is, to recapitulate the leading facts of his public life, and to deduce therefrom the guiding principles of his policy.

We may first, however, tell whatever may be fairly stated of Lord Palmerston's pedigree and personel. The "Peerage" informs us that he is "Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, of Palmerston, County Dublin, and Baron Temple, of Mount Temple, County Sigo, in the Peerage of Ireland, G.C.B., M.P., and P.C. ;' "that he was born October the 20th, 1784; succeeded to his title and property, April, 1802; married, December the 16th, 1839, Emily Mary, Dowager Countess Cowper, eldest daughter of Peniston, first Viscount Melbourne, born April the 4th, 1787. His Lordship's genealogical tree is more deeply rooted than even those of the few noble families who boast of having come over with William the Conqueror-and some of them might with greater truth be said to have come over with William the Dutchman. Its fibres strike into the Homeric age of English history, and clasp around such rocky ribs of earth as our Saxon progenitors. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who founded the abbey of Coventry, and married the famous Lady Godiva, is the putative founder of the Temple family. Among its later and less mythical ornaments is the learned Sir W. Temple, better known as a diplomatist than a literatuer, having effected, in 1668, that "triple alliance" between England, Sweden, and Holland, by which the ambitious designs of Louis XIV. were effectually checked. Lord Palmerston, it will be observed, is sixty-seven years of age. His appearance, however, is comparatively juvenile. He is thus sketched in Mr. Grant's "Random Recollections of the House of Commons :"-" In person, Lord Palmerston is tall and handsome. His face is round, and is of a darkish hue. His hair is black, and always exhibits proofs of the skill and attention of the peruquier. His clothes are in the extreme of fashion. He is very vain of his personal appearance, and is generally supposed to devote more of his time in sacrificing to the Graces than is consistent with the duties of a person who has so much to do with the destinies of Europe. Hence it is that the Times newspaper has fastened upon him the soubriquet of Cupid.' The same writer describes his Lordship

His

as a very indifferent speaker. Either Mr. Grant's judgment is strangely at fault, or Lord Palmerston has greatly improved since the date of the above sketch (1836). There is now no member of the House of Commons who is listened to so eagerly, and whose style of speech is more emphatically effective. Sir Robert Peel expressed the universal opinion when, in the last speech delivered by that eminent and lamented statesman, in the great debate to which we shall have again, and more than once, to advert, he spoke of Lord Palmerston's as "that most able and most temperate speech, which made us all proud of the man who delivered it (loud and general cheering);—and in which he vindicated, with an ability worthy of his name, that course of conduct which he has pursued (renewed cheering)." Lordship's oratory possesses that rare quality of adaptability which renders his speaking as effective on the hustings as on the floor of the House. When his re-election for Tiverton was contested, in 1847, by Mr. Julian Harney, one of the ablest of the Chartist orators, Lord Palmerston's reply was a model of fluency, humour, and point. One expression we remember. In allusion to the famine in Ireland, he spoke of the young, the hale, and the hearty, as becoming skeletons before they became corpses - than which it is scarcely in the power of words to portray more vividly death in its most appalling form. Lady Palmerston, though in her sixty-fourth year, is still a leader of fashion. Her soirées in Carlton-place have succeeded to the celebrity of Lady Holland's, and are regarded as one and a principal source of her husband's political influence.

Cut off, by the Act of Union, from his senatorial inheritance, Lord Palmerston had the alternative of taking his chance of election as an Irish representative peer, or seeking admission to the Imperial House of Commons. He chose the latter. Educated at Harrow, he went, as was then the fashion among the scions of the Whig nobility, -"in stress of politics," as Sydney Smith says, to Edinburgh, where he studied mental philosophy under its celebrated professor, Dugald Stuart. He next entered St. John's College, Cambridge, and took the degree of A.M. On the death of the Premier,

William Pitt, in 1806, our young politician contested the representation of the University with Lord Henry Petty, then a member of the Fox-Granville Cabinet, now the Marquis of Lansdowne, and until lately a colleague of Lord Palmerston's. He was defeated in this contest, but was returned for the Government borough of Bletchingley, and was made a Lord of the Admiralty, under Lord Portland's Ministry, in 1807; and, on the accession of Percival to the Premiership, in 1810, became Secretary-at-War, and continued to hold that important office during the remaining five years of Continental war. He again contested the representation of Cambridge University in 1807, on Lord Henry Petty's elevation to the Peerage, but was defeated; and again in 1811, when he was successful. Of this anxiety to represent the scene of youthful studies and sports in Parliament-the honoured Alma Mater-we have repeated illustrations in the lives of statesmen. To Canning, it was an object of higher ambition than any honour that could be bestowed by Crown or people; and to Mr. Peel, its resignation was the heavy price of conversion on the Roman Catholic question.

The mention of the former of these gentlemen introduces us to the second epoch in Lord Palmerston's career. It was in consequence of Canning's duel with Castlereagh, in 1810, that Palmerston was promoted to the office held by the latter. Canning was for some time out of office, but was sent, in 1814, on an embassy to Lisbon, and on his return was placed on the Board of Control. Refusing to participate in the persecution of Queen Caroline, he threw up that office, and spent a year or two in travel. The suicide of Castlereagh vacated a post that of Foreign Secretary-which none but Canning could fill with the slightest acceptance to the public; and the King reluctantly consented to his recall from Liverpool, whither he had gone for embarkation to India. Canning's accession was much more than a change of men,-it was a total change of policy. When Castlereagh committed suicide, he was on the eve of setting out for the Congress of Verona. Europe was just then astir with democratic movements. The Iberian and Italian peninsulas were in arms for constitutional freedom, and Greece was fighting for inde

pendence of Turkey. To suppress these agitations was the object of the Congress, and to that design Castlereagh would have offered no opposition. Canning, on the contrary, deeply sympathised with these struggles, as a man; and, as a Minister of England, would, at least, not consent to their repression by foreign powers. The result was,

the virtual dissolution of the Holy Alliance by the resistance of England to its policy. True, Spain was invaded by a French army, and the Italian despots reinstated by Austrian arms; but Portugal was protected from a counter-revolution, and the independence of the Spanish colonies recognised; "the New World was called into existence to redress the balance of the Old ;" and the right of peoples to choose their own form of Government, was formally declared by the British Minister. In this great change Lord Palmerston fully concurred. He was not one of the many who deserted Mr. Canning at the period of his elevation to the Premiership, and of the fierce assaults upon him of inveterate Tories and unappreciating Whigs. On the contrary, he was known as one of Canning's closest friends and adherents; continued in office after his death, under Lord Goderich; was one of the five " Canningites" who had seats in the Wellington Cabinet, and seceded with Mr. Huskisson.

Though he had joined with Mr. Canning in his anomalous resistance to Parliamentary Reform, Palmerston became Foreign Secretary in Earl Grey's Cabinet; fought with them the battle for "the bill;" sacrificed to his Liberalism the representation of the University of Cambridge (in which he was succeeded by Mr. Goulburn); and was returned, at the exciting election of 1831, by the county of South Hants. The continental revolutions of 1830 tested at once the foreign policy of the new Ministry. The Duke of Wellington had frankly recognised the dynasty of Louis Philippe-Lord Palmeston sought to cherish an al

liance with him against the absolutist powers. To the suppression of Polish independence, they offered only verbal opposition; and to the gallant people who appealed for substantial aid, only sympathy in struggle, or an asylum in defeat. The Belgians were more fortunate. United to Holland by the

intervention was just, and its practice expedient. To this question Sir Robert Peel addressed himself:-"The honourable and learned gentleman (Mr. Roebuck) says there shall be no mistake as to the purport and import of my vote; that it is not a resolution simply of approval of the policy of the noble lord, but a resolution the intention and meaning of which is this:We are to tell the people of all foreign countries with whom we have any relations, that our power, so far as it is physically concerned, is not to be employed to coerce their rulers; but that in so far as the moral influence of this country and of this Government is concerned, the world shall know that we are friendly wheresoever we find a large endeavour, on the part of any body of men, to vindicate to themselves the right of self-government..

I am asked, what is the antagonistic principle ! I have been challenged over and over again to declare it. I will declare it. The principle for which I contend is the principle for which every statesman for the last fifty years has contended; namely, non-interference with the domestic affairs of other countries without some clear and undeniable necessity arising from circumstances affecting the interests of your own country. That is the antagonistic principle for which I contend. I affirm that the principle for which you contend is the principle contended against by Mr. Fox, when it was employed in favour of arbitrary government; which was resisted by Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning at the Congress of Verona; the principle which was asserted by the Convention of France on the 19th of November, 1792, and was abandoned by that same Convention on the 13th of April, 1793, because France found it utterly impossible to adhere to it consistently with the maintenance of peace.

It is

my firm belief that you will not advance the cause of constitutional government by attempting to dictate to other nations. If you do, your intentions will be mistaken; you will rouse feelings upon which you do not calculate; you will invite opposition to Government; and beware that the time does not arrive when, frightened by your own interference, you withdraw your countenance from those whom you have excited, and leave upon their mind the

bitter recollection that you have betrayed them. If you succeed, I doubt whether or no the institutions that take root under your patronage will be lasting. Constitutional liberty will be best worked out by those who aspire to freedom by their own efforts."

With the recent retirement of Lord Palmerston fron the position he has filled for so many years, with such conspicuous ability, and with such weighty results to the destinies of Europe, we have nothing to do but to chronicle the fact. Within a few days the cause of that retirement will be authoritatively divulged. Then, too, it will be shown whether the disciple and successor of Canning is the deliberate abettor of a political crime greater than any committed by him in whose name the criminal is powerful, and against whom Canning invoked the vengeance of Heaven and the hostility of man, or whether the statesman, whose life has been consistent in its progressive developments, is prepared to take a position above the moral altitude of his late colleagues; and while free from the embarrassing expediency of his previous policy, possibly involving a sharp and decisive struggle. We put forth here no political opinions; but we suggest that the visit of Kossuth to England may prove the initiative of a new principle of international relation. "The hands-off doctrine," as it is picturesquely designated by the Americans, the demand that no one Power intermeddle between the Government and the people of another,-is free from the objections urged by Sir Robert Peel, in the luminous sentence quoted above, against democratic propagandism, or intervention on behalf of constitutional liberty. We are slipping, however, unconsciously, into the second part of our task; for the discharge of which we have not this month the necessary space-nor, indeed, complete material. To show a continuous and consistent principle running through Lord Palmerston's protracted and complicated toils, it will be necessary to review the voluminous letters and speeches, in which his opinions are enunciated, and his acts defended. That we hope to accomplish in our next.

DR. CHALMERS. WE left Dr. Chalmers in the quiet class-room of St. Andrew's, a small and secluded academy, with a wellstocked library, and an average of some hundred students. It was scarcely a field of labour for a man of such comprehensive views of usefulness and such impulsive energy of character. For a time, however, he was happy in congenial pursuits, and the society of some dozen members of the Senatus

Academicus. He considered a professor's chair in a university chiefly devoted to the education of a Christian ministry as the most important and responsible position the Church could offer him, and continued to fill this office successively in St. Andrew's and Edinburgh till the disruption of the Scottish Establishment, when he became the Principal of the new college of the Free Church. In the beginning of the year 1827 the chair of moral philosophy in the University of London was offered to the acceptance of Dr. Chalmers, and declined. On the 31st of October, in the same year, the Town Council and Magistrates of Edinburgh unanimously elected him to fill the vacant Professorship of Divinity in that University. Numerous opportunities of testing the sincerity and power of this preference for academic labours were furnished, by offers of promotion to more popular and lucrative situations. In 1831, Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, patron of the West Church, in Greenock, requested Dr. Chalmers to accept this, the richest ecclesiastical living in Scotland, whose endowments nearly doubled those of the office he was then filling. Doctor gratefully declined the nomination, and, in doing so, said,-" You have conferred upon me a substantial favour by having placed within my reach a benefice o lucrative.

The

You

have enabled me to say, in language which cannot be mistaken, in what estimation I hold the professorships of theology throughout Scotland, and in pleading, whether for the virtuous patronage or for the adequate endowment of these high offices, your offer of the parish of Greenock will effectually shield me from any ungenerous imputation to which I might otherwise have been exposed."

