Conservatism and British foreign policy, 1820-1920: the Derbys and their world 9780754669296, 9780754696582, 9781315573496, 1315573490

Table of contents :
1. Derby redivivus : reflections on the political achievement of the fourteenth Earl of Derby / Angus Hawkins --
2. The ultimate test : the fourteenth Earl, the admiralty and the ministry of 1852 / Andrew Lambert --
3. The fourteenth Earl and the 'political chameleon' : changing views of Palmerston from Knowsley / David Brown --
4. The struggle for stability : the fourteenth Earl and Europe, 1852-1868 / Geoffrey Hicks --
5. 'Only wants quiet riding'? Disraeli, the fifteenth Earl of Derby and the 'war-in-sight' crisis / T.G. Otte --
6. Britain's 'most isolationist foreign secretary' : the fifteenth Earl and the eastern crisis 1876-1878 / Bendor Grosvenor --
7. Crossing the floor : Mary Derby, the fifteenth Earl and the liberals, 1878-1882 / Jennifer Davey --
8. Oiling the entente : the seventeenth Earl of Derby and the Paris embassy, 1918-1920 / David Dutton --
9. Traditions of conservative foreign policy / John Charmley.

Citation preview

Conservatism and British Foreign Policy, 1820–1920 The Derbys and their World

Edited by Geoffrey Hicks

Conservatism and British Foreign Policy, 1820–1920

To John Vincent

IV

Conservatism and British Foreign Policy, 1820–1920 The Derbys and their World

Edited by Geoffrey Hicks University of East Anglia, UK

© Geoffrey Hicks and the contributors 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Geoffrey Hicks has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Conservatism and British foreign policy, 1820–1920 : the Derbys and their world. 1. Derby, Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of, 1799–1869. 2. Derby, Edward Henry Stanley, Earl of, 1826–1893. 3. Derby, Edward George Villiers Stanley, Earl of, 1865–1948. 4. Foreign ministers--Great Britain-- History--19th century. 5. Great Britain-Politics and government--19th century. 6. Great Britain--Foreign relations--19th century. 7. Conservative Party (Great Britain)--History--19th century. 8. Great Britain--Politics and government--1901–1936. 9. Great Britain-- Foreign relations--1901–1936. I. Hicks, Geoffrey. 941’.081’0922–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Conservatism and British foreign policy, 1820–1920 : the Derbys and their world / [compiled by] Geoffrey Hicks. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6929-6 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9658-2 (ebook) 1. Great Britain-Politics and government--19th century. 2. Great Britain--Politics and government--1901-1936. 3. Conservatism--Great Britain--History--19th century. 4. Conservatism--Great Britain--History--20th century. 5. Derby, Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of, 1799-1869. 6. Great Britain--Foreign relations--19th century. 7. Great Britain--Foreign relations--1901-1936. 8. Conservative Party (Great Britain)--History. 9. Derby, Earls of. 10. Stanley family. I. Hicks, Geoffrey. II. Title. DA537.C66 2011 327.41009’034—dc22 2011013780 ISBN 9780754669296 (hbk) ISBN 9780754696582 (ebk)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK.

Contents Preface    Notes on Contributors    Timeline    Introduction: The View from Knowsley   Geoffrey Hicks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

vii ix xi 1

Derby Redivivus: Reflections on the Political Achievement of the Fourteenth Earl of Derby   Angus Hawkins

19

The Ultimate Test: The Fourteenth Earl, the Admiralty and the Ministry of 1852   Andrew Lambert

41

The Fourteenth Earl and the ‘Political Chameleon’: Changing Views of Palmerston from Knowsley   David Brown

59

The Struggle for Stability: The Fourteenth Earl and Europe, 1852‒1868  Geoffrey Hicks

81

‘Only wants quiet riding’?: Disraeli, the Fifteenth Earl of Derby and the ‘War-in-Sight’ Crisis   T.G. Otte

99

Britain’s ‘most isolationist Foreign Secretary’: The Fifteenth Earl and the Eastern Crisis 1876‒1878   Bendor Grosvenor

129

Crossing the Floor: Mary Derby, the Fifteenth Earl and the Liberals, 1878‒1882   Jennifer Davey

169

Oiling the Entente: the Seventeenth Earl of Derby and the Paris Embassy, 1918‒1920   David Dutton

189

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vi

9

Traditions of Conservative Foreign Policy   John Charmley

Index   

215 229

Preface The idea for this volume was conceived several years ago, but a collection of this kind takes some time to produce; I am grateful to the contributors both for their patience during a long process and for their tolerance of my editorial questions. I am particularly grateful to Emily Yates and the staff at Ashgate, who have been so helpful throughout the process. We are also grateful to the Earl and Countess of Derby for welcoming us so warmly to Knowsley and for the deposit of invaluable material at Liverpool City Record Office. Lloyd Mitchell and Catherine Armstrong were important members of the original group of contributors, and I want to take this opportunity both to acknowledge their early support and wish them well in their new endeavours. Bendor Grosvenor was one of the original editorial team and has been hugely supportive in reading through texts and offering comments. Any editorial errors that remain, however, lie at my own door. Much of the research being undertaken into the role of the Derbys would be considerably more difficult without the contribution of one particular historian; the work of Professor John Vincent on the Derby diaries, as the references throughout this book attest, has been invaluable to scholars. In grateful acknowledgement of his scholarship in the field over many decades, it is to him that this volume is dedicated. Geoffrey Hicks September 2010

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Notes on Contributors David Brown is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Strathclyde. He has written widely on nineteenth-century British politics and his most recent book is Palmerston: A Biography (Yale University Press, 2010). His previous works include Palmerston and the politics of foreign policy 1846–55 (MUP, 2002). John Charmley is Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia and editor of the journal History. His previous works include The Princess and the Politicians: Sex, Intrigue and Diplomacy, 1812–40 (Viking, 2005). He is currently working on a history of modern Conservatism. Jennifer Davey is an Associate Tutor at the University of East Anglia. Her PhD thesis examines the political career of Mary Catherine Stanley, the fifteenth Countess of Derby. Her research interests include gender relations, high politics and diplomacy in the nineteenth century. David Dutton retired recently from the Ramsay Muir Chair of Modern History at the University of Liverpool. Among his books are Paris 1918: The War Diary of the 17th Earl of Derby (Liverpool University Press, 2001) and The Politics of Diplomacy: Britain and France in the Balkans in the First World War (I.B. Tauris, 1998). Bendor Grosvenor is a director of Philip Mould Fine Paintings, and a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives. His PhD thesis examined the foreign policy of the fifteenth Earl of Derby during the Eastern Crisis of 1876–8. Angus Hawkins is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford, Director of Public and International Programmes in Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education and Bursarial Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford. He has recently published a two-volume biography of the fourteenth Earl of Derby (OUP, 2007 and 2008). Geoffrey Hicks is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of East Anglia. His previous works include Peace, War and Party Politics: The Conservatives and Europe, 1846–59 (MUP, 2007).

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Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History at King’s College London. His latest book is The Gates of Hell: Sir John Franklin’s Tragic Quest for the North West Passage (Yale, 2009). T.G. Otte is Senior Lecturer in Diplomatic History at the University of East Anglia. He has written or edited a dozen books, the latest being The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865–1914 (CUP, 2011).

Timeline For ease of reference, the earls of Derby are here referred to by number, whatever their precise title at any given point. Titles are otherwise indicated as they were conferred or changed. The title Lord Stanley is the courtesy title of the eldest sons of the earls of Derby and does not confer membership of the House of Lords unless leave is granted for it do so and a barony activated for the purpose (as in 1844 and 1886). D14: Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley (1799–1869), fourteenth Earl. D15: Edward Henry Stanley (1826–1893), fifteenth Earl. MC: Mary Catherine Stanley, formerly Cecil, née Sackville-West (1824–1900). D16: Frederick Arthur Stanley (1841–1908), sixteenth Earl. D17: Edward George Villiers Stanley (1865–1948), seventeenth Earl. 1799 Birth of D14 1824 Birth of MC 1826 Birth of D15 1830 D14 Chief Secretary for Ireland (in Cabinet 1831) under Grey 1833 D14 Colonial Secretary under Grey 1834 D14 becomes Lord Stanley on death of D12 and succession of D13 1841 D14 Colonial Secretary under Peel; Birth of D16 1844 D14 moves to Lords as Stanley of Bickerstaffe 1845 D14 resigns over Protection 1846 D14 becomes Protectionist leader 1848 D15 MP for King’s Lynn (until 1869) 1851 D14 Earl on death of D13; D15 becomes Lord Stanley 1852 (Feb–Dec) D14 Prime Minister; D15 Parliamentary Under-Secretary at FO 1858–9 D14 Prime Minister; D15 Colonial Secretary, then India Secretary 1865 Birth of D17 1866–8 D14 Prime Minister; D15 Foreign Secretary (under Disraeli as PM 1868) 1869 D15 Earl on death of D14 1870 Marriage of D15 and MC 1874 D15 Foreign Secretary under Disraeli 1878 D15 resigns over Eastern crisis 1878–80 D16 War Secretary under Disraeli 1882–5 D15 Colonial Secretary under Gladstone 1885–6 D16 Colonial Secretary under Salisbury 1886 D16 moves to Lords as Stanley of Preston 1886 D15 becomes Liberal Unionist (party leader in the Lords until 1891)

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1886–8 D16 President of Board of Trade under Salisbury 1888–93 D16 Governor-General of Canada (1892 D16 establishes Stanley Cup) 1893 D16 Earl on death of D15; D17 becomes Lord Stanley 1900 Death of MC 1903 D17 Postmaster-General under Balfour (in Cabinet) 1908 D17 Earl on death of D16 1916 D17 War Secretary under Lloyd George 1918 D17 Ambassador to France 1922–4 D17 War Secretary under Bonar Law and Baldwin 1948 Death of D17

Introduction

The View from Knowsley Geoffrey Hicks

It may seem curious that a group of academics in the twenty-first century should wish to spend their time analysing the activities of an aristocratic family in the nineteenth century. Those with an eye for the latest fashion will consider this a retrograde step, as will those who would consider a subject unworthy of attention merely because of its aristocratic origin. Yet the subjects of the essays in this collection were not chosen because of a desire on the contributors’ part to indulge in a reactionary exercise. Neither has there been a systematic programme to rehabilitate or examine a particular group. ‘Derby Studies’ do not exist. The essays in this collection have been produced for the best of reasons: because a group of historians who had been working in cognate areas gradually realised that their research overlapped. That discovery was a happy one, because all of the contributors, from different perspectives, had separately come to the conclusion that there were gaps in our understanding of the politics and diplomacy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was therefore satisfying that, at a conference some years ago, some of us were able to come together at Knowsley House and discuss these topics under the broad title ‘The View from Knowsley’. We were joined by other historians in the field who discussed and challenged our ideas. But this volume is emphatically not a collection of conference proceedings. The contributors were not all at the conference, and neither were all the speakers at the conference able to contribute to this collection. Half of the essays are either completely new or radically different from the papers given at Knowsley. Those that were presented as papers have been substantially revised and supplemented by additional research. They also reflect a changed historiographical context after several years have passed. But the inspiration for the conference remains the inspiration for this collection: that there is an unexplored dimension to the political and diplomatic history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This volume is part of a much broader process of exploring it. It attempts to summarise what recent research might indicate, to pose new questions and to suggest ways of approaching some of the outstanding ones. Collectively, it suggests that, with a sense of the ‘view from Knowsley’, our own view of politics and foreign policy shifts. The subjects of these essays were selected because their family ties give a cohesion to the collection, although by no means all of the contributors set out to examine members of that family. But the mere existence of family ties would not justify a volume considering their role. The Stanley family between 1820 and

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2

1920 is worthy of historians’ attention not because it was aristocratic, rich and powerful – conditions that might apply to plenty of individuals and families – but because of its consistent, substantial political role, nationally and internationally, which stands in inverse proportion to the historiographical attention it has been accorded. The family was linked with the political affairs of the nation for the best part of a century. The fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth earls of Derby all served as Cabinet ministers. The fourteenth Earl was Prime Minister three times and leader of the Conservative Party for over twenty years. The fifteenth Earl was Foreign Secretary twice and the only man to serve in Cabinet under both Disraeli and Gladstone. The Countess of Derby, wife of the fifteenth Earl, played a significant political role of her own. The sixteenth Earl was successively a Conservative minister and Governor-General of Canada – although best known to history as the founder of the Stanley Cup. His son, the seventeenth Earl, was twice a Cabinet minister and, in between, ambassador to Paris at the time of the Versailles conference. Had space or time permitted us to go beyond the 1920s, this volume might also have considered the seventeenth Earl’s sons, Lord Stanley and Oliver Stanley, both of whom served as Cabinet ministers before premature deaths, and in the latter case had a promising political career. Of course, it might also be said of the Cecil and Churchill families, among others, that there were several members who played a significant part in British politics, but much has been written about their role already. That is not true of the Stanleys. There is a significant historiographical gap to fill. All historians claim this for their subjects, but the claim in this case is a pressing one. For example, for fifty years between the publication of W.D. Jones’ research in 1956 and the first volume of Angus Hawkins’ biography of the fourteenth Earl in 2007, barely any detailed research examined his role in British politics, despite his long tenure as Conservative leader (still unsurpassed in modern times).1 The only exceptions were Dr Hawkins’ work on politics in the 1850s and Robert Stewart’s assessments of the mid-Victorian Conservative Party.2 John Vincent’s editions of the fifteenth Earl’s diaries, publication of which began in the 1970s, have proved to be an invaluable resource for political historians, and his introductory essays are fascinating insights into Derby’s character.3 Yet that Earl’s role remains largely unexplored.   W.D. Jones, Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism (Oxford, 1956); Angus Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby, Volume 1, Ascent: 1799‒1851 (Oxford, 2007). 2   Angus Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics in Britain, 1855‒59 (Stanford, CA, 1987); Robert Stewart, The Politics of Protection: Lord Derby and the Protectionist Party, 1841‒1852 (Cambridge, 1971), The Foundation of the Conservative Party, 1830‒67 (London, 1978). 3   J.R. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849‒1869 (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978), A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826‒93) between 1

The View from Knowsley

3

One might have expected that the diaries’ publication would act as a catalyst for extensive research, but it has not. Of course, biographical studies are far from the only way of analysing political history, and the foreign policy of the Disraeli Government has been the subject of several studies (though few recent ones). But for the most part they have been restricted to the Eastern crisis of 1875‒78.4 As Bendor Grosvenor and Thomas Otte note in their chapters, there is much work yet to be done on the foreign policy of 1874‒78. The ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis of 1875 is one of a number of episodes that have received very little attention. Even less is understood about the fifteenth Earl’s part in politics beyond the Eastern crisis, or the family’s later role. Yet the fifteenth Earl served twice as Colonial Secretary, as the first Secretary of State for India, and initially as Foreign Secretary under his father. He played a part in three different political parties, as respectively a Conservative, a Liberal and a Liberal Unionist. Meanwhile his wife has suffered doubly. As Jennifer Davey explores in her chapter, conventional political history has overlooked the role of women, while gender history has overlooked the role of aristocrats. Mary Derby has been left in historiographical limbo. The sixteenth Earl, a relatively junior figure in national politics, has rarely been the subject of research, which situation this volume is unfortunately unable to rectify, although perhaps it might represent an encouragement to others. His son, the seventeenth Earl, received the most notice from posterity when Randolph Churchill’s 1959 biography proclaimed him the ‘King of Lancashire’, but modern research examining his role is sparse.5 Collectively, the Derbys have suffered from under-exposure. This neglect no doubt has many roots. The history of ‘great men’ in Britain has long since been knocked off its nineteenth-century pedestal, and understandably so. In 1890 Froude could assert that ‘we call those great who have devoted their energies to some noble cause, or have influenced the course of things in some extraordinary way’, but the ‘great men’ looked rather less great when they bequeathed their children the Great War.6 In the 1920s Strachey stripped Victorian heroes of their eminence and the iconoclasm gathered pace over decades, so that it not only claimed the reputations of particular personalities but challenged the very notion that the individual had any significance in history at all. By the 1960s, the individual was being pushed back into the belly of society and, in E.H. Carr’s words, ‘the imaginary antithesis between society and the individual’ became ‘no September 1869 and March 1878 (London, 1994), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826‒93) between 1878 and 1893 (Oxford, 2003). 4   See, e.g. R.W. Seton-Watson, Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question (London, 1935, 1962); Richard Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875‒1878 (Oxford, 1979). Just as this volume went to press, a new study of Disraeli’s policy was published, again focused on the East: Miloš Ković, Disraeli and the Eastern Question (Oxford, 2011). 5   Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby, ‘King of Lancashire’ (London, 1959). 6   J.A. Froude, Lord Beaconsfield (London, 1890), p. 259.

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more than a red herring drawn across our path to confuse our thinking’.7 Whether or not anyone had ever really imagined that individuals were separate from the forces that had defined their times, it appeared increasingly odd to want to examine them at all. More recently, postmodernism may have returned to ‘the human element in history’, but it has hardly ‘redressed the balance’ as Richard J. Evans suggested in 1997; with its impenetrable language and its focus on the obscure it has muddied the waters still further.8 Add in disdain for aristocrats, academia’s arm’s-length treatment of Conservatism and a suspicion in some quarters that foreign policy is the province of the dull or the reactionary, and the disappearance of the Derbys is no great surprise. But political history certainly did not disappear over the last thirty years, even if some individuals did. The research of the last three decades has changed our view of nineteenthcentury politics. It was always going to be difficult to sustain a position in which politicians who exercised power were considered beneath the notice of most historians, as had become orthodoxy by the late 1970s. Since then, there has been a renewed focus on political history. Without accepting that the individual is either ‘great’ or a man, and assuming that individuals are very much a part of the society within which they live, a new generation of political historians have been wary of the proletarian obsessions of the 1960s and 1970s. They have started to explore the role of prominent individuals in the light of new sources, armed with new approaches and an appreciation of politicians’ places in the continuum of high and low politics. The triumphant arrival of one individual, Margaret Thatcher, as Michael Bentley has suggested, may have contributed to a cultural shift when it came to examining the roles of individuals in political history.9 It was not Thatcher’s Tory predecessors, however, who first attracted the renewed attention of historians in the 1980s and 1990s. Assisted by the publication of Colin Matthew’s edition of the Gladstone diaries, historians began to reassess that curious amalgam, Victorian Liberalism. Gladstone and his party were the subject of a range of new studies.10 The broader Liberal-radical spectrum was illuminated in the work of historians such as Jonathan Parry, Anthony Howe, Peter Mandler, Miles Taylor and Eugenio Biagini.11 They   E.H. Carr, What is History? (London, 1961), p. 55.   Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London, 1997), p. 190. 9   Michael Bentley, ‘Victorian prime ministers: changing patterns of commemoration’, 7 8

M. Taylor and M. Wolff (eds), The Victorians Since 1901: Histories, Representations and Revisions (Manchester, 2004), p. 54. 10   See, e.g. B.L. Kinzer (ed.), The Gladstonian turn of mind: essays presented to J.B. Conacher (Toronto, 1985); H.C.G. Matthew, Gladstone 1809‒1874 (Oxford, 1986); J.P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867‒1875 (Cambridge, 1986); H.C.G. Matthew, Gladstone 1875‒1898 (Oxford, 1995); P.J. Jagger (ed.), Gladstone (London, 1998). 11   See, e.g. J.P. Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT and London, 1993); Anthony Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England,

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considered its economic philosophies and practice, its global impact, its religious and cultural influences and its leadership. Liberalism had captured Victorian Britain, in Parry’s estimation, by offering ‘free trade, a strong, economical, ‘patriotic’ foreign policy, the rule of law, efficiency in domestic administration and the extension of local responsibility’.12 The ‘Age of Palmerston’ received new consideration and was linked with the ages that preceded and succeeded it; as was its eponymous hero, who was assessed not merely as Guedalla’s ‘old champion’ or Bourne’s ‘masterly Foreign Secretary’, but as a force in Liberal politics.13 Palmerston’s broader role in the development of the British polity was recorded: the way in which, under ‘Palmerston’s astute and easygoing leadership, Liberalism became the natural ruling force’.14 For David Steele, Palmerston represented more than just a strain of aristocratic liberalism; rather, he had sought to prepare Britain for the politics of the extended franchise, and ‘his governments were a conscious introduction to the new era’.15 Two volumes edited by Miles Taylor and David Brown have assessed Palmerston’s policies from a variety of new angles, while Saho Matsumoto-Best has explored afresh the role he played in Italy in the 1840s.16 David Brown, first in his analysis of Palmerston’s ascent to the premiership and latterly as his biographer, has considered in more detail his blending of foreign and domestic policy and his use of new political arts to do so.17 Like Parry and Steele, he sees Palmerston as a sincere Liberal, though he is sceptical of Steele’s claims about the deliberate preparation of Britain for democracy. There is much work yet to be done, but we now have a much clearer view of Victorian Liberalism than was the case in, say, 1980. Our greater understanding of Liberalism prompts questions about the Conservatism that opposed it and the men who led it back to government after the schism of 1846. Of course, Conservatism has not been without its chroniclers. In the climate of the 1980s and early 1990s, it would have been odd if historians had ignored the development of popular Conservatism. Research by E.H.H Green and 1846‒1946 (Oxford, 1997); Peter Mandler, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830‒1852 (Oxford, 1990); Miles Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847‒1860 (Oxford, 1995); E.F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860‒1880 (Cambridge, 1992). 12   Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government, p. 304. 13   Philip Guedalla, Palmerston (London, 1926), p. 403; Kenneth Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England, 1830‒1902 (Oxford, 1970), p. 631. 14   Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government, p. 304. 15   E.D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855‒1865 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 367. 16   David Brown and Miles Taylor (eds), Palmerston Studies I and II (University of Southampton, 2007); Saho Matsumoto-Best, Britain and the Papacy in the Age of Revolution, 1846‒1851 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2003). 17   David Brown, Palmerston and the Politics of Foreign Policy, 1846‒55 (Manchester, 2002); at the time of going to press, Dr. Brown’s biography had just been published: David Brown, Palmerston: A Biography (New Haven and London, 2010).

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Martin Pugh started to explore late nineteenth-century Conservatism and at the turn of the century a trio of biographies of Lord Salisbury appeared.18 Conservative protectionist discourse and local activism have also attracted attention.19 But the mid-Victorian period – the era of the Derbys – remains relatively unexplored, as does Edwardian Conservatism.20 Disraeli, the Victorian Conservative most attractive to modern writers, has sporadically been the subject of new research. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, he was relocated in a more complex picture of Victorian culture. The Disraeli thus revealed was not just a politician, but an outsider; culturally and socially separated from those with whom he worked. He was in the party of the Derbys, but he was not of it. Paul Smith suggested that, unlike his aristocratic colleagues or his radical opponents, Disraeli ‘did not see politics … as a moral gymnasium, in which the egoism of the individual could be sublimated simply by the strenuous assertion of principle or disinterested exertion for the public good’.21 Disraeli was in many ways a politician apart, who ‘would never be wholly comfortable with his party or with the system of aristocratic party politics’.22 His race, sexuality and literature have all been explored.23 Yet, given his distinctiveness, work on Disraeli tends to leave unanswered any questions about the aristocrats who surrounded him and directed the party until 1868 (and arguably beyond). Although the tide is changing, a greater appreciation of the Derbys’ role will be necessary if the Victorian Conservative party and Conservatism is to be revealed as Liberalism has been. Examining the view from Knowsley enables new analysis not only of the history of the Conservative party but of a range of aspects of nineteenth-century politics. Recent research has demonstrated that the Derbys’ particular brand of aristocratic power was a key component in Victorian and Edwardian politics. Angus Hawkins has corrected the long omission of history by preparing his two-volume   See, e.g. E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the Conservative Party, 1880‒1914 (London, 1995); Martin Pugh, The Tories and the People, 1880‒1935 (Oxford, 1985); Andrew Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (London, 1999); E.D. Steele, Lord Salisbury: A Political Biography (London, 1999); Michael Bentley, Lord Salisbury’s World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2001). 19   Anna Gambles, Protection and Politics: Conservative Economic Discourse, 1815‒1852 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1999); Alex Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism in Imperial London, 1868‒1906 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2007). 20   For a rare analysis of Edwardian Conservatism, see: David Dutton, ‘His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’: The Unionist Party in Opposition, 1905‒1915 (Liverpool University Press, 1992). 21   Paul Smith, ‘Disraeli’s politics’, Charles Richmond and Paul Smith (eds), The Self-Fashioning of Disraeli, 1818‒1851 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 152. 22   Ibid., p. 172. 23   See, e.g. Todd M. Endelman and Tony Kushner (eds), Disraeli’s Jewishness (London, 2002); William Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure: A Portrait of Benjamin Disraeli (London, 2006). 18

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biography of the fourteenth Earl. His work suggested that the re-insertion of Derby in nineteenth-century politics, all the way from the 1820s to the 1860s, shifted the dynamics of a series of important political episodes, from the realignments of the 1830s to the second reform act. Through the work of John Charmley, Bendor Grosvenor and Jennifer Davey, at long last attention is turning to that enigma, the fifteenth Earl, and his less enigmatic but much-maligned wife, Mary Derby. Inspired by Professor Vincent’s work on the diaries, Professor Charmley and Dr Grosvenor have suggested that the fifteenth Earl played a much more significant and distinct role in the two Disraeli governments than historians have previously acknowledged. A number of researchers at the beginning of their academic careers, inspired by the developments of the last ten years, have started to reconsider the politics and foreign policy of the nineteenth century from perspectives hitherto forgotten or ignored. We are starting to build up a clearer picture of the Derbys and their role, to place alongside the more detailed one we have of Palmerston. The valuable new work on Palmerston also raised questions about foreign policy, which occupies a curious place, historiographically. The eras of ‘appeasement’ and the Cold War have produced prodigious research, constituting separate historiographical traditions. Yet the foreign policies of the ‘long’ nineteenth century struggle to attract the same level of attention. Anyone exploring the politics of British foreign policy with undergraduates will be familiar with the difficulty of preparing bibliographies of sufficient length to satisfy students’ demands. The excitements of the two world wars have tended to act as more powerful magnets for academic research. Apart from a brief flurry of research by historians out of the London stable, notably Muriel Chamberlain and Kenneth Bourne, academic interest in nineteenth-century foreign policy has been sporadic. Perhaps part of the problem has been its detachment from broader political history, a separation challenged by Steele and Brown; but it also reflects the fact that Britain had a relatively ‘quiet’ century between 1815 and 1914, at least compared with the upheavals of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic period, or those of 1914 to 1945. Even the Crimean and Boer war eras have not been accorded the attention given to twentieth-century conflicts. There are important exceptions which serve to remind us of the work still to be done. International historians such as Thomas Otte, Keith Neilson, Antony Best and others have begun to consider areas of the world and aspects of government too long left unexplored by academics.24 The Far East has been put firmly back onto our maps of the Victorian and Edwardian world, while new light has been shed on Britain’s part in diplomacy before 1914. Historians have also examined 24   See e.g. T.G. Otte, The China Question: Great Power Rivalry and British Isolation, 1894‒1905 (Oxford, 2007); Keith Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894‒1917 (Oxford, 1995); Keith Neilson and T.G. Otte, The Permanent UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs, 1854‒1946 (New York, 2009); Antony Best, British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914‒1941 (Basingstoke and New York, 2002).

