129 Facts About Lord Palmerston

Lord Palmerston dominated British foreign policy during the period 1830 to 1865, when Britain stood at the height of its imperial power.

Lord Palmerston held office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865.

Lord Palmerston began his parliamentary career as a Tory, defected to the Whigs in 1830, and became the first prime minister from the newly formed Liberal Party in 1859.

Lord Palmerston first attained Cabinet rank in 1827, when George Canning became prime minister, but like other Canningites, he resigned from office one year later.

Lord Palmerston remains most recent British prime minister to die in office.

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Lord Palmerston's alleged weaknesses included mishandling of personal relations, and continual disagreements with the Queen over the royal role in determining foreign policy.

Lord Palmerston's family derived their title from the Peerage of Ireland, although he rarely visited Ireland.

Lord Palmerston's father was The 2nd Viscount Palmerston, an Anglo-Irish peer, and his mother was Mary, a daughter of Benjamin Mee, a London merchant.

Whilst in Italy Lord Palmerston acquired an Italian tutor, who taught him to speak and write fluent Italian.

Lord Palmerston inherited a vast country estate in the north of County Sligo in the west of Ireland.

Lord Palmerston was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Commander of the Romsey Volunteers.

In February 1806, Lord Palmerston was defeated in the election for the University of Cambridge constituency.

Lord Palmerston entered Parliament as Tory MP for the pocket borough of Newport on the Isle of Wight in June 1807.

Lord Palmerston justified the attack by peroration with reference to the ambitions of Napoleon to take control of the Danish fleet:.

Lord Palmerston's speech was so successful that Spencer Perceval, who formed his government in 1809, asked him to become Chancellor of the Exchequer, then a less important office than it was to become from the mid-nineteenth century.

Lord Palmerston preferred the office of Secretary at War, charged exclusively with the financial business of the army.

The post of Chancellor of the Exchequer was offered to Lord Palmerston, who accepted it, but this appointment was frustrated by some intrigue between King George IV and John Charles Herries.

Lord Palmerston remained Secretary at War, though he gained a seat in the cabinet for the first time.

On 26 February 1828 Lord Palmerston delivered a speech in favour of Catholic Emancipation.

Lord Palmerston felt that it was unseemly to relieve the "imaginary grievances" of the Dissenters from the established church while at the same time "real afflictions pressed upon the Catholics" of Great Britain.

Lord Palmerston supported the campaign to pass the Reform Bill to extend the franchise to more men in Britain.

Lord Palmerston had already urged Wellington into active interference in the Greek War of Independence, and he had made several visits to Paris, where he foresaw with great accuracy the impending overthrow of the Bourbons.

Lord Palmerston was no orator; his language was unstudied, and his delivery somewhat embarrassed; but generally he found the words to say the right thing at the right time, and to address the House of Commons in the language best adapted to the capacity and the temper of his audience.

Lord Palmerston entered the office of Foreign Secretary with great energy and continued to exert his influence there for twenty years; he held it from 1830 to 1834,1835 to 1841, and 1846 to 1851.

Basically, Lord Palmerston was responsible for the whole of British foreign policy from the time of the French and Belgian Revolutions of 1830 until December 1851.

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Lord Palmerston had no grievance against Russia and while he privately sympathised with the Polish cause, in his role as foreign minister he rejected Polish demands.

Lord Palmerston therefore focused chiefly on achieving a peaceful settlement of the crisis in Belgium.

The British solution involved the independence of Belgium, which Lord Palmerston believed would greatly contribute to the security of Britain, but any solution was not straightforward.

Lord Palmerston conceived and executed the plan of a quadruple alliance of the constitutional states of the West to serve as a counterpoise to the northern alliance.

Lord Palmerston was greatly interested by the diplomatic questions of Eastern Europe.

Lord Palmerston regarded the maintenance of the authority of the Sublime Porte as the chief barrier against both these developments.

Lord Palmerston had long maintained a suspicious and hostile attitude towards Russia, whose autocratic government offended his liberal principles and whose ever-growing size challenged the strength of the British Empire.

Lord Palmerston was angered by the 1833 Treaty of Hunkar Iskelesi, a mutual assistance pact between Russia and the Ottomans, but was annoyed and hostile towards David Urquhart, the creator of the Vixen affair, running the Russian blockade of Circassia in the mid-1830s.

