THE STORY OF DON PACIFICO.

THE story of Don Pacifico is interesting, dramatic, and peculiar, and emblematic in the highest degree of Lord Palmerston’s manner of feeling and condition of mind. In it he will be seen carrying British honesty, British honour, and British determination to the very verge of absurdity and arrogance, till he pushes his principles almost beyond the verge. But who shall say what is absurdity? And he is held to have been thoroughly triumphant in the whole affair, because at last he got a majority of the House of Commons to vote that he had been splendidly English and splendidly honest rather than absurd and arrogant. We may be sure that the statesmen of other nations ridiculed him, but that they did so with a mixture of awe, knowing that it was Palmerston,—and knowing that Palmerston must be allowed to have his own way in such matters,—unless he were stopped by his own countrymen. And a great attempt was made by his own countrymen to keep him down, and to prove that he had been ridiculous. Lord Stanley, who, since 1844, had been in the Upper House, brought a direct motion against him, in which he was supported by Lord Aberdeen and Lord Canning; and he carried his resolution by a majority of thirty-seven. Lord Stanley had not forgotten the accusations of official{113} ignorance made against him by Lord Palmerston; and Lord Aberdeen’s memory was still laden with the bitterness of that “example of antiquated imbecility,” as which he had been represented to the House of Commons. For amenities such as these Lord Palmerston was too wise to expect in return aught but similar amenities.

“I can only say,” said Lord Stanley, “that I have arisen from the perusal of these papers,”—and he describes the documents in his hands, all referring to claims made by Lord Palmerston against Greece, as a weary waste of papers,—“with regret and shame for the part which my country has played.” Then he takes the proud ground that the weakest and the strongest nations should in such matters be treated alike; and he asks whether such has been the case—imputing, of course, to Lord Palmerston the degrading fault that he has been imperious only against the weak. Then he recapitulates the absurd cases for redress as to which Lord Palmerston sent the British Fleet to the Pir?us,—a fleet larger, as Lord Aberdeen goes on to say, than that with which Nelson conquered at Trafalgar. Can this, we wonder, have been true? There is the matter of Stellio Sumachi, the blacksmith, which was of itself a very trivial affair. Then there was the question of two of our war vessels, the Fant?me and the Spitfire. A midshipman out of one had landed in plain clothes where he ought not to have landed, and officers of the one ship were taken to have been officers of the other. This had given ground for great offence to British honour. There was the plunder of some Ionian boats at Salcina, Ionians being regarded in Athens as being Greeks well able to take care of themselves,—whereas to Lord Palmerston they were British subjects. Then there was the case of certain Ionians who{114} had laid themselves down in the street to get rid of the fleas which were intolerable in their houses. With these men the police had interfered, as they certainly should not have interfered with British subjects afraid of fleas. Then there was a bit of ground, which Mr. Finlay had bought for ￡10 or ￡20, amounting to less than an acre. This was included in King Otho’s garden without payment, whereas a Britisher should, of course, have been paid,—and Mr. Finlay demanded about ￡1,500. He did ultimately get ￡1,000. And lastly there was Don Pacifico, the Jew. It had been the custom of the Greeks at a certain festival to burn the figure of Judas; but one of the Rothschilds had come to Athens, and it was thought that this Christian ceremony would be distasteful to him. Therefore the Greeks omitted to burn the Judas, but did burn Don Pacifico’s house, and among the rioters who burnt it was the son of the Greek Minister of War. Now, Don Pacifico, though his relations were supposed to have been Portuguese-Jews, had resided at Gibraltar, or, as some said, had been born there. He had at any rate made out for himself some claim to British citizenship. It sufficed for Lord Palmerston; but the amount of compensation claimed by Don Pacifico was, among the many absurdities, the most absurd. There were certain Portuguese documents which were represented as of immense value. They had been burned, and ￡26,000 had been charged for them, though they seem to have consisted only of letters from Don Pacifico in which he made his claim, and from the Portuguese Government denying that anything was due to him. All these points Lord Stanley exposed, and he ended by moving; “That, while the House fully recognizes the right and duty of the Government to secure to her{115} Majesty’s subjects residing in Foreign States the full protection of the laws of those States, it regrets to find, by the correspondence recently laid upon the table by her Majesty’s command, that various claims against the Greek Government, doubtful in points of justice, or exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by coercive measures, directed against the commerce and people of Greece, and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with other Powers.” He carried his motion, as I have said, by thirty-seven votes. During the debate, Lord Aberdeen spoke of the “cry of indignation” which had been called forth throughout Europe by the doings of our fleet; and Lord Cardigan threatened the peers with a great war.

