IV
The great and eternal themes of the noble viscount's self-glorification are the services he has rendered to the cause of constitutional liberty all over the Continent. The world owes him, indeed, the inventions of the "constitutional" kingdoms of Portugal, Spain, and Greece,—three political phantoms, only to be compared with the homunculus of Wagner in "Faust." Portugal, under the yoke of that huge hill of flesh, Donna Maria da Gloria, backed by a Coburg, "must be looked upon as one of the substantive Powers of Europe."—(House of Commons, March 10, 1835.)
At the very time the noble viscount uttered these words, six British ships of the line anchored at Lisbon, in order to defend the "substantive" daughter of Don Pedro from the Portuguese people, and to help her to destroy the constitution she had sworn to defend. Spain, at the disposition of another Maria, who, although a notorious sinner, has never founded a Magdalen, "holds out to us a fair, a flourishing, and even a formidable power among the European kingdoms."—(Lord Palmerston, House of Commons, March 10, 1837.)
Formidable, indeed, to the holders of Spanish bonds. The noble lord has even his reasons ready for having delivered the native country of Pericles and Sophocles to the nominal sway of an idiot Bavarian boy. "King Otho belongs to a country where there exists a free constitution."—(House of Commons, August 8, 1832.)
A free constitution in Bavaria, the German Bastia! This passes the licentia poetica of rhetorical flourish, the "legitimate hopes" held out by Spain, and the "substantive" power of Portugal. As to Belgium, all Lord Palmerston did for her was burdening her with a part of the Dutch debt, reducing it by the Province of Luxemburg, and saddling
