one
which the cabinet had decided should be taken on the subject; that his
language was calculated to draw the government into a course of action
which it had been deliberately resolved to avoid. And, in spite of the
deference due to Lord Palmerston's great experience, it is hard to see
how a conversation between our Foreign Secretary and the French
Ambassador on an action, the result of which is as yet undecided, can be
wholly unofficial, in the sense of having no influence on the conduct of
affairs, or, as he expressed it, "in no degree or way fettering the
action of the government."

The result was, as has been mentioned before, that the Prime-minister
recommended the removal of Lord Palmerston from his office, and that he
was removed accordingly. And this conclusion of the case seems to show
that the statement of the position of the Prime-minister in the cabinet
is rather understated by Mr. Gladstone in one of his essays,[280] where
he says: "The head of the British government is not a Grand Vizier. He
has no powers, properly so called, over his colleagues; on the rare
occasions when a cabinet determines its course by the votes of its
members, his vote only counts as one of theirs." He admits at the same
time that "they are appointed and dismissed by the sovereign on his
advice." And surely to have the right of giving this advice is to have
the greatest possible power over his colleagues; not power, perhaps, to
change their opinions (though it possibly at times has had power to
prevent the expression of them), but power to compass their immediate
removal from the administration, as was exercised in this instance, and
as had been exercised by Pitt with regard to Lord Thurlow. That a
difference of opinion, even on an important subject, is not always
regarded as a sufficient cause for such a dismissal; that a
Prime-minister, especially if conscious of his strength, occasionally
consents to retain colleagues who differ from him on some one subject,
the same work to which we are partly indebted for our knowledge of the
details of this affair--the "Life of the Prince Consort"--furnishes two
remarkable instances in which the Prime-minister, then Lord Palmerston
himself, submitted to be overruled. We read there that on one occasion,
when "Count Persigny sought the active intervention of England by the
way of 'moral support' to a demand" which France proposed to address to
Austria, "Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell (the