d its effect was
overwhelming. Disraeli, meeting Lord Dalling by chance next day on the
staircase of the Russian Embassy, exclaimed as he passed, with
significant emphasis, 'There _was_ a Palmerston!' The common opinion at
the clubs found expression in a phrase which passed from lip to lip,
'Palmerston is smashed;' but, though driven for the moment to bay, the
dismissed Minister was himself of another mind.

Lord Palmerston was offered the Irish Viceroyalty, but he declined to
take such an appointment. He accepted his dismissal with a
characteristic affectation of indifference, and in the course of a
laboured defence of his action in the House of Commons, excused his
communication to the French Ambassador on the plea that it was only the
expression of an opinion on passing events, common to that 'easy and
familiar personal intercourse, which tends so usefully to the
maintenance of friendly relations with foreign Governments.' Lady
Russell wrote down at the time her own impressions of this crisis in her
husband's Cabinet, and the following passage throws a valuable sidelight
on a memorable incident in the Queen's reign: 'The breach between John
and Lord Palmerston was a calamity to the country, to the Whig party,
and to themselves; and, although it had for some months been a
threatening danger on the horizon, I cannot but feel that there was
accident in its actual occurrence. Had we been in London or at Pembroke
Lodge, and not at Woburn Abbey, at the time, they would have met, and
talked over the subject of their difference; words spoken might have
been equally strong, but would have been less cutting than words
written, and conciliatory expressions on John's part would have led the
way to promises on Lord Palmerston's.... They two kept up the character
of England, as the sturdy guardians of her rights against other nations,
and the champions of freedom and independence abroad. They did so both
before and after the breach of 1851, which was, happily, closed in the
following year, when they were once more colleagues in office. On
matters of home policy Lord Palmerston remained the Tory he had been in
his earlier days, and this was the cause of many a trial to John.'

The Russell Administration, as the Premier himself frankly recognised,
was seriously weakened by the dismissal of Lord Palmerston; and its
position was not improved when Lord Clarendon, on somewhat paltry
grounds, refused the Foreign Office. Lord John's saga