Palmerston and the Times

Foreign Policy, the Press and Public Opinion in Mid-Victorian Britain

Laurence Fenton

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781780760742
• eBook ISBN: 9780857736512
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

England in the Age of Palmerston had two players of colossal influence on the world stage: Lord Palmerston himself - the dominant figure in foreign affairs in the mid-nineteenth century - and The Times - the first global newspaper, read avidly by statesmen around the world. Palmerston was also one of the first real media-manipulating politicians of the modern age, forging close links with a number of publications to create the so-called 'Palmerston press'. His relationship with The Times was more turbulent, a prolonged and bitter rivalry preceding eventual rapprochement during the Crimean War. In this book, Laurence Fenton explores the highly charged rivalry between these two titans of the mid-Victorian era, revealing the personal and political differences at the heart of an antagonism that stretched over the course of three decades. Fenton focuses on the years from 1830 to 1865, when Palmerston was British Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister for a combined total of almost twenty-five years, and when The Times, under the editorship of first Thomas Barnes and then John Delane, reached the zenith of its success.
It was a period during which public interest in foreign affairs grew immeasurably, encompassing the tumultuous 'Year of Revolutions', the famous 'Don Pacifico' debate and the Crimean War. Palmerston and The Times adds significantly to the understanding of the life and career of Lord Palmerston, in particular the relationship he enjoyed with the press and public opinion that was so vital to his incredibly long and multifaceted political career. It also brings to light the remarkable men behind the success of The Times, paying fair tribute to their abilities while at the same time warning against the long-standing view of The Times as a paragon of newspaper independence in this era. It will be essential reading for researchers of Victorian history and for anyone interested in the tumultuous relationship between politics and the press.

1

THE POLITICIAN

Born in London in late October 1784, there was little in the relatively minor aristocratic background of Henry John Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston, to indicate the great impact he would have on world affairs. He was an Irish peer, which in the highly stratified world of the aristocracy ranked below both English and Scottish peers. Although Palmerston did not visit the country until his mid-twenties, the family connection with Ireland was strong, dating back to the late sixteenth century when William Temple travelled over as secretary to Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, who had been dispatched by Queen Elizabeth I to put down the rebellion now known as the Nine Years War (1594–1603). William Temple was appointed provost of Trinity College Dublin in 1609, Palmerston’s ancestors holding thereafter a variety of sinecured posts, including the Master of the Rolls in Ireland and Chief Remembrancer of the Court of Exchequer in Ireland. They acquired large tracts of land over the course of two centuries, particularly in Sligo on the west coast of the country. It was Palmerston’s great-grandfather, Henry Temple, who became the first viscount, created an Irish peer in 1723 in recognition of the family’s long discharge of public duties in Ireland, the very name of Palmerston taken from a small village in County Dublin where the family held lands. An Irish peerage did not entail residence in Ireland, and so it was to Hampshire in the south of England that Palmerston’s great-grandfather turned when building Broadlands, the grand familial home of the Temples.

Palmerston’s father, Henry Temple, the second viscount, was an enthusiastic patron of the arts who numbered among his friends the historian Edward Gibbon, the actor David Garrick and the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. A member of the House of Commons for nearly 40 years – Irish peers were not entitled to sit in the House of Lords – he served at both the Admiralty and Treasury and was on good terms with Charles James Fox and Lord North among other leading politicians. Politics, however, were of secondary interest to this voluble and adventurous soul who adored travel and the arts instead. This desire to travel caused trouble when, despite pleas to the contrary, he took the family on the Grand Tour in the summer of 1792, escaping the ‘Reign of Terror’ in Paris by a mere matter of days.

