that during his ministry he 'always imposed on the foreign ministers by telling them the naked truth'. Thinking it impossible that the truth should come from the mouth of a statesman, 'they never failed to write information to their respective Courts directly contrary to the assurances he gave them'. Lord Palmerston, at the beginning of the session of 1848, found the formula for the guidance of British Ministers in the expression of Canning, that with each of them the 'interests' of his own country ought to be 'the shibboleth of his policy'.[1] In his intercourse with the Ministers of other States he had desired a certain measure of personal freedom, as he claimed in the notable letter in which he gave an account of the circumstances of his dismissal from the charge of the Foreign Office in 1851: in such intercourse the Foreign Minister could not always act merely as the organ of a previously consulted Cabinet.[2] That the measure of freedom he claimed and exercised had results of the kind that he approved is clear from his declaration to his biographer, that he occasionally found that foreign ministers 'had been deceived by the open manner in which he told them the truth'. 'They went away convinced that so skilful and experienced a diplomatist could not possibly be so frank as he appeared, and, imagining some deep design in his words, acted on their own idea of what he really meant, and so misled their own selves.'[3] 'In politics, in stormy times', said Ségur, writing of Louis XV's secret correspondence, 'true dexterity consists in courageous good faith'; it is by character, frankness and sincerity that durable
- ↑ Ashley, Life of Palmerston, i. 63.
- ↑ Ibid., i. 314. In a speech of self-defence, he asked: 'Is Her Majesty's Minister to sit like a dolt, when a Foreign Ambassador converses on some great event, without giving him any answer or making any observation?'—Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, under date February 3, 1852.
- ↑ Ashley, ii. 301.
