Lord
Palmerston represented the moderate centre of the liberal party. Even
now he enjoyed a growing personal favour out of doors, not at all
impaired by the bad terms on which he was known to be with the court,
for the court was not at that date so popular an institution as it
became by and by. Among other schemes of ingenious persons at this
confused and broken time was a combination under Palmerston or Lansdowne
of aristocratic whigs, a great contingent of Derbyites, and the
Peelites; and before the elections it was true that Lord Derby had made
overtures to these two eminent men. A Lansdowne combination lingered
long in the mind of Lord Palmerston himself, who wished for the
restoration of a whig government, but resented the idea of serving under
its late head. Some dreamed that Palmerston and Disraeli might form a
government on the basis of resistance to parliamentary reform. Strange
rumours were even afloat that Mr. Gladstone's communications with
Palmerston before he left London at the election had been intimate and
frequent. 'I cannot make Gladstone out,' said Lord Malmesbury, 'he seems
to me a dark horse.'

In the closing days of the autumn (September 12) Graham interpreted some
obscure language of Mr. Gladstone's as meaning that if protection were
renounced, as it might be, if Palmerston joined Derby and the government
were reconstructed, and if Disraeli ceased to be leader, then his own
relations with the government would be changed. Gladstone was so uneasy
in his present position, so nice in the equipoise of his opinions that
he wished to be, as he said, 'on the liberal side of the conservative
party, rather than on the conservative side of the liberal party.' A
little earlier than this, Lord Aberdeen and Graham agreed in thinking
(August) that 'Disraeli's leadership was the great cause of Gladstone's
reluctance to have anything to do with the government; ... that even if
this should be removed, it would not be very easy for him to enter into
partnership with them.' Mr. Gladstone himself now and always denied that
the lead in the Commons or other personal question had anything to do
with the balance of his opinions at the present and later moments. Those
who know most of public life are best aware how great is the need in the
case of public men for charitable construction of their motives and
intent. Yet it would surely have been straining charity to the point of
dishonour if, within two years of Peel's death