The bulk of this European tour was spent in Italy, the young Palmerston visiting an array of Classical and Renaissance sites. Groomed at first for a career in diplomacy, Palmerston was fluent from an early age in French and Italian. His younger brother William would follow this path, serving out a long career at various embassies and legations. Three more siblings, Frances, Mary (who died a child) and Elizabeth completed the family set. The Palmerstons returned to England in late 1794, the eldest son beginning his formal education at Harrow the following year. Palmerston remained at Harrow until 1800, before spending three years apiece at the University of Edinburgh and St John’s College, Cambridge. He was a keen sportsman at all three institutions, and popular with fellow students. But he was also a diligent worker, a trait that endured throughout his long political career despite what later seemed to be an often flippant demeanour. If anything, Palmerston could be too serious and reserved as a youth, leading one friend of the family to bemoan the ‘want of spirits belonging to his age’.¹

Palmerston was in Edinburgh, then the ‘capital of the mind’, for the most formative years of his youth, deemed by his father ‘that critical and important period when a young man’s mind is most open to receive such impressions as may operate powerfully on his character and his happiness during the remainder of his life’.² He studied a wide range of subjects, including mathematics, chemistry, history, political economy, Greek and Latin. Most importantly, he came under the influence of Dugald Stewart, the noted Professor of Moral Philosophy, at whose home he also roomed. As foreseen by his father, Palmerston took from Edinburgh a number of lifelong lessons, including a strident belief in the benefits of free trade gleaned from the study of Adam Smith’s seminal text The Wealth of Nations. Of more subtle consequence, perhaps, were Stewart’s progressive ideas on the role and importance of public opinion in modern society. The ‘stability and influence of established authority’, Stewart argued, depended on the ‘coincidence between its measures and the tide of public opinion’, with crises in government and society derived largely from a ‘bigoted attachment to antiquated forms, and to principles borrowed from less enlightened ages’. The path to a more enlightened society, Stewart advised, lay in the ‘gradual and prudent accommodation of established institutions to the varying opinions, manners, and circumstances of mankind’.³ From an early age, therefore, Palmerston was primed to pay heed to the growing power of public opinion, and to view it as a fundamental facet of government, not just something to be pandered to in order to win votes.

‘There is in nature no power but mind, all else is passive and inert,’ Palmerston would go on to declare to the House of Commons in the late 1820s. ‘[In] human affairs this power is opinion; in political affairs it is public opinion; and he who can grasp this power, with it will subdue the fleshy arm of physical strength, and compel it to work out his purpose.’ Those statesmen, he continued in a panegyric tone that carried echoes of his mentor Stewart, who knew how to avail themselves ‘of the passions, and the interests, and the opinions of mankind’ were able ‘to give an ascendancy, and to exercise a sway over human affairs’ that was ‘far out of all proportion greater than belong to the power and resources of the state over which they preside’, while those who sought to ‘check improvement, to cherish abuses, to crush opinions, and to prohibit the human race from thinking, whatever may be the apparent power which they wield’ would ‘find their weapon snap short in their hand, when most they need its protection’.⁴ Palmerston, however, did not always view public opinion in such benign terms, stating in the midst of a political crisis in 1809 that ‘if a victim is to be sacrificed to appease the fury of the many headed monster [public opinion], I know no one whose loss would perhaps be less felt than poor Cas[tlereagh], since whatever his talents for business may be… he is dreadfully unpopular & is somewhat of a millstone about the necks of his friends.’⁵ Political realities, not just lofty ideals, had to be factored in to any thinking on public opinion.

The death of the second viscount in 1802 led to Palmerston’s inheritance of the title at just 17 years of age. Recovering himself from the heavy blow of his adored father’s death, Palmerston returned regularly to Broadlands to visit his grieving mother, herself slowly dying of cancer. In late 1804 he wrote to Laurence Sulivan, a friend from Cambridge, how she ‘has been going on very well since you left us. Her spirits are generally very good, and she has had better nights, and been more free from pain than ever when in London.’ She had a garden chair that allowed her to be pushed around the grounds, Palmerston believing the country air to be ‘of much benefit to her’.⁶ It was with great grief but only mild surprise that Palmerston learned of her passing in January 1805, leaving him bereft of both parents at the age of 20 and burdened with the responsibility for three siblings, a large country estate, more lands in Ireland and significant debts accrued through his father’s voracious art collecting and expensive refurbishments of Broadlands.

