Lord Palmerston by Anthony Trollope
Author:Anthony Trollope [Trollope, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783965376373
Google: aNUTAQAAMAAJ
Publisher: W. Isbister
Published: 1882-01-15T03:20:51+00:00
CHAPTER VIII.
THE STORY OF DON PACIFICO.
THE story of Don Pacifico is interesting, dramatic, and peculiar, and emblematic in the highest degree of Lord Palmerstonâs manner of feeling and condition of mind. In it he will be seen carrying British honesty, British honour, and British determination to the very verge of absurdity and arrogance, till he pushes his principles almost beyond the verge. But who shall say what is absurdity? And he is held to have been thoroughly triumphant in the whole affair, because at last he got a majority of the House of Commons to vote that he had been splendidly English and splendidly honest rather than absurd and arrogant. We may be sure that the statesmen of other nations ridiculed him, but that they did so with a mixture of awe, knowing that it was Palmerston,âand knowing that Palmerston must be allowed to have his own way in such matters,âunless he were stopped by his own countrymen. And a great attempt was made by his own countrymen to keep him down, and to prove that he had been ridiculous. Lord Stanley, who, since 1844, had been in the Upper House, brought a direct motion against him, in which he was supported by Lord Aberdeen and Lord Canning; and he carried his resolution by a majority of thirty-seven. Lord Stanley had not forgotten the accusations of official ignorance made against him by Lord Palmerston; and Lord Aberdeenâs memory was still laden with the bitterness of that âexample of antiquated imbecility,â as which he had been represented to the House of Commons. For amenities such as these Lord Palmerston was too wise to expect in return aught but similar amenities.
âI can only say,â said Lord Stanley, âthat I have arisen from the perusal of these papers,ââand he describes the documents in his hands, all referring to claims made by Lord Palmerston against Greece, as a weary waste of papers,ââwith regret and shame for the part which my country has played.â Then he takes the proud ground that the weakest and the strongest nations should in such matters be treated alike; and he asks whether such has been the caseâimputing, of course, to Lord Palmerston the degrading fault that he has been imperious only against the weak. Then he recapitulates the absurd cases for redress as to which Lord Palmerston sent the British Fleet to the Piræus,âa fleet larger, as Lord Aberdeen goes on to say, than that with which Nelson conquered at Trafalgar. Can this, we wonder, have been true? There is the matter of Stellio Sumachi, the blacksmith, which was of itself a very trivial affair. Then there was the question of two of our war vessels, the Fantôme and the Spitfire. A midshipman out of one had landed in plain clothes where he ought not to have landed, and officers of the one ship were taken to have been officers of the other. This had given ground for great offence to British honour. There was the plunder of some
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