liberal sympathies from sustaining the policy of the coup d'état; nor did his hatred of slavery, one of his few strong and genuine emotions apart from English interests, inspire him with any repugnance to the cause of the Southern slaveholders. But it cannot be doubted that his very defects were a main cause of his popularity and his success. He was able always with a good conscience to assure the English people that they were the greatest and the best, the only good and great, people in the world, because he had long taught himself to believe this, and had come to believe it. He was always popular, because his speeches invariably conveyed this impression to the English crowd whom he addressed in or out of Parliament. Other public men spoke, for the most part, to tell English people of something they ought to do which they were not doing, something which they had done and ought not to have done. It is not in the nature of things that such men should be as popular as those who told England that whatever she did must be right. Nor did Palmerston lay on his praise with coarse and palpable artifice. He had no artifice in the matter. He believed what he said, and his very sincerity made it the more captivating and the more dangerous. A phrase sprung up in Palmerston's days which was employed to stigmatize certain political conduct beyond all ordinary reproach. It was meant to stamp such conduct as outside the pale of reasonable argument or patriotic consideration. That was the word "un-English." It was enough with certain classes to say that anything was "un-English" in order to put it ut terly out of court. No matter to what principles, higher, more universal, and more abiding than those that are merely English, it might happen to appeal, the one word of condemnation was held to be enough for it. Some of the noblest and the wisest men of our day were denounced as un-English. A stranger might have asked in wonder at one time whether it was un-English to be just, to be merciful, to have consideration for the claims and the rights of others, to admit that there was any higher object in a nation's life than a diplomatic success. All that, would have made a man odious and insufferable in private life was apparently held up as belonging to the virtues of the English nation. Rude selfassertion, blunt disregard for the feelings and the claims of

others, a self-sufficiency which would regard all earth's interests as made for England's special use alone-the yet more outrageous form of egotism which would fancy that the moral code as it applies to others does not apply to us-all this seemed to be considered the becoming national characteristic of the English people. It would be almost superfluous to say that this did not show its worst in Lord Palmerston himself. As in art, so in politics, we never see how bad some peculiar defect is until we see it in the imitators of a great man's style. A school of Palmerstons, had it been powerful and lasting, would have made England a nuisance to other nations.

Certainly a statesman's first business is to take care of the interests of his own country. His duty is to prefer her interests to those of any other country. In our rough-andready human system he is often compelled to support her in a policy the principle of which he did not cordially approve in the first instance. He must do his best to bring her with honor out of a war, even though he would not himself have made or sanctioned the war if the decision had been in his power. He cannot break sharply away from the traditions of his country. Mr. Disraeli often succeeded in throwing a certain amount of disrepute on some of his opponents by calling them the advocates of "cosmopolitanism." If the word had any meaning, it meant, we presume, that the advocates of "cosmopolitanism" were men who had no particular prejudices in favor of their country's interests, and were as ready to take an enemy's side of a question as that of their own people. If there were such politicians—and we have never heard of any such since the execution of Anacharsis Clootz-we could not wonder that their countrymen should dislike them, and draw back from putting any trust in them at a critical moment. They might be held to resemble some of the pragmatical sentimentalists who at one time used to argue that the ties of family are of no account to the truly wise and just, and that a good man should love all his neighbors as well as he loved his wife and children. Such people are hopeless in practical affairs. Taking no account of the very springs of human motive, they are sure to go wrong in everything they try to do or to estimate. An English minister must be an English minister first of all;

but he will never be a great minister if he does not in all his policy recognize the truth that there are considerations of higher account for him, and for England too, than England's immediate interests. If he deliberately or heedlessly allows England to do wrong, he will prove an evil counsellor for her; he will do her harm that may be estimated some day even by the most practical and arithmetical calculation. There is a great truth in the fine lines of the cavalier-poet, which remind his mistress that he could not love her so much, loved he not honor more. It is a truth that applies to the statesman as well as to the lover. No man can truly serve his country to the best of his power who has not in his mind all the time a service still higher than that of his country. In many instances Lord Palmerston allowed England to do things which, if a nation had an individual conscience, he and every one else would say were wrong. It has to be remembered, too, that what is called England's interest comes to be defined according to the minister's personal interpretation of its meaning. The minister who sets the interest of his country above the moral law is necessarily obliged to decide, according to his own judgment at the moment, what the interests of his country are; and so it is not even the State which is above the moral law, but only the statesman. We have no hesitation in saying that Lord Palmerston's statesmanship, on the whole, lowered the moral tone of English politics for a time. This consideration alone, if there were nothing else, forbids us to regard him as a statesman whose deeds were equal to his opportunities and to his genius. To serve the purpose of the hour was his policy. To succeed in serving it was his triumph. It is not thus that a great fame is built up, unless, indeed, where the genius of the man is like that of some Cæsar or Napoleon, which can convert its very ruins into monumental records. Lord Palmerston is hardly to be called a great man. Perhaps he may be called a great "man of the time.”

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE NEW GOVERNMENT.

LORD RUSSELL was invited by the Queen to form a Government after the death of Lord Palmerston. For a few days a certain amount of doubt and speculation prevailed in London and the country generally. It was thought not impossible that, owing to his advanced years, Lord Russell might prove unwilling to take on him the burden of such an office as that of Prime-minister. The name of Lord Clarendon was suggested by many as that of a probable head of the new administration. Some talked of Lord Granville. Others had a strong conviction that Mr. Gladstone would himself be invited to take that commanding position in name which he must have in fact. Even when it became certain that Lord Russell was to be the Prime-minister, speculation busied itself as to possible changes in the administration. Many persuaded themselves that the opportunity would be taken to make some bold and sweeping changes, and to admit the Radical element to an influence in the actual councils of the nation such as it had never enjoyed before, and such as its undoubted strength in Parliament and the country now entitled it to have. According to some rumors, Mr. Bright was to become Secretary for India in the new Cabinet; according to others, the great free-trade orator was to hold the office of President of the Board of Trade, which had once been offered to his friend Mr. Cobden; and Mr. Mill was to be made Secretary for India. It was soon found, however, that no such novelties were to be announced. The only changes in the Cabinet were that Lord Russell became Prime-minister, and that Lord Clarendon, who had been Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, succeeded him as Foreign Secretary. One or two new men were brought into offices which did not give a seat in the Cabinet. Among these were Mr. Forster, who became Under-secretary for

the Colonies in the room of Mr. Chichester Fortescue, now Irish Secretary, and Mr. Goschen, who succeeded Mr. Hutt as Vice-president of the Board of Trade. Both Mr. Forster and Mr. Goschen soon afterward came to hold high official position and to have seats in the Cabinet. In each instance the appointment was a concession to the growing Liberal feeling of the day; but the concession was slight and cautious. The country knew little about either Mr. Forster or Mr. Goschen at the time; and it will easily be imagined that those who thought a seat in the Cabinet for Mr. Bright was due to the people more even than to the man, and who had some hopes of seeing a similar place offered to Mr. Mill, were not satisfied by the arrangement which called two comparatively obscure men to unimportant office. The outer public did not quite appreciate the difficulties which a Liberal minister had to encounter in compromising between the Whigs and the Radicals. The Whigs included almost all the members of the party who were really influential by virtue of hereditary rank and noble station. It was impossible to overlook their claims. In a country like England one must pay attention to the wishes of "the Dukes." There is a superstition about it. The man who attempted to form a Liberal Cabinet without consulting the wishes of “the Dukes," would be as imprudent as the Greek commander who in the days of Xenophon would venture on a campaign without consulting the auguries. But it was not only superstition which required the Liberal Prime-minister to show deference to the claims of the titled and stately Whigs. The great Whig names were a portion of the traditions of the party. More than that, it was certain that whenever the Liberal party got into difficulties, it would look to the great Whig houses to help it out. Many Liberals began to speak with more or less contempt of the Whigs. They talked of these shadows of a mighty name as Thackeray's Barnes Newcome talks of the senior members of his family, his uncle more particularly. But when the Liberal party fell into disorganization and difficulty some years after, the influence of the great Whig houses was sought for at once in order to bring about an improved condition of things. Liberalism often turns to the Whigs as a young scapegrace to his father or his guardian. The wild youth will have his