To Parliament

Palmerston’s father had been a Whig until the 1790s when, in the midst of the war with revolutionary France, he switched allegiance to the Tories of William Pitt the Younger. Upon his death the Earl of Malmesbury, likewise a Whig turned Tory, was appointed Palmerston’s guardian. Malmesbury had enjoyed a distinguished diplomatic career, including spells at the courts of Frederick the Great and Catherine II. By the time Palmerston came under his wing, Malmesbury was retired and almost deaf. Nevertheless, he remained a confidante to many of the political elite and of great value to Palmerston as he sought a path to parliament. They aimed high, with Palmerston running as the Tory candidate in the Cambridge by-election called in response to Pitt’s death in January 1806. This first campaign had not really been planned, and though Malmesbury and others canvassed on his behalf, Palmerston came last in the field of the three candidates. He was beaten but determined to try again, his correspondence from this point on growing ever denser with political content – the goings-on in Westminster and the continuing war with Napoleon Bonaparte – the neophyte forming his opinions in preparation for another run at parliament.

The collapse of the Whig-led ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ led to a general election in the summer of 1807. The Tories returned to power under the leadership of the Duke of Portland. Palmerston, however, was defeated at Cambridge again, admitting to his close friend Sulivan how ‘very much mortified & disappointed’ he was ‘at being a second time foiled in my attack upon the University’.⁷ But there was a back-up plan. Malmesbury paid £4,000 for Palmerston to take the seat for the atrociously rotten borough of Newport on the Isle of Wight, where indeed one of the terms of his victory was that he never set foot in his supposed constituency. Such was the fetid state of Britain’s electoral system when the young Palmerston entered parliament for the first time.

The London Palmerston arrived in was the world’s first ‘million city’, and home to a cornucopia of attractions and distractions. Palmerston, still in his twenties, lived rather a double life at first, working in an unheralded manner at two relatively minor political offices, socializing somewhat more raucously at dinner parties and clubs. Malmesbury’s influence with Portland had seen him appointed to a junior position in the Admiralty in 1807, Palmerston writing soon after to Sulivan how he had been so busy with work that he had ‘scarcely seen a soul except in the way of business’.⁸ This was rather disingenuous, for Palmerston was thoroughly enjoying the delights of the capital. He shook off whatever shackles had given rise to an earlier reputation for diffidence, and when promoted to the position of Secretary at War in 1809, it was commented acerbically by one lady that at least ‘it may divert his Lordship from flirting’.⁹

As Secretary at War, Palmerston was responsible for the financial and general administration of the army, duties that included presenting the army estimates to parliament each year. In office he was guilty of some of the iniquities of the age, bringing in Sulivan as his private secretary and ensuring that George Shee, another friend from Cambridge, was made Agent-General of the Militia. More positively, while he increased the workload of his staff, Palmerston did not shy away from long hours himself. Quickly confident in his post, Palmerston was also unafraid to disagree with the Duke of York, King George III’s second son and Commander-in-Chief of the army, their regular disputes having to be smoothed over by a succession of Prime Ministers, from Portland to Spencer Perceval and Lord Liverpool.

Palmerston’s political stature was increased when he finally took the prestigious seat for Cambridge during another by-election in 1811. He demonstrated some adept handling of the media during the course of this campaign, something far from common among his political – especially Tory – peers, writing to Sulivan, who later that year married Palmerston’s youngest sister Elizabeth (Libby), of the need to send ‘a paragraph to the Courier’ saying ‘we understand that the greatest exertions are making by Mr [John] Smith & Ld P. and the contest is expected to be a very hard one’ and won ‘by only a few votes’. The Courier, Palmerston complained, had ‘been spreading about the idea that I am secure’, and a piece along the lines envisaged appeared the next day.¹⁰ Palmerston, however, was confident of victory. He had put in the work, returning to Cambridge for various social events through the years, all the time cultivating the university’s voters.

