sleight of hand he was an expert, and he suited the temper of the times, while old maxims of government and policy were tardily expiring, and the forces of a new era were in their season gathering to a head.