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how Britain was able, practically, to pursue the policies defined by the politicians, but delivered by the diplomats, governors, civil servants, soldiers and sailors of the era. In an extensive body of work, Andrew Lambert has explored in detail the nature and role of the nineteenth-century navy.25 Britain was a commercial superpower and an imperial behemoth; the research of the last decade has reminded us that if we are to appreciate how Victorian Britain interacted with the world beyond its parlour then we need to know about all its windows upon it. And important questions about British foreign policy and power remain. Was foreign policy exclusively Palmerstonian in the mid-Victorian era? Thereafter, when Disraeli put on Palmerston’s mantle, what do we know of the work of his Foreign Secretary, the fifteenth Earl of Derby, an apparently ‘odd’ individual who did not share his chief’s predilections? How did Conservative ideas about foreign policy, if they existed, link with their predecessors and successors? Via the Derbys, there is a rich layer of political history to explore, which includes several decades of the Conservative Party’s history, a section of Liberal history and a significant chunk of British foreign policy. We therefore need to get some sense of the view from Knowsley. For our purposes, that view can usefully be divided in two: a perspective on domestic government and on foreign policy. Home At home, the view from Knowsley was an unapologetically aristocratic perspective. It assumed that the landed classes were essential to the smooth running of the British constitution. In an age when popular politics began to lap up against the old power structures of Britain, conservatives, with both a lower- and upper-case ‘C’, provided a breakwater that is often overlooked. An interesting feature of British historiography is its reluctance to deal with continuity or reaction. If conservative forces appear, it is as part of a narrative of ‘decline’, to explain the absence of revolution, or, more recently, differences in political discourse. With some notable exceptions, historians have been more interested in the agents of change than the guardians of continuity. Yet the aristocracy played a distinct part in the body politic which is worthy of study in and of itself. Some time ago, David Cannadine suggested it was ‘commonplace’ to discuss the persistence of ‘the old regime’ in Britain, but it is difficult to see much recent evidence of this trend.26 Political history is certainly less focused upon the shift from landed to middle-class power than once would have been the case, while it has a much more nuanced view of   See e.g. Andrew Lambert, The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy against Russia 1853‒1856 (Manchester, 1990); The Last Sailing Battlefleet: Maintaining Naval Mastery 1815‒1850 (London, 1991); War at Sea in the Age of Sail (London, 2000); Nelson: Britannia’s God of War (London, 2004). 26   David Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy: Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven and London, 1994), p. 9. 25

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that shift than it did in the mid-twentieth century. The impact of the industrial revolution and the absence of political revolution do not preoccupy historians as they did in the post-war era. Yet the history of high politics is still largely defined in the context of a declining elite. Radicals, Liberals, the middle classes, the working classes and the beguiling charisma of Messrs Disraeli and Gladstone are all more attractive subjects for study than aristocrats. Cannadine consigned the aristocracy to their fate: ‘their wealth withered, their power faded, their glamour tarnished, and their collective sense of identity and purpose gradually but inexorably weakened’.27 Others have agreed. In Kim Reynolds’ view, after 1880, ‘new generations of aristocrats came to abandon the view that it was their destiny and their duty to govern, and the political culture which had both justified and maintained their existence at the heart of the political nation gradually crumbled away’.28 This may be so, but they did not go gentle into that good night. The decline of the aristocracy is undoubtedly a subject worthy of study, but Victorian and Edwardian aristocrats did not know that they were heading for a world of death duties and irrelevance and did not behave as if they were. They were participating in their own political world, not marionettes performing allotted roles, any more than the diplomats of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries knew they were acting out ‘the causes of the First World War’. They certainly did not think they could exercise power as their eighteenth-century ancestors had done, though that did not stop them periodically thwarting the liberalism of the Commons. They feared for the future and for the days when democracy swept away government by ‘gentlemen’, but the motto was aprés moi, la deluge. And in the arena of high politics, one wonders whether the aristocracy ever really ‘fell’, even if it declined. The post-1945 roll-call of Prime Ministers included one genuine aristocrat (Home) and two scions of aristocratic families (Churchill and Eden), alongside a host of others in the upper echelons of government. As recently as 1998, a Cecil could be found leading the Conservatives in the House of Lords, while at the time of writing the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer are respectively the grandson and son of baronets. As minor gentry, Cameron and Osborne would certainly meet the fifteenth Earl’s definition of ‘gentlemen’, even if they might not be aristocrats in the Stanley mould (but how many can date their prominence back to Bosworth field anyway?). An assumption has been made before the question about decline is asked. We know that decline was coming, so we should explain it. Of course that is a perfectly reasonable occupation for a historian, but one might as easily ask why aristocratic power in high politics proved to be so durable, and analyse the countervailing influence exercised by the aristocratic survivors. This volume cannot hope to provide a comprehensive

27   David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven and London, 1990), p. 2. 28   K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998), p. 2.

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analysis of that influence, but it does allow us to explore its operation by one significant family. The view from Knowsley was not that of an ancien regime, but of a governing class that knew it had to fight for its survival. As this volume demonstrates, while aristocrats appreciated that their power was not what it had been and their position was challenged, they did not all ‘fade’. The Derbys were not going down without a fight. The fourteenth Earl was as alive as Palmerston to the importance of managing political change, and did so in a way that bolstered conservative forces. The fifteenth Earl had a keen awareness of the developing polity. He was no naïf in domestic politics, even if he lacked guile in foreign policy. He had been dipped in the blood of electoral politics, withstanding contested elections at King’s Lynn in 1852, 1865 and 1868, while as Earl he schemed with his wife and agents to preserve influence in Lancashire. As Professor Cannadine has pointed out, it was he who called for a survey of land ownership to challenge radical attacks on aristocratic wealth.29 While that tactic proved unsuccessful, it was no last stand. The Derbys did not have an existential crisis of the kind Cannadine described. They assumed a right to exercise power if the capacity, desire and opportunity existed. Successive earls of Derby and their offspring considered themselves a natural part of Britain’s governing elite and continued to rule. As late as the mid-twentieth century, the decline of the aristocracy did not stop the seventeenth Earl’s two sons serving in Cabinet; even if the elder was an odd appointment, Oliver Stanley was widely perceived as a rising star. Perhaps the Derbys were exceptions. Cannadine also noted that their great wealth enabled the fifteenth Earl to buy land long after many of his contemporaries no longer could.30 But neither Gladstone nor Disraeli were particularly representative of their contemporaries either; the difference makes them interesting. This collection does not propose that the Derbys stand proxy for all aristocrats, merely that some aristocratic families played a very significant part in domestic and foreign policy that is worthy of study and has been overlooked. But for all our discussion of earls of Derby, the view from Knowsley was not just a male view. The notion of ‘separate spheres’ for men and women in Victorian life is one that has been increasingly challenged in recent years. Amanda Vickery pointed out some time ago that other boundaries mattered as much as those imposed by gender, and that when ‘particular individuals and groups’ are investigated, ‘Victorian women emerge as no less spirited, capable and, most importantly, diverse a crew as women in any other century’.31 Yet there has been precious little historiographical interest in the particular individuals who played an active role in high politics. The notable exception is the work of Kim Reynolds, who in 1998 considered the part played by a range of aristocratic women in   Cannadine, Decline and Fall, pp. 54‒5.   Ibid., p. 99. 31   Amanda Vickery, ‘Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and 29 30

chronology of English women’s history’, Pamela Sharpe (ed.), Women’s Work: The English Experience 1650‒1914 (London, 1998), p. 300.

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nineteenth-century politics. She too challenged the idea of ‘separate spheres’, suggesting that, in their own families, ‘aristocratic women were first and foremost women’, but that ‘in relation to the rest of the world, they were aristocrats first and last’.32 These women took on political duties of their own, but are notable by their invisibility in political history. For example, while David Steele’s biography of Palmerston started to reshape ideas about the Liberal Prime Minister, Reynolds has pointed out how it completely ignored Lady Palmerston.33 Yet for contemporaries, Lady Palmerston was a very significant political actor indeed. Reynolds proposed a model of ‘incorporated’ wives, actively part of a family political business. But is this model of ‘incorporation’ sufficient to encompass someone like Mary Derby, who took an individual path in politics which, while dedicated to her husband’s interests (at least as she defined them), was determinedly her own? The research here suggests otherwise. The view from Knowsley when politics was in flux in the 1870s and 1880s was not just a male one. Jennifer Davey shows how Mary Derby played two vital roles: firstly as her husband’s confidante and patient guide; secondly as an active participant in politics, both in electioneering and in the murkier waters of high politics. The view from Knowsley was also a regional view. In the last twenty years there has been a growing interest in the history of Britain’s nationalities, a process encouraged by the devolution of power from Westminster to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In the debate about identity, there has been an academic response to nationalism which has accompanied renegotiation of the Union. Yet the history of the English regions is as relevant to any study of British political history as that of their Celtic neighbours. It is even more significant in the context of many English aristocratic politicians, whose power was derived principally from extensive land ownership. The story of the Derbys is inseparable from that of Lancashire and the north-west, a region of huge political importance, both symbolic and actual, from the industrial revolution to the present day. Some recent research has suggested that the Conservative leadership in the late nineteenth century displayed little interest in local political concerns.34 While it is true that the fifteenth Earl was no straightforward Tory in this period, taking the Liberal whip in the 1880s before Home Rule displaced him once more, the Derbys were consistently interested in local politics, under whichever political flag they fought. The fifteenth Earl’s diary is replete with references to Lancashire electioneering. Professor Cannadine has pointed to the absence of the Stanley family from successive county councils of Lancashire between 1889 and 1937 as more evidence of the decline of the regional power of the aristocracy.35 Yet, as Professor Dutton notes here, the seventeenth   Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, p. 4.   Ibid., p. 6. 34   Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism, p. 208. His focus is London, but he appears 32 33

to make a broader point about the distance of the Conservative hierarchy from ‘local political activists’. 35   Cannadine, Decline and Fall, p. 164.

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Earl’s regional role was every bit as important to him as his Cabinet career, and even if one does not accept Derby as the ‘King of Lancashire’, his north-western power-base was significant. Not for nothing was his efficiency as a local recruiter in the Great War recognised by Lloyd George. The Stanley family had a keen sense of its national and regional roles. But the view from Knowsley was of a broader perspective than that. Abroad As this volume outlines, the Stanley family’s international outlook was every bit as important as its domestic one. But there are good historiographical reasons why few historians have taken much time to examine it. They have worked in the shadow of those who were first in the field. The history of late nineteenth-century Conservatism was written by the winners of the Cabinet battles of the 1870s: the two best, early accounts of Conservative policy were the exploration of Disraeli’s diplomacy in the six-volume biography produced by W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, and Gwendolen Cecil’s four-volume biography of her father, the third Marquis of Salisbury.36 During the Eastern crisis, the fifteenth Earl had spectacularly fallen out with both Disraeli and Salisbury. Unsurprisingly, his reputation did not emerge enhanced from the initial histories of the period. The Knowsley ‘brand’ was tainted by the events of 1878; there was little interest in books about it. But in any case, neither the fourteenth nor fifteenth earls had ever taken much interest in the verdict of history. With an aristocratic fatalism, neither was too concerned about memorialisation. The fifteenth Earl took no time to commission or oversee a ‘life’ of his father, and was distinctly sniffy about memoirs such as those written by his erstwhile colleague, the Earl of Malmesbury.37 Although his wife oversaw a collection of his speeches, he had no children to commission a biography. Neither his brother, a Disraeli loyalist, nor his nephew had any incentive to do so. The foreign policy of the fourteenth Earl was forgotten, while accounts of the fifteenth Earl’s were left to the biographers of those who had disagreed with him. Although the Eastern crisis has had several subsequent chroniclers, they have struggled to change the picture of the indecisive, broken man portrayed by the first historians of the subject. Some have not tried very hard. Foreign policy was thus either neglected or distorted. This situation prompted a process of research undertaken at the University of East Anglia, out of which came John Charmley’s ‘Splendid Isolation?’ and my own study of Conservatism and foreign policy in the 1840s

  W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (6 vols, London, 1910‒1920); Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (4 vols, London, 1921‒32). 37   See, e.g., diary entry, 2 October 1884, Vincent (ed.), Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 845. 36

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and 1850s.38 Separately, both works suggested that there was, in the nineteenth century, a strand in foreign policy which has been overlooked by historians. The foreign policy thus revealed, and further explored in this volume, was neither Palmerstonian, Disraelian, nor that of the radical ‘Troublemakers’ examined by A.J.P. Taylor.39 Although, naturally, it exhibited a concern for vital British interests just as those policies did, it pursued them rather differently. Put very simply, it regarded interventionism with distaste, favoured working with the other powers whatever their systems of government, opted for negotiation over confrontation on almost all occasions and presumed only minimal alteration of the status quo was necessary. It constituted an important phase in a longer tradition of Conservative foreign policy, represented by individuals often seen as ‘unusual’ or defined vaguely as exponents of isolationism (whether ‘splendid’ or otherwise). That did not make the Derbys exactly like those other policymakers. Nevertheless, they followed in Castlereagh’s footsteps, their stance closely resembled the Earl of Aberdeen’s in the 1840s and had much in common with Salisbury’s later, wariest diplomacy. As Professor Charmley details in the closing chapter of this volume, this strand persisted in various forms into the twentieth century. It has its successors in more recent political debate. But, from the 1840s to the 1880s, it so happened that earls of Derby stood as its representatives. As Professor Dutton describes, the seventeenth Earl does not fit quite so comfortably within it. In his desire for an unequivocal continental commitment, he moved away from a guiding principle of his predecessors. On the other hand, however, his determined search for Anglo-French co-operation in the broader interest of European peace, despite his colleagues’ deep scepticism, put him firmly in the tradition of Aberdeen and Malmesbury. His instincts were similar to those of his uncle and grandfather. There was a mode of doing business with foreign powers that was a feature of British diplomacy over several generations which has been unwittingly marginalised. The view of the European continent from Knowsley was one of polite suspicion. The earls of Derby understood and accepted Europe’s role in Britain’s wider fortunes. In their analysis, the political and economic well-being of Britain and its empire rested upon stability and conciliation in Europe and beyond. They were keenly aware of the value of empire. Both the fourteenth and fifteenth earls experienced the difficulties of imperial administration, not least when they worked together to conciliate Indian opinion after the Mutiny. There is room for an entire volume considering the Derbys and empire. The focus here is, however, upon areas where research is more advanced, on policy at home and in Europe, where they worked to ensure that nothing distracted Britain from its global role. For them, the European continent was not an ideological battleground as it was for many Liberals. Neither the fourteenth nor fifteenth earls saw the point of unnecessary 38   John Charmley, Splendid Isolation? Britain and the Balance of Power, 1874‒1914 (London, 1999); Geoffrey Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics: The Conservatives and Europe, 1846‒59 (Manchester, 2007). 39   A.J.P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy (London, 1957).

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politicking abroad. There was little value in them mimicking Palmerston, because they did not share his liberal objectives and they doubted the effectiveness of his methods. For the Derbys, an uncontroversial foreign policy was necessary for the expansion of wealth and the safety of British interests. Foreign policy was a practical matter, nothing more. For them, as for others such as Aberdeen, Britain was also sufficiently strong to be impervious to insults to its prestige, real or imagined. Thus, as Dr Grosvenor outlines, it was for very different reasons that Disraeli and the fifteenth Earl rejected the Dreikaiserbund solution to the growing unrest in the Ottoman Empire in 1876, contained in the Berlin Memorandum. Disraeli objected to a perceived slight, because Britain had not been consulted: Derby disliked the reforms it proposed, but merely on practical grounds; he could not have cared less where they originated. The Derbys did not delight in Machiavellian intrigue as Disraeli did. Neither did they perceive storms in every teacup as he was wont to do. Nevertheless, the ambitions of their continental neighbours concerned them; as Professor Lambert explores in his chapter, security was a priority in an age when the European continent was undergoing profound change. The fourteenth Earl regarded French ambitions with disquiet and went to some lengths to improve naval defences. Arguably his administrations took the naval threat more seriously than some of their contemporaries. The Derbys’ intention was not to try and ignore Europe, which they appreciated harboured problems and threats, but to work with it constructively, just as Castlereagh had in the wake of the Napoleonic wars and Aberdeen had in the 1840s. They assumed that for the most part the other powers were not actively hostile, but that Britain had better be sufficiently prepared for hostile behaviour if it was encountered. Such an outlook inevitably produced a less ‘active’ policy. As several of the essays in this collection note (although Dr Otte demurs), an important element in foreign policy as defined at Knowsley was the value of inactivity as a policy: that not every event or apparent crisis required an immediate – or necessarily any – British response. Like Salisbury’s policy at the turn of the century, it implied neither passivity nor a lack of interest in matters overseas, but it assumed – as he did – that it was unwise for Britain to intervene unless a real British interest was threatened. The fifteenth earl took inactivity further than Salisbury would have done, as became clear in 1878, but by examining the Derbys’ role in detail and in context, it becomes possible to appreciate features of policy hitherto dismissed as ‘dithering’ or ‘indecision’. If, as Kenneth Bourne alleged, the fifteenth Earl saw matters in ‘a dim fog’, then his policy would certainly have been indecision and confusion; but if that policy is appreciated as a consistent methodology in diplomacy it becomes at once more coherent and comprehensible.40 Unnecessary initiative in foreign policy was viewed as unwise for several reasons: because it might mean the unnecessary expenditure of British resources (for which the landed classes would have to pay through taxation); because, by entangling the country in foreign problems, it might endanger British interests; and because it   Bourne, Foreign Policy, p. 118.

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might produce domestic political problems. The latter was a particular concern during the three Derby administrations and during the first Disraeli government, when the Conservatives had no majority in Parliament. More fundamentally, the view from Knowsley was not of a continent requiring constant British guidance. Thus, in early 1859, when continental opinion was agog after Napoleon III insulted the Austrians, the fourteenth Earl dismissed Disraeli’s panicked desire for intervention. Over Luxembourg in 1867, the fifteenth Earl resisted getting involved for as long as possible before reluctantly agreeing to a guarantee for the grand duchy, which he and his father then did their best to repudiate. As Dr Grosvenor describes, the fifteenth Earl saw little point in intervening in the ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis in 1875, because he considered that it was not as serious a threat as either newspaper coverage or his excitable leader suggested. Similarly, in the Eastern crisis, he was reluctant to act precipitately, although his obstinacy eventually alienated most of his colleagues. As a diplomatic device, such a policy may or may not have been successful, but things were viewed differently from Hughenden, where Disraeli perceived opportunities for intervention or intrigue at every turn. The ‘view from Knowsley’ certainly deserves to be seen as a policy in its own right. In one important respect, the Derbys’ view of the world beyond British shores was very similar to their view of the nation on their doorstep: what mattered was stability. As this introduction has outlined, what might be called a ‘progressive aristocratic’ mindset accepted the importance of minimal change at home to maintain social stability in a nation going through a great deal of change. Overseas, the same logic applied. By the early 1860s, the Vienna settlement had provided the framework for European relations for half a century and the Derbys regarded its maintenance as the starting-point for policy. Plenty of their opponents did too, of course, but where they differed was in presuming that greater concessions to liberalism would help sustain the status quo. Many Liberals assumed that nationalism and constitutionalism could be embraced and the old order preserved. If Austria lost Italy, therefore, it would be in Austria’s interest, because the Hapsburgs would improve and sustain their empire elsewhere. This rationale was rejected by the fourteenth Earl, who feared the unravelling of the entire system and favoured minimal change to Austrian governance in northern Italy. He appreciated that nationalism was antithetical to the whole notion of an ‘imperial’ Europe enshrined at Vienna. Both positions were undermined by a failure to appreciate that the Crimean war had destroyed the Vienna system anyway, but they were informed by different perspectives. Later, the Derbys’ view of the new European system created by Bismarck was not so different. When the Stanley duumvirate confronted Bismarckian change during the 1866‒68 administration, it had to accept that a new order prevailed, but stability was still its concern. If there was a political framework that broadly served the interests of a conservative status quo, then the Derbys would have no part in interfering with it, except reluctantly to shore it up in Luxembourg in 1867. They lost no sleep over the division of territory in the 1860s, though they

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feared the opportunities a new European war might offer Russia to undermine the Treaty of Paris. Further afield, their conservatism defined a similar view of the Ottoman Empire. They did not subscribe to the growing liberal clamour for reform. The massacres of the 1870s were of no more concern to the fifteenth Earl than the Cretan nationalists crushed by the Turks had been to the fourteenth Earl a decade earlier. But neither did Derby fret unduly about the Russians in early 1878, when as far as he was concerned essential British interests had already been secured and the stability of the European continent was not threatened. The size of Bulgaria or the possession of Cyprus were not, for him, matters of import as they were for Disraeli. In its way, the seventeenth Earl’s concern for France in the 1920s exhibited the same concern for a stable balance of power, though we must be careful not to stretch the analogy beyond breaking-point; his principles were not quite the same. It is difficult to imagine either the fifteenth Earl or his father readily accepting a continental commitment, though it is not difficult to imagine them pointing out the inadequacies of Versailles or the dangers of a system that excluded Russia and Germany from great-power politics. Seen from Knowsley, foreign policy also occupied a rather different place in domestic political debate when compared with the view from elsewhere. Under Palmerston and in an even more pronounced manner under Disraeli and Gladstone, foreign policy became part of a more populist politics, as the expansion of the electorate turned all aspects of political life into areas of public debate. What all three of those leaders did was to use ‘active’ policies as tools for aggressive campaigning. Thus ‘Civis Romanus sum’, ‘peace with honour’ and the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’ could be used to bludgeon opponents who were perceived not to have been bold enough in defence of British interests or to have offended the conscience of Victorian England. For the Derbys, however, as for Aberdeen, foreign policy was not something to be turned into political spectacle. This was partly from principle, partly for practical reasons and partly from instinct. For them, a successful foreign policy was a quiet foreign policy which did not intrude into national political debate: diplomacy was there to minimise difficulties, not compound them via Palmerstonian homilies or drama in the House of Commons. But a successful policy was also one that did not open up opportunities for their enemies, who came from across the Liberal spectrum and were awaiting any opportunity to attack the men they perceived as reactionary or incompetent, or both. It was probably also the case that a distaste for appeals to public opinion was instinctive for politicians who spent much of their careers in the House of Lords, but it was not symptomatic of any naïvety about public opinion. Like Salisbury, the Stanley family were by no means averse to appealing to that when necessary. The fourteenth Earl took advantage of Palmerston’s mistakes in foreign policy, while his son was alive to the intricacies of electoral politics. His wife, too, appreciated the importance of the way in which he was perceived in popular politics. When the Derbys were with the grain of opinion, they occupied a unique social position to exploit it, as the seventeenth Earl demonstrated with his efforts during the Great War. The situation faced by the fourteenth and fifteenth earls was of course different. Like

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the third Marquis of Salisbury, they preferred to leave foreign policy to a politicodiplomatic elite, fearing that its subtleties were not well handled in an era of mass politics and appreciating that quiet, conciliatory diplomacy fared badly in the rough-and-tumble of electioneering. As Dr Grosvenor explains, this attitude to foreign policy became a handicap by the 1870s: the fifteenth Earl’s reluctance to engage with the mood of the times frustrated his fellow ministers. This was particularly the case when the ‘Bulgarian horrors’ campaign blew up: his cautious policy was appreciated by the Cabinet but his failure to explain it in terms that would engage the electorate drove some of his colleagues to distraction. Though the view from Knowsley naturally shifted as the nineteenth century progressed, its view of foreign policy in public debate was increasingly out of alignment with mass politics. The view from Knowsley was local, regional, national and international. It merits exploration from a variety of angles: an appreciation of it adds something to our understanding of political history, diplomatic history, gender history, regional history, electoral history and naval history. It is particularly useful in expanding our understanding of the Conservative Party in the nineteenth century, though given the Derbys’ place at the centre of politics for so long, it is not useful merely in a Conservative context. The fifteenth Earl played an important role in Liberal politics in the 1880s, and the roles played by him, his wife, his father and his nephew affected the dynamics of high politics between the 1830s and the 1920s. Incorporating the view from Knowsley into political history challenges the ideas we have about certain of the Derbys’ contemporaries, above all Disraeli. It puts the ‘age of Palmerston’ into a wider context and it adds further variety to the broad tent occupied by Lloyd George. It also poses questions about the fate of these views in the twentieth century and into our own era. What this collection cannot do, of course, is answer all the questions it raises or explore these issues comprehensively: it offers a sample of work going on in more detail elsewhere and attempts to bring a variety of approaches together to suggest that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It also acknowledges that, in the academic’s favourite refrain, there is much work still to be done. It does not assume that everyone will agree with the views set forth here. To suggest that there was a ‘view from Knowsley’ is not to propose that it looks the same to all historians, or that its existence is uncontested. One important aspect of this volume is the fact that it displays in microcosm an area of debate. Despite the best efforts of this introduction to suggest a coherent whole, the collection includes a variety of ‘views from Knowsley’. There is certainly no party line for contributors, neither does the volume intend to reach some sort of consensus on the topics it examines, except that they are worthy of renewed analysis. While three of the chapters emanate from what Thomas Otte describes as the ‘Norwich School’ and posit a different strand in Conservative foreign policy, Dr Brown and Dr Otte himself are more sceptical. Dr Grosvenor’s and Dr Otte’s chapters offer contrasting views of Derbyite foreign policy. The very existence of an alternative (i.e. nonDisraelian) foreign policy is challenged, while the way in which the fifteenth Earl

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of Derby conducted foreign policy is reviewed in very different ways, with very different conclusions. Dr Otte’s verdict is damning; Dr Grosvenor’s altogether more benign. Professor Charmley’s analysis of the alternative ‘tradition’ in Conservative foreign policy announces the death of a number of assumptions, whose obituaries others will consider premature. But that is part of the point of this exercise: there is a debate to be joined, and questions to which there are many answers. What we hope this volume does is to stimulate discussion by asking some of these questions, and that it in turn helps to refine the theses that prompted them and encourage others to consider them. The debate also allows this volume to blow a little dust from people’s assumptions: the role of aristocrats in the upper echelons of government need not be dry, dull or obscure. The differences on these subjects concern some of the most important questions facing historians, about the nature of Britain’s role in the world and the assumptions made about it by its leaders, subjects as potent today as at any time in the past.