The permanent author of this magazine was Karl Marx, who stated "from the time of Peter the Great until the Crimean war, there was a secret agreement between the London and St Petersburg offices, and that Lord Palmerston was a corrupt tool the Tsar policy".

Lord Palmerston's policy was triumphant, and the author of it had won a reputation as one of the most powerful statesmen of the age.

However Lord Palmerston Napier wanted to provoke a revolution in China that would open trade.

Lord Palmerston thus achieved his main goals of diplomatic equality and opening China to trade.

Lord Palmerston leaked secrets to the press, published selected documents, and released letters to give himself more control and more publicity, all the while stirring up British nationalism.

Lord Palmerston feuded with The Times, edited by Thomas Barnes, which did not play along with his propaganda ploys.

In 1839, Lord Palmerston married his mistress of many years, the noted Whig hostess Emily Lamb, widow of Peter Leopold Louis Francis Nassau Clavering-Cowper, 5th Earl Cowper and sister of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, prime minister.

Lord Palmerston resided at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, his wife's inheritance.

Lord Palmerston believed that peace with France was not to be relied on, and indeed that war between the two countries waser or later inevitable.

Russell replied to critics that Lord Palmerston's policies had "a tendency to produce war" but that he had advanced British interests without a major conflict, if not entirely peaceably.

Brown argues that as foreign secretary from 1846 to 1851 and subsequently as prime minister, Lord Palmerston sought to maintain the balance of power in Europe, sometimes even aligning with France to do so.

Lord Palmerston financed the emigration of starving Irish tenants across the Atlantic to North America as did Petty-Fitzmaurice to equal notoriety; however the punitive backwardness of not sponsoring any emigration by comparator Ulick de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde and his son likely can be ascribed to more deaths.

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Lord Palmerston maintained that the existence of Austria as a great power north of the Alps was an essential element in the system of Europe.

Lord Palmerston supported the Sicilians against the King of Naples, and even allowed arms to be sent them from the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich.

Lord Palmerston rejected the terms he might have obtained for Piedmont.

In spite of what Lord Palmerston termed his judicious bottle-holding, the movement he had encouraged and applauded, but to which he could give no material aid, was everywhere subdued.

When Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian democrat and leader of its constitutionalists, landed in England in 1851 to wide applause, Lord Palmerston proposed to receive him at Broadlands, a design which was only prevented by a peremptory vote of the cabinet.

On many occasions, Lord Palmerston had taken important steps without their knowledge, which they disapproved.

In January 1850, Lord Palmerston took advantage of Don Pacifico's claims on the Greek government, and blockaded the port of Piraeus in the kingdom of Greece.

The Queen addressed a minute to the Prime Minister in which she recorded her dissatisfaction at the manner in which Lord Palmerston evaded the obligation to submit his measures for the royal sanction as failing in sincerity to the Crown.

Lord Palmerston privately congratulated Napoleon on his triumph, noting that Britain's constitution was rooted in history but that France had had five revolutions since 1789, with the French Constitution of 1848 being a "day-before-yesterday tomfoolery which the scatterbrain heads of Marrast and Tocqueville invented for the torment and perplexity of the French nation".

Lord Palmerston was weakened because Parliament, where he had great support, was not in session.

Lord Palmerston continued to have wide approval among the newspapers, elite opinion, and the middle class voters.

Lord Palmerston's popularity led to distrust among rivals and especially at the Royal Court.

Lord Palmerston's fall demonstrates the lack of power of public opinion in a pre-democratic era.

However, Lord Palmerston kept his public support and the growing influence of public opinion steadily increased his political strength in the 1850s and 1860s.

When she enquired after the latest news, Lord Palmerston allegedly replied: "There is no definite news, Madam, but it seems certain that the Turks have crossed the Danube".

Lord Palmerston passed the Factory Act 1853, which removed loopholes in previous Factory Acts and outlawed all labour by young persons between 6pm and 6am.

Lord Palmerston attempted to pass a Bill that confirmed the rights of workers to combine, but the House of Lords rejected it.

Lord Palmerston introduced the Truck Act which stopped the practice of employers paying workmen in goods instead of money, or forcing them to purchase goods from shops owned by the employers.

Lord Palmerston oversaw the passage of the Vaccination Act 1853 into law, which was introduced as a private member's bill, and which Palmerston persuaded the government to support.

Lord Palmerston opposed this practice on public-health grounds and ensured that all bodies were buried in a churchyard or public cemetery.

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Lord Palmerston reduced the period in which prisoners could be held in solitary confinement from eighteen months to nine months.

Lord Palmerston ended transportation to Tasmania for prisoners by passing the Penal Servitude Act 1853, which reduced the maximum sentences for most offences.

Lord Palmerston passed the Reformatory Schools Act 1854 which gave the Home Secretary powers to send juvenile prisoners to a reformatory school instead of to prison.

Lord Palmerston was forced to accept an amendment which ensured that the prisoner had to have spent at least three months in jail first.

When in October 1854 Lord Palmerston visited Parkhurst gaol and conversed with three boy inmates, he was impressed by their behaviour and ordered that they be sent to a reformatory school.

Lord Palmerston found the ventilation in the cells unsatisfactory and ordered improvement.

Lord Palmerston argued in Cabinet, after Russian troops concentrated on the Ottoman border in February 1853, that the Royal Navy should join the French fleet in the Dardanelles as a warning to Russia.

Lord Palmerston argued for immediate decisive action - that the Royal Navy should be sent to the Dardanelles to assist the Turkish navy and that Britain should inform Russia of London's intention to go to war if the Imperial Russian Army invaded the principalities.

Lord Palmerston interpreted this as the result of British weakness and thought that if the Russians had been told that if they invaded the principalities the British and French fleets would enter the Bosphorus or the Black Sea, they would have been deterred.

In Cabinet, Lord Palmerston argued for a vigorous prosecution of the war against Russia by Britain, but Aberdeen objected, as he wanted peace.

Clarendon refused, and so Lord Palmerston rejected Derby's offer; Derby subsequently gave up trying to form a government.

Aged 70 years, 109 days, Lord Palmerston became the oldest person in British political history to be appointed Prime Minister for the first time.

Lord Palmerston took a hard line on the war; he wanted to expand the fighting, especially in the Baltic where St Petersburg could be threatened by superior British naval power.

Lord Palmerston's goal was to permanently reduce the Russian threat to Europe.

However, Lord Palmerston found the peace terms too soft on Russia and so persuaded Napoleon III of France to break off the peace negotiations until Sevastopol could be captured, putting the allies in a stronger negotiating position.

Lord Palmerston supported Parkes while in Parliament the British policy was strongly attacked on moral grounds by Richard Cobden and William Gladstone.

Lord Palmerston's stance proved popular among a large section of the workers, the growing middle classes and the country's commercial and financial interests.

Nonetheless, Lord Palmerston was determined to get the bill through, which he did.

Lord Palmerston agreed to transfer the authority of the East India Company to the Crown.

Lord Palmerston introduced a Conspiracy to Murder bill, which made it a felony to plot in Britain to murder someone abroad.

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Lord Palmerston rejected an offer from Disraeli to become Conservative leader, but he attended the meeting of 6 June 1859 in Willis's Rooms at St James Street, where the Liberal Party was formed.

Historians usually regard Lord Palmerston, starting in 1859, as the first Liberal prime minister.

Lord Palmerston used to look fixedly at the paper before him, saying nothing until there was a lull in Gladstone's outpouring.

Lord Palmerston then rapped the table and said cheerfully: 'Now, my Lords and gentlemen, let us go to business'.

Lord Palmerston told another friend that he thought Gladstone would wreck the Liberal Party and end up in a madhouse.

When in May 1864 the MP Edward Baines introduced a Reform Bill in the Commons, Lord Palmerston ordered Gladstone to not commit himself and the government to any particular scheme.

Lord Palmerston believed that this was incitement to the working class to begin agitating for reform and told Gladstone: "What every Man and Woman too have a Right to, is to be well governed and under just Laws, and they who propose a change ought to shew that the present organization does not accomplish those objects".

French intervention in Italy had created an invasion scare and Lord Palmerston established a Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom which reported in 1860.

Lord Palmerston said that he had received so many resignation letters from Gladstone that he feared that they would set fire to the chimney.

Lord Palmerston had first appointed Richard Lyons to the Foreign Service in 1839, and was a close friend of his father, Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons, with whom he had vehemently advocated increased aggression in the Crimean War.

When Lyons resigned from the position of American Ambassador, Lord Palmerston attempted to persuade him to return, but Lyons declined the offer.

Lord Palmerston ordered reinforcements sent to the Province of Canada because he was convinced the North would make peace with the South and then invade Canada.

Lord Palmerston was very pleased with the Confederate victory at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, but 15 months later he felt:.

Lord Palmerston called the action "a declared and gross insult", demanded the release of the two diplomats and ordered 3,000 troops to Canada.

Lord Palmerston was convinced the presence of troops in Canada persuaded the US to acquiesce.

Lord Palmerston rejected all further efforts of the Confederacy to gain British recognition.

Lord Palmerston's stance derived from the traditional belief that France was the greater threat to Britain and was much stronger than Austria and Prussia.

Lord Palmerston himself favoured Denmark but he had long been pacifistic in this matter and did not want Britain to become militarily involved.

Russell urged Lord Palmerston to send a fleet to Copenhagen and persuade Napoleon III that he should mobilise his French soldiers on the borders of Prussia.

Lord Palmerston replied that the fleet could not do much to assist the Danes in Copenhagen and that nothing should be done to persuade Napoleon to cross the Rhine.

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Lord Palmerston told the Austrian ambassador that if his fleet entered the Baltic to attack Denmark the result would be war with Britain.

Lord Palmerston accepted Russell's suggestion that the war should be settled at a conference, but at the ensuing London Conference of 1864 in May and June the Danes refused to accept their loss of Schleswig-Holstein.

Lord Palmerston said the fleet could not be sent in view of the deep division in the Cabinet.

The Conservatives replied that Palmerston had betrayed the Danes and a vote of censure in the House of Lords was carried by nine votes.

The result of the vote was announced at 2:30 in the morning, and when Lord Palmerston heard the news he ran up the stairs to the Ladies' Gallery and embraced his wife.

Lord Palmerston won another general election in July 1865, increasing his majority.

The leadership of Lord Palmerston was a great electoral asset to the Liberal Party.

Lord Palmerston then had to deal with the outbreak of Fenian violence in Ireland.

Lord Palmerston believed that the Fenian agitation was caused by America.

Lord Palmerston advised that more armaments be sent to Canada and more troops be sent to Ireland.

Lord Palmerston began thinking of a new friendship with France as "a sort of preliminary defensive alliance" against the United States and looked forward to Prussia becoming more powerful as this would balance against the growing threat from Russia.

Lord Palmerston enjoyed robust health in old age, living at Romsey in his home Foxhills, built in about 1840.

Lord Palmerston then had a violent fever but his condition stabilised for the next few days.

Lord Palmerston was the fifth person not of royalty to be granted a state funeral.

Lord Palmerston has traditionally been viewed as "a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad".

Lord Palmerston believed that the British constitution as secured by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was the best which human hands had made, with a constitutional monarchy subject to the laws of the land but retaining some political power.

Lord Palmerston supported the rule of law and opposed further democratisation after the Reform Act 1832.

Lord Palmerston wished to see this liberal system of a mixed constitution in-between the two extremes of absolute monarchy and republican democracy replace the absolute monarchies on the Continent.

Lord Palmerston believed it was in Britain's interests that liberal governments be established on the Continent.

Lord Palmerston practised brinkmanship and bluff in that he was prepared to threaten war to achieve Britain's interests.

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When in 1886 Lord Rosebery became foreign secretary in Gladstone's government, John Bright, a longstanding radical critic of Palmerston, asked Rosebery if he had read about Palmerston's policies as foreign secretary.

Lord Palmerston lived for her honour, and she will cherish his memory.

Lord Palmerston was an avowed abolitionist whose attempts to abolish the slave trade was one of the most consistent elements of his foreign policy.

Lord Palmerston is once said to have claimed of a particularly intractable problem relating to Schleswig-Holstein, that only three people had ever understood the problem: one was Prince Albert, who was dead; the second was a German professor, who had gone insane; and the third was himself, who had forgotten it.