f Belgium with a new French Empire.'

[Sidenote: OUR POLICY ABROAD]

As usual, Lord Palmerston had his own ideas and the courage of them.
Within three weeks of the Russell Memorandum to the Cabinet he
accordingly stood out in his true colours as a frank opportunist. The
guiding rule of his foreign policy, he stated, was to promote and
advance, as far as lay in his power, the interests of the country as
opportunity served and as necessity arose. 'We have no everlasting union
with this or that country--no identification of policy with another. We
have no natural enemies--no perpetual friends. When we find a Power
pursuing that course of policy which we wish also to promote, for the
time that Power becomes our ally; and when we find a country whose
interests are at variance with our own, we are involved for a time with
the Government of that country. We find no fault with other nations for
pursuing their interests; and they ought not to find fault with us, if,
in pursuing our interests, our course may be different from theirs.'

Lord Palmerston held that the real policy of this country was to be the
champion of justice and right, though professing no sympathy with the
notion that England ought to become, to borrow his own expression, the
Quixote of the world. 'I hold that England is a Power sufficiently
strong to steer her own course, and not to tie herself as an unnecessary
appendage to the policy of any other Government.' He declared that, if
he might be allowed to gather into one sentence the principle which he
thought ought to guide an English statesman, he would adopt the
expression of Canning, and say that with every British Minister the
interests of England ought to be the shibboleth of his policy.
Unfortunately, Lord Palmerston, in spite of such statements, was too
much inclined to throw the moral weight of England into this or that
scale on his own responsibility, and, as it often seemed to
dispassionate observers, on the mere caprice of the hour. He took up the
position that the interests of England were safe in his hands, and
magnified his office, sometimes to the annoyance of the Court and often
to the chagrin of the Cabinet. No matter what storm raged, Palmerston
always contrived to come to the surface again like a cork. He never lost
his self-possession, and a profound sense of his own infallibility
helped him, under difficulties and rebuffs which would have knocked the
spirit out of other men, to adopt t