their policy as one
of "meddle and muddle," and Palmerston only escaped a vote of censure in
the Commons by being able to point to the prodigious success of the
Ministry's finance. His personal popularity and ascendancy, however, were
as great as ever; the Liberals were returned by a majority of sixty-seven.
Although this majority must have been more than they looked for, the
election disappointed Lord Russell in two respects: Gladstone lost his seat
at Oxford and Lord Amberley was beaten at Leeds. Before Parliament met
Palmerston fell seriously ill.

PEMBROKE LODGE, _October_ 19, 1865

Letter from the Queen at Balmoral to John telling him she means to
ask him to carry on the Government in case of Lord Palmerston's
death. Dearest John very calm and without the oppressed look and
manner I always dread to see.

On the 18th of October Palmerston died. Had he taken the precautions usual
at the age of eighty, he might have lived longer, but in private as in
public life, he despised caution. He was one of those statesmen whom modern
critics, on the watch for the partially obsolete and with the complexity of
present problems always before them, tend to depreciate. He had the first
quality which is necessary for popularity: he was readily intelligible. In
addition he was prompt, combative, and magnanimous; shrewd, but never
subtle; sensible, but not imaginative. He had no ideas which he wished to
carry out; he did not like ideas. He wanted England to dominate in Europe
and to use her power good-naturedly afterwards; to be, in fact, what a
nobleman may be in his home-country, where he is universally looked up to
and ready to take immense trouble to settle fairly disputes between
inferiors. Opposition from a direction making it savour of impertinence he
stamped upon at once, without imagining the provocation or ideas from which
it might possibly spring; he could not understand, for instance, that there
might be two sides to the Chinese War. It is probable, too, that had not
the Prince Consort intervened to soften the asperity of the Government's
protest against the seizure of the Confederate emissaries on board the
_Trent_, we should have had war with the Northern States. This
menacing, peremptory attitude in diplomacy served him well, till Bismarck
crossed his path. In the encounter between the man with a great idea to
carry out, who had taken the measure of the forces against him, and the man
who had only