The joy was great among Lord Palmerston’s enemies; and it will be understood that they were numerous. He had against him generally the diplomacy of Europe. First of all the French were very hostile to him. The hostility of Thiers and Guizot still remained, kept warm among the archives of the French Foreign Office. And the Austrians and the Prussians and the Russians were all hostile to him;—and the Bavarians, of whose king, Otho, the young king of Greece, was son. The French, as he complains, were treating him with gross ingratitude. When the French were making demands on Morocco, which Palmerston himself describes as “unusual and exaggerated,” had not our consul, “first spontaneously, and then by instructions from me,” and “by an infinity of trouble,” talked the Moors into paying? But, he tells Lord Normanby, that when we ask for our own, “we find the French Minister, faithful to the course which French diplomacy has for years past pursued in Greece, encouraging the Greek Government to refuse,{116} and thus doing all he can to drive us to the necessity of employing force to obtain redress.” And even among Englishmen a strong party has been made against him. Even his own friend Lord Normanby, his own ambassador in Paris, does not seem to have assisted him with his whole heart in what he was doing. “As to the melodrama which you talk of, it seems to me to have been the right course.” “But we have all along been thwarted in Greece by the intrigues and cabals of French agents, who have encouraged the Greek Government to ill-use our subjects and to refuse us satisfaction, and of course Thouvenel is frantic that at last we have lost patience.” And Russia is as hostile as France. He writes to Lord Bloomfield; “We do not mind the Russian swagger and attempt to bully about Greece. We shall pursue our own course steadily and firmly, and we must and shall obtain the satisfaction we require.” “I have been so busy fighting my battle with France, that I have been obliged to put off for a time taking up again my skirmish with Russia.” “There have been in London within the last week letters from Madame Lieven to friends of hers here, abusing me like a pickpocket.” And he complains of our own newspapers. In writing to the Prime Minister, he talks of “the boastful threats made by the Times newspaper as to what Russia would do to put a stop to our proceedings in Greece.” Then again he writes to Lord John as to a question which is to be brought before the Cabinet on the next day. He has already obtained a deposit from the Greek Government, and the question is mooted whether the deposit shall not be returned. “Normanby’s conversation with the President brings another question under the consideration of the Cabinet. Louis Napoleon would be satisfied,{117} as I infer, if to the arbitration we added the restitution of the deposit, and this the Cabinet will have to consider to-morrow. The reasons for and against seem to me to be much as follows.” He then proceeds to explain why he thinks the deposit should be kept in hand, and he evidently feels that the Cabinet may be against him. Indeed, he fears that many are opposed to him who should be his friends, as well as all who are naturally his enemies. And we can see that it is not about this affair of Don Pacifico that his mind is anxious. Don Pacifico is such a flea as that which disturbed the slumbers of the British Ionians. And Greece, with its freedom, of which by this time Palmerston had become nearly sick, was not much more. Shall he, or shall he not, be able to hold his head on high amidst the deep Court waters, in which he had so long been struggling? For the battle with him was one against the absolutism of rulers, on behalf of the constitutional rule of nations. With the rulers were their favourites and Ministers,—and indeed masters; for who need be told that a Metternich was, in fact, master in the Court of Vienna? “We have long had all these things in our own hands,” we can imagine they would say to themselves. “All the glory and the power, and the silks and the satins, and the soft words and courtly shows of imperial rule; and here is this man, who has crept in among us; and has become by his own audacity the first of our order, and is daily lecturing us as to the way in which we shall do our business! And at the bottom is he not as abominable a Revolutionist as any of them? Are we not, among us, able to put him down; and shall we not use the power which, by the excess of his own arrogance, he has now given us?” Thus it is we can imagine that they spoke{118} among themselves, not without sundry endeavours to inveigle his own servants in their own Courts. And we can imagine also in what language Palmerston spoke to himself, when he looked round about him in the world and saw what was going on. He had been continually prompted to arrogance by the conviction that in no other way could he withstand the counts and barons, the duchesses and princesses. He must have known of himself that he was arrogant; but he must have known also that when he would yield an inch he would at once fall, an ell at a time. The motives in men’s minds are mixed. We do believe that with him a true love of liberty had grown up amidst his Foreign Office duties, forcing him to think rather of the English nation than of the ways of Courts. But there had grown with it a lust of personal power and a desire to rule from his desk in Downing Street as much of Europe as he could get into his hands. So should the Turk do under certain circumstances, and so the Austrian, so the Russian, so the Greek, and the Spaniard,—and so, also, as far as might be possible, the Frenchman. Of course, with so many efforts, he often failed; but as he went on he saw, or thought he saw, that where he failed there had come misfortune to the world at large; and where he had succeeded, prosperity.

