was suppressed by Austria with Russian assistance, and after
its suppression many leading Hungarians took refuge in Turkish
territory. Austria and Russia addressed demands to the
Porte for their surrender. Lord Palmerston determined to support
the Porte in its refusal to give up these exiles, and actually
sent the British fleet to the Dardanelles with this object. His
success raised the credit of Great Britain and his own reputation.
The presence of the British fleet, however, at the Dardanelles
suggested to him the possibility of settling another long-standing
controversy. For years British subjects settled in Greece had
raised complaints against the Greek government. In particular
Don Pacifico.
Don Pacifico, a Jew, but a native of Gibraltar, complained
that, at a riot, in which his house had been
attacked, he had lost jewels, furniture and papers
which he alleged to be worth more than £30,000. As Lord
Palmerston was unable by correspondence to induce the Greek
government to settle claims of this character, he determined to
enforce them; and by his orders a large number of Greek vessels
were seized and detained by the British fleet. The French
government tendered its good offices to compose the dispute,
and an arrangement was actually arrived at between Lord
Palmerston and the French minister in London. Unfortunately,
before its terms reached Greece, the British minister at Athens
had ordered the resumption of hostilities, and had compelled
the Greek government to submit to more humiliating conditions.
News of this settlement excited the strongest feelings both in
Paris and London. In Paris, Prince Louis Napoleon, who had
acceded to the presidency of the French republic, decided on
recalling his representative from the British court. In London
the Lords passed a vote of censure on Lord Palmerston’s proceedings;
and the Commons only sustained the minister by
adopting a resolution approving in general terms the principles
on which the foreign policy of the country had been conducted.
In pursuing the vigorous policy which characterized his tenure of the foreign office, Lord Palmerston frequently omitted to consult his colleagues in the cabinet, the prime minister, or the queen. In the course of 1849 Her Majesty formally complained to Lord John Russell Palmerston dismissed. that important despatches were sent off without her knowledge; and an arrangement was made under which Lord Palmerston undertook to submit every despatch to the queen through the prime minister. In 1850, after the Don Pacifico debate, the queen repeated these commands in a much stronger memorandum. But Lord Palmerston, though all confidence between himself and the court was destroyed, continued in office. In the autumn of 1851 the queen was much annoyed at hearing that he had received a deputation at the foreign office, which had waited on him to express sympathy with the Hungarian refugees, and to denounce the conduct of “the despots and tyrants” of Russia and Austria, and that he had, in his reply, expressed his gratification at the demonstration. If the queen had had her way, Lord Palmerston would have been removed from the foreign office after this incident. A few days later the coup d’état in Paris led to another dispute. The cabinet decided to do nothing that could wear the appearance of interference in the internal affairs of France; but Lord Palmerston, in conversation with the French minister in London, took upon himself to approve the bold and decisive step taken by the president. The ministry naturally refused to tolerate this conduct, and Lord Palmerston was summarily removed from his office.
The removal of Lord Palmerston led almost directly to the
fall of the Whig government. Before relating, however, the
exact occurrences which produced its defeat, it is necessary to
retrace our steps and describe the policy which it had pursued
in internal matters during the six years in which it had been in
power. Throughout that period the Irish famine had been its
chief anxiety and difficulty. Sir Robert Peel had attempted
to deal with it (1) by purchasing large quantities of Indian corn,
which he had retailed at low prices in Ireland, and (2) by enabling
the grand juries to employ the people on public works, which were
to be paid out of moneys advanced by the state, one-half being
ultimately repayable by the locality. These measures were not
entirely successful. It was found, in practice, that the sale of
Indian corn at low prices by the government checked the efforts
Irish
famine.
of private individuals to supply food; and that the
offer of comparatively easy work to the poor at the
cost of the public, prevented their seeking harder
private work either in Ireland or in Great Britain. The new
government, with this experience before it, decided on trusting
to private enterprise to supply the necessary food, and on throwing
the whole cost of the works which the locality might undertake
on local funds. If the famine had been less severe, this
policy might possibly have succeeded. Universal want, however,
paralysed every one. The people, destitute of other means
of livelihood, crowded to the relief works. In the beginning of
1847 nearly 750,000 persons—or nearly one person out of every
ten in Ireland—were so employed. With such vast multitudes
to relieve, it proved impracticable to exact the labour which
was required as a test of destitution. The roads, which it was
decided to make, were blocked by the labourers employed upon
them, and by the stones, which the labourers were supposed
to crush for their repair. In the presence of this difficulty the
government decided, early in 1847, gradually to discontinue the
relief works, and to substitute for them relief committees charged
with the task of feeding the people. At one time no less than
3,000,000 persons—more than one-third of the entire population
of Ireland—were supported by these committees. At the same
time it decided on adopting two measures of a more permanent
character. The poor law of 1838 had made no provision for the
relief of the poor outside the workhouse, and outdoor relief was
sanctioned by an act of 1847. Irish landlords complained that
their properties, ruined by the famine, and encumbered by the
extravagances of their predecessors, could not bear the cost of
this new poor law; and the ministry introduced and carried
a measure enabling the embarrassed owners of life estates to
sell their property and discharge their liabilities. It is the
constant misfortune of Ireland that the measures intended for
her relief aggravate her distress. The encumbered estates act,
though it substituted a solvent for an insolvent proprietary,
placed the Irish tenants at the mercy of landlords of whom they
had no previous knowledge, who were frequently absentees,
who bought the land as a matter of business, and who dealt
with it on business principles by raising the rent. The new
poor law, by throwing the maintenance of the poor on the soil,
encouraged landlords to extricate themselves from their responsibilities
by evicting their tenants. Evictions were made on a
scale which elicited from Sir Robert Peel an expression of the
deepest abhorrence. The unfortunate persons driven from their
holdings and forced to seek a refuge in the towns, in England,
or—when they could afford it—in the United States, carried
with them everywhere the seeds of disease, the constant handmaid
of famine.
Famine, mortality and emigration left their mark on Ireland.
In four years, from 1845 to 1849, its population decreased from
8,295,000 to 7,256,000, or by more than a million persons; and
the decline which took place at that time went on to the end of
the century. The population of Ireland in 1901 had decreased
to 4,457,000 souls. This fact is the more remarkable, because
Ireland is almost the only portion of the British empire, or
indeed of the civilized world, where such a circumstance has
occurred. We must go to countries like the Asiatic provinces
of Turkey, devastated by Ottoman rule, to find such a diminution
in the numbers of the people as was seen in Ireland during the
last half of the 19th century. It was probably inevitable that
the distress of Ireland should have been followed by a renewal
of Irish outrages. A terrible series of agrarian crimes was committed
in the autumn of 1847; and the ministry felt compelled,
Rebellion
of 1848.
in consequence, to strengthen its hands by a new
measure of coercion, and by suspending the Habeas
Corpus Act in Ireland. The latter measure at once
brought to a crisis the so-called rebellion of 1848, for his share
in which Smith O’Brien, an Irish member of parliament, was
convicted of high treason. The government, however, did not
venture to carry out the grim sentence which the law still applied
