Viscount Palmerston

In October, 1860, an Anglo-French army entered Yuanmingyuan, the palace compound of the Chinese emperor north-west of Beijing. First the French looted the palaces then the British burned them to the ground. The reason why they engaged in this barbarian behavior, they explained, was that they wanted to "civilize the Chinese." This book explains how liberals then as now turn into barbarians when making war in non-European settings. The book discusses 1860, but the implications for today are obvious.

THE DANUBE NAVIGATION AND THE AUSTRIAN-BRITISH TREATY OF JULY 1838
The paper analyses the context in which the British and Austrian governments signed at Vienna, on July 3, 1838, a new treaty of commerce and navigation, which stipulated, in its fourth article, that “all Austrian vessels arriving from the ports of the Danube, as far as Galacz inclusively, shall, together with their cargoes, be admitted into the ports of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and of all the Possessions of Her Britannic Majesty, exactly in the same manner as if such vessels came direct from Austrian ports, with all the privileges and immunities stipulated by the present Treaty of Navigation and Commerce. In like manner, all British vessels, with their cargoes, shall continue to be placed upon the same footing as Austrian vessels, whenever such British vessels shall enter into or depart from the same Ports”. Though initially considering it as advantageous for British merchants and ship-owners, the conservative opposition strongly criticised the treaty, as it was based on a double fallacious foundation: firstly, there were no Austrian ports on the Danube where British sea-going vessels could call, and thus the two signatories agreed upon the terms of entering Turkish ports; secondly, it was contrary to navigation laws to allow Austrian ships loaded at the Danube to sail to British ports. Thus, in 1839, when an Austrian vessel, the “Vallaco”, attempted to enter the port of Gloucester, with a cargo of Danubian grain, it was seized on the ground of violating the navigation laws and then relieved, after the payment of a fine. Proving inoperative and illegal without further legislative measures, the treaty was criticised both by the conservative politicians and the antigovernmental publicists. The paper covers the parliamentary debates and the works of two vocal and influential publicists, William Cargill and David Urquhart, so as to give an idea of the public echo of these agitations, fully revealing the prospects which the British political and economic circles related to the development of the Danube navigation and the exploration of the Romanian Principalities’ resources. In the same time, the treaty is analysed in the context of the strained British-Russian relations in the Near East, after the conclusion of the treaties of Adrianople and Unkiar Skellesi, when the Russian impositions in the way of the Danube navigation became the object of Britain’s diplomatic representations.

The Crimean War took a central place in the British imagination. The news from the warzone traveled faster than ever before. The people in Britain were almost immediately informed about everything that happened on the front. The public expressed its compatriotism vividly. Donations from all over the country were sent to Crimea for the relief of the hardship of soldiers during the conflict. Before and during the war an unexpected change in the attitudes of the British occurred. Francophobia, that used to be dominant in Britain in previous times, was replaced by a new national feeling of hatred towards Russia and its emperor Nicolas I. Russians were blamed, not always without foundation, for all the evils, while the old enemy - the Bonapartist empire of France, was now regarded as a dear friend and ally. Based on the diaries and letters of officers and soldiers, on the Parliamentary debates in the House and, most importantly, on the publications of the British press, this article deals with the exciting recreation of the perception of British contemporaries of the Crimean war, a topic evoked by the need of emphasis on the importance of public opinion in nowadays politics.

After Palmerston’s victory in the 1857 election, the Morning Post proclaimed that he returned to Parliament ‘as the leader of the English people, and as the great designer and administrator of a national party.’ Nowhere did this appear truer than in the West Riding, where his parliamentary opponent Cobden had been forced to abandon his prestigious county seat before crashing to electoral defeat in the contest for the borough of Huddersfield. Yet by 1864, Palmerston’s reputation in the region appeared to have evaporated, with thousands of working men silently lining the streets of Bradford to protest his recalcitrance on reform.

This paper seeks to explore the extent to which Palmerstonian Liberalism existed as a coherent ideology at the constituency level within the West Riding. It examines the ways in which both Liberal and Conservative candidates expressed support for or opposition to Palmerston and his politics, and how they reconciled this with acting as independent representatives of the interests of their constituencies. It examines whether Palmerston was an advantage or a handicap for candidates, and how their use of his name changed over the course of his premiership. By attempting to draw out the core of a specifically Palmerstonian brand of liberalism at the regional level, it seeks to broaden our understanding of an ideology often seen primarily in parliamentary and metropolitan terms.