Chapter 1

Derby Redivivus: Reflections on the Political Achievement of the Fourteenth Earl of Derby Angus Hawkins

How does the recovery of the view from Knowsley alter our perspective of Victorian politics, British Conservatism and modern party history? Its impact is significant. This should be less surprising than the neglect in which it has been shrouded for so long. The earls of Derby were prominent in national politics throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. None more so than Edward Geoffrey Stanley, fourteenth Earl of Derby, who remains the longest-serving party leader in modern British politics, heading the Conservatives for twenty-two years between 1846 and 1868. He was the first British statesman to become prime minister three times, in 1852, from 1858‒59, and from 1866‒68. He was a powerful advocate for the 1832 Reform Act. In 1833 he abolished slavery in the British empire. And as premier in 1867 he oversaw the introduction of the Second Reform Act.1 Restoring the view from Knowsley not only extends our historical understanding; it also opens up a fresh perspective on seemingly familiar events. The vista from Knowsley challenges a conventional wisdom largely shaped by the views from Drayton Manor, Hughenden, Broadlands, Pembroke Lodge and Hawarden. No reverential multi-volume biography of the fourteenth Earl of Derby, à la Morley or Monypenny and Buckle, was written after his death in 1869. Later generations of Conservatives have found greater inspiration in constructing mythologies around the figures of Benjamin Disraeli or, more recently, Sir Robert Peel. As a result, Derby became a shadowy and disregarded historical figure. As an aristocrat without the prerequisites of ambition and dedication, possessed of vitality though lacking in ideas, it was suggested, he oversaw the ‘dog days’ of Conservatism, as the party languished in impotent opposition during the 1850s and 1860s. So was the inheritance from Peel squandered and the genius of Disraeli suppressed. Yet this dismissal of Derby creates an historiographical puzzle. How is Derby’s evident prominence to be reconciled with the disparagement of   For convenience I have referred to Derby by his final title throughout this essay. Born Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley in 1799, he took the title Lord Stanley in 1834. As Lord Stanley of Bickerstaffe he was elevated to the House of Lords during his father’s lifetime in 1844. He succeeded his father as the fourteenth Earl of Derby in 1851. 1

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posterity? An intellectual problem is the product of a tension between evidence and accepted knowledge. For the historian this highlights the relation between the archive and historical interpretation; the alignment of evidence extant with idées reçues. Derby’s extensive papers, correspondence and letter books, now housed in the Liverpool Record Office, enable us to revise the conventional portrait of Derby as a politically uninterested aristocrat, who regarded public affairs as a weary distraction from the high-spirited diversions of Newmarket and Epsom. From his papers Derby emerges as an astute, intelligent, and committed politician, whose public values and private beliefs reflected the convictions of his class and shaped the events of his day.2 A secure self-regard, a belief in the moral duties of an enlightened aristocracy, a perception of the natural interdependence of a hierarchical social order, a moderate evangelical Anglicanism, the boisterous enjoyment of field and turf, and a teasing social manner concealing the earnestness of his private convictions, shaped a complex personality, whose political faith left an indelible mark on his contemporaries. The trajectory of Derby’s political career traces a journey from the Whig milieu of early nineteenth-century Knowsley and his mentorship under Lord Lansdowne to Lord Grey’s Reform government of 1830‒34, his migration to Peel’s Conservatives in 1836, and his eventual emergence as Conservative leader in 1846. That midVictorian Conservatives were led by a man whose political principles were formed in the Whig tradition is central to understanding Derby’s successes and limitations as party leader. His Whig education shaped the Conservative party’s aspirations between the apostasy of Peel in 1846 and the ascendancy of ‘Beaconsfieldism’ in the 1870s. After Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, Derby entered Parliament in 1822, as MP for the ‘pocket’ borough of Stockbridge, while undertaking the ‘Grand Tour’ on continental Europe and extensive travels around North America. Then, as a young Whig MP, during the 1820s, he supported Lansdowne in Lord Goderich’s coalition ministry, advocated the revision of the Corn Laws, voted for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Grey appointed him, aged thirty-one, Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1830. In 1833 he took up the office of Colonial Secretary, having become a cabinet member in June 1831. This early success was recognition of Derby’s evident talents and impeccable aristocratic credentials. It was also a reflection of his political beliefs, as inherited from his Whig grandfather and father, and as formed by Lansdowne in his Whig salon at Bowood. Derby’s youthful Whiggism grounded his political views. Though subsequently changing parties, he adhered to those convictions he had inherited from his family and Lansdowne. Indeed, it was the consistency of his beliefs, he insisted, that   My recently published two-volume biography of Lord Derby draws primarily on these extensive papers housed at the Liverpool Record Office. See Angus Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: the 14th Earl of Derby, Volume I, Ascent: 1799‒1851 (Oxford, 2007) and The Forgotten Prime Minister: the 14th Earl of Derby, Volume II, Achievement: 1852‒1869 (Oxford, 2008). 2

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required his migration to the Conservatives, as Whigs such as Lord John Russell, he argued, became tainted by English and Irish radicalism during the 1830s. Derby understood progress as the defining attribute of the modern age. Moral, social and economic improvement distinguished Britain’s historical development. The role this prescribed for an enlightened aristocracy was ensuring that dynamic progress was combined with the preservation of civil order and legal liberties. Reform, constant judicious adjustment maintaining the stable equilibrium of society, should accommodate moral and material improvement; otherwise licence would lead to anarchy, or reactionary inflexibility incite revolution. Reconciling progress, stability and liberty, for the young Derby, defined responsible statesmanship. ‘His will be a glorious destiny’, he declared to a Glasgow University audience in December 1836, ‘who knows how to direct and turn into the proper channels the energies of the people, and to conduct with propriety, at this period, the government of this great nation; but if he shall imagine himself capable of stemming and abruptly resisting its force onwards, he will be swept along with the torrent’.3 The aristocracy’s highest calling was to govern in the interest of the nation as a whole. Ensuring the stability of a progressive and dynamic society, founded upon the rule of law and parliamentary liberties, was their particular responsibility; the violent bloodshed of the French Revolution demonstrating the fate of a privileged closed caste, heedless of its duties and obligations. Derby saw the historic institutions of the nation, Parliament and the Established Church, as the essential foundations of civic order. Parliament constrained a potentially tyrannical Royal prerogative. It was in Westminster that those various ‘interests’ comprising the political nation were represented. It was from Parliament that government derived its authority. Westminster was sovereign. The sovereignty of Parliament also protected the judgement of the nation’s need from the clamour of demagogues and subversive agitation. It was in the deliberation of Westminster that genuine improvement was differentiated from reckless change. Avoiding a politically corrupting reliance on the prerogative and resisting dangerous popular agitation required politicians in Westminster to act as members of parties, formed upon shared ideals and mutual confidence. Parliamentary parties were both necessary and desirable, affirming Parliament’s status as the sovereign assembly of the nation. For Derby the support of party in Parliament was the only legitimate basis upon which politicians could hold office, enact legislation and command public respect. Throughout his life he remained hostile to popular extraparliamentary movements seeking to dictate the deliberations of Westminster. The historic Established Church, meanwhile, safeguarded those Anglican scriptural truths preserving the moral foundation of social order. Derby’s mother, before her premature death in 1817, had instructed him in the beliefs of moderate Anglican evangelicalism. From her he learnt of the social and moral duties accompanying wealth and privilege, and of the importance of personal faith in leading a Christian life. The memory of her sainted motherhood became, for   Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, p. 144.

3

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Derby, a model of instruction in evangelical belief. His own writings on religion, Conversations on the Parables (1828) and The Miracles of Our Lord Explained (1839), reflected her moderate, though firm, Anglican convictions. Just as Parliament mediated the demands of change and the necessity for stable order, so the Church of England, he believed, represented a religious via media, avoiding the superstitions of Roman Catholicism and the puritanical pieties of nonconformity. In a society being transformed by progress, Parliament and the Anglican Church were the institutional bedrocks of political and moral stability. Derby’s support for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic Emancipation and parliamentary Reform, between 1828 and 1832, reflected his commitment to the responsible adjustment of political, religious and civic relations, in response to the advancement of intelligence, morality and wealth in society. In 1831 he introduced an education scheme for Ireland, proposing shared religious instruction for Protestant and Catholic children, so as to reduce sectarian tensions. In 1833 he abolished slavery in the British colonies; his first-hand experience of slavery in the United States having strengthened his deep moral repugnance for regarding the black population as a form of private property. Yet, at the same time, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, he staunchly defended the rule of law, in the face of Daniel O’Connell’s agitation against the tithe paid to the Church of Ireland, and in 1833 he introduced an Irish Coercion Act to restore order in areas disturbed by attacks on persons and property. In order to safeguard the Protestant Church of Ireland he drew up an Irish Church Temporalities bill in 1832, reforming the Church’s organisation and offices, so as to defuse mounting hostility to its Established status and property. So, under the hammer blows of rural violence and sectarian hostility, the anvil of Ireland hardened his commitment to the prescriptive rule of law and legally designated property rights. Responsible reform, he maintained, must stand on the authority of Parliament and obedience to its laws, the protection of the rights of property being fundamental to a civilised society. Only then could what he saw as the real ills of Ireland, the absence of a resident gentry, want of capital, shortage of employment and lack of adequate education, be addressed. Lack of respect for the rule of law, he concluded, rendered extensive reform in Ireland both dangerous and inappropriate. Unlike England, the necessary prior conditions for enlightened reform did not yet exist in Ireland. Derby’s political beliefs were unremarkable in a young moderate Whig of the 1820s and 1830s. They reflected his Bowood apprenticeship and his wish to reconcile stable progress with the extension of political liberties. But his reluctance to introduce what he saw as premature reform in Ireland antagonised many of his Cabinet colleagues. His staunch commitment to the Established Churches of both England and Ireland came to mark out sharp differences with ministerial colleagues such as Lord John Russell. It was the status of the Established Church and its property, the appropriation of the Church of Ireland’s revenues for non-Anglican purposes, that became the flashpoint of government rupture in 1834, prompting Derby’s resignation from Grey’s Cabinet. Religious reform had precipitated the events of 1828‒29 and it was religious differences that

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split Grey’s government in 1834. While Russell and other young Whig reformers looked to modify church-state relations, Derby favoured civil liberties for nonAnglicans, while preserving the Established status of the Anglican Church. His first major Commons speech, in 1824, had been an impassioned defence of the Church of Ireland’s property. It was this that drove him, accompanied by Sir James Graham, over to Peel’s Conservatives in 1836; his attempt to form a new centrist party (the ‘Derby Dilly’) during 1834‒35 having failed. Defence of the Church Establishment defined Derby’s differences with more ‘advanced’ Whig reformers. Preserving the Established Church remained a cornerstone of his political beliefs throughout the remainder of his political career. Derby became a Conservative with a public doctrine shaped by his Whig political education. His reading of Edmund Burke was fashioned into a Conservative philosophy. When Derby left the Commons and entered the House of Lords in July 1844 the Whig beliefs of his youth continued to determine his views of statesmanship and policy. Progress was a fundamental reality driving forward Britain’s moral, political and material advancement. The responsibility of aristocratic politicians, through the combining of judicious reform with the maintenance of social stability, was to pilot the nation on a steady course, as it was carried forward by the irresistible current of progress. Steering against the flow would capsize the nation into the turbulent waters of revolution. Allowing the nation to drift freely would carry it at increasing speed towards the dangerous rapids of democratic and demagogic turmoil. The sovereignty of Parliament and the authority of the Anglican Church were essential to maintaining the equilibrium of the nation. Party association in Parliament, particularly in the House of Commons, was the basis of government authority. It was parliamentary party support that placed ministers in office, not the prerogative or the electorate. Party association, in turn, imposed mutual obligations upon party leaders and their backbenchers. The loyalty of backbenchers gave their frontbench power and leaders owed due regard to the opinions of their supporters. When Peel pressed for the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 Derby strongly objected on two grounds. First, he was not persuaded that famine in Ireland either required or justified the complete abandonment of import tariffs; revision of the Corn Laws, not their total repeal, was a more appropriate course. Secondly and equally importantly, introducing Free Trade in corn breached the faith placed by Conservative backbenchers in Peel’s government. It was a violation of party trust. When Derby resigned from Peel’s Cabinet in December 1845, his parting words to his ministerial colleagues were that ‘they could not do this as gentlemen’.4 It was with reluctance that Derby became leader of the Protectionist Conservatives during the spring of 1846. He deeply regretted the party schism caused by Peel’s conversion to Free Trade. A gloomy dejection and uncertainty as to how best to act descended upon him. He hoped the split in the party might 4   Lady Broughton (ed.), Recollections of a Long Life by Lord Broughton (6 vols, 1909), vol. 6, p. 229.

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be healed in due course and wished to defer the formalisation of the rupture, which assuming the leadership of the Protectionists would imply. But Peel’s icy intransigence and the savage Commons invective of Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli made Conservative reconciliation impossible. In May 1846, acquiescing to events, Derby finally accepted the leadership of the Protectionists, with the mercurial Bentinck acting as his leader in the Commons at the head of the 222 Conservative MPs who had voted against Corn Law repeal. For the next twenty-two years, until chronic ill health forced him to step down in February 1868, Derby led the party according to the lights of the Whig schooling he had received from his family and Lansdowne. Views that were unremarkable in a young Whig of the 1820s and 1830s were to have a formative effect on the midVictorian Conservative party. In doing so they acquired a singular significance. They are the prism through which we can discern the nature of his successes as Conservative leader and his limitations as a parliamentary politician. Their impact on mid-Victorian party politics was to be no less profound. As Conservative leader Derby saved his party from languishing as a beleaguered agricultural rump of reactionary protest. During 1847‒48 the Protectionists resembled an embittered parliamentary mob more than an organised party, pulled in contrary directions by militant Protectionism, visceral antiCatholicism, Bentinck’s volatility and Disraeli’s smouldering resentment. The party’s survival as a coherent parliamentary force was uncertain. An agricultural slump in 1849‒50 reignited Protectionist protest in the rural constituencies, as farmers and Tory grandees such as the Duke of Richmond, Lord Eglinton and Lord Granby denounced the economic panacea of Free Trade as a delusion. Derby, however, resisted the temptation of surrendering the parliamentary party to the outcry of dogmatic Protectionist protest. Notwithstanding the demurring of some, in 1848 he laid aside the party label Protectionist, insisting that the party call themselves Conservatives. Despite the anguished mood of the rural constituencies, he recognised that Free Trade was an economic orthodoxy supported by the majority of those in Parliament. This was affirmed by the repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1849, albeit legislation finally secured by just 24 proxy votes in Lords. A rigid commitment to agricultural Protection, he believed, would condemn the party to remaining the minority expression of a sectional interest. Parliamentary logic, not extra-parliamentary protest, determined his course. Rehabilitating the Conservatives as a credible party of government required a broader view of national policy than inflexible Protectionism and virulent anti-Catholicism. He tempered his backbenchers’ calls for the reimposition of agricultural tariffs and distanced his leadership from the anti-Catholic outbursts of MPs such as Charles Newdegate and Charles Beresford. During 1850‒51 he carefully advanced the policy of fiscal reform as a replacement for agricultural tariffs, tax adjustments meeting the grievances of the landed interest. So might the party be gradually weaned from Protectionism. He also resisted taking up the Protestant cry amid the furore excited by the ‘Papal Aggression’ question in 1850. This left the prime minister Lord John Russell hoisted by his own petard of the Ecclesiastical Titles

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bill. ‘We should rather follow the stream’, he advised Lord Malmesbury, ‘which is running quite strong enough, than attempt to take a lead of our own.’5 By restraining the ardour of his extreme supporters Derby gave the Conservatives a future. This strategy was affirmed during his brief minority government of 1852. Following the general election of July 1852 Protection was abandoned as party policy, allowing his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Disraeli, to prepare a Free Trade supplementary budget in November of that year. Law reform, self-government for New Zealand, resolution of the militia issue (which had ejected Russell from office at the beginning of the year), the appointment of a Select Committee to consider the renewal of the East India Company’s charter, support for public health legislation for London, the signing of the Treaty of London (resolving the dispute between Denmark and the German states over Schleswig-Holstein), and secret negotiations exploring the restoration of diplomatic relations with the Vatican were all part of Derby’s intention to show the Conservatives capable of moderate responsible government. This was a deliberate counter to the Whig and Liberal portrayal of the Conservatives as prejudiced rural backwoodsmen, blind to the progressive ideas of their age, those John Stuart Mill dismissed as ‘the stupid party’. The Conservatives in office, Derby believed, must demonstrate their ability to provide safe moderate government serving all sections of the community. Upon becoming prime minister for a second time in 1858 Derby declared to the Lords that ‘in politics, as in everything else, the same course must be pursued ‒ constant progress, improving upon the old system, adapting our institutions to the altered purpose they are intended to serve, and by judicious changes meeting the demands of society’.6 Whigs and Liberals, he insisted, did not possess a monopoly of progressive wisdom. As premier during 1858‒59 he oversaw the resolution of the Orsini crisis with France, the reform of government in India (following the Mutiny in 1857), a Sale and Transfer of Irish Land measure, and legislation giving Catholic chaplains in the British Army permanent rank and salary. He secured the passage of a bill allowing practising Jews to become MPs by preventing a clash between the Lords and Commons; legislation which one modern historian has described as ‘the most symbolic religious liberty measure of the 1850s’.7 He also framed a parliamentary Reform bill in 1859 proposing a uniform £10 householder suffrage in all constituencies, with ‘merit franchises’ for borough voters possessing funded property worth £10 yearly, £60 in a savings bank, or £20 pensions in the naval, military or civil services, graduates of the universities, and members of the learned professions. A uniform county and borough £10 franchise had previously been proposed annually by the radical MP Peter Locke King and had received   Derby to Malmesbury, 2 December 1850, Lord Malmesbury, Memoirs of an ExMinister (2 vols, 1884), vol. 1, p. 267. 6   Derby, 1 March 1858, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series (1830‒91), vol. 149, col. 41. 7   G.I.T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832‒1868 (Oxford, 1977), p. 272. 5

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broad Whig, Liberal and radical support in July 1858. The Conservatives’ ‘merit franchises’ were similar to those proposed by Russell in his abortive Reform bill of 1854 and considered by Palmerston as premier in 1857. Extension of the franchise was accompanied in Derby’s 1859 bill by the restriction of urban freehold voters to the borough constituencies, a modest disfranchisement of 15 seats, and redistribution including a third MP being given to Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester. But in April 1859 the Conservative reform bill was defeated in the Commons by a hostile motion moved by Russell. On becoming prime minister for a third time, in July 1866, Derby again advocated ‘safe and steady progress, strengthening, rather than subverting, the institutions of the country, and maintaining that balance between the various parts of our constitutional system’, which had delivered ‘a progressive improvement in our legislation according with the temper and character of the times’.8 This was the context for Derby’s attempt to secure a safe and lasting settlement of parliamentary Reform in 1867. Taking boldness as safety he framed a Reform measure proposing a rated household suffrage for the boroughs and a £15 annual rental qualification in the counties. In its final amended form (the county qualification, for example, being reduced to £12) the Reform Act, passed in August 1867, created over 938,000 new voters and increased the English and Welsh electorate by 88 per cent. The main principles of the Act were determined by Derby, although it was Disraeli who steered the measure through turbulent Commons debate. So Derby, as he told the Lords, sought ‘to settle one great and important question of vital importance to the interests of the country’.9 Where the Liberals had failed, the Conservatives had secured ‘a well-considered, safe and liberal measure of Reform’, he declared to an enthusiastic audience at Manchester Free Trade Hall in October 1867.10 It was Derby, not Disraeli, who ‘educated’ the mid-Victorian Conservative party. He saved it from being mired in regretful nostalgia. In doing so, he transformed the Conservatives from the anguished agricultural rump of the late 1840s into a credible party of moderate progressive government. This shaped the broad pattern of mid-Victorian politics. It meant that, unlike continental Europe, Britain did not possess an embittered party of strong reactionary sentiment. Rather, Victorian politics became a contest between major parties which, albeit to differing degrees, acknowledged the benefits of sustained progress. On continental Europe the polarities of monarchy, republicanism, militarism and socialism stretched political conflict across a far broader ideological spectrum. In comparison, the mainstream of Victorian politics in Britain appeared remarkable for its consensus, defining far narrower parameters of debate. The Conservatives did not contest the fundamental reality of progressive advancement. Clashes occurred over the pace, rather than the ultimate desirability, of constructive change. As The Times observed in 1851: ‘No party can now disclaim resolutions of progress; the   Derby, 9 July 1866, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 184, col. 744.   Derby, 22 July 1866, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 188, col. 1783. 10   The Times, 18 October 1867, p. 10. 8 9

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question is scarcely one of route ‒ only of speed.’11 In later life Derby referred more than once to the conviction which had been instilled in him early in his public career; ‘that real political power was not to be had in England: at best you could only a little advance or retard the progress of an inevitable movement’.12 He accommodated the Conservative party to careful reform, helping to establish the commitment to responsible improvement, the judicious adjustment of a dynamic civil society to moral and material progress, as the inclusive defining characteristic of mid-Victorian political culture. General Charles Grey, the Queen’s private secretary, endorsed Derby’s Whig views in October 1866, as the storm clouds of parliamentary Reform gathered over Westminster. ‘I still believe in Whig doctrine and principles as I was taught them forty years ago’, he wrote to Derby, ‘and if I was to choose the side of the House on which I find them best represented it might very probably be yours.’13 Derby’s belief in stable progress combined with responsible reform played a crucial part in shaping the broadly liberal nature of the mid-Victorian state. Derby’s foreign policy rejected Palmerstonian bluster and ineffectual Russellite posturing. It drew on the aspirations of Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary prior to 1822, and extended the policies of Lord Aberdeen, Peel’s Foreign Secretary from 1841 to 1846. Conciliatory negotiation, rather than aggressive sabre-rattling, was the responsible means of ensuring European peace and preserving cordial diplomatic relations with the continental Great Powers. This was a shunning of what he memorably described in 1864 as Liberal ‘meddle and muddle’.14 Upon assuming the premiership for the first time, in February 1852, he informed the Lords that in foreign policy he would undertake ‘a calm, temperate, deliberate and conciliatory course of conduct’.15 In June 1850 he had led the Lords’ condemnation of Palmerston’s high-handed actions over the ‘Don Pacifico’ affair; behaviour he denounced as the ‘prodigality of folly’.16 This devastating critique echoed his attacks on Palmerston’s hyper-active diplomacy of 1842 and 1847. Britain was a great maritime power, her international prestige derived from her global commercial Empire outside Europe, shielded by her naval supremacy. Unilateral involvement in the vexatious disputes of the continental Powers should be avoided; an objective underscored by Britain’s relatively limited military strength. The militaristic character of the regimes of France or Prussia, with their destabilising territorial ambitions, was inimical to the civil liberties and parliamentary freedoms enjoyed in Britain. A calm and temperate course in foreign policy, he believed,   The Times, 5 March 1851, p. 4.   Stanley journal, 24 March 1853, J.R. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the

11

12

Conservative Party [hereafter DDCP] (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978), p. 104. 13   General Grey to Derby, 28 October 1866, Liverpool Record Office, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 103/6. 14   Derby, 4 February 1864, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 173, cols. 22‒41. 15   Derby, 27 February 1852, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 119, col. 889. 16   Derby, 17 June 1850, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 111, cols. 1293‒332.

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was best maintained by preserving constructive diplomatic relations with the continental Great Powers, upholding that ‘balance of power’ enshrined in the Treaty of Vienna. This was not a policy of ‘isolationism’. Rather, Derby believed, Britain should maintain a diplomatic engagement with European affairs, mediating the quarrels arising from nationalistic disputes. In 1852 his government hosted the negotiations leading to the Treaty of London, temporarily resolving the crisis caused by the rival claims of Denmark and the German states to Schleswig-Holstein. Friendly British relations with Austria were restored in the wake of the Erskine Mather affair. Derby’s government played an important diplomatic role in settling the succession to the Greek throne and clarifying the status of the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. Secret negotiations were undertaken exploring the restoring of diplomatic relations with the Vatican. In concert with Russia and Austria, diplomatic pressure defused a potential crisis threatened by suspicion of France’s intention of annexing Belgium. In 1858 Derby secured the swift diplomatic resolution of Britain’s quarrel with France over the Orsini affair, which had driven Palmerston from office. When two British engineers were thrown into a Neapolitan prison, following the seizure of a Sardinian ship the Cagliari, manned by Carbonari, their release and monetary compensation was quickly negotiated. No British gunboats were dispatched to the Bay of Naples. In February 1859 Britain successfully mediated the dispute between France and Portugal, following the latter’s commandeering of the French ship the Charles et Georges. The same month Lord Cowley was charged with a mission to seek a diplomatic resolution of the mounting European crisis over Italy. This calm and temperate foreign policy was Derby’s achievement. He exercised, as prime minister, a close and constant oversight of his government’s diplomacy. As Derby’s political confidant, Lord Malmesbury (Foreign Secretary in 1852 and 1858‒59) proved a loyal proponent of the premier’s policy. As Malmesbury damningly pronounced in the Lords, in June 1863, on the famous Palmerstonian dictum Civis Romanus sum, ‘of all the foolish misapplications of a dead language of a semi-barbarous country to a living and civilised nation, I never heard of a worse’.17 Malmesbury, like Derby, has been undeservedly maligned by historians; a denigration which has obscured the successes of mid-Victorian Conservative foreign policy. Upholding public treaties, avoiding interference in the internal affairs of foreign powers, seeking the diplomatic resolution of European disputes and preserving cordial relations with other Great Powers, neither adopting ‘a tone of haughty intimidation or … servile submission’, defined a foreign policy premised on the wish of civilised men to reach rational diplomatic solutions avoiding conflict.18 In Malmesbury’s words, British subjects took a legitimate pride, not in wielding an overbearing power, but belonging to ‘a nation in the vanguard of civilization … founded on respect for municipal and international   Malmesbury, 19 June 1863, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 171, col. 1132.   Derby, 1 March 1858, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 159, cols. 22‒44.

17 18

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law’.19 By the 1930s this Conservative foreign policy, as implemented by Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, was labelled ‘appeasement’ and suffered an ignominious fate at Munich in 1938, when confronted by the brutal totalitarian cynicism of German Nazism. Derby’s view of Britain’s colonies revealed those ambiguities of meaning and aspiration existing at the heart of the mid-Victorian Empire. As Colonial Secretary from 1833‒34 and 1841‒45 he saw Britain’s Empire as essentially a commercial entity; trade between the ‘mother country’ and her colonies, protected by the supremacy of the Royal Navy, constituting the basis of Britain’s international prestige. He rejected the notion of ‘imperialism’ as an active policy of territorial expansion. For Derby, as for most of his English contemporaries, ‘imperialism’ was an alien and negative continental term, evoking the vainglorious ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte or the autocratic repression of Russia. By the 1850s ‘imperialism’ was increasingly associated with the militaristic and ostentatious ambitions of Napoleon III of France. As Colonial Secretary between 1841‒45 Derby had resisted extending Britain’s colonial boundaries. He disliked the additional expense and diplomatic complications that colonial expansion inevitably entailed. Extended trade, not territory, best served Britain’s interests. Yet local political, strategic, religious and commercial pressures in Africa and Asia, often intensified by indigenous resistance along the contested frontiers of colonial control, undermined official policy in Whitehall. Despite Derby’s wish not to acquire ‘a Chinese Gibraltar or two’ and his preference for legitimate trade with China based upon treaty agreements, Hong Kong was obtained as a colony in 1842 under the terms of the Treaty of Nan-ching, as negotiated by local British representatives giving way to demands from British traders in India.20 The same year Natal was annexed by the authorities in the Cape Colony, so as to secure a strategic stronghold on the South African coast and to restore peace between Boer settlers and local native tribes. In 1843 Lord Ellenborough, Governor General of India, annexed the province of Sind. From London Derby found he could often do little to stem the impetus to further colonial territorial expansion being driven forward by local decisions and men ‘on the spot’. A singular success was his blocking of the establishment of a new British colony along the River Niger in 1842. Not until the 1870s, under the inspiration of Disraeli, did ‘imperialism’ acquire a less alien and more favourable domestic connotation, describing the alleged moral obligation of British civilisation to conquer and enlighten less advanced peoples around the world. For Derby, prior to 1869, expanding global commerce and trade, not territorial enlargement, were central to the Conservative vision of empire. Considered domestic reform safeguarding stable progress and social cohesion, a temperate foreign policy avoiding entanglement in the disputes of the continental   Malmesbury, 19 June 1863, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 171, col. 1132.   Derby to Aberdeen, 17 October 1842, Aberdeen Mss, British Library Additional

19 20

MS 43072, Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, p. 241.

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Great Powers and abstaining from interference in their internal affairs, and a vision of maritime empire based upon trade not territory, underpinned Derby’s delineation of Conservative policies between 1846 and 1868. His understanding of the institutional context of political power, as embodied in the British polity, had no less an impact upon the character of mid-Victorian Conservatism. Parliament and the Established Anglican Church were the institutional mainstays of civilised order in Britain, supporting the rule of law, sustaining secure political and material advancement, and providing a moral foundation for the communal harmony of a dynamic society. For Derby Parliament was the authoritative arena of national politics, from whence governments derived their executive authority. Westminster was sovereign and party association in Parliament, seen as the voluntary and virtuous affiliation of MPs, ensured that an arbitrary prerogative and an unruly populace were held in check. He firmly resisted the attempts of popular radical or Conservative extra-parliamentary bodies, such as the Anti-Corn Law League, the Chartists, Protestant Associations or Protectionist Societies, to dictate the deliberations of Westminster. As he observed to the Duke of Newcastle in 1849: ‘I look on principle with great jealousy at the formation of clubs and associations of any sort, for the purposes of checking and influencing the executive government.’21 Parties in Parliament safeguarded the sovereignty of Westminster. As Derby described them in 1854, parliamentary parties were made up of those ‘who are in the habit of acting together’.22 Mutual confidence between leaders and their backbench followers was essential to party integrity. Party leadership was a matter of guiding and shepherding parliamentary support. Peel’s grave defect as Conservative leader prior to 1846, Derby believed, was ‘disregarding the opinion of his party, whenever it did not exactly square with his own; and I am confident that no man these days can hope to lead a party who cannot make up his mind sometimes to follow it’.23 Consent, not coercion, cemented party attachment. Party policy should be that to which a party generally agreed. He always addressed his supporters as ‘his friends’, rather than as enlisted subordinates. One of his celebrated bon mots was the definition of an independent MP as a politician who could not be relied on. A leadership’s regard for backbench opinion should be reciprocated with trust. As he advised one wayward Conservative backbencher in 1849: ‘Don’t go against your party unless your conviction is very strong indeed; if there is any doubt in your mind give them the benefit of it; hear what they have to say with an inclination to think them right.’24 Derby’s own standing and authority were crucial to Conservative unity after 1846. His appeals for party solidarity, when faction or disaffection threatened to fracture the party, were received with enthusiastic acclaim. Not only did he head a party for longer than any other politician in modern British politics, but he did so     23   24   21 22

Derby to Newcastle, 4 April 1849, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 178/1. Derby to Blandford, 26 January 1854, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 182/2. Derby to Bentinck, 27 October 1847 Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 177/2. Stanley journal, 14 April 1849, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 4.

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without serious challenge or substantial desertions of support. During the 1850s, when Whig, Liberal and radical divisions, often prompted by the rivalry between Palmerston and Russell, were disrupting party connection, the Conservatives remained the largest unified body of Commons votes. As Palmerston, aware of the differences on his own side of the Commons, observed in 1855, ‘when it comes to a division’ the Conservatives ‘will go together into the same lobby like sheep through a gap’.25 In 1859 Lord Granville acknowledged that ‘the close attendance of [Derby’s] supporters both in and out of office was very remarkable’. This was due ‘not merely to a stricter system of discipline, which is characteristic of the Conservative party’, but was also the result of ‘the great personal ascendancy’ of Derby.26 The Illustrated London News noted in 1861 that Derby was ‘nearly adored by all his party’.27 As a former Conservative MP wrote to Sir William Jolliffe, chief whip in the Commons, in 1859, ‘what has kept the party together is the influence and most successful leadership of Lord Derby’.28 Derby’s unchallenged authority within his party stood on moral as well as ideological ground. His personal probity, his statesmanlike expressions of public disinterest, his depiction of the natural interdependence of the nation’s ‘interests’, his advocacy of judicious progress, as well as the broad acres of the Knowsley estate and a peerage dating back to 1485, personified an ideal of aristocratic service at the heart of mid-Victorian Conservative sensibilities. During the ‘Cotton Famine’ in Lancashire of the early 1860s he organised charitable relief for workers and their families, such assistance being a call on individual Christian conscience, rather than the responsibility of the state. His own large financial contribution to the relief effort provided an example for other Lancashire worthies. In 1863 he initiated a legislative remedy to the extensive industrial pollution scarring Lancashire, sharply reducing the toxic emissions of alkali works in the county, while his election as Chancellor of Oxford University in 1852 affirmed his eminence and recognised his scholarly abilities as a translator of classical literature. His rendering of Homer’s Iliad into English blank verse, published in 1864, was received with much critical praise. The Illustrated Times described him in 1860 as the ‘the first patrician in England’.29 Few Conservative leaders have retired at moments of their own choosing. Many have been pushed, far fewer have jumped. Enjoying sustained and largely unquestioned support, Derby was one of the latter select group. Nor, unlike many Conservative leaders, did Derby come to harbour a private contempt for those under his command. Peel’s disdain for the Conservative backbenches and 25   Palmerston to Temple, 24 December 1855, Southampton University Library, Broadlands Mss, GC/TE/364. 26   Granville to Palmerston, 18 June 1859, Broadlands Mss, GC/GR/1863. 27   The Illustrated London News, 15 June 1861. 28   ? to Jolliffe, 22 November 1859, Somerset County Record Office, Hylton Mss, DD/HY/24/107. 29   The Illustrated Times, 9 June 1860.

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Disraeli’s life-long sense that the Tory squires were undeserving of his genius were readily apparent to contemporaries. But Derby never succumbed to private scorn for his supporters. He saw party leadership as a solemn obligation, born of public duty and mutual trust. As prime minister Derby exercised an unchallenged authority over his cabinets. His debating skill, intellectual ability, administrative resourcefulness, and ministerial experience rendered him primus inter impares. When, in November 1852, he drew up in one sitting without erasures a detailed memorandum laying out his government’s response to the establishment of the Second Empire in France, he displayed that competence and mastery of detail that maintained his ascendancy within his Cabinet. In November 1858 it was Derby who drafted the report of his cabinet committee on parliamentary Reform, laying out the basis of what he hoped would be a lasting settlement of a long-disputed issue. Again, in November 1866, it was Derby who drove forward Cabinet discussion of parliamentary Reform, securing ministerial agreement to an extension of both the borough and county franchise based on the principle of rating. The following month he proposed a household borough franchise coupled with plurality of voting. These formed central elements in the Reform bill Disraeli introduced to the Commons in March 1867. Only when rapidly moving events in the Commons swept along the Conservatives’ Reform bill, did Derby’s grasp on ministerial policy slacken. Few other Victorian premiers, perhaps only Peel and Gladstone for certain periods, maintained as firm a control of their governments. This was not merely a function of a poverty of talent or meagreness of ambition among his Cabinet; lack of ability is not a necessary check on aspiration. More importantly, it accurately reflected his authority and commanding prestige within the parliamentary party. Considered progress, as the Conservative aspiration in office, was complemented by a strategy of ‘masterly inactivity’ in opposition.30 It was parliamentary calculation that determined a strategy which Derby also described as ‘killing with kindness’ or ‘armed neutrality’.31 This was a shrewd course for a united minority party facing a fractious Commons majority. Liberal critics characterised it as an involuntary confession of doctrinal bankruptcy. In fact, it was a deliberate strategy intended to cleave Derby’s opponents along the natural grain of Peelite, Whig, Liberal and radical differences. In 1851, 1852, 1855, 1858 and 1866 WhigLiberal governments were forced out of office by hostile initiatives originating from their own side of the Commons, Conservatives reaping the harvest of their opponents’ discord. At the same time, Derby supported moderate elements within the Liberal Cabinet against their extreme colleagues. This formed the basis of the so-called ‘truce of parties’ in the early 1860s, as the Conservatives backed the premier Palmerston in his ministerial tussles with Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, over defence expenditure, repeal of the paper duties and the budget. In 50 per cent of whipped Commons divisions during the 1860 session Conservatives   Derby to Malmesbury, 4 December 1860, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 188/2.   Stanley journal, 20 December 1852, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 92.

30 31

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and moderate Liberals combined against a minority of radical votes. In only 5 per cent of whipped divisions was there straight two-party voting.32 So Derby sought to demonstrate that Palmerston’s best allies sat on the benches opposite him, rather than on the radical benches on his own side of the House. The purpose of ‘masterly inactivity’ in opposition, avoiding giving Liberals the occasion to vote together and supporting the more cautious inclinations of Palmerston, was to encourage centrist realignment. This was Derby’s contribution to mid-Victorian equipoise. The merger of landed Whigs and moderate Conservatives, first mooted by Derby in 1848, underlay his hope of party realignment, as an alliance based on the protection of property, the defence of parliamentary sovereignty, and the safeguarding of Anglican scriptural authority. Parties recover power, he recognised, by reclaiming the middle ground. Despite the temptations of consolidating their core support, the surrender to their doctrinaire extremists condemned parties to impotent exclusion. Through ‘masterly inactivity’ in opposition and moderate progressivism in office, Derby sought to reclaim the middle ground. The path taken by the majority of Peelites through the complex party politics of the 1850s affirmed the effectiveness of Derby’s strategy. Established historiography emphasises Gladstone’s tortured journey from Peelism to Liberalism during the 1850s and 1860s. Our reading of mid-Victorian politics is dominated by the view that Peelism pointed along the high road to late-Victorian Liberalism. Yet Gladstone’s often idiosyncratic course cannot stand proxy for the passage of other MPs. In fact, of the 112 Conservative MPs who supported Peel over Corn Law repeal in 1846, a total of 70 had rejoined Derby’s Conservative party by 1859. The twisting trail that eventually led to Gladstonian Liberalism after 1868 was a path the vast majority of Peelites elected not to take. Only 32 Peelites, mostly prominent office-holders under Peel prior to 1846, ultimately joined the Liberals. For the great majority of Peelites, Derby’s moderate Conservatism provided a far more welcoming destination. The party merger of Conservatives and Whigs, those Derby called in 1847 ‘real Conservatives’, underlay his strategic thinking throughout the 1850s and 1860s.33 The return of the majority of Peelites to the Conservatives after 1846 gave substance to this aspiration. But it remained an unfulfilled hope during his lifetime. In 1866 party reconstruction seemed on the cards, as parliamentary Reform fractured the Palmerstonian alliance of Whigs, Liberals and radicals. But in 1868 Gladstone brought together the broken shards of a Liberal party shattered by Reform with the emotive cry of Irish Church disestablishment. Not until 1886, in a party crisis precipitated by Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule crusade, did the reconfiguration of parties, long anticipated by Derby, occur. The migration of landed Whigs under Lord Hartington over to the Conservative party realised that party realignment foreseen by Derby thirty years earlier. As a result, the Conservatives became the 32   Hugh Berrington, ‘Partisanship and Dissidence in the Nineteenth Century House of Commons’, Parliamentary Affairs, 21/4 (1968): 344. 33   Derby to Croker, 12 September 1847, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 177/2.

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most successful party in modern British politics, forming the natural party of government, either alone or in coalition, for the next 100 years. Derby’s belief in maintaining stable progress was buttressed by his commitment to the Established Church. The Church of England was woven through the moral fabric of the nation. But his defence of the Church Establishment never hardened into harsh Protestant bigotry and accommodated the extension of political liberties to non-Anglicans. He never regretted his vote for Catholic Emancipation in 1829, although his hope that the measure would attach Catholic subjects in Ireland more firmly to the constitution was disappointed. He opposed exciting Protestant prejudice as a Conservative rallying cry. He stepped back from the popular Protestant fervour ignited by the ‘Papal Aggression’ crisis in 1850. He defended the Maynooth grant against the hostile motions of the ultra-Protestant Conservative backbencher Richard Spooner during the 1850s. The vehemently anti-Catholic National Club, largely Conservative in membership, he regarded as ‘a mischievous body whose extreme pretensions and views must not be encouraged’.34 The passions of ultra-Protestant Conservative MPs, such as Charles Newdegate, William Beresford and Richard Spooner, were to be discouraged, he insisted in 1853, ‘by the negative means of avoiding in debate, or in meetings of the party, language which may unnecessarily frossier their … views’.35 He secured the passage of an Oaths bill in 1858 allowing practising Jews to become MPs. In February 1859 he supported a resolution of the church rates issue by allowing landlords to commute the rate into a rent charge on their lands, similar to the commutation of the tithe. But, while favouring political liberties for non-Anglicans, he remained committed to preserving the Established status of the Churches of England and Ireland. The proposal to appropriate the Irish Church’s surplus revenue for lay purposes had caused his resignation from Grey’s government in 1834. ‘A more perfect liturgy was never devised’ than that contained in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, he informed the Lords in 1858.36 Scholarly clergy of moderate views, inclining to Low Church sympathies, embodied his ideal of ecclesiastical preferment when prime minister. In 1866 he appointed the Revd. Samuel Butcher, a staunch defender of the Irish establishment, but known for his moderation and avoidance of extreme partisanship, to the bishopric of Meath. He recommended the Revd. Hawson for the Deanery of Chester, because Hawson’s ‘religious views incline to what is called “Broad Church”; but he is a sound theologian, and well known for several works, including the Life and Epistles of St. Paul’.37 He rejected the proposal to appoint the fiery evangelical the Revd. Hugh McNeile to the Deanery of Hereford, because of McNeile’s violent anti-Catholic sermons. He also, he assured the Queen in October 1867, held ‘as strong an objection to the     36   37   34 35

Derby to Disraeli, 14 November 1853, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 182/1. Ibid. Derby, 6 May 1858, Hansard, 3rd Series, vol. 150, col. 161. Derby to Queen Victoria, 25 May 1867, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 194/1.

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Ritualist clergy as Her Majesty’.38 Moderate Anglicanism formed the religious complement to Derby’s commitment to responsible progress, avoiding the destabilising extremes of political and sectarian excess. The Established Church embodied a religious via media underpinning the moral foundation of the nation, providing a social cohesion secure from the papal influences of Rome, the antiinstitutional predilections of nonconformity, and lying beyond the purview of the state. Derby’s first major Commons speech, as a young MP in 1824, had been a defence of the Church of Ireland’s property. With a symmetrical neatness his last address to the Lords, as a frail elder statesman in 1869, was to denounce Gladstone’s disestablishment of the Irish Church. Despoiling the Church of Ireland, he declared, would inevitably erode those cherished liberties granted by Parliament. It was a prelude to the dissolution of the Union and an encouragement to those who wished to disestablish the Church of England. Employing ‘the language of menace and coercion’, it was an act of political folly and moral injustice.39 When Gladstone’s Irish Church bill passed its third Lords reading in July 1869 Derby abruptly left the chamber, tersely remarking: ‘I have nothing left but to go away.’40 Just as Derby’s achievements were born of his Whig education and background, so his limitations as a mid-Victorian politician reflected his Knowsley and Bowood apprenticeship. He remained, as Gladstone observed, too much of a parliamentary politician to seek the ‘strength of popular opinion’.41 He had a wary disdain for the press, despite the expansion of political journalism during the 1850s. There was, he commented just before his death in1869, ‘no more unsatisfactory mode of spending money than the purchase of a second class newspaper’.42 This disdain was predictably reciprocated by the press, which has encouraged the neglect of posterity. Derby had no taste or enthusiasm for popular speaking, possessing ‘a strong dislike to being made the object of public curiosity’.43 When Gladstone undertook a series of popular addresses in South Lancashire, during the election of 1868, Derby dismissed the events as a self-indulgent and undignified display of ‘balderdash and braggadocio’.44 Personal pride and an unshakeable sense of his social status, as well as his position as a member of the Lords, prevented Derby from condescending to the vulgar arts of popular flattery. The boundaries of his political world were defined by Westminster, Whitehall, the country estates of fellow peers and the immediate community of Lancashire, his standing as the pre  Derby to General Grey, 19 October 1867, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 194/1.   Derby to Queen Victoria, 9 June 1869, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 197/2. 40   Granville to Queen Victoria, 22 July 1869, G.E. Buckle (ed.), The Letters of Queen 38 39

Victoria, 2nd Series (3 vols, 1926‒28), vol. 1, p. 621. 41   Gladstone memo, 6 March 1857, Gladstone Mss, British Library, Additional MS 44655, fol. 62. 42   Derby to Colville, 12 September 1869, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 197/2. 43   Stanley journal, 26 February 1851, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 48. 44   Derby to Disraeli, 22 November 1868, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Hughenden Deposit, B/XX/S/505.

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eminent landowner of the county requiring his presence at those public formal occasions prompted by royal visits, agricultural shows, museum openings and local Conservative dinners. It was left to Derby’s successors to revive Conservatism as a dynamic organisational force in the country. Even within Westminster Derby declined to pay easy compliments, regarding deference as his birthright. Lord Clarendon saw Derby’s arrogance as a want of graciousness: ‘No generosity, never to friend or foe; never acknowledged help, a great aristocrat proud of family and wealth.’45 No British prime minister, apart from Lord Rosebery after his marriage to a Rothschild, has enjoyed greater personal wealth, Derby’s annual income after 1851 being £110,000 a year (about £5.5 million in modern value). Public servants, sensitive to slights to their own status, such as Charles Greville (Clerk to the Privy Council from 1821 to 1859), deeply resented Derby’s lofty hauteur. In his widely-read journals, published in the 1880s, Greville declared that Derby was ‘of all men, the one to whom I have felt the greatest political and personal repugnance’.46 Greville’s portrayal of Derby as a man too much affected by ‘the Newmarket style of life’ reinforced posterity’s disparagement. Upon Derby becoming prime minister Greville chose not to attend Privy Council meetings, sending a colleague instead. When this was pointed out to the premier, Derby breezily replied: ‘Is that the case? I have not observed it: when I order coals to be put on the fire, I do not notice whether it is John or Thomas who does it.’47 Derby’s personality was a complex blend of pride, intelligence, assured self-belief and religious faith, combined with those characteristics common to dedicated politicians of pure duty, raw ambition, principled belief and the need to dominate lesser men which constitute the private stimulus to public conduct. His often teasing social manner and aristocratic aloofness effectively concealed the deeper recesses of his motivation. His public rhetoric served to persuade, not explain. Sensitive to slurs on his personal honour and always aware of his aristocratic status, he upheld the interests of his class as the nation’s landed ruling elite. His patrician detachment and public indifference to personal advancement was the natural appurtenance of aristocratic birth. Power was not a rare prize to be earnestly striven for, but a public duty intrinsic to his social status. Expressions of patriotic detachment served to enhance statesmanlike claims to office. His patrician beliefs proved an important part of the survival of aristocratic authority during the mid-Victorian period. As Conservative leader Derby played a weak hand with skill and forbearance. His containment of rural reaction, his tempering of sectarian animosity, his exploitation of opponents’ differences, and his responsible moderation while in office preserved the Conservative party as an effective presence in Westminster. He bequeathed his successors a credible parliamentary party of government, reconciled to progress   G.W.E. Russell, Sixty Years of an Empire, 1837‒1897 (London, 1897).   H. Reeve (ed.), C.C.F. Greville, A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV, King

45 46

William IV and Queen Victoria, (8 vols, 1888), vol. 8, p. 182. 47   Sir William Fraser, Disraeli and his Day (London, 1891), p. 231.

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and delivered from blinkered reaction and rural nostalgia. The 1867 Reform Act, as much Derby’s long term triumph as an ingenious improvisation conjured up by Disraeli’s dexterity, proved a fitting capstone to his career. Appreciation of Derby’s achievement provides an important perspective on his predecessor as Conservative leader, Sir Robert Peel, and his successor, Benjamin Disraeli. Peel can be seen as an essentially eighteenth-century executive politician, who never accepted party in Parliament, rather than the monarch’s prerogative, as the source of ministerial authority. Pace Norman Gash, Peel was not the founder of modern Conservatism. In 1846, over Corn Law Repeal, Peel split the newly fledged party he brought into office in 1841. It was Derby who nursed the tormented agricultural rump of the late 1840s through to the vigorous adolescence of 1867 and the early maturity of the 1870s. Likewise, an appreciation of Derby’s leadership dispels those persistent myths that portray Disraeli as the frustrated genius of the midVictorian Conservative party, suppressed by the dead hand of Derby’s political uninterest. Disraeli’s political position before 1867 was chronically insecure and his standing subordinate to the sway of Derby. It was Derby who commanded the Conservatives. It was Derby who ‘educated’ the party. Disraeli’s prominence was fragile and vulnerable, reliant on the grace of Derby’s endorsement. It was Derby, not Disraeli, who kept ministerial minds focused upon parliamentary Reform in 1858‒59 and 1866‒67. It was Derby who authoritatively struck the key note of Conservative government and who determined the thrust of domestic and foreign policy. Disraeli’s unpopularity was often politically convenient for Derby, shielding his authority from simmering Commons resentment or frustration. Conservatives found it easier to distrust Disraeli than to be disloyal to Derby. Suspicion of Disraeli served as a lightning rod for flashes of backbench anger, insulating Derby from dangerous discharges of discontent. This makes Disraeli’s extraordinary career and ultimate success in 1874 no less remarkable. With a Byronic sense of destiny the mercurial Disraeli finally triumphed over hostility and suspicion, the alchemy of his rhetoric transforming the base metal of social reform into the gold of party triumph in 1874 and converting the alien coin of ‘imperialism’ into the patriotic currency of Conservative honour. But Disraeli’s ultimate popular triumph was built on the foundation of Derby’s parliamentary achievement. Derby’s rehabilitation extends our understanding of modern British politics in crucial ways. It illuminates the consensus of mid-Victorian politics, both Conservatives and Liberals advocating enlightened progress and responsible reform. Derby ensured that the Conservatives were not a party of boorish reactionary sentiment. The mainstream of mid-Victorian parliamentary debate was largely about the pace, not the ultimate desirability, of constructive change. The rehabilitation of Derby is also an important corrective to an established historiography that emphasises the passage from Peelism to Liberalism as the salient route through the complex politics of the 1850s and 1860s, Gladstone’s anguished personal journey from Peelite acolyte to Liberal tribune embodying the

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current of his times. The view from Knowsley opens up alternative routes through the landscape of mid-Victorian politics. Finally, Derby’s rehabilitation reveals a Conservative tradition of governance subsequently overlaid by later celebrations of Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher. For Derby, like Stanley Baldwin, Harold Macmillan and R.A.B. Butler, authentic Conservatism possessed an innate wariness of strident jingoism, an allergic sensitivity to divisive ideology, and an overriding sense that the nation wished to be at ease with measured progress. Derby believed that human rationality was limited by a higher Providential wisdom. The flawed intricacy of human nature and the unforeseen consequences of utopian aspirations suggested the limits of political agency. He was deeply sceptical of speculative theory when divorced from historical experience. Mistrustful of ideological panaceas for society’s ills, he believed that the subtle complexity of social needs, the impact of contingency on rational designs, and the weight of past experience on perceptions of the future counselled humility in the exercise of political power. His strong attachment to the nation’s institutions, Parliament and the Anglican Church, informed his aversion to sudden or violent change. He saw society as a natural organic whole, not as a mere aggregate of individual experience, in which the seamless weave of varied complementary interests comprised far more than the sum of discrete social concerns. All this shaped a pragmatic tradition of Conservative governance seeking to do what was possible, doctrinaire inflexibility being a recipe for disillusion and disappointment. It also suggested that consensual conciliation, rather than adversarial conflict, was the desirable basis for resolving political differences. Derby, as Conservative leader during the 1850s and 1860s, sought to soothe the bitter political and religious antagonisms of the 1830s and 1840s. This reflected the benign perspective from Knowsley of an aristocratic Lancashire magnate secure in his status and authority. The conciliatory, intelligent, horse-loving Conservatism of Derby reverberated in the emollient public language of Baldwin during the 1920s as he sought to ease the clash between capital and labour. When Baldwin, another astute, popular, long-serving, though easily disregarded Conservative leader, added the term ‘One Nation’ Conservatism to the party lexicon, in a speech at the Albert Hall in 1924, he too defined the political middle ground in an appeal, across social distinctions, to a vision of ordered freedom embedded in a professed English native genius for stable progress. Derby’s Conservatism, after his death in 1869, was rapidly pushed aside by Disraeli’s patriotic and imperialist rhetoric of the 1870s, just as the vigorous astringency of Thatcher’s public language during the 1980s marginalised ministerial ‘wets’. Thatcher’s scornful dismissal of her centrist colleagues as feeble and spineless echoed the contemptuous portrayal by mid-Victorian Liberals and radicals of Derby’s Conservatism as vacillating weakness. Such hostile caricature, with strident ideological certainty, condemned Derby’s leadership as a period of intellectual stagnation, organisational decay and political failure. Yet the quieter modulation of Derby’s Conservative convictions, informed by subtle scepticism rather than coarse prejudice, looked to combine stable progress with judicious

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reform, reconciling the nation’s venerated past with emergent dynamic social interests. This, Derby believed, was what respectable members of the political nation, cognisant of both their duties and their privileges, desired. It is a tradition of governance that forms an important, though easily overlooked, strand in the history of modern Conservatism.

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Chapter 2

The Ultimate Test: The Fourteenth Earl, the Admiralty and the Ministry of 1852 Andrew Lambert

In contrast to contemporaries and colleagues like Lord Palmerston and Sir James Graham Lord Derby is not normally associated with the politics and policies of the Royal Navy.1 He demonstrated remarkably little interest in the detail of naval power: his only technical contribution to the naval policy of his first government was to recommend the Navy consider fire extinguishers he had purchased for Knowsley.2 Little wonder his career is read through the lens of high profile, Cabinet-splitting issues of religion, tariff and reform. However, such an approach is misleading. It elevates questions that divided domestic politicians over those, like defence, on which they were generally in agreement. If Derby’s approach to the essentially bipartisan, policy imperative to maintain naval mastery was effective and unremarkable, his handling of the Admiralty provides a critical insight into the nature of British politics, and the problems of a minority administration. The ultimate test of Derby’s Ministry would be the maintenance of British naval mastery, the key to national security, prosperity and stability. Although infrequently aired, Derby’s views on naval power were, like those of every nineteenth-century Prime Minister, of the highest importance to the overall conduct of government. While he agreed with most other statesmen of the day that ‘Britain’s national defence was viewed as primarily dependent upon a strong navy’, he was equally concerned with the votes of government employees, and the parliamentary voting strength of the Admiralty Board in the House of Commons.3 1   One notable exception is: J. Beeler, ‘“A Whig Private Secretary is in itself fatal”: Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Derby, Party Politics, and Naval Administration, 1852’ in T. Larson and M. Shirley (eds), Splendidly Victorian: Essays in honour of Walter L. Arnstein (Aldershot, 2001). Since a version of this chapter was delivered at the Knowsley conference in 2004, the situation has been ameliorated, but not entirely redressed, by Angus Hawkins’ excellent political biography, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby (2 vols, Oxford, 2007 and 2008). 2   Derby to Northumberland, 7 September 1852, Alnwick Castle, Alnwick Ms [hereafter Alnwick] E/4/160. Derby’s note on Stafford to Derby, 7 December 1852, demonstrates that he had not read the technical half of a letter on naval forces: Liverpool Record Office, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 150/5. 3   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 11.

