September and November 1840; Ibrahim was forced to retreat to Egypt, and Mohammed Ali was obliged to accept (11 Jan. 1841) the hereditary pashaship of Egypt, without an inch of Syria, and to restore the Turkish fleet to its rightful owner. ‘Palmerston is triumphant,’ wrote Greville reluctantly; ‘everything has turned out well for him. He is justified by the success of his operations, and by the revelations of Thiers and Rémusat’ (l.c. i. 354). French diplomacy failed to upset these arrangements; and, when the Toulon fleet was strengthened in an ominous manner, Palmerston retorted by equipping more ships, and instructed (22 Sept. 1840) Bulwer, the chargé d'affaires at Paris, to tell Thiers, ‘in the most friendly and inoffensive manner possible, that if France throws down the gauntlet we shall not refuse to pick it up.’ Mohammed Ali, he added, would ‘just be chucked into the Nile.’ The instruction was only too ‘Palmerstonian’—neglect of the forms of courtesy, of the suaviter in modo, was his great diplomatic fault—but it had its effect. The risk of a diplomatic rupture with France vanished, and the success of the naval campaign in the Levant convinced Louis-Philippe, and led to the fall of Thiers and the succession of ‘Guizot the cautious.’ In the settlement of the Egyptian question Palmerston refused to allow France to have any voice; she would not join when she was wanted, and she should not meddle when she was not wanted (to Granville, 30 Nov. 1840). There was an injudicious flavour of revenge about this exclusion, and Palmerston's energetic language undoubtedly irritated Louis-Philippe, and stung him to the point of paying England off by the treachery of the Spanish marriages; but it is admitted even by Greville that Palmerston bore himself with great modesty after his triumph over France, and let no sign of exultation escape him (loc. cit. i. 370). The parties to the quadruple alliance concluded a convention on 13 July 1841 by which Mohammed Ali was recognised as hereditary pasha of Egypt under the definite suzerainty of the sultan, the Bosporus and Dardanelles were closed to ships of war of every nation, and Turkey was placed formally under the protection of the guaranteeing powers. The treaty of Unkiar Skelesi was wiped out.
With the first so-called ‘opium war’ with China the home government had scarcely anything to do. Their distance and ignorance of Chinese policy threw the matter into the hands of the local authority. Palmerston, like the chief superintendent, of course disavowed any protection to opium smuggling, but when Commissioner Lin declared war by banishing every foreigner from Chinese soil, there was nothing for it but to carry the contest to a satisfactory conclusion. Graham's motion of censure in April 1840 was easily defeated, and the annexation of Hong-Kong and the opening of five ports to foreign trade were important commercial acquisitions. Meanwhile to Palmerston's efforts was due the slave trade convention of the European powers of 1841. There was no object for which Palmerston worked harder throughout his career than the suppression of the slave trade. He frequently spoke on the subject in the House of Commons, where the abolition of slavery was voted in 1833 at a cost of twenty millions; ‘a splendid instance,’ he said, ‘of generosity and justice, unexampled in the history of the world.’
By his conduct of foreign affairs from 1830 to 1841 (continuously, except for the brief interval in 1834–5 during which Peel held office) Palmerston, ‘without any following in parliament, and without much influence in the country, raised the prestige of England throughout Europe to a height which it had not occupied since Waterloo. He had created Belgium, saved Portugal and Spain from absolutism, rescued Turkey from Russia, and the highway to India from France’ (Sanders, Life, p. 79). When he came into office he found eighteen treaties in force; when he left he had added fourteen more, some of the first magnitude. A strong foreign policy had proved, moreover, to be a policy of peace. Apart from the concerns of his department, Palmerston, as was his custom, took little part in the work or talk of the House of Commons. His reputation was far greater abroad than at home. The most important personal event of these years was his marriage, on 11 Dec. 1839, to Lord Melbourne's sister, the widow of Earl Cowper. This lady, by her charm, intellect, tact, and experience, lent a powerful support to her husband, and the informal diplomatic work accomplished at her salon prepared or supplemented the interviews and transactions of the foreign office.
In opposition from 1841 to 1846, during Peel's administration, Palmerston took a larger share in the debates in the House of Commons. His periodical reviews of foreign policy were looked forward to with apprehension by the tory government; for while he said that ministers were simply ‘living upon our leavings,’ and ‘carousing upon the provisions they found in the larder,’ he saw nothing but danger in Lord Aberdeen's ‘antiquated imbecility’ and timid use of these ‘leavings;’ he said the government ‘purchased