It is quite possible, indeed, that in

this preference Chalmers may have been unconsciously influenced, to some extent, by a craving for greater opportunities of association with minds of a kindred order to his own, than the mercantile community of Glasgow had afforded him. If so, he could scarcely have found a sphere congenial to him until his removal to the classical circles of Edinburgh, peculiarly rich at that time in distinguished men, and possessing the most intellectual society of any city in the world. Removing here from the secluded sea-port of St. Andrew's, Dr. Chalmers must have felt himself transported to a new and most delightful world. But to whatever extent he may have misunderstood his strong predilection for the office of a professor in preference to that of a parish minister, it cannot be questioned that he exercised a vast influence upon the rising ministry of the Kirk, and trained up an entirely new order of divines, for whom events were rapidly preparing a new field of exertion. Nor is it less unquestionable that, in declining a preferment which would have rendered the resignation of his professorship necessary, he maintained a conscience void of offence, as in the discharge of an imperative duty. The indifference to pecuniary advancement, when it must be purchased by a sacrifice of either predilection or conscientiousness, which is displayed in his letter to Sir Michael Stewart, and his chivalrous fearlessness, both in paying what justice demanded from him, and in asserting what justice owed to him, received a singular illustration during his professor's life at St. Andrew's. A difference between Chalmers and his colleagues. It was not the first time; for no man was more unscrupulous in opposing abuses, and he had just got into hot water by resisting the appointment to one of the city churches of a professor whose hands were already full of his own proper work. But he felt he was right, and cared for no man's resentment. The occasion of the present dispute was a part of the administration of the college funds, called the Candlemas Appropriation. The professors' salaries had originally been fixed by act of Parliament in 1747, but in 1769 and 1779 they had made a fixed addition to their incomes, on account of the increased expense of

H

arose

living, and the want of a house and a common table, which had originally been provided out of the college reveuues. An increasing surplus was still left for repairs and other general items of expenditure. From the year 1784 downward, a further augmentation was made, the professors year by year laying aside what they deemed necessary for current outlay, and dividing the remainder amongst themselves. Dr. Chalmers refused to receive his share. He communicated his scruples to the Senatus Academicus, and tried to persuade his colleagues that they had no right thus to help themselves, and his remonstrances being resented as amounting to a charge of malversation, his position in the little academic commonwealth was rendered sufficiently painful. But he was unmoved, and the sum offered him was laid by until it accumulated to upwards of £700. When a Royal Commission was appointed for the visitation of colleges in Scotland, he hailed the opportunity of bringing this subject under their notice, that it might be authoritatively settled. It was not

until 1829-six months after his removal from St. Andrew's to Edinburgh -that he received the decision of the Commissioners, who resolved that, "under the circumstances, there was no good reason why Dr. Chalmers should not receive and accept of the sum so due to him." Regarding this as a competent award, he made no further objection to the receipt of the money; but his surprise and indignation were great, when, on the appearance of the official report, it was stated that "the Principal and Professors appear to have made these appropriations without any authority,"-a charge from which certainly his scrupulously honourable conduct should have expressly exempted him. Dr. Chalmers was too sensitive and impetuous to remain silent under this calumny. "When receiving that money, under your sanction," he says, in a published letter to the Commissioners, "I did not understand that I had given up to you, in exchange for it, the power of aspersing my character and good name." In sending a copy of this pamphlet to Sir Robert Peel, he excuses the warmth of his self-vindication :-"In these fearful times, when all our establishments are in danger, I hold it of more

importance that, situated as I am, at the highest fountain head of the Scottish Church, the stain which the representation of the Commissioners would have fastened on my character should be done away, than that either their feelings should be spared, or even that their reputations should be left entire. I am a thorough Conservative, but I feel persuaded that it is only by a resolute adherence to principle, without regard to persons, on the part of those who are influentially or conspicuously placed in society, that our institutions will stand."

Dr. Chalmers had now attained an age and reputation which warranted his taking a prominent part in the discussions of the General Assembly of the Kirk; and his vast powers of eloquence, his enthusiastic temperament, and an energy and perseverance which

no

obstacle could daunt, speedily caused him to be hailed as the leader of the Evangelical, or, as it was afterwards more generally called, the Nonintrusion party. Indeed, he took so conspicuous a part in preparing and conducting the great ecclesiastical movement, which, before his death, convulsed the heart of Scotland, that one would fail in writing his biography who neglected to trace the origin and development of this singular episode in a nation's history.

The men who were its chief actors had been, for the most part, pupils of Chalmers. In the class-room of the college, at Edinburgh, they had imbibed their principles of action from his lips, and conceived an ardent attachment and admiration for their preceptor. They were the members of a great school of which he was the master. Those who had not sat at his feet as a teacher, had, nevertheless, drunk of his spirit. They were mostly his juniors in years, had been captivated by his eloquence, and caught the infection of his enthusiasm. had able coadjutors and followers. Candlish and Welsh, Gordon and Cunningham, lent the movement the invaluable aid of their several great qualities; but the origin of the Free Church of Scotland-the fact of its birth, and the form of its development -were, unquestionably, the work of Thomas Chalmers. Itis his monument.

He

The foundation of this great controversy was laid centuries back. In the