ere Peel was strong and penetrating, Palmerston was weak and
purblind. He regarded Bright and Cobden as displeasing mixtures of the
bagman and the preacher. In 1840 he had brought us within an ace of war
with France. Disputes about an American frontier were bringing us at the
same period within an ace of war with the United States. When Peel and
Aberdeen got this quarrel into more promising shape, Palmerston
characteristically taunted them with capitulation. Lord Grey refused
help in manufacturing a whig government in December 1845, because he was
convinced that at that moment Palmerston at the foreign office meant an
American war. When he was dismissed by Lord John Russell in 1852 a
foreign ruler on an insecure throne observed to an Englishman, 'This is
a blow to me, for so long as Lord Palmerston remained at the foreign
office, it was certain that you could not procure a single ally in
Europe.'

Yet all this policy of high spirits and careless dictatorial temper had
its fine side. With none of the grandeur of the highest heroes of his
school--of Chatham, Carteret, Pitt--without a spark of their heroic fire
or their brilliant and steadfast glow, Palmerston represented, not
always in their best form, some of the most generous instincts of his
countrymen. A follower of Canning, he was the enemy of tyrants and
foreign misrule. He had a healthy hatred of the absolutism and reaction
that were supreme at Vienna in 1815; and if he meddled in many affairs
that were no affairs of ours, at least he intervened for freedom. The
action that made him hated at Vienna and Petersburg won the confidence
of his countrymen. They saw him in Belgium and Holland, Spain, Italy,
Greece, Portugal, the fearless champion of constitutions and
nationality. Of Aberdeen, who had been Peel's foreign minister, it was
said that at home he was a liberal without being an enthusiast; abroad
he was a zealot, in the sense most opposed to Palmerston. So, of
Palmerston it could be said that he was conservative at home and
revolutionist abroad. If such a word can ever be applied to such a
thing, his patriotism was sometimes not without a tinge of vulgarity,
but it was always genuine and sincere.

This masterful and expert personage was the ruling member of the weak
whig government now in office, and he made sensible men tremble. Still,
said Graham to Peel, 'it is a choice of dangers and evils, and I am
disposed to think that Palmerston and his foreign policy a