When he had found, or thought that he had found, that a thing was just, he would have his own way, and was not unfrequently earned astray from justice in the pursuit of power. Greece had become to him a very stumbling-block of offences. Prince Otho of Bavaria, who had been sent there to be King, hardly with Palmerston’s assent, had not at all answered the purpose of his mission. The Constitutional Government which was{119} promised had been delayed, and was never really established under King Otho. Misrule of all kinds became rampant; and matters arose which, with all his patience, must have driven Palmerston nearly mad in his efforts to keep men—not right, but from drifting into recognized illegality. That Mr. Finlay, who had bought his bit of ground, and had had it taken from him without payment and could get not even an answer when he sent in his bill, must have been a provoking stumbling-block. So also was Don Pacifico, with his abominable pettifogging Levant lies and his Jew villanies. I can imagine that, though it did not suit Lord Palmerston openly to abuse Don Pacifico, he must have hated him in the core of his heart. And those flea-bitten Ionians, and even the silly English sailors, must have been distasteful to him. Such a bill as Don Pacifico sent in! There were sofas, ottomans, and consoles of most portentous manufacture; and, above all things, there was a lit conjugal, which must have been surely kept for the expected arrival of a young Duke and Duchess. Lord Stanley says he prefers, in giving the inventory of the furniture, the language of Don Pacifico to the more homely phrase, a double-bed. And then those Portuguese documents,—invaluable, not to be replaced, and now gone for ever!

Lord Palmerston of course knew, as well as did Lord Stanley, that Don Pacifico’s bill was a hideous Levant fraud from beginning to end, having its only base of justice in the fact that the Greek Government had refused to acknowledge it at all. A Greek, of some position in his country, had been present in the streets encouraging the rioters when the house had been burnt down, and the police had refused to notice the matter. Application over{120} and over again had been made for redress,—that due inquiries should at any rate be made; but nothing had been done, and Lord Palmerston would not put up with it Don Pacifico was the last ounce which broke the camel’s back. No doubt Greece was a difficulty to him, and specially a difficulty because she was powerless to protect herself. King Otho and his Ministers were probably instigated by others to use their own weakness. When Great Britain finds a difference between herself and France or the United States, no doubt she must bide her time and wait till just inquiries have been made before true justice shall have been,—or shall not have been, discovered. But with Greece,—with Greece w............