Back in London, Palmerston’s evening scene revolved around the opera, theatre and lavish balls that characterized the Regency era. He was a member of the exclusive Almack’s club, regarded by many as ‘the seventh heaven of the fashionable world’.¹¹ In 1811 he described to his sister Libby how ‘London is uncommonly gay, so I go every night to the play, I belong to a private box which gives me the run of Covent Garden & the Lyceum all week about which is very pleasant.’¹² As Palmerston was an attractive young man as well as sociable and amusing, rumours of affairs abounded and were often true. Foremost among Palmerston’s liaisons was Lady Emily Cowper, wife of Earl Cowper. Palmerston was a friend of Emily’s brother William Lamb, later Lord Melbourne, and is acknowledged as the father of three of the five children she bore while married to Cowper: Emily in 1810, William in 1811 and Frances Elizabeth in 1820. Very proper in his working day, Palmerston could be scandalously improper at night.

Parliamentary recesses often found Palmerston staying at the grand country homes of friends and colleagues. ‘Country-house visiting, in fact, was a way of life,’ observed the social historian Venetia Murray, with these trips just as important as the London clubs to Palmerston’s social milieu.¹³ Here the aristocracy reposed at leisure, playing charades, billiards and tennis, producing amateur theatricals, shooting pheasants and partridges and hunting with hounds. They partook of politicking and surreptitious seduction. Palmerston had game down at Broadlands, too, and an interest in horses and the races at nearby Romsey. On one occasion, he wrote to his sister Libby how he had sold two horses quite well: ‘Harlequin who was likely to be blind & lame for 100 guineas, & Firefly who was not quite sound for 87. This was a good riddance of bad rubbish.’¹⁴

The defeat of Napoleon opened up another welcome social outlet, the aristocracy in their liveried swarms taking once more to the Grand Tour. Visiting Paris in 1815, Palmerston took in the theatre and the Louvre, and with a keen eye noted the physical and mental de-Napoleonizing of the French capital. At plays, the restored Bourbon monarchy were cheered by royalists in the crowd, while on the streets the ‘basso relievos upon the arches and public buildings in which anything is contained that relates to Bonaparte, have been chiselled off, and the number of plain entablatures is daily increasing’.¹⁵ Palmerston travelled abroad again in 1816, in pursuit on this occasion of Lady Cowper rather than any further culture. In 1818, he went to France and Belgium in the company of George Shee, stopping at Waterloo along the way. The British army were in the midst of finally leaving France, but instead of assuming a superior and mean-spirited air towards the erstwhile foe, Palmerston considered the departure ‘highly gratifying’, as nothing ‘can be more galling and humiliating than the presence of a conquering army within the territory of the worsted nation’.¹⁶

Prior to this latter trip, Palmerston had been shot at on the stairs of the War Office. Palmerston’s assailant, David Davies, a former lieutenant in the army, had escaped from a mental institution. The bullet grazed Palmerston’s hip and Davies was easily captured. Palmerston actually felt some pity for his would-be assassin, who was sent to Bedlam, and contributed to a fund for his defence. But Palmerston was not always so compassionate. In August 1819 when the yeomanry of Manchester, on the orders of agitated local officials, charged into a peaceful mass meeting at St Peter’s Field, killing 11 and injuring hundreds of the 60,000-strong crowd, his sympathies were firmly with the authorities. The ‘Peterloo massacre’, an attack on innocent men, women and children at a time of heightened post-war economic distress and political tension, caused a national uproar, but Palmerston was resolute in his allegiance to the Tory cause, supporting the repressive and hated ‘Six Acts’ later that year.

To the Foreign Office

By the time Palmerston was shot at on the stairs of the War Office, he was in his mid-thirties and had been Secretary at War for nine years. He was not progressing politically and it might even have seemed that he was following in his father’s footsteps, frequenting the continent and London’s finest fashionable parties without ever reaching real political heights. It is instructive that a recent major biography of Lord Castlereagh, one of the leading politicians of the era, mentions Palmerston mainly in the context of dances at Almack’s.¹⁷ However, unlike his father, Palmerston was frustrated with his apparent lot, and he became noticeably sullen in his work and at his clubs. Over the course of the next few years he was offered numerous paths out of the War Office, but they all seemed either steps sideways or, wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Politician
• 2. The Paper
• 3. Origins of Animosity
• 4. A New Editor
• 5. Palmerston vs. Guizot
• 6. Revolutions
• 7. The Rise and Fall of Palmerston
• 8. Rapprochement
• 9. The Last Years
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography