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VISCOUNT PALMERSTON (1784-1865)

A MASTER OF PARLIAMENTARY TACTICS

F

OR some fifty years Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, played a leading part in British politics, being lord and master in the management of foreign affairs for the greater part of that period. Succeeding his father as third Viscount in 1802, he entered Parliament in 1806, and remained there to the end of his life. He became a member of the Cabinet as Secretary of War in 1809, and held this portfolio until 1828, under five different Tory ministers. Joining now the Whig party, he became Secretary of Foreign Affairs under Earl Grey in 1830. He resigned in 1841, on the question of free trade in corn, but resumed his office in 1846. In 1855 he was made Prime Minister, and vigorously prosecuted the Crimean War. With slight intermission he held the premiership until his death in 1865. Palmerston made numerous enemies abroad and at home. His self-asserting character, brusqueness of speech, and interferences in foreign affairs, were little calculated to soften party animosity in England, while his arbitrary manner won him foes abroad. "Firebrand Palmerston” was the name his quickness of temper brought him. One example of his haste was his approval of the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon in 1851, without consulting the Queen or the Prime Minister. Yet withal he was a national rather than a party leader, and won genuine acceptance of his course from the people. He had great business ability and political tact, was dexterous in parliamentary tactics, and a ready, witty, and often brilliant debater.

CIVIL WAR IN IRELAND

[It was the question of Catholic emancipation in Ireland, which Lord Palmerston favored, that caused him, in 1828, to resign from Wellington's cabinet, and turn from Tory to Whig principles. His opinion of forcible coercion in Ireland is well expressed in a speech made in the House of Commons in 1829.]

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EXXI

IRISH ORATORS ROBERT EMMET AND DANIEL O'CONNELL

Robert Emmet's fame rested upon that Famous Oration given in this book. Danie O'Connell is a household word in every home in Ireland. His eloquence and his patriotism give him undying fame.

VISCOUNT PALMERSTON

525

Then come we to the last remedy-civil war. Some gentlemen say that, sooner or later, we must fight for it, and the sword must decide. They tell us that, if blood were but shed in Ireland, Catholic emancipation might be avoided. Sir, when honorable gentlemen shall be a little deeper read in the history of Ireland, they will find that in Ireland blood has been shed, that in Ireland leaders have been seized, trials have been had, and punishment has been inflicted. They will find, indeed, almost every page of the history of Ireland darkened by bloodshed, by seizures, by trials, and by punishments. But what has been the effect of these measures? They have, indeed, been successful in quelling the disturbances of the moment; but they never have gone to their cause, and have only fixed deeper the poisoned barb that rankles in the heart of Ireland.

Can one believe one's ears when one hears respectable men talk so lightly-nay, almost so wishfully-of civil war! Do they reflect what a countless multitude of ills those three short syllables contain? It is well, indeed, for the gentlemen of England, who live secure under the protecting shadow of the law, whose slumbers have never been broken by the clashing of angry swords, whose harvests have never been trodden down by the conflict of hostile feet-it is well for them to talk of civil war as if it were some holiday pastime, or some sport of children.

'They jest at scars who never felt a wound."

But that gentlemen from unfortunate and ill-starred Ireland, who have seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears the miseries which civil war produces; who have known, by their own experience, the barbarism, aye, the barbarity, which it engenders;-that such persons should look upon civil war as anything short of the last and greatest of national calamities, is to me a matter of the most unmixed astonishment.

I will grant, if you will, that the success of such a war with Ireland would be as signal and complete as would be its injustice. I will grant, if you will, that resistance would soon be extinguished with the lives of those who resisted. I will grant, if you will, that the crimsoned banner of England would soon wave in undisputed supremacy over the smoking ashes of their towns and the blood-stained solitude of their fields. But I tell you that England herself never would permit the achievement of such a conquest; England would reject in disgust laurels that were dyed in fraternal blood; England would recoil with loathing and abhorrence from the bare contemplation of so devilish a triumph!

SIR ROBERT PEEL (1788-1850)

A LEADING CONSERVATIVE ORATOR

T

HE oldest son of a leading cotton manufacturer, who had

amassed a great fortune in this growing industry, Sir Robert Peel made his mark in politics as his father had done in manufacture, gradually rising in reputation and influence, until in 1841, he became Prime Minister of the British Realm. The Irish constabulary, founded by him, are still known as "Peelers,"in recognition of their origin. But the most important political question in his administration was that of the repeal of the Corn Laws. This he had at first opposed, but in 1846 he made an eloquent speech in its favor, and, by the aid of his followers and the Liberals, those oppressive laws were removed from the English statutes. This action made Peel very popular, but his career was suddenly ended by a fatal fall from his horse in July, 1850.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION

[On the 11th of January, 1837, on the occasion of his installation as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, Peel made an eloquent address to the students on the benefits of the higher education. We select a passage from this in preference to his political speeches, as possessing a broader and more enduring interest.]

"It is very natural," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "for those who are unacquainted with the cause of anything extraordinary, to be astonished at the effect and to consider it as a kind of magic.

"The travelers into the East tell us that when the ignorant inhabitants of those countries are asked concerning the ruins of stately edifices yet remaining among them, the melancholy monuments of their former grandeur and long-lost science, they always answer that they were built by magicians. The untaught mind finds a vast gulf between its own powers and those works of complicated art which it is utterly unable to

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