succeeded by his grandson, Henry the second viscount (1739–1802), who married Miss Mary Mee (d. 1805), a lady celebrated for her beauty.
The 2nd viscount’s eldest son, Henry John, is mentioned by Lady Elliot in her correspondence as a boy of singular vivacity and energy. These qualities adhered to him through life, and he had scarcely left Harrow, at the age of eighteen, when the death of his father (April 17, 1802) raised him to the Irish peerage. It was no doubt owing to his birth and connexions, but still more to his own talents and character, that Lord Palmerston was thrown at a very early age into the full stream of political and official life. Before he was four-and-twenty he had stood two contested elections for the university of Cambridge, at which he was defeated, and he entered parliament for a pocket-borough, Newtown, Isle of Wight, in June 1807. Through the interest of his guardians Lord Malmesbury and Lord Chichester, the duke of Portland made him one of the junior lords of the Admiralty on the formation of his administration in 1807. A few months later he delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons in defence of the expedition against Copenhagen, which he conceived to be justified by the known designs of Napoleon on the Danish court. This speech was so successful that when Perceval formed his government in 1809, he proposed to this young man of five-and-twenty to take the chancellorship of the exchequer. Lord Palmerston, however, preferred the less important office of secretary-at-war, charged exclusively with the financial business of the army, without a seat in the cabinet, and in this position he remained, without any signs of an ambitious temperament or of great political abilities, for twenty years (1809–1828). During the whole of that period Lord Palmerston was chiefly known as a man of fashion, and a subordinate minister without influence on the general policy of the cabinets he served. Some of the most humorous poetical pieces in the New Whig Guide were from his pen, and he was entirely devoted, like his friends Peel and Croker, to the Tory party of that day. Lord Palmerston never was a Whig, still less a Radical; he was a statesman of the old English aristocratic type, liberal in his sentiments, favourable to the march of progress, but entirely opposed to the claims of democratic government.
In the later years of Lord Liverpool’s administration, after the death of Lord Londonderry in 1822, strong dissensions existed in the cabinet. The Liberal section of the government was gaining ground. Canning became foreign minister and leader of the House of Commons. Huskisson began to advocate and apply the doctrines of free trade. Roman Catholic emancipation was made an open question. Although Lord Palmerston was not in the cabinet, he cordially supported the measures of Canning and his friends. Upon the death of Lord Liverpool, Canning was called to the head of affairs; the Tories, including Peel, withdrew their support, and an alliance was formed between the Liberal members of the late ministry and the Whigs. In this combination the chancellorship of the exchequer was first offered to Lord Palmerston, who accepted it, but this appointment was frustrated by the king’s intrigue with Herries, and Palmerston was content to remain secretary-at-war with a seat in the cabinet, which he now entered for the first time. The Canning administration ended in four months by the death of its illustrious chief, and was succeeded by the feeble ministry of Lord Goderich, which barely survived the year. But the “Canningites,” as they were termed, remained, and the duke of Wellington hastened to include Palmerston, Huskisson, Charles Grant, Lamb (Lord Melbourne) and Dudley in his government. A dispute between the duke and Huskisson soon led to the resignation of that minister, and his friends felt bound to share his fate. In the spring of 1828 Palmerston found himself in opposition. From that moment he appears to have directed his attention closely to foreign affairs; indeed he had already urged on the duke of Wellington a more active interference in the affairs of Greece; he had made several visits to Paris, where he foresaw with great accuracy the impending revolution; and on the 1st of June 1829 he made his first great speech on foreign affairs. Lord Palmerston was no orator; his language was unstudied, and his delivery somewhat embarrassed; but he generally found words to say the right thing at the right time, and to address the House of Commons in the language best adapted to the capacity and the temper of his audience. An attempt was made by the duke of Wellington in September 1830 to induce Palmerston to re-enter the cabinet,which he refused to do without Lord Lansdowne and Lord Grey, and from that time forward he may be said to have associated his political fortunes with those of the Whig party. It was therefore natural that Lord Grey should place the department of foreign affairs in his hands upon the formation of the great ministry of 1830, and Palmerston entered with zeal on the duties of an office over which he continued to exert his powerful influence, both in and out of office, for twenty years.
The revolution of July 1830 had just given a strong shock to the existing settlement of Europe. The kingdom of the Netherlands was rent asunder by the Belgian revolution; Portugal was the scene of civil war; the Spanish succession was about to open and place an infant princess on the throne. Poland was in arms against Russia, and the northern powers formed a closer alliance, threatening to the peace and the liberties of Europe. In presence of these varied dangers, Lord Palmerston was prepared to act with spirit and resolution, and the result was a notable achievement of his diplomacy. The king of the Netherlands had appealed to the powers who had placed him on the throne to maintain his rights; and a conference assembled accordingly in London to settle the question, which involved the independence of Belgium and the security of England. On the one hand, the northern powers were anxious to defend the king of Holland; on the other hand a party in France aspired to annex the Belgian provinces. The policy of the British government was a close alliance with France, but an alliance based on the principle that no interests were to be promoted at variance with the just rights of others, or which could give to any other nation well-founded cause of jealousy. If the northern powers supported the king of Holland by force, they would encounter the resistance of France and England united in arms, if France sought to annex Belgium she would forfeit the alliance of England, and find herself opposed by the whole continent of Europe. In the end the policy of England prevailed; numerous difficulties, both great and small, were overcome by the conference, although on the verge of war, peace was maintained; and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was placed upon the throne of Belgium.
In 1833 and 1834 the youthful queens Donna Maria of Portugal and Isabella of Spain were the representatives and the hope of the constitutional party in those countries—assailed and hard pressed by their absolutist kinsmen Don Miguel and Don Carlos, who were the representatives of the male line of succession. Lord Palmerston conceived and executed the plan of a quadruple alliance of the constitutional states of the West to serve as a counterpoise to the northern alliance. A treaty for the pacification of the Peninsula was signed in London on the 22nd of April 1834; and, although the struggle was somewhat prolonged in Spain, it accomplished its object. France, however, had been a reluctant party to this treaty. She never executed her share in it with zeal or fidelity. Louis Philippe was accused of secretly favouring the Carlists, and he positively refused to be a party to direct interference in Spain. It is probable that the hesitation of the French court on this question was one of the causes of the extreme personal hostility Lord Palmerston never ceased to show towards the king of the French down to the end of his life, if indeed that sentiment had not taken its origin at a much earlier period. Nevertheless, at this same time (June 1834) Lord Palmerston wrote that “Paris is the pivot of my foreign policy.” M. Thiers was at that time in office. Unfortunately these differences, growing out of the opposite policies of the two countries at the court of Madrid, increased in each succeeding year; and a constant but sterile rivalry was kept up, which ended in results more or less humiliating and injurious to both nations.
The affairs of the East interested Lord Palmerston in the highest degree. During the Greek War of Independence he had strenuously supported the claims of the Hellenes against the
