The year 1839 also saw a slight revival of these civil disturbances which had marked the Reform period. That same economic distress that had led to the anti-Corn Law agitation also gave birth to the semi-revolutionary Chartist Movement. During May there was serious rioting in Birmingham, and at Newport in November. Melbourne dealt with the new disturbances as he had with the old: he advocated vigorous repression but only within the limits of the existing law. The ringleaders of the riots ought to be hanged, he said. On the other hand he was against John Russell’s proposal that the Government should be given extraordinary powers to seize arms, etc. On the whole, however, he took the whole affair much more calmly than in 1831. When, on 10th August, the Cabinet was told that the Chartists were organizing a mass protest movement in support of their demands and that it was scheduled to start on 12th August, “God bless my soul,” said Melbourne breezily, “that is the day after tomorrow! It is time for us to be looking about us.” Clearly he had at last come to the conclusion that there was not much danger of bloody revolution breaking out in England. He was quite right. Lawlessness was easily stamped out. But the deterioration in the economic situation continued: and Melbourne did worry about this, especially as he thought it was likely to get worse and saw no way of stopping it. However, he still was determined to try and stay in office. Apart from anything else, the Queen was always asking him to: and he had told her he would. He preferred, however, that the outside world should not know this, for fear they might blame her for it. Let it be thought, rather, that he was doing it to please those members of his Party who were enjoying the sweets of office. “No one supposes I want to go on,” he said, “but I must think of those poor fellows who would have to put down their broughams.” By the spring of 1840 there did not seem any immediate danger that they would have to. The disturbances were over, the Radicals were losing heart. For the time being, at any rate, it looked as if things were settling down.
However, Melbourne was not fated to feel easy for long. In the summer a new crisis loomed up. This time it was over foreign affairs. These had never been one of Melbourne’s major preoccupations up till now. Not that he neglected them. The subject interested him—he was the only member of the Cabinet except Palmerston who really understood it, said a foreign observer—and anyway he was not allowed to forget about it by his brother Fred Lamb, now British Representative in Vienna, and who distrusted Palmerston even more than he did himself. Both brothers were against his militant pro-Liberalism: they wanted to combine with Austria to create a middle force that might hold the balance between Russia and France. However, Melbourne was not prepared to try and enforce this view on his obstreperous Foreign Secretary. Once he had resigned himself to taking Palmerston back in 1835, he seems to have come to the conclusion that he had better let him run foreign policy as he wanted. For one thing, he knew he could not stop him, and for another it was a great saving of trouble. All he could do was to keep a vigilant eye on him and intervene from time to time to check his more perilous extravagances of word and action. Breezy and combative, Palmerston continued to pursue his liberalizing policy; backed the Constitutional Party in Spain and Portugal, encouraged Liberal Movements in Central Europe, hauled foreign monarchs and statesmen over the coals when he caught them doing anything that struck him as unusually tyrannical. None of this was much to Melbourne’s liking. Palmerston did not seem to realize that “the worst thing in the world was to be troublesome.” Besides, trouble abroad meant trouble at home, and trouble at home might easily lead to that downfall of the Government which it was Melbourne’s chief aim to avoid. The situation at home always conditioned his view of the situation abroad. His first reaction to any proposal of Palmerston’s is to ask him how it is to be defended in the House of Lords. His own advice to him was always on the side of caution. It is extraordinary how many sentences in his frequent letters began with the phrase, “For God’s sake don’t . . .” He stopped Palmerston seizing the island of Goa from the Portuguese in 1839 because they had not kept their promise to put down the slave trade; in 1836 he warned him about getting entangled in grandiose schemes for moulding the future of Asia. “The Black Sea and the Caucasus and those great empires enflame the imagination wonderfully,” he remarked ironically. He was also always suspicious of coming to any international agreement which committed England to some definite course of action in the future. “It may be necessary to defend Turkey,” he says on one occasion, “but I should not like to be bound to defend her. Our policy is to have our hands free . . .” And again when commenting on the French proposal for a comprehensive treaty of mutual defence, “Treaties of this comprehensive character are very dangerous transactions. They rarely answer the purpose for which they were formed and they often involve consequences which are in no respect foreseen.” Melbourne realized, as Palmerston did not, that the English, however progressive and idealistic, liked their foreign policy to be cheap. They might cheer the spectacle of a foreign people rightly struggling to be free; the last thing they wanted was to spend money or soldiers in helping them to win the struggle. Melbourne, therefore, objected to Palmerston’s tendency to speak strongly, because he knew he seldom had the power to enforce his words by strong action. What was the good of scolding the Czar for addressing his Polish subjects in offensive terms; much the Czar would care! And why promise to see that the Spanish gave generous terms to the Basques when there was no means of ensuring that they carried out these terms? Why encourage the Circassians and the Serbs to resist their oppressors when England had neither the intention nor the means actively to help them in their fight? The only consequence of such conduct was to irritate England’s enemies without alarming them, and to leave her friends with the impression that she was either perfidious or ineffective.
All the same, in spite of these causes of disagreement, Palmerston and Melbourne did not get on so badly. For one thing, personal relations between them were easy. They had a family connection: Palmerston, who for many years it was suspected, had been Emily Cowper’s lover, married her in 1839. Further, he and Melbourne were natives of the same fashionable Whig world, both talked the same blunt, flippant, male Whig language. Plain-spoken though their letters to each other are, they are also good-humoured. Neither was offended by the other’s frankness. Further, each respected the other enough to make concessions. More often than not Palmerston listened to Melbourne’s advice and modified his policy accordingly. On his side Melbourne, whatever he might say to Palmerston in private, loyally supported him in public. He always refused to hold any communication with foreign representatives who tried to negotiate with him behind Palmerston’s back, and when Holland or John Russell grumbled to him about Palmerston, Melbourne replied that he thought he was doing well. He meant it, too. Melbourne had the open-mindedness of his scepticism. So long as Palmerston’s risky-seeming policy did not get the Government into serious trouble, Melbourne was willing enough to give it his approval.
Altogether Melbourne had not found much to worry about in foreign affairs during the first five years of his Premiership. Alas, in the summer of 1840 he did. Trouble arose in the Middle East. It had been brewing some time. Early in the ’thirties Mehemet Ali, the powerful Pasha of Egypt, rebelled against His Suzerain, the corrupt and feeble Sultan of Turkey. The consequence was a long drawn out conflict between them which seemed likely to end in the victory of Mehemet Ali and the break up of the Turkish Empire. Palmerston was horrified at such a prospect. For he saw the Turkish Empire as a necessary bulwark against the rival ambitions of France and Russia to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean.
Accordingly, in the autumn of 1839, he set to work to persuade the great powers to agree to a treaty by which they pledged themselves to help the Sultan, by force if need be, to defeat Mehemet Ali. This proposal produced a new alignment of powers in Europe. Russia, Austria and Prussia agreed to it, but the French, who saw a chance of getting Egypt on her side if Mehemet Ali won, hung back. Undismayed Palmerston set to work to bully them into acq
uiescence. Here he found himself at odds with some of his colleagues. Two in particular, Holland and Clarendon, the new Lord Privy Seal, shrank from any idea of quarrelling with progressive France, more especially as they feared that Palmerston’s policy might lead to increasing the power of the arch-reactionary, Russia. They wanted Palmerston to drop his plan. Melbourne, as so often, felt divided on the question. Though he diplomatically denied it to Holland, on the whole he thought Palmerston right; for Egypt dominated by France would be a danger to England; and as for Russia, Melbourne had come to the conclusion that she was bound to get control of Turkey sooner or later. On the other hand, he wanted above all things to avoid a split in his own Government. He therefore took up his usual middle-way position and pleaded rather ineffectively with his colleagues for compromise. To the outside world he adopted his old tactics of agreeable evasiveness. In March, 1840, Guizot, the new French Ambassador, went to see him and expatiated with Gallic eloquence on the strength of his country’s case. Melbourne, stretched out comfortably in an armchair, listened and laughed and seemed friendly and interested, and refused to commit himself in any way. In July, alarmed by Mehemet Ali’s continued successes, Palmerston decided to force the issue. Since the French would not agree, he proposed making a treaty with the other powers, leaving them out. At once Holland and Clarendon said they would resign if such a proposal was accepted. Palmerston replied that he would resign if it was not accepted. “For God’s sake,” cried Melbourne, “let nobody resign or we’ll have everybody resigning;” and he proceeded to try and persuade one side or the other to yield. In the end, Holland and Clarendon gave way and the Treaty was signed.
It was far from being the end of the trouble. The French were furious. Their excitable Prime Minister, Thiers—“he is a strange quicksilver man, this Thiers, he puts me in mind of Brougham,” said Melbourne—fulminated threats of reprisal. It seemed possible that if the other powers went to the Sultan’s help, France might go to the help of Mehemet Ali. For the first time for many years the shadow of a possible general war rose to brood darkly over the European scene. The result was an explosion in the English Cabinet. The pro-French party became frantic; and, what mattered much more, John Russell who had agreed to the Treaty, was now so frightened by the idea of war that he changed his mind. He wrote clamouring for some compromise with France before it was too late. So also did those respected grand old men of the Whig Party, Lord Spencer and the Duke of Bedford. Melbourne communicated their agitated expostulations to Palmerston who paid no attention whatever. The French were merely bluffing, he said cheerfully, they were not such fools as to embark on a war in which they were bound to do badly. Melbourne was unable to feel so confident. Hitherto he had managed to stop himself worrying; now he became seriously disturbed. It was all very well for Palmerston to say that the French would be silly to go on standing out, but people often were silly. “You calculate a little too much upon nations and individuals feeling reason, right and a just view of their own interest,” he said crisply. Even if Palmerston were right about the French, the defeat of Mehemet Ali was likely to be a long job; and meanwhile the English Government might fall. However, Melbourne reflected gloomily, it was too late for England to back out now without disastrous loss of face. Besides, to do so would mean Palmerston’s resignation and that also would bring about the downfall of the Government. No—there was nothing to do but go on as they had begun; and his own particular task was to hold country and Government together in the hope that the situation might improve. The country in general added little to his difficulties for the public was not fully awake to the crisis; and Melbourne safeguarded himself against any attack from the official opposition by going to see the Duke of Wellington and persuading him to promise his support. It was his own colleagues who were the trouble; Holland, John Russell who had begun again to talk of resigning, and, of course, Palmerston. In order to deal with them Melbourne pulled himself together to give such an exhibition of his diplomatic skill as had not been seen since the days of his prime. There was no longer any sign of his having lost his grip. Outwardly his old lazy, ironical self, he proceeded during two tense months to evade and temporize and pour oil, and now and again, genially but firmly, to read the riot act. Of course Palmerston was indiscreet, he told John Russell, but for John Russell to resign would only increase Palmerston’s power. Of course John Russell and Holland were tiresome, he said to Palmerston—“Friends are generally more troublesome and often more hostile than adversaries,” he remarked sardonically—but that was all the more reason for being cautious and circumspect. To both parties Melbourne insisted on the folly of doing anything that might break up the Government. If it fell, neither, he pointed out, would have a chance of getting their way in foreign affairs.
At first all his efforts appeared vain. Mehemet Ali did better and better, the French got angrier and angrier, John Russell went on threatening his resignation, Palmerston became more arrogantly intransigent than ever. Keeping him in order was the hardest part of Melbourne’s task; and secretly he found himself turning more and more against him. Why, oh why had Palmerston ever embarked on so dangerous a policy? “Never,” he wrote sharply to him, “was a great measure undertaken upon a basis of support so slender and uncertain.” Not that Palmerston was much more of a nuisance than Lord and Lady Holland, who, it was reported, were now repeating every Cabinet secret at their parties in Holland House, even when the French Ambassador was present.
Certainly it was a wearing time, especially for a frail and ageing man like Melbourne. The strain began to tell on him. He suffered continually from indigestion and lumbago; he lost his appetite and could hardly sleep at all. He kept awake, it was noticed, even during Cabinet meetings! In mid-September, a new element insinuated itself into the situation, to disturb him still further. The Queen intervened. Prompted by the Prince, who in turn was prompted by King Leopold, she became extremely suspicious of Palmerston’s policy and began to bombard Melbourne with excited letters complaining that she was not consulted and pressing for accommodation with France before things came to a crisis. “The Queen really could not go through that now,” she protested, “and it might make her seriously ill if she were to be kept in a state of agitation and excitement.” Melbourne was extremely distressed. The Queen, as he knew to his cost, was likely to be just as unmanageable as Palmerston. Besides, the last thing he wanted to do was to upset her at the present moment, she was now several months gone with child. However, he kept his head, soothed her down with his usual skill and made use of her delicate condition as an argument to impose his will on Palmerston and John Russell. If they had an ounce of consideration for the Queen they simply must try to be moderate. Meanwhile, with light tact he suggested to the Hollands that they should cultivate discretion. “I know not what can be done except to take care that as little of political affairs transpires in conversation as possible;” he wrote to Lord Holland, “but this is inconsistent with a salon—which has many advantages and some disadvantages.”
At last, his patience reaped its reward. The situation took a turn for the better. Helped by the British Fleet, the Sultan began to prevail over Mehemet Ali, and in France there were signs that Thiers, the leader of resistance to England, was losing support. Melbourne judged that the need for procrastinating was over. Now was the moment for strong action. Without consulting anyone, he therefore wrote off to King Leopold, who had constituted himself a sort of unofficial intermediary between England and the French King, Louis Philippe, a letter written in his most trenchant style, in which he said that if Thiers called up the army he, Melbourne, would summon Parliament and demand that England should take effective counter-measures. He assumed that this letter would be shown to Louis Philippe. It was: and the effect produced was instantaneous. The terrified Louis Philippe dismissed Thiers. Soon after news came that Acre, a principal fortress in Mehemet Ali’s defences, had fallen to the Sultan. The danger of war was over. By the end of October the crisis was at an end.
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sp; (6)
A wave of relief swept over Melbourne. For a week or two he was like a boy escaped from school, bubbling over with laughter and high spirits. He had reason to be exhilarated as well as relieved, for England’s success was partly due to him. The policy had been Palmerston’s: but unless Melbourne, in spite of his own inner misgivings, had backed it so loyally and kept Queen and Cabinet in check, Palmerston would never have been able to carry it out. It had been a very trying time for Melbourne though, and left him—once the first exhilaration had worn off—frailer and older than ever: “Lord Melbourne is looking as old as the hills,” said a court lady. He felt it too. Clearly he would not be up to going on with the work of a Prime Minister for much longer. In fact he did not have to. The year 1841 saw the final collapse of the Whig Government. The economic situation was its undoing. This got no better: with the result that the agitation to get rid of protective duties, more especially the Corn Laws, revived and intensified. More and more Government supporters went over to the anti-Corn Law side: more and more did ministers press that the Corn Laws should be modified if not repealed. Melbourne was still against this. He thought modification must lead ultimately to complete abolition: and he recognized—as some of his colleagues did not—that abolition must fatally undermine the rule of the English landed gentry. Melbourne continued to favour the rule of the English landed gentry. Further, he realized that raising the Corn Law issue also meant the end of the Whig Government. It was bound to start a major political row: and the precarious balance which kept the Whigs in power could only be maintained, so long as it was not shaken by a major political row. Up till now Melbourne had tried to stave things off by suggesting that the Corn Laws, like the secret ballot, should be treated as an open question on which ministers could vote as they pleased. But this was no longer a possible way out; the question had become so important that the Government must make up its mind to give the country a definite united lead about it. Melbourne thought the matter over, listened to his colleagues’ arguments—and gave way to the anti-Corn Law party. Airily he explained his position in the matter to the Queen. “I do not,” he said, “go the length of those people who think the Corn Laws are against the Gospel and the spirit of Jesus Christ! I am against the political principles of many in this way. But I have always kept it open for me to change, if I should think it necessary.” Indeed, his change over about the Corn Laws was not an inconsistency on his part. It had always been one of his principles that a wise statesman compromised with a movement once it had become too strong and too widespread to be checked without an explosion. He behaved over the Corn Laws as he had over the Reform Bill. All the same he could not bring himself to feel much interested in how they should be modified. It was the sort of practical subject that bored him to tears. Absent-minded and indifferent, he sat through one Cabinet meeting after another while his colleagues wrangled interminably about fixed duties and sliding scales. At last, in March, they came to an agreement and took their leave. As they went downstairs they heard the Prime Minister’s voice calling to them: looking up they saw him leaning over the banisters: “Stop a bit,” he said, “what did we decide? Is it to lower the price of bread, or isn’t it? It doesn’t matter which, but we must all say the same thing.”
The Young Melbourne & Lord M Page 41