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Both would be critical to his political calculations in 1852. Furthermore, he took office with a decidedly outdated concept of how Admiralty patronage could be exploited to sustain his minority ministry. The key question for Derby in 1852 was political survival. Like any minority Prime Minister he had to trim his appointments and policies to suit the mood of the House, and the wider public, while looking to a general election to improve his power base. The day-to-day formulation and execution of naval policy was the responsibility of the Board of Admiralty, presided over by a Cabinet minister, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Normally the First Lord would be chosen by the Prime Minister; the two men would then confer on other naval and civilian members of the Board.4 Before 1832 the post of First Lord, relatively quiet in peace time, had been held by distinguished grandees with electoral influence and limited talent, or service peers with limited means who performed other key roles in government. After Sir James Graham’s radical overhaul of naval administration in 1832 the office demanded considerable application, and no little political acumen. Despite that, Derby appointed an old-style grandee First Lord. His reasons were simple: shortage of men, money and votes. In February 1851 Derby constructed a potential Cabinet from among his followers but, as he informed Prince Albert, Algernon Percy, fourth Duke of Northumberland, was ‘not of his party’.5 The Duke had spoken and voted with the Peelites since 1846. Disraeli considered him a ‘great card’, which, like Derby’s initial selection, was a reference to electoral patronage and financial resource, rather than administrative talent or political experience.6 Derby’s choice was influenced by landed property, electoral influence and party funding.7 It is probable Derby knew Northumberland would only join the Cabinet if he could have the Admiralty. In return Derby hoped to secure the support of the Northumberland estates and the patronage of the Admiralty. The Duke’s interest was direct and personal. After a promising naval career he had been forcibly retired in 1850, lacking sufficient time at sea as a captain for retention. Consequently his ideas were heavily influenced by 4   Between 1832 and 1867 Admiralty Boards normally consisted of a civilian First Lord, four Naval Lords, ranking admirals or captains, with two politicians, a First or Political Secretary and a Junior Civil Lord, the latter generally tasked with financial oversight, an area in which few naval officers were expert. For these boards see: J. Sainty, Admiralty Officials, 1660‒1870 (London, 1975). In addition to the Civilian Lords, all the Naval Lords could sit in the House of Commons, if they were not peers. Six or seven reliable ministerial votes significantly exceeded the voting strength of any other department. 5   Prince Albert’s memorandum of an interview, A.C. Benson and Viscount Esher (eds), The Letters of Queen Victoria 1837‒1861 [hereafter LQV], vol. 2, pp. 302‒3. 6   W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, vol. 3 (London, 1914), p. 292. 7   ‘The Duke of Northumberland would have had the Admiralty’: Malmesbury, diary, 28 February 1851, Earl of Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister (2 vols, London, 1884), vol. 1, pp. 278‒80.

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professional considerations and professional opinions. No‑one held any elevated opinions of the Duke’s political abilities, although Sir James Graham may have been exaggerating for effect when he described the appointment as a danger to the state.8 After February 1851 Northumberland assumed that he would be First Lord in a Derby administration, preparing for office and choosing his Admiralty Board. Influenced by radical Admiral Sir Charles Napier, the Duke planned a ‘professional’ board, retaining Naval Lords from the previous regime.9 He hoped that offering a seat to Derby’s cousin Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby would be his only concession to party politics.10 However, Hornby pointed out that Derby believed ‘three of the Board, certainly should be in the House of Commons; but that beyond that the 1st Lord of the Admiralty should be left entirely to his own wishes as to the selection of his men’.11 By the time his appointment was confirmed on 23 February 1852, Northumberland had accepted that most of the Naval Lords would have to take seats, seats that he would provide. His friend the former Conservative Naval Lord Admiral William Bowles represented the Percy constituency of Launceston, but Derby reckoned Bowles too liberal, so he was replaced by a ducal relative at the election.12 Yet, this negative aside, Derby, believing he could not in all conscience interfere with the minor arrangements of a duke, allowed Northumberland to select his Naval Lords and his private secretary. As a result the Ministry never came close to maximising Admiralty voting strength in the House of Commons. When the Board was formed on 2 March only Augustus Stafford and Captain the Hon. Arthur Duncombe had seats (Northamptonshire North and the East Riding of Yorkshire respectively). Furthermore they did not have to stand for re-election on taking office, as a general election had been moved.13 While there should have been more than enough Conservative naval officers to create a suitable Admiralty Board, Northumberland chose two men who would not enter the House. The key appointment of First Naval Lord went to Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, a very liberal Conservative, married into a Whig family, who refused to sit in the House of Commons. In a break with tradition, based on   Graham to Russell, 26 July 1852, cited in J. Conacher, The Peelites and the Party System 1846‒1852 (Newton Abbot, 1972), p. 126. 9   Napier to Northumberland, 6 April 1851; Sir Hyde Parker to Northumberland, 30 June 1851 (commenting on Napier’s proposals), Alnwick E/4/99‒103. 10   Furthermore, Hornby was a very distinguished officer with recent sea-going command experience. 11   Hornby to Northumberland, 6 August 1851 and 8 and 10 August 1851, Alnwick G/7/4-5. 12   N. Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel (London, 1953), p. 438. For Hornby’s intended political berth at Bodmin: Derby to Northumberland, 4 February 1852, Alnwick G7/11. 13   After obtaining his post captaincy in 1834 Duncombe had come ashore and taken up a political career. His seat was usually uncontested and he retained it until 1867. His brothers Lord Faversham and the Hon. Octavius Duncombe of the Life Guards added useful numbers to the party’s voting strength. 8

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Napier’s advice, Northumberland retained the technocrat Captain Alexander Milne from the Whig Board, and Milne maintained his apolitical stance.14 Although a loyal follower of the Prime Minister, Phipps Hornby managed to avoid parliamentary duty. Only Captain Sir Thomas Herbert agreed to take a seat, winning the small government borough of Dartmouth at the general election (not that Duncombe or Herbert provided any accretion of Admiralty debating power).15 To make matters worse there was no Junior Civil Lord, a post usually held by a young politician linked to the Prime Minister or the Treasury. The failure to fill the Admiralty Board with MPs reflected Northumberland’s ‘professional’ outlook. But leaving the Admiralty appointments to the Duke weakened Derby’s parliamentary party and allowed a dangerous fracture to develop between political and professional nominees in the naval administration. It also ensured Stafford would get very little help from his parliamentary colleagues. Politics The pledge of an early dissolution of Parliament persuaded Lord John Russell to allow the defence budgets through unopposed on 22 March, leaving Derby free to plan the political strategy of his naval administration.16 Taking office with a minority government, his overriding concern was to build a majority in the House of Commons, either by alliances, or a successful general election. The election would also settle the question of protection. In the past, governments had always secured seats in boroughs where the Admiralty exercised real economic and social influence. By 1852 the naval dockyards at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham employed the largest single group of voters open to direct influence, and they were an appealing target, most seats being held by Whigs. To secure these advantages Derby needed a reliable man in the vital post of First or Political Secretary of the Admiralty. Northumberland sat in the wrong house for naval debates, most of which turned on questions of finance, addressed in the annual Naval Estimates, and necessarily moved in the House of Commons. When the First Lord sat in the House of Lords the Estimates were moved by the First (or Political) Secretary to the Admiralty. This was an office of real power, more important to the success of the administration than some Cabinet posts, making Derby’s choice critical. He offered the post to Augustus Stafford. Although a prominent figure in the ‘Young England’ movement, Stafford had been among the last to accept Disraeli’s lead

14   J. Beeler (ed.), The Milne Papers, vol. 1 (Aldershot Navy Records Society, 2004), pp. 205‒6, for the origins of Milne’s apolitical position under the Whigs, and its continuance in 1852; pp. 312‒13, for the congratulations of senior officers on his continuation in 1852. 15   Gash, Politics, p. 337. 16   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 20.

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in the Commons and remained far closer to Derby.17 When an occasional naval question reached the Lords, Derby, not the Duke, took the lead.18 From the start, it was obvious that Stafford and the Duke were uneasy bedfellows. While the Secretary was alive to the political implications of every act, the First Lord closed his eyes to anything that was not to the advantage of the service. Stafford nicknamed his master ‘the Doge’ and only wished he would place his great “N” on the various measures he promulgated to improve the electoral fortunes of the party. At the Admiralty Stafford found himself effectively alone as a party politician, with only a small coterie of supportive clerks. His chief, a grandee with naval experience, surrounded himself with naval officers and a core of professional advisers, most of whom owed their positions to the Whigs, whatever their own politics. Derby and Disraeli were quickly made aware of the situation, receiving an unsigned memorandum pointing out the strong Whig links of Northumberland’s private secretary, Captain Frederick Pelham, First Sea Lord Hyde Parker, and Captain Milne. While understandably anxious to make a success of his office, it is clear that Stafford did not act alone. The party whips channelled letters concerning the distribution of patronage through Stafford, for the Duke proved impervious to claims of party above merit. Stafford attempted to take control of Admiralty patronage, to meet the wishes of fellow MPs and expand Government support at the election. Stafford’s primary concern, the political imperatives of the ministry, soon brought him into collision with the astute, professional Surveyor of the Navy, Captain Baldwin Walker. Unlike the Admiralty Board, which left office with the government, the Surveyor was a permanent appointment responsible for construction policy and programming, a major area of expenditure, while the dockyards he controlled were a major source of employment under the Crown. Appointed by a Whig Admiralty, Walker had powerful Whig friends in the House of Commons: former First Lord Sir Francis Baring and former First Naval Lord Admiral Sir Maurice Berkeley. Both had great faith in Walker’s judgement, while Berkeley was a personal friend. Although the ministers had expected to gain political support through government patronage they soon discovered that their predecessors had altered the rules. To the Tory rank and file, the alterations appeared to render permanent the result of seven years of Whig control of the dockyards.19 Critically, an Admiralty Order of Lord Auckland’s on 27 February 1847 had removed authority over dockyard promotions from the Board to the Surveyor, ostensibly in the interests of economy 17   C. Whibley, Lord John Manners and his Friends (2 vols, London, 1925), vol. 1, pp. 58, 203‒9, 293‒7. For Stafford’s relationship with Derby, Stafford to Derby, 3 March 1852, reporting a dinner conversation with Sir James Graham is typical: Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 150/5. The disappearance of Stafford’s archive leaves a significant gap in our understanding of Derby’s naval policy: it was sold at auction and its current whereabouts are unknown. 18   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, pp. 21 and 27, for examples. 19   Robert Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), pp. 320‒22.

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and efficiency. In effect the process had been de-politicised. Acting on this basis Northumberland and Hyde Parker left Walker to determine the appointment and promotion of dockyard workmen. Because that advice appeared to favour known Whig partisans, Stafford urged Derby to establish that he spoke for the Ministry. Within a month of taking office Derby had to remind the Duke that he was leading a political party: My dear Duke, I am sure you will do me the justice to be assured that I am the last man who would desire to interfere with the exercise of your Patronage, or, still less, to see you again introduce that system of political jobbing for which the late Board of Admiralty was so eminently distinguished. When I asked you to undertake the formation of a Board, I begged you to select the Officers who you thought most calculated to benefit the service – always supposing that those in Parliament supported the general policy of the Government – and in making other appointments, I equally wished that you should consult the good of the Service, and not mere political claims to the exclusion of professional claims. But I think it is my duty to say to you that I hear, rightly or wrongly, strong remonstrances as to the extent to which, at the outset of your Office, this sound principle has been carried; and political friends complain, that having been subjected to a long period of exclusion on the grounds of disagreement with the Government of the day, the altered circumstances of the Board of Admiralty bring no alteration in their chances – and that some of the best things, even in minor departments, which have fallen to your disposal, have been given to those connected with our political opponents. … however much you may desire the strictest impartiality in the distribution of naval employment, we cannot, if we would, altogether ignore the existence of the House of Commons, or conceal from ourselves that the exercise of the Patronage of the Admiralty is an instrument which according to our form of Government is expected to be used, and must be used, to a certain degree, in furtherance of Political objects, and that especially at a time when the greatest national interests are trembling in the balance, and dependent on the existence, or overthrow of an Administration. Pray do not think that I ask you to appoint to command, high or low, inefficient men, on the grounds of party. All I wish you to do is not to give ground for an idea, that while the Whigs promoted all their friends, and excluded all their opponents, under a Conservative government there is not even a turn given, even in respect of subordinate employment, in favour of those Candidates, whose political connexions have subjected them to a long Taboo. I much regret, I know of no individual cases. I only know the feeling which is arising in the House of Commons; and I am sure you will excuse me if I say that even in Admiralty appointments that House must not be altogether set aside, and that the doctrine of political impartiality may be carried to an extent dangerous to the party which

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adopts it, and (without entire reciprocity) ultimately prejudicial to the interests of this Country.20

Clearly Derby’s supporters wanted to taste the fruits of power. Northumberland protested that his promotions had been made on professional grounds, but Derby repeated his desire that political affiliation should also be taken into account.21 The Duke can have been in no doubt as to the source of Derby’s information. On 31 March, Grant, Stafford’s secretary, told Walker that political friends were complaining about his dockyard appointments at Devonport, and that Stafford would have to act. Walker demanded that the imputation he was acting on partisan grounds should not be repeated. A few days later the Political Secretary confessed that he was being pressed by Derby and Disraeli.22 He also claimed that promotions were being given to political opponents of the Government, but offered no evidence to support the claim.23 Hyde Parker gave the Surveyor his wholehearted support, and doubted Stafford would revoke the 1847 order giving the Surveyor of the Navy control over dockyard appointments: ‘surely he cannot be so ill advised, he can never cancel the order and I am quite sure from the conversation I have had with the Duke of Northumberland that he never would consent to that regulation made by Lord Auckland being cancelled’.24 Parker was wrong. Ten days later Stafford reversed the Order. He acted without the sanction of the Duke, or the Board, but with the approval of Derby and Disraeli. He also violated an Order issued by Sir Francis Baring’s Board on 26 September 1849 to avoid any interference in local politics, and once again produced no evidence to back his claims of political action by ‘opponents’ in the dockyards, or at the Admiralty. When he learnt that Stafford had revoked the 1847 Order, Walker resigned: Parker took his letter to the Duke, and had the offensive Order recast. Walker was persuaded to withdraw his resignation. Stafford also planned to secure and exploit the civil patronage of the office, but Northumberland refused to sign the draft, on the advice of his private secretary, Captain Frederick Pelham.25 Stafford complained to Derby, copying Disraeli into   Derby to Northumberland, 27 March 1852, Alnwick G/7/13.   Derby to Northumberland, 29 March 1852, Alnwick G/7/15. 22   Walker Notes, 31 March 1852, 5 April 1852, National Maritime Museum, Walker 20 21

Papers [hereafter WWL] 2. 23   Select Committee on Dockyard Appointments, Parliamentary Papers 1852‒1853, vol. 25, pp. ii‒vi. 24   Parker to Walker 9 April 1852, Cape Town University Library, Walker Papers, WWL/ Cape Town. 25   Pelham’s brother was the Earl of Chichester. M.G. Wiebe, M. Millar and A.P. Robson (eds), Benjamin Disraeli Letters, 1852‒1856, vol. 6 (Toronto, 1996), p.164, fn 4; J. Beeler, ‘“A Whig Private Secretary is in itself fatal”: Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Derby, Party Politics, and Naval Administration, 1852’ in T. Larson and M. Shirley (eds), Splendidly Victorian: Essays in honour of Walter L. Arnstein (Aldershot, 2001).

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the correspondence.26 In response Derby spoke to Parker, and wrote ‘strongly’ to the Duke: I wish with all my heart, as I do not doubt you do, that in conducting the affairs of a Government there were no such thing as Patronage, nor any necessity for exercising Government influence, but I fear we must take the world as we find it, and be content, more especially just before a General election, to make use of the power of giving appointments for the purpose of gratifying and strengthening our political supporters … I must be permitted to express a hope that as far as possible you will allow Stafford to deal with these petty appointments, and to seek for the means of gratifying and encouraging our supporters. I believe he gave you a list, a few days ago, of a number of offices which may be made very useful as they fall vacant, and which, not being rewards for merit in the public service, may fairly be dealt with on political grounds. If they are not, we really do not do justice to ourselves: and at the moment when every seat is of importance, it is doubly necessary that we should not throw away any legitimate influence. I have no doubt that Captain Pelham, your Private Secretary, is a highly honourable man, but I hear that his political opinions are decidedly Whiggish, and that unconsciously to himself they may bias him in the cases which he has to lay before you. I need not of course say that what I have written is for your own eyes alone. I hope you will excuse me for interfering, but the representations which have been made to me from various quarters are so strong that I could not refuse.27

The Duke disagreed, and warned: ‘Mr. Stafford tried the experiment of a Political promotion in Chatham Dockyard; and I feared that a continuance would do injury to the service, and damage the Government in public estimates if the principle of reward for merit was abandoned, and reward for political votes introduced.’28 Walker found Stafford’s interference disruptive and damaging to the management of the yards. Dockyard Superintendents found the sudden appearance of the Political Secretary in the yard, actively supporting the Conservative candidate, and without the Board, both novel and destabilising. In effect the dockyard canvas began at least two months before the poll. As polling day approached Stafford chaired dinners for voters, at the Admiralty’s expense.29 Perhaps this was why Derby expected a majority.30 Yet unable or unwilling to discipline the First Lord, and increasingly frustrated by the apparently whiggish sympathies of his Board, 26   Stafford to Derby 3 May 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 150/5, with endorsement; also Bodleian Library, Hughenden Deposit [hereafter Dep. Hughenden] B/XXI/S/475. 27   Derby to Northumberland, 3 May 1852, Alnwick G/7/16-7. 28   Northumberland to Derby, 4 May 1852, Alnwick D 154/8. 29   Select Committee on Dockyard Appointments, Parliamentary Papers, 1852‒53, vol. 25, Introduction and Conclusion. 30   Malmesbury, diary, 18 June 1852: Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 340.

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Derby was reduced to asking Disraeli if he had any influence with the Duchess of Northumberland.31 Stafford met with little but disappointment in the run up to the July elections. His position was not improved by uncommon zeal and an exaggerated notion of the power of his office. He saw every act of the Duke and the Board through a very dark glass, for example complaining vehemently about the appointment of Captain Stephen Lushington to HMS Albion, which he attributed to political machinations, and especially the covert whiggery of Walker, only for Derby to learn that Lushington had been recommended as a reliable Conservative by Hornby and Herbert, two of the ‘political’ officers on the Board, and had only been offered the ship after another Conservative officer had turned it down.32 Clearly the parliamentary party believed Northumberland was not acting in their interest, and Stafford had not checked his facts.33 Instead he called on the leadership to clear the obstacles to enhanced political control of the department.34 Stafford’s suggestion was entirely consistent with the long term process whereby the Cabinet acquired ever greater financial control over the major spending departments, a process that had begun before the 1832 reforms.35 The election was noteworthy for the large number of candidates fielded, ‘electoral intimidation and bribery’ and sectarian contests in Ireland.36 The ministers made only limited gains, and with no prospect of significant additional support Derby realised the future was bleak. An ill-tempered demand for the proxy vote of Lord Cowley, the ambassador in Paris, indicated the focus of his thoughts.37 Admiralty patronage secured useful electoral successes at Chatham and Devonport, which seemed to justify Stafford’s methods, and he was anxious to work the dockyards for the future. Once again he found Walker and Pelham in his path.38 Walker was disgusted, and still thinking about resigning.39 While the leadership considered the political future, Stafford used the summer recess to visit the Mediterranean, where the Commander in Chief – and former Whig First Naval Lord – Admiral Sir James Whitly Deans Dundas, provided fresh

  Derby to Disraeli, 2 June 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/XX/5/61, 61a, 93.   Derby to Disraeli and Northumberland to Derby, 2 July 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/

31 32

XX/S 61a. 33   J. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: the Political Journals of Lord Stanley 1849‒1869 [hereafter DDCP] (Hassocks, 1978), p. 70 . 34   Stafford to Disraeli, 6 July 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/XXI/S/480. 35   A.D. Lambert, ‘Politics. Administration and Decision-Making: Wellington and the Navy, 1828‒1830’, in C.M. Woolgar (ed.), Wellington Studies IV (Southampton, 2008), pp. 185‒243. 36   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 38. 37   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, pp. 38‒9. 38   Stafford to Disraeli 24 July 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/XXI/S/463. 39   Walker to Admiral Berkeley, 25 July 1852, WWL/ Cape Town.

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criticism of the Duke.40 On his return Stafford discovered that Hyde Parker’s latest dockyard appointments would upset local Conservative interests. Once again he turned to Derby and Disraeli: while I received approbation in Downing Street for my exertions in the cause of our Government; those exertions were here looked upon with coldness, if not with dislike, and that my important position as the person responsible in the House of Commons for every act of the Board and for the whole state of the Navy was never properly understood, probably because so many members of the Board were utterly ignorant of Parliamentary life.41

Stafford also used Treasury contacts to thwart the Duke’s desire to establish a Committee on steam engines, planned by Walker.42 Such interference in key professional questions prompted a fresh explosion. Hyde Parker complained that the Secretary was acting ‘in direct opposition to both Sir Baldwin Walker’s opinion and my own’, without reference to the Board or the responsible officers.43 The Board divided along party/professional lines. With seats in the House Captains Herbert and Duncombe understood Stafford’s concerns, but Parker, Pelham and Walker stressed the professional needs of the Navy, leaving Milne trying to reduce friction. Derby had to act, but he was unwilling to force the Duke to give up his Whig private secretary, or to lose his naval MPs, and preferred to settle the issue in conversation, well aware that such things should not be committed to paper.44 In an adroit example of political management he persuaded Pelham to let Stafford discuss political issues with the Duke in private.45 By early October the struggle for political control of the Admiralty was effectively over. Party interests had triumphed over professional needs, making it somewhat ironic that the Navy would come back to destroy the political hopes of the Ministry. Strategy and Technology During the summer recess Disraeli planned a Budget to secure the Conservative grip on power, only for his arithmetic and his politics to be fatally undermined by the Admiralty. In the face of alarming political developments in France, Derby favoured keeping on friendly terms with the government of President Louis 40   Dundas was convinced, and convinced Stafford that Northumberland was trying to goad him into resigning. 41   Stafford to Northumberland, 28 September 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/XXI/S/ S465a. 42   Stafford to Derby, 29 September 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 150/5. 43   Hyde Parker to Northumberland, 6 October 1852, Alnwick E/4/79‒80. 44   Derby to Disraeli, 7 October 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/XX/S 77. 45   Stafford to Derby, 9 October 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 150/5.

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Napoleon Bonaparte, while maintaining strong defences. But every addition to the defence budget forced Disraeli to sacrifice measures crafted to secure the support of specific interest groups.46 The financial demands that ultimately wrecked Disraeli’s plans were driven by the rapid pace of technological development and the deteriorating international outlook. Statesmen of Derby’s generation had grown up in the last days of technological stability, when wooden sailing warships remained essentially unchanged for decades and, in the case of HMS Victory, ready for front line service after half a century afloat. The introduction of steam power, shell firing guns and finally the screw propeller not only obliged statesmen to master new subjects or place far more faith in their professional advisers, but they also meant that the simple arithmetic of naval power, based on the number of effective sailing line of battle ships, no longer served. Derby always believed that Navy was the basis of national security and political power, but by 1852 the issue had become complex. New ships were needed, and a new type of sailor to serve in them: developments that held out little hope of economy or stability. In the years since Derby had last held political office, the Navy had been developing a new warship design. Existing ships were either sailing ships or paddle wheel steamers. From the mid 1840s the potential of the sailing ship with auxiliary screw propulsion had been tested. By late 1852, the French having adopted the technology, the Surveyor advised that all future warships, especially battleships, should be screw propelled.47 On 19 October Walker urged the Board to sanction a large expenditure on steam machinery, to create an all-steam Navy. Hyde Parker agreed this was ‘absolutely necessary’.48 With impeccable timing the Queen launched a sustained campaign for increases in national defence spending. When Derby took office the Queen and Prince Albert were already taking a close interest in defence.49 The Foreign Secretary, Lord Malmesbury, met with both Palmerston and Wellington, who stressed the need to keep close to France, while pressing the government to increase spending on sea and land armaments. The rest of the country seemed to agree that the Whigs had allowed defence spending to fall too low.50 The overriding strategic concern was to keep the French out of Belgium, especially the potential invasion base at Antwerp. Keeping Antwerp and the Scheldt out of the hands of a major power had been the basis of British   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, pp. 41‒2.   See A.D. Lambert, Battleships in Transition: The Creation of the Steam Battlefleet

46 47

1815‒1860 (London, 1984), pp. 13‒40, for this process. 48   Walker Submission, 19 October 1852, WWL/1; Parker to Walker, 24 October 1852, WWL /Cape Town. 49   Royal Correspondence on Defence with the Russell Ministry 1852: Windsor Castle, Royal Archive [hereafter Windsor] E43 fols 10‒23. 50   Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 317‒19. Discussions in late February‒early March.

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security policy for centuries, as Malmesbury reminded Derby: French troops on the Scheldt would mean war.51 Malmesbury looked to a Great Power coalition to impress upon the French that the 1815 settlement was final, although he and Derby preferred to uphold it without binding European commitments.52 While Malmesbury and Derby tried to maintain the European balance and build good cross-Channel relations, the task was complicated by the nervous, excitable state of France as it passed from republic to empire, and an Anglo-French naval race in screw-propelled wooden battleships. From the start Malmesbury considered the new naval base at Cherbourg the key indicator of French intentions. Located only 200 miles from England, the heavily defended port was well placed for an invasion. No sooner had the new ambassador, Lord Cowley, taken post in Paris than Malmesbury exploited the requirement for a new consul at Granville to shift the post to Cherbourg. The new consul, Hamond, a former soldier and Secretary to the King of Hanover, was instructed to send ‘no intelligence of a certain nature excepting by a sure & private hand to be given to you in person or delivered in the same manner to me here’.53 Hamond received verbal instructions from Cowley in early April.54 Despite that precaution, Malmesbury would remain anxious about French naval activity throughout the Ministry.55 British concern was conveyed by strengthening the fleet in the Mediterranean and warning Louis Napoleon not to infringe any treaties.56 Lord Hardinge, Master General of the Ordnance, urged the need to upgrade the defences of Pembroke dockyard, Spithead and Alderney, the last being the key to command of the Channel.57 Derby professed to lack the professional knowledge to judge the merits of new defences, putting his faith in senior officers, not least his lifelong companion General Sir John Burgoyne.58 A royal visit to Belgium in August provided fresh opportunities for King Leopold to influence his relatives. In this heated atmosphere it was hardly surprising the government would be as anxious to preserve the totemic Iron Duke. The steam battleship Windsor Castle had been launched on the very day the old warrior had died, and Northumberland proposed she be renamed Duke of Wellington.   Malmesbury to Derby, 27 March 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 144/1.   Malmesbury to Hamilton Seymour, 29 March 1852: Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol.

51 52

1, p. 325. 53   Malmesbury to Cowley, 26 March 1852, Hampshire Record Office, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/50/21. 54   Malmesbury to Cowley, 2 April 1852, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/50/30. 55   Malmesbury to Cowley, 15 September 1852 and 6 November 1852, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/50/107 and 132. 56   Malmesbury to Derby, 16 April 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14), 144/1; Malmesbury to Cowley, 2 June 1852, Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 337. 57   Hardinge to Disraeli, 5 June 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/V/H/1a. 58   Derby to Prince Albert, 24 July 1852, Windsor M53, fol. 143. Burgoyne had grown up at Knowsley.

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Derby concurred.59 The symbolic translation of the victor of Waterloo into the mightiest warship afloat could not be misunderstood by Napoleon’s nephew, or his Bonapartist entourage. By the autumn the international scene was darkening. Derby trusted the fleet would uphold British interests, but feared that Austria, and possibly Russia, would not oppose a French invasion of Belgium, ostensibly to crush the hostile Brussels press. Fortunately ‘our immense maritime superiority’ would deter American aggression against Canada.60 By this time Malmesbury was less concerned by French threats to invade Belgium, which he believed would unite all Europe. He considered Egypt to be a more likely target. Fortunately the latest intelligence indicated the French dockyards were ‘never more sluggish’.61 Yet by October it was obvious that Louis Napoleon would soon proclaim a Bonapartist empire, and many feared war was inevitable. That much of the alarm originated in Brussels, where Leopold acted as a clearing house for scraps of Orleanist gossip, was not lost on the ministers. Malmesbury was more accurate in his analysis that French policy aimed at securing a British alliance, but he could not halt the slide into panic.62 The inevitable consequence would be raised defence spending, followed by political problems. On the afternoon of 25 October the Cabinet spent four hours debating defence, especially the need for more seamen, and the impact this would have on the forthcoming budget.63 When Parliament met on 4 November, the Queen repeated the alarm, strongly supported by Albert, while Walker extended his call for additional funds. Derby advocated a European response to an imperial declaration by Napoleon, but without any binding alliances. The Queen was not impressed: Derby, as she explained to King Leopold, ‘is never alarmed enough’.64 Fresh intelligence from the consular service finally convinced Malmesbury that even if the French did not intend war, they were preparing for one.65 Consequently Derby urged Disraeli to find the money for extra seamen and marines, having secured Whig support for a supplementary estimate. Only after he had confirmed this decision at Windsor did Derby receive royal sanction to enter into coalition negotiations with the Peelites or Palmerston.66 The survival of the ministry depended on recruiting allies, which the Queen would only permit if Derby accepted her line on defence. Little wonder

  Northumberland to Derby, 19 September 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14), 154/8, endorsed ‘written to the Queen’. 60   Derby to Malmesbury, 3 October 1852, Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 353‒5. 61   Malmesbury to Derby, 8 October 1852, Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 355‒7. 62   Queen Victoria to Derby, 23 October 1852, LQV, pp. 396‒7; Malmesbury, diary, 24 October 1852, Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 359. 63   Malmesbury, diary, 25 October 1852, ibid., p. 360. 64   Queen Victoria to King Leopold, 23 November 1852, LQV, p. 401. 65   Malmesbury to Derby, 23 November 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 144/1. 66   Derby to Disraeli 23 November 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/X/S/102; Memorandum by Prince Albert, 25 November 1852, Windsor C42/21. 59

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Derby was anxious to get the supplementary naval estimate through the House before the Budget debate.67 The sudden appearance of further financial demands from the Admiralty, close to a million pounds in total, prompted one last explosive intervention by Stafford. On Derby’s instruction he unilaterally cut the additional Naval Estimates to £350,000, without consulting Northumberland. My First Lord has been furious with me this morning and told me I had no business to cut down the Estimates without consulting him. He brought me before the Board and I had no alternative but to state that I had been with you and had acted in obedience to your directions. I desired therefore that the Board would either acquit me of all blame or blame me to you and that by your answer I should remain here or retire.

The Board caved in on 3 December, the very day Disraeli presented his Budget.68 In his speech Disraeli developed a bipartisan argument about national defence, and promised to provide for ‘a real Channel Fleet, which can assemble from its different rendezvous at the moment necessary, and which is the proper garrison and protection of the country’.69 The next day the French Empire was officially recognised, but the sense of danger had passed. Malmesbury declared: ‘If we keep 10,000 good seamen in the Channel I do not care what he [Napoleon] does in that line.’70 The Supplementary Estimates passed without a division on 6 December, supported by Lord John Russell and the Whigs.71 Almost imperceptibly the fleet had been redistributed, ships and men shifted from the outlying stations to the Channel and Mediterranean fleets, from cruisers to battleships, from trade protection and colonial security to home defence. By the turn of the year the British Isles were secure, and Britain could sustain Derby’s policy of a free hand in European affairs, based on naval power and deterrence. But security and diplomatic freedom came at a price. The defence problem may have been solved, but last minute attempts to square the Budget, driven by pressure from the defence departments, especially the Navy, left Disraeli to find more money at a very late stage of the process. The resort to imaginative but unsuccessful expedients left his proposals open to attack by all sections of a hitherto divided opposition. While the Ministry suffered a decisive defeat on the Budget, a classic set-piece political occasion conducted on the floor of the House of Commons by front bench political heavyweights, it would be wrong to ignore   Derby to Disraeli, 29 November 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/XX/S/94.   Derby to Disraeli, 30 November 1852, Dep. Hughenden B/XXI/S/81; Stafford to

67 68

Derby, 3 December 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 150/5. 69   Disraeli’s Budget Speech: Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, vol. 3, pp. 432‒3. 70   Malmesbury to Cowley, 4 December 1852, Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 373. 71   Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. 123, 1000‒1017.

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Lord Stanley’s analysis that the Budget had been fatally damaged by the late addition of naval expenditure. Northumberland had been zealous in his efforts to improve the fleet, but his ill-timed demand for another £800,000 ruined the Budget.72 At this period naval expenditure was not overtly political: both Whigs and Peelites happily supported Derby’s supplementary Navy estimates. The 1853 Whig/Peelite coalition would adopt Derby’s estimates without change, as Derby had adopted those of his Whig precursors. While Derby’s government had done much to improve the national defences, in both the short and the long term, the political cost was high. Aftermath To retain political power Derby needed to maximise the political advantage to be derived from office. The Admiralty was an obvious target, and Stafford had no doubt what was expected. Derby secured dockyard seats but soon discovered that the rules of the game had been profoundly altered since he was last in government. Between 1846 and 1852 the Whig Boards of Lord Auckland and Sir Francis Baring had handed the hitherto highly partisan question of dockyard promotions to the Surveyor of the Navy, to be made on the basis of professional advice. This system worked well while Whig officers ran liberal dockyards. In essence the Whigs, having filled the yards with their partisans, employed the popular cry of reform to break the link with party politics. The dockyard seats Derby gained in the 1852 election were lost on appeal, and the resulting enquiries exposed an unpalatable truth. Stafford’s electioneering at Chatham and Devonport had gone far beyond acceptable limits. In 1853 the Aberdeen Ministry, having recovered two dockyard seats on the grounds of corrupt practices, exploited the controversy caused by Stafford’s handling of dockyard patronage. It was no accident that Hyde Parker was still First Sea Lord, with Russellite Whig Admiral Berkeley as his second, and both served under Derby’s old friend and new enemy Sir James Graham. While Stafford managed to avoid Berkeley’s most damaging imprecations his attack on Walker in the House on 30 April led the government to appoint a Committee under another Russellite Whig, Lord Seymour.73 Derby had already conceded that it would be unwise to resist the investigation.74 His trusted lieutenant Malmesbury attended several sessions of the enquiry, finding Stafford’s evidence weak and unsatisfactory. It would appear that it was on his advice that Derby and later Disraeli offered to   Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 87, and obituary at p. 227.   Later twelfth Duke of Somerset, a minister under Russell and between 1859 and

72 73

1866 First Lord of the Admiralty. He was Graham’s son-in-law, and a personal friend of Disraeli (see Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, vol. 4, p. 11, fn.). Seymour would be involved in coalition discussions with Disraeli early in the following year. Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 92. 74   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 69.

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appear to establish that they were not involved. Although both Derby and Disraeli properly bore the lion’s share of the responsibility Stafford took the blame. While Stafford’s disgrace meant that he could not be appointed as Chief Whip in 1853, the fact that he was seriously considered reflected the leadership’s opinion of his loyalty and reliability.75 Seymour’s enquiry revealed that the Duke of Northumberland had been a cypher, which was all the more galling when his judgement on the matter had been far sounder than that of his senior colleagues.76 The Duke lost his enthusiasm for government and retired to Alnwick. In 1858 he preferred the role of eminence grise, looking to secure his interest in the Navy by placing his friends (and his nephew and heir Lord Lovaine) at the Admiralty. His financial support was available, but only if ministers fell in with his schemes. As John Vincent observed, the Stafford case demonstrated that the corrupt use of patronage in the period between the first two Reform Bills was tolerated, while it remained discreet.77 Stafford’s crime had been allowing his actions to become public knowledge. What he had done was typical of the humdrum routine of government, giving the triumphal cries of Peelites and Whigs more than a hint of hypocrisy. His failure can be attributed to inexperience. The nervousness of Derby’s later ministries on issues connected with dockyard patronage, and Disraeli’s abiding dislike of the Navy, and Baldwin Walker in particular, reflected a potent combination of embarrassment, outrage and humiliation.78 One result was a growing belief among Conservatives that dockyard workmen should be disenfranchised, for as Disraeli was warned in 1866, unless something was done the party would not secure any seats in Admiralty boroughs. Derby understood the role of naval power in national defence. However, his political commitment to the defence of the landed order, and the established church, had not extended to embrace commercial and industrial interests, which left his party narrowly focused and condemned to a permanent minority.79 Landed property was both the focus of his concerns and the source of his First Lords of the Admiralty. The largest contributors to party election funds in 1859 were Northumberland and Derby.80 Consequently Derby was less likely to use naval power in support of commerce and commercial interests than Palmerston. When  

75

p. 279.

Stewart, The Foundation of the Conservative Party 1830‒1867 (London, 1978),

76   Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 398‒9. In March 1853, before the enquiry, the Duke had offered to help Disraeli set up The Press, until dissuaded by Malmesbury; see Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 102. 77   J. Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party 1857–1868 (London, 1966), pp. 78‒80; J. Bourne, Patronage and Society in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1986) examines the Royal Navy at pp. 171‒6, but does not discuss this critical case. 78   Charles Greville, journal entry, 15 May 1853, H. Reeve (ed.), The Greville Memoirs, Third Part, vol. 1 (London, 1887), pp. 62‒3; Bourne, Patronage, pp. 170, 172. 79   Stewart, Party p. 276. 80   Stewart, Party, p. 331.

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Conservatives aligned themselves with the radicals against Palmerston’s overtly commercial Second China War in 1856, Derby was reminded that the right arm of the state should be used to support the manufacturers and financiers who funded it. Thereafter the Conservatives were only prepared to make a full scale attack on Palmerston when he appeared to be feeble on defence. In 1852 Derby’s ministry sacrificed outlying squadrons and commitments, many of them critically connected to commercial concerns, for a powerful home defence fleet. Political arithmetic suggested that empire and trade required less attention than disgruntled farmers while the party shifted its political power base away from protection.81 Where liberals spread the fleet to uphold commerce, support capital, and suppress the slave trade, the Conservatives were content to concentrate force nearer to home, and openly discussed ending the anti-slavery patrol. The only successful ‘free trade’ initiative of 1852, Captain Sir Charles Hotham’s treaty opening the River Plate for trade, had been under discussion before they took office. It would be concluded after they had been defeated.82 More significant for the Derby ministries was the issue of naval mastery. Too many historians miss the vital role of nineteenth century naval arms races in resolving international tensions short of war. Between 1840 and 1870 Britain and France engaged in at least three significant periods of competitive naval construction shaped by new technology, with paddle wheel steamers, screw steam battleships and ironclads as the new currency. At each stage the real cost of warships effectively doubled, while the navy had to be quite literally ‘reconstructed’. These sudden demands for funds and resources replaced the stable, long-term programmes that had been the hallmark of post war naval policy.83 Naval power became a core concern when Louis Napoleon used naval arms programmes to quiet domestic unease over his close relationship with Britain, while seeking a diplomatic lever to persuade Britain to support or acquiesce in his ambitious European programme.84 The British response was consistent, coherent, and decisive. To preserve the diplomatic ‘free hand’ acquired three decades earlier, Britain increased the tempo of warship construction, increased the number of men afloat and redistributed the active squadrons. In 1852 and 1858 Derby would face sudden upsurges of the French threat, combining new technology with political tension. His response was calm, balanced and effective, steering a course between the Scylla of royal alarmism and the Charybdis of Disraeli’s politico/economic gloom.

  Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 18.   S. Roberts, Charles Hotham: A Biography (Melbourne, 1985) pp. 83‒9; Derby

81 82

to Malmesbury, 26 March 1852, Malmesbury Ms, 9M73/451/3; Derby to Malmesbury, 22 May 1853, Malmesbury, Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 400. 83   A.D. Lambert, The Last Sailing Battlefleet: Maintaining Naval Mastery 1815‒1850 (London, 1991), examines this process in detail. 84   A.D. Lambert, ‘Palmerston, Gladstone and the management of the Ironclad Naval Race, 1859‒1865’, The Northern Mariner, 8 (1998), pp. 9‒38.

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The court was easily roused; the royal family was heavily influenced by Leopold, King of the Belgians, uncle of both Albert and Victoria, husband of an Orleanist Princess, and chief source of self-serving rumours of French aggression. After fifteen years on the throne Victoria had her own ideas on national defence. That she expressed them in the ‘strategical’ language of Jomini and Clausewitz suggests that she was being coached by a well-read German military man. Victoria and Albert used every opportunity to pressure Derby into increased spending, while building a cross-party coalition to back defence projects. This pressure was more overt than they applied to Whig/Liberal ministries, reflecting the weakness of the minority governments. While the Palace pushed for a cross-party consensus on big defence, Disraeli argued that only a good Budget performance, to please friends and demonstrate competence, could save the minority government. That Derby and Disraeli disagreed on this issue is symptomatic of their very different political ideologies. Believing national interest overrode party advantage, Derby ultimately gave way to royal pressure and accepted the political consequences. Despite the controversial attempt to extract political capital from the Admiralty, Derby’s first Ministry laid the foundations of a new steam powered, professionally manned navy, and did so at the cost of losing office. In 1853 a powerful Channel fleet, the steady completion of steam-powered battleships and the new manning system put Britain in a strong position to meet the complex international situation.85 That the authors of these measures were of a decidedly liberal cast only emphasises the point that Derby recognised naval power was too important to be sacrificed, even for political survival. As Angus Hawkins observed: ‘National defence, with increased naval and military expenditure, was strengthened.’86 Despite the obvious pressing need for naval votes, Derby was not prepared to sacrifice national security to partisan interests. He had passed the ultimate test, reflecting the wider truth that his Ministry had conducted the business of government with success.

85   Northumberland appointed a powerful Committee under Whig Vice Admiral Sir William Parker in July 1852 to consider naval manpower. Derby accepted the ‘unquestionable importance’ of the issue, and the need to select men of ‘sound judgment; the more latitude you give them, the better’. Derby to Northumberland, 13 July 1852, Alnwick E/4/154. Milne was a key player in the process of bringing this Whig measure before a Tory board. Beeler, ‘Whig Private Secretary’, p. 206. The new system of Continuous Manning avoided the perennial manpower problems at the outbreak of war, with recourse to the politically impossible system of impressment. Parker’s Committee, which bore a very ‘liberal’ character, produced a clear and effective report, recommending the creation of a long-service professional naval rating career structure. The report was submitted after the fall of the Ministry, but the recommendations were adopted in 1853. 86   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 59.

Chapter 3

The Fourteenth Earl and the ‘Political Chameleon’: Changing Views of Palmerston from Knowsley David Brown

Lord Palmerston looms large in any history of the Victorian period. As Foreign Secretary through the 1830s and again 1846‒51; as Home Secretary 1852‒55 and Prime Minister for the best part of a decade 1855‒65 (except for a brief hiatus 1858‒59) he certainly left a mark on the politics of those years. Yet just what that mark was is sometimes less than clear. According to one contemporary observer: The difficulty of daguerreotyping Proteus would be comparable with the perplexity of a biographer in attempting a sketch of the career of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston. For, though the individuality is, at all stages, identical, there are four different personages to deal with – Palmerston, who was the raging young Pittite; Palmerston, the adolescing Canningite; Palmerston the juvenile Whig; and Palmerston the attaining-years-of-discretion Coalitionist. There is none of the Ciceronian symmetry in the career – beginning, middle, and end; it is all beginning.1

It was a verdict echoed by the fourteenth Earl of Derby in 1857 when he described Palmerston as, ‘a political chameleon, which offers a different hue and colour to the spectator according to the side from which he gazes’.2 Yet in Derby’s case the exasperation was less that of the perplexed biographer, more a recognition of the shifting nature of political affiliations and a keenly felt frustration at the fact that Palmerston seemed to be a Conservative in the wrong party. Indeed, as John Vincent has remarked, Palmerston ‘kept the possibility of becoming Derbyite leader under continual review’ and ‘was looked to by average Tory opinion not only

  Edward M. Whitty, The Governing Classes of Great Britain: Political Portraits (London, 1859), p. 118. 2   Derby to the House of Lords, 16 March 1857, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates [hereafter Hansard], Third Series, vol. 144, col. 2337, in W.D. Jones, Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism (Oxford, 1956), p. 217. 1

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as an ideal, but also as a probable leader’ during this period.3 This is striking for a politician regularly identified as the first Liberal prime minister and furthermore one who, according to recent scholarship, in conformity with Liberal notions of progress and modernity, consciously and deliberately introduced Britain to a new democratic era.4 Derby and Palmerston by mid-century stood at the head of their respective parties and rhetorically located themselves within different and competing political traditions. Yet, it seems that they had much more in common than the adversarial nature of British politics allowed them always to admit; it was increasingly sharply delineated party identities that forced them into opposition rather than ideological antipathy. In taking in the view of Palmerston from Knowsley, Derby might at times have been forgiven for thinking he was looking in a political mirror. Derby and Palmerston travelled lengthy political journeys of discovery, though in opposite directions: Derby from Whig to Conservative; Palmerston from Tory to Liberal. Yet their paths intersected, ideologically and professionally, in the early 1830s as ministers in the government of Earl Grey. The connections between them at this time are noteworthy. Palmerston had been educated at Edinburgh where he studied under Dugald Stewart, himself a student of Adam Smith, and this classic Whig education would serve to inform much of the later Palmerston’s politics, not least in terms of an appreciation of the importance of Parliament and the bonds of trust between rulers and governed. Derby was not himself an Edinburgh man, but he was profoundly influenced by another of Stewart’s pupils, Lord Lansdowne, who would be one of the two most important influences on Derby’s intellectual development,5 and who taught Derby to embrace the liberal values of the Scottish enlightenment, just as Palmerston had done rather more directly. Subsequently, Derby, or more accurately Stanley, as Derby then was, and Palmerston both fell in with George Canning, finding in the latter’s brand of liberal Toryism an easy accommodation of what might be termed that Scottish Whiggery of their early years. Both Palmerston and Stanley in the 1820s championed Catholic Emancipation as a good Whig cause and both viewed moderate reform in Ireland, where both had estate interests, as important and timely.6 When the Canningites joined with the Whigs in Grey’s   J.R. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849‒1869 [hereafter DDCP] (Hassocks, 1978), p. xiv. 4   E.D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855‒1865 (Cambridge, 1991). 5   The other was his grandfather, the twelfth Earl of Derby. 6   This discussion of Derby relies particularly on A. Hawkins, ‘Lord Derby’, in R.W. Davis (ed.), Lords of Parliament: Studies, 1714‒1914 (Stanford, CA, 1995), especially pp. 136‒45. On Palmerston’s education, see K. Bourne, Palmerston: the Early Years, 1784‒1841 (London, 1882), chapter 1 and D. Brown, Palmerston and the politics of foreign policy, 1846‒55 (Manchester, 2002), pp. 3‒8. On Palmerston and Ireland, see T. Anbinder, ‘Lord Palmerston and the Irish famine emigration’, Historical Journal, 44 (2001): pp. 3

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government of 1830‒34, Palmerston emerged as one of Stanley’s ‘allies’,7 and the small number of letters which Stanley wrote to Palmerston at this time, though not extensive or especially remarkable, are nonetheless perfectly cordial and conform to a general impression of collegiality appropriate between two ministers sharing a similar political outlook.8 Palmerston and Stanley shared a common belief in the centrality of Parliament to the political process, but it would transpire that they had different views of the foundations upon which that position rested. Canning had revealed the possible role and uses of popular support, underpinning his foreign policy with claims to represent the views and interests of the people, but Stanley and Palmerston would disagree over how to handle this part of the Canningite legacy. Stanley never did feel comfortable with popular, extra-parliamentary politicking. As he told an audience in Glasgow in 1834: His will be a great destiny who knows how to direct and turn into the proper channels the energies of the people, and to conduct with propriety, at this period, the government of this great nation; but if he shall imagine himself capable of stemming and abruptly resisting its force onwards, he will be swept along with the torrent.9

In a similar vein, just five years earlier, Palmerston had declared in the House of Commons that: ‘There is in nature no moving power but mind, all else is passive and inert; in human affairs this power is opinion; in political affairs it is public opinion; and he who can grasp this power, with it will subdue the fleshly arm of physical strength, and compel it to work out his purpose.’ Thus, he continued, the statesmen who found the means by which to harness such opinion exercised a ‘sway over human affairs, far out of all proportion greater than belong to the power and resources of the state over which they preside’.10 Yet while Stanley sought to avoid being caught in a torrent, Palmerston embraced this opinion and set about actively cultivating popular support through manipulation of the newspaper press and deliberately populist policies, particularly in the foreign policy arena where he could play upon notions of patriotism and national glory and honour.11 441‒69; but also D. Norton, ‘Lord Palmerston and the Irish famine emigration: a rejoinder’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003): pp. 155‒65. 7   Hawkins, ‘Lord Derby’, p. 145. 8   Southampton University Library, Broadlands Papers, GC/DE/61-64. These letters, covering the period 1831‒34, are the only letters from Stanley surviving among Palmerston’s papers for the years of Grey’s government. I am grateful to the Trustees of the Broadlands Archives for permission to use material from the Palmerston Papers. 9   Quoted in Hawkins, ‘Lord Derby’, p. 146. 10   1 June 1829, Hansard, Second Series, vol. 21, col. 1668. 11   See, for example, D. Brown, ‘Compelling but not Controlling?: Palmerston and the Press, 1846‒1855’, History, 86 (2001): pp. 41‒61 and D. Brown, ‘The Power of Public

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Palmerston recognised and embraced the advance of liberalism in early nineteenth century Europe. Calls for self determination and constitutional government chimed perfectly with what he had learned in Edinburgh about the importance of accommodating government to the needs of a changing population, and promoting policies that resonated with a significant body of public opinion satisfied prescriptions that political conduct should accord with popular demands. Thus Palmerston emerged in the 1830s as a vocal champion of liberalism. He had applauded the July revolution in France as evidence of liberal progress, enthusing in a letter to his friend Laurence Sulivan that this marked the beginning of a new era. ‘We shall drink to the cause of Liberalism all over the world’, he declared. ‘Let Spain & Austria look to themselves; this reaction cannot end where it began, & Spain & Italy & Portugal & parts of Germany will sooner or later be affected. This event is decisive of the ascendancy of Liberal principles throughout Europe; the evil spirit has been put down and will be trodden underfoot. The reign of Metternich is over & the days of the Duke’s policy might be measured by algebra, if not by arithmetic.’12 Palmerston set about promoting this liberal advance when he became Foreign Secretary in November 1830 in Earl Grey’s government. Although he had not convened the conference in London assembled to determine the fate of Belgium, he entered office just as it was due to open and so it fell to Palmerston to chair the meetings that led, ultimately, to the establishment of an independent Belgium. As ‘le pere de la Belgique’, Palmerston could, and did, claim to have steered the Great Powers towards an important revision of the Vienna settlement of 1815. Similarly he spoke up for Greek independence in the late 1820s and in early 1831 was keen to afford protection to Greece against Egypt in the interests of general peace.13 Almost four years later, he still clung to the notion of independent, constitutional, government for Greece as the only safeguard against instability. ‘There are no doubt many opinions, prejudices and interests adverse to such a proceeding and many men who will say that Greece is not ripe for a representative assembly’, he wrote to Britain’s diplomatic agent in Athens. ‘But this is more easily said than proved; all nations are ripe for a representative assembly who have interests with respect to which it is necessary to make laws.’14 Although he continued to act pragmatically – while welcoming a weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the face of Greek constitutionalism, for example, he regretted the instability threatened by Egyptian uprisings and argued that Mehemet Ali must be resisted rather than encouraged in his challenge to Ottoman government Opinion: Palmerston and the Crisis of December 1851’, Parliamentary History, 20:3 (2001): pp. 333‒58. 12   Palmerston to Laurence Sulivan, 1 August 1830, in Mabell, Countess of Airlie, Lady Palmerston and Her Times (2 vols, London, 1922), vol. 1, pp. 172‒4. 13   Palmerston to Prince Lieven, 10 January 1831, Lieven Papers, British Library, Additional Manuscripts [hereafter BL, Add Ms] 47263, fols 61‒2. 14   Palmerston to Dawkins, 30 September 1834, in Sir Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830‒1841 (2 vols, London, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 271‒2.

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– to a large extent Palmerston infused his foreign policy in the early 1830s with heavy doses of Canningite rhetoric and backed it up with showy demonstrations of Britain’s ability and willingness to champion good liberal causes. Here, however, some of the early differences with Stanley can be seen. Conservative government had been in the ascendant in both Spain and Portugal since the late 1820s as King Ferdinand VII of Spain and Dom Miguel in Portugal consolidated their position and by the early 1830s both were now looking to Russia, Austria and Prussia as potential allies in the face of west European liberalism, which the July revolution in France and the accession of the Whigs in Britain seemed to indicate was gaining ground. In 1832 Dom Pedro landed in Portugal and, supported by the British military, finally installed his daughter Maria as Queen. The following year, in Spain, Ferdinand’s death opened up a direct contest between his daughter, Isabella, whose claim was supported by her mother, Maria Cristina, who acted as her regent and that of Ferdinand’s brother, Don Carlos, who claimed the throne in the conservative interest. As these succession contests raged in the Iberian Peninsula in the early 1830s, therefore, the issue seemed as much about east European conservative monarchism and west European constitutionalism as it was about dynastic struggles in Spain and Portugal. Palmerston was keen to offer moral and material support to the liberal interest, both on ideological grounds and in order to prevent France gaining influence in the Iberian peninsula if Britain allowed Paris a free run at Madrid and Lisbon. He was to become frustrated, however, by Stanley’s hesitancy on these matters. In the summer of 1831 he had hoped for more support from Stanley in his determination to adopt a firm line in his negotiations with France over the Eastern question, but Stanley had concurred with Grey, and the majority of the rest of the Cabinet, that the government should not adopt too aggressive a position.15 Now, in 1833 over Portugal he found Stanley still tending to advocate caution. In October of that year, for example, Stanley argued against intervention, not because he disapproved of Palmerston’s wish to check Miguelite and Carlist forces, but because he balked at the costs involved.16 ‘Nothing is more to be deprecated than our interposition in the internal affairs of Spain,’ Stanley wrote following the death of Ferdinand, which he thought made Spanish aggression on Portugal less likely; all that Britain was called on to do, he said, was to recognise the young Queen as his successor. It was not impossible that Britain would be called on to intervene, he thought, but it was both unlikely and undesirable. There is a case, however, in which, unfortunate as it might be, I can conceive that we should be compelled to interfere in Spain. What if the Miguellite party, abandoning for the present any further struggle in Portugal, were openly to espouse the cause of D. Carlos? Should we act wisely in suffering such a

 

15

p. 342.

Kenneth Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years, 1784‒1841 (London, 1982),

  Stanley to Palmerston, 4 October 1833, Broadlands Papers, GC/DE/62.

16

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combination, and allowing the young Queen and the liberal party in Spain to be put down, so as to have the Apostolicals free to return the favour to Miguel? Or should we not then be compelled to take an active part at once, and defend the two Queens, reciprocally, from foreign invasion? I do not think this likely, but it is possible. In such a case we should require much more than 5000 men: and I fear that for any greater number it would require a considerable time to provide Commissariat men.17

Here is an early indication of the later Derby’s view of foreign policy. Expensive and intrusive interference overseas was something to be avoided: while he shared Whiggish faith in notions of progress, it was not, he thought, Britain’s mission actively to promote it. Britain should act only when material interests or the balance of power were at risk. These were not the terms by which Palmerston was accustomed, at this point, to formulate his foreign policies. He had, by contrast, by this point developed a fairly advanced conception of the duty, even Providential obligation, to encourage liberal constitutionalism wherever it took root. Before taking the Foreign Office, Palmerston had lambasted the Wellington government for its failure to intervene to stave off reactionary attempts to undermine popular liberties. Miguel, for example, who continued to threaten Portuguese liberalism in the 1830s, he had condemned in 1829 as ‘this destroyer of constitutional freedom, this breaker of solemn oaths, this faithless usurper, this enslaver of his country, this trampler upon public law, this violator of private rights, this attempter on the life of a helpless and defenceless woman’; all of which, he said, had been permissible because of ‘a belief industriously propagated by his partisans, and not sufficiently refuted by any acts of the British government, that the cabinet of England look upon his usurpation with no unfriendly eye’. This had been part of an important speech on foreign affairs in which Palmerston had publicly distanced himself from the Tories, and he had roundly criticised persistent failure to act where intervention would have checked the advance, both territorial and political, of absolutist government, notably of Russia and Turkey. ‘There are two great parties in Europe’, he said, ‘one which endeavours to bear sway by the force of public opinion; another which endeavours to bear sway by the force of physical control’, and while the Wellington government was unequivocally to be grouped in the latter, Palmerston was equally sure justice rested with the former.18 Thus, in the 1830s, as Foreign Secretary, Palmerston had been determined to act decisively wherever he thought that could be done to the advantage of liberal government. His remedy to the crisis in the Iberian peninsula, therefore, was not to watch and wait and send reinforcements only when absolutely necessary, but to act pre-emptively and to bind the west European powers into a formal, liberal alliance. Thus in the spring of 1834 he had devised ‘my Quadruple Alliance between England France Spain & Portugal for the expulsion of Carlos & Miguel from the Portugueze   Stanley to Palmerston, 9 October 1833, Broadlands Papers, GC/DE/63.   1 June 1829, Hansard, Second Series, vol. 21, cols 1643‒70.

17 18

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Dominions … . I carried it through the Cabinet by a coup de main, taking them by surprize, & not leaving them time to make objections’. The Alliance was an explicit attempt to establish a moral union of liberal powers that would ‘serve as a powerful counterpoise to the holy alliance of the East’.19 These hints of divergent priorities in foreign affairs were disappointing to Palmerston who had initially looked on Stanley as a welcome recruit to the Whig government’s ranks and a personal ally for himself. In 1830 Stanley had demonstrated his high opinion of Palmerston by pressing Grey to appoint him Leader of the House of Commons. On the pressing domestic political question of the day, Palmerston recognised in Stanley a fellow sceptic on the subject of parliamentary reform.20 Palmerston shared with Stanley his correspondence with Lord Grey on the subject of Reform and it is clear that the two men were on the same wing of the government when it came to negotiating demands for radical change in the face of aristocratic opposition. Both were anxious about unleashing democracy, but both accepted that moderate change was unavoidable. Stanley wrote to Palmerston at the end of October 1831: You cannot reprobate more strongly than I do the language of intimidation & menace which has been used – it is bad feeling, & it is bad policy. I think too that we are bound to sound the dispositions of our opponents a little more than we have done, and where I have an opportunity, I intend to do so myself. Our next bill must be very well considered before we can bring it forward, but I think there are moderate men enough in the Cabinet to ensure this, notwithstanding the impetuosity of some of our members.21

The moderate terms of the Reform measure proposed in 1832, therefore, were satisfying to both Stanley and Palmerston. The Bill made concessions to the ‘dispositions of our opponents’ but not to ‘impetuosity’. As Palmerston observed in January 1852: ‘I am confident that the institutions of the monarchy have gained a solidity of which many people have no adequate idea by incorporating with the governing portion of the community a vast body of the middle classes who have hitherto been excluded.’ Radicals ‘may perhaps wish to clip some few of the Corinthian capitals, but they will not allow anybody to undermine the column itself’.22 This support for change within carefully prescribed boundaries was an important shared legacy of their Scottish enlightenment education and served as a point of union between Palmerston and Stanley. Their closeness should not be overstated: the number of extant letters between them is neither voluminous nor expressive of intimacy; by the same token, there is evidence enough that     21   22   19

Palmerston to Sir William Temple, 21 April 1834, Broadlands Papers, GC/TE/219. Bourne, Palmerston, pp. 524‒5. Stanley to Palmerston, 28 October 1831, Broadlands Papers, GC/DE/61. Palmerston to Sir Frederick Lamb, 4 January 1832, Beauvale Papers, BL, Add Ms 60464, fols 2‒5. 20

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there was a mutual recognition of shared values to underpin a friendly political connection. Despite the differences over foreign policy, therefore, Palmerston still saw in Stanley sufficient evidence of a politician with whom he could work and a valuable counter-weight to the more advanced and radical demands for political change. Furthermore, it was Stanley who had drafted the government’s legislation for the abolition of slavery in 1833, a cause for which Palmerston had for some time been an advocate. When Stanley quit the government in May 1834, therefore, Palmerston was chief among those who pleaded with him not to leave.23 The grounds on which Stanley resigned, along with Graham and the Duke of Richmond, were to do with Irish Church reform: Stanley objected to Lord John Russell’s plans for lay appropriation of church revenues in Ireland. Palmerston shared Stanley’s interest in the stability of Ireland – both were major landlords in the country – but Palmerston’s interest was far less political; he was an active reformer in a private capacity but Stanley had, as Chief Secretary for Ireland between November 1831 and March 1833, taken a much more active role in the government of Ireland, overseeing both coercive and reformist measures. There was no reason to expect Palmerston to follow Stanley over this question, if anything it was another point of difference between them. For Palmerston, therefore, Stanley’s departure was viewed in strictly parliamentary terms: the defection of leading figures within the Cabinet (and, significantly, Stanley was known to be close to the Prime Minister, Grey) threatened to destabilise or collapse the government. There had not been much time or occasion for Palmerston and Stanley to forge a close unbreakable union, nor had their underlying political differences been much exposed during this period, but following Stanley’s break with the Whigs in May 1834 they were separated for the rest of their political careers. This, however, was not always obvious and for the next thirty years their relationship alternated between antagonism and accord. The ambiguities might have been explained on one side by Palmerston’s perceived chameleonic character, but this was simply one way of acknowledging that the two men could have been either allies or opponents; it was largely due to the vagaries of early- to mid-Victorian parliamentary politics that they were to remain the latter. Having separated from the Whigs, and having widened that breach in July 1834 with an unrestrained attack on the government’s policy on the Church in Ireland, Stanley occupied a political middle ground between his erstwhile colleagues in government and the Conservative opposition led by Robert Peel. Initially Stanley viewed this as a political opportunity: his ‘Derby dilly’ of independent MPs might, he thought, be fashioned into a third party and in December 1834 he outlined his ‘Knowsley creed’ in a speech at Glasgow. This was a political platform based on a respect for traditional institutions (including the Church in Ireland) combined with moderate, responsible, reform of abuses of privilege and power such as would strengthen the existing establishment and preserve the primacy of 23   Angus Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The Fourteenth Earl of Derby, Volume I: Ascent, 1799‒1851 (Oxford, 2007), p. 141.

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Parliament. The ‘creed’ should have demarcated the ‘dilly’ as a political party by exploiting the ambiguities of Whig and Tory identity in the fluid state of parliamentary allegiances that prevailed at the time. It was, from Stanley’s point of view, unfortunate, therefore, that, just at this moment, both the Conservatives and Whigs (or Liberals) through Peel’s Tamworth manifesto of December 1834 and the Lichfield House compact of March 1835 respectively, sharpened their own political identities and effectively limited Stanley’s room for manoeuvre as a distinct third way. Increasingly Stanley looked to an accommodation with the Conservatives as the only viable route to prominence, arguing in so doing that traditional Whig values were better represented by Peel’s Conservatives than by the Whigs, led now by Lord Melbourne. The 1830s saw Stanley move ever closer to an accommodation with Peel and it was unsurprising that he should be made Colonial Secretary in September 1841 when Peel assumed the premiership.24 In March 1838, with Palmerston now a fixture in Whig government and Stanley moving to the right, the two clashed in a debate over Canada. Neither could resist a jibe at the other’s perceived opportunism: Palmerston responded to Stanley’s attack on the government’s feeble handling of the uprising in Upper Canada the previous year with the charge that Stanley had displayed his political inconsistency and willingness to exploit a crisis for party advantage, sensing a plan to use the issue as the basis for a Conservative-radical coalition government. Stanley retorted that if such was the intended result, it would lead to the first government of which Palmerston had been unable to make himself a member.25 Such sparring might have amused the backbenches, but it also highlighted the extent to which Stanley and Palmerston could sit on opposing benches and yet share a common heritage. Stanley had found the Whig government’s reform agenda too advanced while Palmerston, who shared Stanley’s disquiet, had found that he could better stomach the necessary measures since that of 1832 had been passed as an avowedly final measure and his growing reputation and sympathies for promoting constitutionalism abroad resonated with Whig instincts in this direction. Stanley, however, could find no compensation for his Reform reservations, only further evidence of divergence when he looked to Ireland and he ‘drifted’ into the Conservative ranks as his position within the Whig party became increasingly anomalous,26 while Palmerston, though himself in a precarious position in Whig circles, nonetheless saw the Whig milieu as a more natural political home. For both men their positions in the later 1830s rested on some measure of political compromise, but those choices had led them to sit opposite, rather than alongside, each other at Westminster.

24   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, chapter 4; for a more succinct review see: Angus Hawkins, ‘Stanley, Edward George Geoffrey Smith, fourteenth earl of Derby (1799–1869)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). 25   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, p. 201. 26   ‘drifted’ is Angus Hawkins’ phrase: Hawkins, ‘Lord Derby’, p. 150.

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By the time Peel became Prime Minister in 1841, Palmerston had spent the best part of a decade at the Foreign Office and had impressed a distinct Palmerstonian, strong, assertive and, he would have liked to think liberal, mark on British foreign policy. His replacement by Aberdeen, he feared, portended weakness and conciliation and a willingness to work with, not against, east European conservatism. After almost a year and a half of Aberdeen at the Foreign Office, Palmerston thought his earlier anxieties borne out by events. Writing to his friend and brother-in-law Laurence Sulivan in February 1843, Palmerston observed the present Govt are lowering the position of England in regard to foreign nations, as fast as they can and they are in this respect doing great & serious mischief. Aberdeen is I hear in a bad state of health; the best thing he could do for himself and the Country, would be to retire, & let Stanley take the Foreign Office. He is the fittest man in the present Cabinet, for that office; & notwithstanding some faults would probably do the business tolerably well. At all events with more spirit than poor Aberdeen.27

The regard was not reciprocated, however. Stanley’s reservations about Palmerston’s foreign policy had developed since his earlier expressed reservations about its cost. Only a week before Palmerston had written his letter to Sulivan, Stanley had defended Aberdeen’s north American policy in a speech endorsing the Ashburton Webster agreement over which Palmerston had been a vocal critic. He argued that Palmerston had had ten years to offer a better solution and had no grounds to criticise and in later speeches robustly rejected Palmerstonian sniping about the issue.28 In July 1842, when Palmerston launched an attack on the government’s failure to address the subject of the harsh conditions endured by the working classes, Stanley rose to defend the government’s economic policies. But in the same speech, he also counter-attacked by offering a retrospective critique of Palmerston’s foreign policy, observing that the ‘world was not wide enough for the universal meddling’ of Palmerston. If the country was in economic straits, he argued, this owed much to the ill-effects of Palmerston’s aggressive diplomacy, with its history of argument, war and expensive interference, which hindered rather than encouraged commercial ties abroad. While Palmerston had antagonised Britain’s closest neighbour, France, Aberdeen had repaired damaged relations, said Stanley, and the government had moved away from the Palmerstonian prescription in foreign policy of ‘some great clap-trap measure … only intended to make a noise for a time and never to be brought into operation’.29 These performances showed Stanley at his parliamentary best and did much to consolidate Conservative union, 27   Palmerston to Laurence Sulivan, 11 February 1843, in The Letters of the Third Viscount Palmerston to Laurence and Elizabeth Sulivan, 1804‒1863, ed. K. Bourne (London: Camden Fourth Series, vol. 23, 1979), p. 276. 28   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, p. 254. 29   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, pp. 266‒8.

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but it also made absolutely explicit the gulf between Stanley and Palmerston at Westminster. Thus, when Peel introduced proposals for repeal of the Corn Laws, a measure which Stanley fundamentally disagreed with, hopes that this might serve as grounds on which to re-unite with Palmerston and the Whigs were still-born. Palmerston, though a committed free trader, was also known, with respect to the duty on corn, to favour a fixed tariff rather than complete abolition. Stanley’s close associate Sir James Graham even speculated that here was sufficient reason to look to a Stanley government with Palmerston taking the lead in the House of Commons. It was clear, however, that the Whigs would not oppose Peel’s bill and any compromise measure proposed by Stanley would not be taken up as the basis for a common anti-Peel alliance.30 It was not long before Stanley reverted to making criticisms of Palmerston’s foreign policy once Palmerston had been returned to the Foreign Office on the fall of Peel’s government in the summer of 1846. Peel’s betrayal of party when he repealed the corn laws in 1846 was felt keenly by Stanley. Thereafter he became increasingly focused on rebuilding Conservative strength, ideally winning back Peelites, but in the face of Conservative disarray, he resorted to a policy of exposing Whig shortcomings rather than trying to identify and play up to Tory strengths. With Palmerston now clearly a major figure in Whig ranks, and the architect of a frequently aggressive, bullying and therefore often controversial foreign policy, Palmerston was a clear target for Stanley. In the later 1840s, therefore, he criticised Palmerston for the deterioration in Britain’s relations with France and pointed to Palmerston’s handling of affairs in the Iberian peninsula, where succession struggles and ideological contests continued, and Britain’s relations with Austria and Italy as examples of damaging Whig interventionism and grounds on which Conservative forces might rally to a common banner (even if that was defined in negative terms as a shared anti-Palmerstonism).31 It was in 1850, over the Don Pacifico affair, however, that Stanley launched his most direct attack on Palmerston’s foreign policy. Stanley presented his criticism of Palmerston in conjunction with Aberdeen, thereby underlining the importance of this attack on Palmerston’s diplomacy as a possible medium for Conservative reunion in the aftermath of the Peelite-Protectionist split of 1846. The case was acknowledged on all sides to be an exaggerated one: David Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew who had lost property in anti-Semitic riots in Athens in 1847, had appealed to Palmerston for support in his efforts to secure compensation from the Greek government on the grounds that his birth in Gibraltar made him a British citizen. Palmerston had never believed that Pacifico’s claims were valid, but he had been keen to seize an opportunity to flex British muscle in the Mediterranean and blockaded the port of Athens and demanded Pacifico’s claims were met. To Stanley, however, Palmerston had finally over-reached himself. In the House of Lords, Stanley’s and Aberdeen’s censure of Palmerston was endorsed in the peers’   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, pp. 311‒12.   Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 1, pp. 323, 358‒9.

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vote and seemed to have done much to serve as a unifying focus for Conservative forces in Parliament. Thus did the Whig government, reluctantly, agree to take up the issue in the House of Commons as a vote of confidence in the whole ministry, not just Palmerston, and on this basis gave Palmerston a platform from which to deliver one of his most celebrated oratorical performances. Dismissing the detail of Pacifico’s claim, Palmerston turned this into a test of whether the House was willing to allow British honour to be impugned: ‘as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong’.32 The government secured a majority largely on the back, so it seemed, of this Palmersonian performance, and Stanley’s hope that this would serve as a springboard to Conservative reunion was disappointed. This led to an important shift in Protectionist strategies. It was clear that attacking Palmerston, who was emerging as one of the government’s most popular ministers, was not a good ground on which to test the differences between Whigs and Conservatives. Whereas Stanley had until the Don Pacifico debate hoped to make some capital from damaging Palmerston, by 1852 he no longer saw antiPalmerstonianism as a ‘possible common cause for fragmented Conservative opinion’. Indeed, the policy might even have had a reverse effect. As Stanley’s son recorded in his diary in January 1851 while he was talking over political issues with Disraeli: a report came that the Ministry had quarrelled: D. took the occasion to speculate on a probable junction between Russell and my Father. Why should it not be? he argued: both are Whigs, of great aristocratic Whig families, both have been reformers, and both are now inclined to be Conservatives. Both have taken up the Protestant cause: the only difficulty arose from our quarrel with Palmerston: which he regretted, as it threw us on Aberdeen for a Foreign Minister. He thought P.[almerston] of the two the better inclined towards us: (a prescient judgement as the result has proved).33

Russell was never likely to agree to the arrangement, but as Disraeli judged, Palmerston could, perhaps, have been a possible colleague. According to Disraeli, a coalition with Palmerston was not fanciful. ‘Palmerston was a man who bore no malice,’ he said in a conversation with Stanley fils, ‘who liked office, whose tendencies were Conservative, and who would find no difficulty in throwing over former colleagues, especially as he and Russell were not on the most cordial terms.’ If the union was thought desirable, Disraeli said he was confident that he could arrange it within twenty four hours.34 Thus, in the aftermath of Palmerston’s   24 June 1850, Hansard, Third Series, vol. 112, cols 443‒4.   January 1851, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 34. 34   16 February 1851, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 41. 32 33

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actual split with Russell and the Whigs in December 1851, and Russell’s revival of the Reform question (of which Palmerston was never a very keen supporter), there was good reason to believe that Palmerston might be receptive to Conservative overtures.35 When Stanley had tried (unsuccessfully) to form a government in February 1851, it was, according to his son, only Queen Victoria’s insistence that Palmerston be excluded from a new Cabinet that prevented Stanley from trying to appoint him then. It is unlikely that the source of the Queen’s objection to Palmerston was ‘unknown’ to the Conservatives – he had spent much of the previous five years at odds with the Palace over his foreign policy both in substance and style – but it is significant that he was identified by the Tories as ‘the most popular’ of all the Whigs and, Russell excepted, the ‘most important’, and the royal ‘prohibition’ was found to be ‘no small embarrassment’.36 However, in late 1851 and early 1852 with Palmerston wavering, apparently, and the Whigs under Russell floundering, Derby (as Stanley now was, having succeeded to the earldom of Derby in June 1851) saw, firstly, no need or good reason to attack a possible valuable recruit and ally, and, secondly, the imminent reward for his patient ‘inactivity’. To Conservatives as well as Liberals, Palmerston’s demonstrated strength with public opinion made him a figure to be reckoned with and more than one overture was made to Palmerston by the Protectionists in 1852.37 Palmerston, however, saw Derby as physically weakening and thought his appetite for the premiership declining: he thought Derby would prefer to spend time mainly occupied by his large estate at Knowsley and in political terms had little ambition beyond making ‘flashy speeches now and then’.38 When Derby was made Prime Minister in February 1852 and invited Palmerston to renew ‘the ties of office’ as colleagues who had ‘never had a difference’ and who had only been thrown into opposition by ‘circumstances’, Palmerston pointed out one important difference and refused to join on the ground of Derby’s commitment to protectionism.39

35   A. Hawkins, ‘Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism: A Reappraisal’, Parliamentary History, 6 (1987): pp. 280‒301, p. 287. 36   1 March 1851, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 51. 37   In July, for example, Lord Stanley, agreeing with Disraeli and others that the Government needed to broaden its base, wrote, ‘the ship requires fine steering; but she requires something else as well: an accession to the strength of the crew. There is an old helmsman who would be very useful in taking an occasional spell at the wheel’. There was no misunderstanding that this old helmsman was Palmerston. W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (2 vols, revised edition, London, 1929), vol. 1, p. 1196. 38   Palmerston to William Temple, 6 November 1851, Broadlands Papers, GC/TE/339. 39   Derby to Palmerston, 22 February 1852, Broadlands Papers, GMC/129; Memorandum by Palmerston on ‘Substance of my conversation with Ld Derby on 22nd Feby when he invited me to join the administration he was commissioned to form’, 29

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That rebuff notwithstanding, Palmerston was recognised by the Derbyites as a minister with considerable ‘experience and talent’ but also ‘great social popularity’ and in July 1852 various plans for accommodating Palmerston were again discussed in Conservative circles and more than one direct approach was made. The negotiations were unsuccessful since, as Lady Palmerston explained on her husband’s behalf, Palmerston was unwilling to cross the floor since ‘in England change of principle was more easily forgiven than change of party’.40 Yet, while attempts to induce Palmerston to join Derby’s government were unsuccessful, Palmerston did at least adopt an attitude towards the ministry throughout 1852 of ‘marked benevolence’ and went out of his way to advise the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Malmesbury in private correspondence.41 He did give some consideration to the notion that he might bolster the position of the Derby government in the autumn of 1852 and it was reported by Charles Greville that there ‘is a strong conviction that it will end in P. joining Derby, provided the latter will give him a decent opportunity for so doing’, but the enthusiasm was really all on the Conservatives’ side.42 Sir James Graham gave credence to the suggestion, thinking Derby would offer Palmerston the Home Office but observing that at any event he had ‘always thought it probable that Palmerston, before he dies, will lead the Tories in the House of Commons’.43 Derby, too, reportedly thought Palmerston’s accession a sure thing, so long as he did not return to the Foreign Office (neither Derby nor the Queen, noted Malmesbury, ‘would ever consent’ to it) and in November there were a number of serious discussions about bringing him in to lead the Commons.44 But Palmerston saw the government as all but defeated. He would not contribute to its demise and is widely acknowledged to have spared Derby’s government in parliamentary debates during the winter of 1852 but this was, as Derby’s son Stanley observed, as much about ‘show[ing] his power’ and exposing the ministry’s ‘weakness’ than any signal of meaningful support.45 Palmerston suffered an attack of ‘political’ gout in December which kept him away from Westminster and therefore any obligation to join in opposition March 1852, Broadlands Papers, GMC/130; Palmerston’s diary, 22 February 1852, Broadlands Papers, D/13. 40   June; 12, 18, 21, 28 July 1852, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, pp. 70, 75, 76, 77; quotations from pp. 70 (June) and 77 (28 July). 41   H.C.F Bell, Lord Palmerston, (2 vols, London, 1936), vol. 2, p. 61; D. Southgate,‘The Most English Minister ...’: The Policies and Politics of Palmerston (London, 1966), p. 310. 42   Charles Greville to Clarendon, 21 October 1852, in H. Maxwell, The Life and Letters of George William Frederick Fourth Earl of Clarendon (2 vols, London, 1913), vol. 1, p. 350. 43   Sir James Graham to George Cornewall Lewis, 1 September 1852, National Library of Wales, Harpton Court Ms, Ms C/700. 44   Political diary of the third Earl of Malmesbury, 24 October; 21, 25, 28 November 1852, Hampshire Record Office, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/79. 45   24 November 1852, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 84.

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attacks on the government,46 but this was not because he waited for a ‘decent opportunity’ to join Derby; if he sought a ‘decent opportunity’ to do anything, it was to re-affirm his own claims to eminence within Whig ranks. A certain personal rivalry probably did get in the way: as George Cornewall Lewis observed, if Palmerston did join the Protectionists, ‘Ld Derby would find not only that he had got a master, but a master who made him feel his servitude every day – & rode him with a sharp bit & a hard hand’.47 And it is quite clear that Derby would not have stood by and allowed Palmerston to steal his leadership.48 But the rivalry between Palmerston and Lord John Russell for the leadership of the Whigs was what preoccupied Palmerston and, sensitive to Liberal allegations that he might abandon his principles, he was determined to find a way to return to his former colleagues under a different leadership. Thus, he was willing to play Derby off against Russell throughout 1852, threatening to take his popular following with him wherever he went, but Palmerston never entertained seriously the idea of joining Derby’s government. As he had described his position in a letter to his brother in April 1852: I believe the Derby Govt will rather calculate upon inducing me to join them when Protection has had its public funeral; on this point of course I am studiously silent; but I have no intention or inclination to inlist [sic] under Derby’s banner. I do not think highly of him as a statesman, and I suspect that there are many matters on which he & I should not agree. Besides after having acted for 22 years with the Whigs, & after having gained by & while acting with them any little political reputation I may have acquired, it would not answer nor be at all agreable [sic] to me to go slap over to the opposite camp, and this merely on account of a freak of Johnny Russells, which the whole Whig Party regretted & condemned. Moreover I am in no great hurry to return to hard work, & should not dislike a little more holyday. On the other hand I own that it would be a very pressing public emergency which would induce me to place myself again under John Russell. Not on account of personal resentment which I have ceased to feel, & Johnny & I meet in private as good friends as ever, but he has shewn on so many occasions such a want of sound judgement & discretion that I have lost all political confidence in him.

In this letter he made no secret of his ambition to become prime minister himself if and when Derby’s government should be overthrown. He thought his deficiencies for the office no greater than those of Derby or Russell.49 Yet, even by the later 1850s, when Palmerston’s unwillingness to join the Protectionists could not have   11, 17 December 1852, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, pp. 87, 91.   G.C. Lewis to Graham, 8 September 1852, Brotherton Library, Leeds, Graham

46 47

Papers, MS Film 124, Bundle 112. 48   See, for example, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. xiv. 49   Palmerston to William Temple, 30 April 1852, Broadlands Papers, GC/TE/343.

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been clearer, Derby still resisted schemes to attack his foreign policy, notably in 1857 and 1858, as the government struggled to handle imperial revolt in India.50 He would, as he had put it in 1852, kill the Whigs ‘with kindness’. In December 1852 Aberdeen replaced Derby as Prime Minister and Palmerston, after some hesitation, took the Home Office: he was reported to have prevaricated because he thought Derby would probably be soon recalled, in which case he would prefer to serve Derby, from whom, according to Lady Palmerston, he ‘had received an offer of carte blanche, including even the Foreign Office, which he prudently declined’.51 This, however, was mere hyperbole, and probably a rumour broadcast by the Palmerstons (Lady Palmerston had told Lady Tankerville to relate Palmerston’s feelings to Derby) in order to strengthen his hand in negotiating with Aberdeen. On the formation of Aberdeen’s government, however, Derby instructed his supporters: ‘Wait – don’t attack ministers – that will only bind them together – if left alone they must fall to pieces by their own disunion.’52 This, then, was the basis on which Derby approached the business of opposition in the 1850s. During the war in the Crimea (1853‒56, which Britain entered in late March 1854) Derby had seemed reluctant to press charges against the government’s foreign policy, preferring to await the government’s collapse over Reform but in the process he handed to Palmerston, on a plate, the patriotic card.53 Indeed, Disraeli thought Palmerston would be attracted by the Conservatives’ numerical majority in the House of Commons and when Palmerston resigned, temporarily, in December 1853, ostensibly over Reform (but really about foreign policy), he thought Palmerston would come over to their side.54 There was no reason for Palmerston to look to the Conservatives though. His hawkish approach to the war, left largely unchallenged by Derby, was coming to look to most in the Cabinet and in the country, as a wise one and his position in Whig circles was strengthening in proportion. There was a growing frustration on the Conservative benches that Palmerston seemed unwilling to commit to either side, but so long as he was, as Disraeli put it, ‘playing fast and loose’, then there remained, he thought, a possibility he would join Derby.55 However, when it was Palmerston, and not Derby, who formed the government that replaced Aberdeen’s at the beginning of 1855 (Derby was commissioned first but failed to fulfil the command) there was no evidence that Palmerston looked to join forces with Derby. He politely, but explicitly, declined Derby’s offer of a seat in his Cabinet (when he saw the list of Derby’s proposed ministers Palmerston 50   A. Hawkins, “British Parliamentary Party Alignment and the Indian Issue, 1857‒1858”, Journal of British Studies, 23:2 (1984), pp. 86‒7. 51   Charles Wood, political journal, note appended after entry for 22 December 1852, Borthwick Institute, York, Hickleton Papers, A8/1/2. 52   20, 24 December 1852, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, pp. 92, 94. 53   Hawkins, ‘Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism’, p. 289. 54   17 December 1853, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 114. 55   23 February 1854, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 121.

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dismissed it as ‘a Ministry of 14 days’) and made no similar offer to Derby subsequently.56 He did invite Derby’s son, Lord Stanley, to join a few months later, in November, but not as part of any Liberal-Conservative union and Stanley said, significantly, that the points of difference between them, especially over foreign policy, were insurmountable.57 It was during Palmerston’s first government that Derby remarked on his opponent’s chameleon-like character. It was part of a speech in which he set out his own political principles – support for the prerogatives of the Crown, the independence of Parliament, the rights of the people, and of the doctrines and rights of property of the Established Church – essentially a reaffirmation of the ‘Knowsley creed’.58 In very general terms, these were not policies from which Palmerston would have dissented. Although Derby continued to look on Palmerston’s foreign policy with some consternation, he also recognised a certain shared outlook on domestic questions. The ‘benevolence’ of Palmerston’s opposition to Derby in 1852 was, to some extent, reciprocated in the later 1850s as Derby ‘preached the merits of inaction’.59 There were plenty of opportunities to attack Palmerston’s government in the later 1850s: imperial revolt in India in 1857 shook the British governing classes and Disraeli was clearly eager to use this as well as perceived inconsistencies elsewhere in British foreign policy and dishonourable secret treaties as the grounds on which to attack Palmerston.60 Palmerston’s government did fall over a foreign policy crisis when his government came under sustained criticism in Parliament from Radicals over his willingness to introduce a Conspiracy to Murder Bill in the spring of 1858 that would tighten the controls over refugees in Britain and make it easier for the government to suppress any future plots hatched in Britain directed against foreign governments. The problem was that the measure had been demanded by Napoleon III after he had been the subject of an attempted assassination that had been planned, and using materials sourced, in Britain. Palmerston suspected Derby had instructed Disraeli and Spencer Walpole, the leading Conservatives in the House of Commons, to vote against the government once he had sensed the popular hostility towards the ministry, using the episode as a crude instrument for turning him out.61 There is 56   Charles Wood, political journal, 31 January 1855, Hickleton Papers, A8/1/4; Palmerston to Derby, 31 January 1855, Broadlands Papers, GC/DE/76. 57   Stanley to Palmerston, 1/2 November 1855, Broadlands Papers, GC/DE/78. 58   16 March 1857, Hansard, Third Series, vol. 144, col. 2337, in Jones, Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism, pp. 217‒18. 59   Hawkins, ‘British Parliamentary Party Alignment and the Indian Issue, 1857‒1858’, pp. 86‒7. 60   See G.B. Henderson, ‘Disraeli and Palmerston in 1857, or, the dangers of explanations in Parliament’, in G.B. Henderson, Crimean War Diplomacy and Other Historical Essays (Glasgow, 1947), pp. 249‒66. 61   Palmerston’s diary, 19 February 1858, Broadlands Papers, D/18; Palmerston to Emily Palmerston, 20 February 1858, ibid., BR23AA/1/24; Note by Palmerston on a letter

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only hearsay evidence for the charge, however, and Derby had made no public statement that contradicted his outward display of support for the Bill. In large part, it seems, Derby suppressed his qualms about certain excesses of Palmerstonian foreign policy because he recognised the far greater points of similarity existing between himself and Palmerston. In late 1859 Disraeli had made it known to Palmerston that he and Derby had ‘no wish or intention to try to disturb the government in the approaching session’, and that they would be willing to cooperate about the government’s planned Reform bill ‘with a view to come to an understanding about it so that it should pass without difficulty’.62 In early 1861 Malmesbury told Palmerston that the ‘general support we are prepared to tender you’ did not in fact include measures for parliamentary reform,63 but at the same time did pay Palmerston a visit in which he relayed a message from Derby and Disraeli that they would not try to turn his government out of office that session (so long as Palmerston did not lead the country into war).64 There was, therefore, in the 1860s a marked rapprochement between Palmerston and Derby. They reached an agreement that the Conservatives would support Palmerston’s government subject to certain provisions. Firstly, with regard to British policy towards Italy and France – where much Liberal capital was being made from the moves towards Italian freedom, unification and liberation from the Austrian (conservative) yoke – that support was conditional on there being no attempt to lead Britain into a direct or overt clash with Austria over Venetia. If Palmerston agreed, further, not to ‘make church rates a government question’ and checked Gladstone’s enthusiasm for increased direct taxation, then the government could, apparently, look forward to facing a relatively friendly opposition.65 The promised support seemed to be genuine. When civil war broke out in the United States in 1861, while the issue of states’ rights and anti-slavery polarised opinion within the Cabinet, from across the floor, Derby simply offered a general endorsement of Palmerston’s policy and shared news and reports with him, particularly when they reflected to the credit of the (pseudo-aristocratic) South.66 In February 1861 Derby did make a ‘slashing speech’ on the government’s foreign policy over France and Italy, but, as he had previously agreed with Palmerston, he stopped short of pressing the attack to the point of causing a government defeat.67 Derby’s determination of the late 1850s that he would ‘show … [Palmerston] I’m alive’ and would, on forming a second Derby government in 1858 prove that he could

from Derby, 22 February 1858, ibid., GC/DE/66. 62   Palmerston’s diary, 4 December 1859, Broadlands Papers, D/19. 63   Malmesbury to Palmerston, 29 January 1861, Broadlands Papers, GC/MA/196. 64   Palmerston’s diary, 25 January 1861, Broadlands Papers, D/21. 65   28 July 1852, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 77. 66   Derby to Palmerston, 13 November 1861, Broadlands Papers, GC/DE/71. 67   Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The Fourteenth Earl of Derby, Volume II: Achievement, 1851‒1869 (Oxford, 2008), p. 255.

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offer a viable alternative to Palmerston, had gradually given way to an openly acknowledged period of cooperation.68 Despite everything, Derby clung to an increasingly forlorn hope that he might succeed in persuading Palmerston, even when Palmerston was publicly identifying himself as a Liberal prime minister, that his true friends and allies were to be found among the Conservatives. For this, Derby has attracted much censure, largely from an historiographical tradition that privileges Disraelian Conservatism over other mid-Victorian varieties, though the work of Angus Hawkins in particular has done much to rescue something of Derby’s reputation. And it should also be noted that, for all that, Disraeli too found it difficult to attack Palmerston, supporting as he did much of what Palmerston stood for. He was himself drawn to try to attack Palmerston’s foreign policy whilst simultaneously absolving Palmerston for any of its shortcomings. Thus, in looking at Derby and Palmerston it seems less that Derby was inept, or weak, but rather that his conduct and thereby the fortunes of the Conservative party were bound by his understanding of the constitution and perhaps a frustration that Palmerston seemed unwilling to play by the rules. In this sense, Palmerston did perhaps appear changeable. Yet it seems unfair to charge Palmerston with duplicity and Derby with irresolution. They adhered to a common political heritage but in interpreting that differently, found themselves drawn into opposition by virtue of parliament and party rather than ideological differences per se. According to Sir James Graham, writing in the spring of 1858, there was not ‘much to choose between Derby and Palmerston: the one was a Whig and became a Tory; the other for half a century has been a Tory at heart and is so still’.69 Palmerston was no chameleon; nor was Derby any less sincere in his politics. Both came from the same political stable – schooled in the ideas of the Scottish enlightenment, and the ideals of early nineteenth-century Whiggery – and both subscribed, in particular, to the Whig orthodoxy of the pre-eminence of Parliament and by extension the importance of political parties. They shared a common reverence for George Canning but crucially differed over how to interpret his legacy. Palmerston sought to develop the Canningite interest in popular opinion and the need for popular support; Derby rejected such populism, remaining instead essentially elitist in his view of society. This difference of opinion regarding the importance and role of opinion would determine their party affiliations and would oblige them, henceforth, to maintain, on the whole, oppositional attitudes towards each other. Palmerston was at best lukewarm about extending popular parliamentary representation, but he saw a clearer accommodation of his essentially populist foreign policy with the reform-minded Whigs and Liberals than with the Conservatives. 68   Jones, Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism, pp. 219, 267; Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 158. 69   Quoted in Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister, vol. 2, p. 219.

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Party identities were becoming increasingly sharply drawn in this period. Although Derby and Palmerston regarded political identity as fairly fluid and mutable, they lived and worked in a political system that was becoming increasingly confrontational and party-based. Hence Derby’s ‘masterly inactivity’, of killing governments with kindness, was a political strategy defined by the demands of party; it was a negative agenda conceived largely in party political terms. Likewise, Palmerston’s political longevity owed less to a widespread sympathy for his views among the Whigs as such, and more to his ability to win over and keep important bodies of opinion – particularly radical opinion – which helped maintain the government in power. As Lord John Russell admitted in 1850 when faced with demands for Palmerston’s expulsion from the Foreign Office, he was himself ‘in fact the weakness and Lord Palmerston the strength of the Government from his popularity with the Radicals’.70 Russell would not throw over a minister with whom he frequently quarrelled if that was to the detriment of the government’s, and thus also the party’s, interest. Although Derby made frequent reference to disagreements with Palmerston over foreign policy, this was as much about its execution as its content. By the 1860s this had evolved into a tacit understanding that so long as Palmerston avoided provoking conflicts with other powers, Derby would on the whole acquiesce in his foreign policy. Even during the late 1840s and early 1850s, when foreign policy was asserted as a significant point of divergence, this appears to have rested as much on a Derbyite dislike of Palmerston’s aggressive bullying, of the way he went about diplomacy, as about a fundamental disagreement over the definition of British national interest. Conservative strategy in the 1840s and 1850s was, as the most recent examination of Conservative foreign policy points out, framed largely against Palmerston, representing in many ways a straightforward anti-Palmerstonism, in which Derby (as leader) and Malmesbury (as Foreign Secretary when they held office) spent much of their time criticising and trying to reverse what they saw as the ill-effects of Palmerston’s meddling abroad. Clearly, as Geoff Hicks argues, debate about foreign policy had not become sterile in the face of an apparent Palmerstonian dominance and there was emerging some sort of Conservative alternative agenda. Thus, when the Protectionists came into office in 1852, argues Hicks, Derby made clear that with regard to foreign policy his party had three objectives: ‘to reject what the Conservatives regarded as the irresponsible elements of Whig foreign policy; to assuage fears about Protectionist extremism; and to give some sense of Conservative principles’. These Conservative principles, however, were largely about how that diplomacy would be conducted: the government would pursue ‘a calm, temperate, deliberate, and conciliatory course of conduct’ and whereas the Whigs had apparently been keen actively to ‘encourage’ the spread of liberalism, the Conservatives would simply rely on the 70   Memorandum by Prince Albert, 3 March 1851, in The Letters of Queen Victoria: a selection from Her Majesty’s correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861, ed. A.C. Benson and Viscount Esher (3 vols, London, 1908), vol. 2, p. 312.

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‘diffusion’ of British best practice.71 The Conservatives, as Steele agrees, did not want to see Britain ‘too closely involved in the affairs of the Continent’.72 The Conservatives’ opposition, therefore, was to Palmerston’s ‘methods’ and their policy was driven in large part by a search for parliamentary political advantage. There is no real sense of profound differences over the essentials of British interests or of deep-rooted ideological disagreements. Thus, for example, the defeat of Palmerston’s government over an issue rooted in foreign affairs in 1858 (his supposed deference to France over the Orsini plot) was essentially just that: a defeat for Palmerston, who had been ‘impaled on exactly the sort of strident affirmation of English interests he had so often wielded against his opponents’; it was not, Hicks admits, ‘a great triumph for Conservative principles’.73 Indeed, when examining the Protectionist view of Italy in the late 1850s, Hicks notes that Malmesbury ‘did not fully understand the nature of “Italian” or Piedmontese national ambitions’. In the end, Conservative ‘principles’ seemed to boil down to ‘a determined and increasingly desperate search for peace accompanied by an almost paranoid fear of provoking war’.74 This led to genuine clashes in parliamentary debate but not to a thorough examination of the intellectual underpinnings of British foreign policy. Party loyalty then, more than political antipathy kept Palmerston and Derby apart.75 As Lady Palmerston had suggested in 1852, Palmerston was acutely sensitive to accusations that he had betrayed his party. On Derby’s side, it was what Steele called his ‘habitual insecurity’, ‘timidity’ and ‘pessimism’ and what Derby himself called his ‘masterly inactivity’ that prevented him from ever really taking the fight to Palmerston.76 Hence Derby and the Protectionists would find themselves in the 1850s, as Angus Hawkins has observed, ‘in the artificial position of confronting a possible ally’.77 Had it not been for this adherence to party, had political associations in the mid-Victorian period shifted as freely as they had done half a century before, then perhaps the period so often labelled the ‘age of Palmerston’ might easily have been the ‘age of Palmerston and Derby’, if not, indeed, the ‘age of Derby’.

71   Geoffrey Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics: The Conservatives and Europe, 1846‒59 (Manchester, 2007), pp. 71‒4. 72   Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855‒1865, p. 150. 73   Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics, p. 179. 74   Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics, pp. 209, 213. 75   Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855‒1865, pp. 136‒7. 76   Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855‒1865, pp. 137, 141. 77   Hawkins, ‘Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism’, p. 289.

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Chapter 4

The Struggle for Stability: The Fourteenth Earl and Europe, 1852‒1868 Geoffrey Hicks

A brief vignette illustrates the role played by the fourteenth Earl of Derby in the foreign policy of his governments. On 4 August 1858, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Malmesbury, left Britain to accompany Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on a visit to Emperor Napoleon III of France at the new naval base at Cherbourg. Thereafter Malmesbury travelled on with them to Potsdam, where the royal couple were reunited with their daughter Victoria, who had married the Prussian Prince Regent’s son and was several months pregnant with her first child, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. In the absence of Malmesbury, all significant policymaking duties and diplomatic functions were exercised by Derby, who became for a month de facto Foreign Secretary. The usual varied business of that officeholder crossed his desk. He met with foreign diplomats, dealt with two diplomatic incidents, handled intelligence about French military preparations and mollified a recalcitrant ex-ambassador. In his letters to Malmesbury, he kept up a broader commentary on geopolitics. While admittedly it was a quieter time of year and he had the assistance of a junior minister, it was an impressive bureaucratic exercise for a Prime Minister already busy with all his other duties. Routine matters were despatched to Malmesbury’s ministerial deputy, more serious questions were dealt with or forwarded to the Foreign Secretary with instructions, and a close eye was kept on detail, with Derby even analysing obscure French orders of saltpetre and sulphur for their military significance. Running the Foreign Office was a role for which he was well-suited, having maintained a careful overview of foreign policy as Prime Minister in 1852 and in opposition. His brief performance of the duties of Foreign Secretary was typical of the way in which he proceeded as a man of business, as was his close attention to detail. The problems he faced were also typical. He had to address the French threat via both diplomacy and defence, neutralise problems in the Near East, negotiate with foreign diplomats and manage the domestic politics of foreign policy. Yet, today, few would associate Derby with international affairs. Conservative foreign policy in the mid-Victorian period has, until recently, received little attention, although it is satisfying to note that this collection is further evidence of a shifting historiographical tide. But it would be difficult to find any work written prior to the turn of the twenty-first century that considered Derby in a foreign policy context. This would have been regarded as a significant historiographical

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omission were it the case with any other Victorian Prime Minister, not least Derby’s two successors as Conservative leader, but the condescension of posterity was vast indeed. Lately, however, research has begun to address this omission. Angus Hawkins’ two-volume biography has set out the principles Derby applied in foreign affairs, and in his contribution to this collection he has summarised the broad approach Derby adopted.1 The object of this chapter is not to repeat that, nor to set out the course of Conservative foreign policy, which has been done elsewhere.2 The intention, rather, is to explore in a little more detail the particular role played by Derby himself as he applied his principles in the construction and guidance of foreign policy. Having supplied himself with able foreign secretaries with whom he could work comfortably, he pursued stability via the maintenance of the status quo in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Indifferent to the fortunes or morals of individual governments, he sought the containment of France, a stable central Europe and the survival of the Ottoman empire. He did so because, like any Prime Minister, he wanted the best conditions for British prosperity to flourish, but also for more conservative reasons: to avoid encouraging radicalism (at home or abroad), interference in the internal affairs of other states, unnecessary expenditure, or the provocation of foreign governments; overall, to sustain a European system which he considered essential for British security. Perhaps one reason why Derby has received little attention from historians of foreign policy is because of the excellent relationship he had with his foreign secretaries. His governments were not marked with the kinds of rows over foreign policy that attract historiographical attention elsewhere; there was no Palmerston or Russell to provoke disharmony. The only internal challenge to the conduct of foreign policy came in early 1859 when Disraeli lobbied for a more ‘active’ intervention in the Italian question, but Derby’s authority in the Cabinet was so absolute that this was given short shrift. The two men chosen as Foreign Secretary were politicians in whom Derby could exercise absolute trust: one of his closest friends, James Howard Harris, the third Earl of Malmesbury, in 1852 and 1858; and his son Edward, Lord Stanley (later the fifteenth Earl of Derby) in 1866. In 1851, he considered others for the post, but by 1852 four factors made Malmesbury the logical choice: he was a friend of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the President of France who had just supplanted the Second Republic; he was also a close friend of Derby, who shared his outlook on foreign policy; he was no maverick, having been a loyal party whip in the Lords; and he would do what Derby wanted, being relatively inexperienced and lacking the ego of the 1851 candidate, Stratford Canning. All of these factors made for an effective political alliance. The two worked together harmoniously; Malmesbury was able to communicate frankly and honestly with a man he regarded as a friend, while Derby could trust Malmesbury 1   Angus Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby (2 vols, Oxford, 2007 and 2008). 2   See e.g., Geoffrey Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics: The Conservatives and Europe, 1846‒59 (Manchester, 2007).

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to manage everyday Foreign Office business efficiently and defer to the Prime Minister where necessary. During the two periods in which they managed foreign policy in tandem, they worked effectively together, and the only occasion on which Malmesbury created a problem for Derby was his too-eager announcement of the recognition of the French Second Empire.3 In all the other domestic difficulties they encountered – for example, over the Mather affair in 1852 or the British response to the Italian crisis of 1859 – Derby bore joint responsibility with his Foreign Secretary. Derby was fortunate, again, in his choice of Foreign Secretary in 1866, though his choice was hardly surprising; there had been ample opportunity for the Prime Minister to consider his merits. In the spring of 1866, when it became clear that Malmesbury’s ill-health would dictate a change at the Foreign Office if the Conservatives won power, Stanley made as loyal a lieutenant; even if the relationship was not that of two friends, it was clearly no less familiar. While they did not always see eye-to-eye politically, and Stanley was arguably even less an interventionist than his father, in foreign policy they were motivated by the same suspicion of Palmerstonian ‘meddle and muddle’ and a desire to preserve stability at home and abroad. Politically, Stanley was a logical and popular choice, having served as a junior minister and an admired Secretary of State for India, whom many expected to become Prime Minister himself. It is more difficult to follow Derby’s guidance to Stanley, because their familial relationship presented so many opportunities for discussion, sometimes – as in the case of Luxembourg in 1867 – even literally over the breakfast-table, but the evidence we have shows that Derby guided his son carefully in the first year of the government, and thereafter that guidance diminished with Stanley’s greater experience and Derby’s failing health. At the Foreign Office, therefore, Derby ensured he was served by efficient men he could trust and work with, and who would not challenge the way in which he wished to see foreign policy conducted. He told Malmesbury in March 1852 that if ‘all my young soldiers show as well’ as he thought Malmesbury had, ‘we shall exhibit a formidable line of battle‘.4 If one may judge a leader by his ability to select his lieutenants, then Derby was a shrewd general. His technique for the management of foreign policy was to maintain an interested overview and to intervene only where necessary, leaving as much as possible to his foreign secretaries. One thing that is striking, however, is the degree to which Derby maintained his knowledge about the detail of foreign policy. He utilised his previous ministerial experience to deploy this effectively. When he received foreign statesmen and ambassadors, he would submit to his Foreign Secretary a detailed summary in the manner of a trained civil servant, with an   See e.g., Geoffrey Hicks, ‘An Overlooked Entente: Lord Malmesbury, AngloFrench Relations and the Conservatives’ Recognition of the Second Empire, 1852’, History, 52 (2007). 4   Derby to Malmesbury, undated [?14 March 1852], Malmesbury Mss, Hampshire Record Office, 9M73/451/2. 3

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exposition of his own thinking on the matter. His interventions in foreign policy were, unsurprisingly, most notable in 1852, when he helped guide Malmesbury, an inexperienced Foreign Secretary. One of the first problems with which he had to grapple was the case of the Swiss canton Neuchâtel, the status of which was disputed with Prussia. The case was a complex one, and he met with the Prussian minister in London, Christian von Bunsen, delivering Malmesbury a detailed précis of the discussion in which he had dealt with the Prussian claim, international negotiations and the results of elections in the canton.5 He may have been briefed well, but it was still an impressively detailed record for a new Prime Minister days after taking office. At the same time, he met with Baron Brünnow, the Russian minister, to discuss details of joint Great Power action in the case of a French invasion of Belgium, which was widely anticipated in the spring of 1852.6 He gave Malmesbury instructions about Sir Henry Bulwer’s secret mission to Rome; the Foreign Secretary told Bulwer that he could ‘add nothing to Lord Derby’s able letter’ which he sent on to the ambassador in Tuscany.7 Derby also applied himself to the settlement of the Greek succession. Perhaps most strikingly and famously, during the crisis over the declaration of the French Second Empire, he produced an ‘elaborate’ memorandum that ran to many pages and was sent to the Holy Alliance Powers on 9 November 1852.8 Henry Addington, the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, and Mellish, another senior diplomat, thought that ‘neither Canning nor Palmerston could have done the like, & without a single erasure’.9 Derby’s memorandum was written to support Malmesbury in the midst of a potentially explosive crisis, in which there were fears that Austria, Russia and Prussia would move against France. As Prime Minister in 1852, Derby was more important in the direction of Conservative foreign policy than Peel had been in the 1840s or than Disraeli would be for much of the 1870s, and a good deal more constructive than the latter. In his second government, Malmesbury’s greater experience inevitably meant that Derby intervened less in the policy process, but it is notable that when he did so, it was with the same forensic attention to detail he had demonstrated in 1852. In the spring of 1858, it was he who drafted the Government’s response when the law officers reported on the disputed case of the Cagliari, a Sardinian boat captured by the Neapolitans.10 The matter was a sensitive one, as two British engineers had served on the ship and had been mistreated by the Neapolitans. In Malmesbury’s absence in August, Derby dealt with the diplomatic fall-out   Derby to Malmesbury, 13 April 1852, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/451/8/1‒2.   See e.g., Derby to Malmesbury, 28 March 1852, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/451/4. 7   Malmesbury to Bulwer, 25 June 1852 (copy), Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/50/77. 8   Description from Malmesbury’s unpublished political diary, 8 November 1852, 5 6

Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/79. 9   Ibid. 10   Derby to Malmesbury, 12 April 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/4.

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after a British ship bombarded Jeddah, following a confusion over its orders.11 He followed closely the unfolding dispute between Portugal and France over the case of the Charles et Georges, a slave-ship apprehended by the Portuguese.12 In October 1858, he handled the question of the renewal of diplomatic relations with Naples, giving – via Bernstorff, the Prussian minister – the definitive British answer to the Neapolitan king.13 When Austro-French differences first flared up in January 1859, he mediated between Malmesbury and Disraeli as they argued about the objectives of British policy.14 He did this whilst steering an unstable minority government which was trying to deliver the first ever Conservative reform act. In so doing he analysed the Italian question with arguably more accuracy than either his subordinates or his Liberal opponents. Despite continuing domestic political difficulties, he worked closely with Malmesbury in an attempt to resolve the dispute between Austria and Piedmont-Sardinia in the spring of 1859. It is a little more difficult to explore Derby’s role in 1866. Not only has the domestic relationship between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary reduced the available evidence, but historians are also hampered by the fact that Stanley was businesslike to the point of terseness in correspondence, which was efficient as a method of managing a heavy workload but, aside from a few hints in his diaries, leaves us guessing as to his detailed thoughts. Nevertheless, it seems that Derby guided Stanley with a lighter touch than he had Malmesbury in 1852. This was only to be expected, as Stanley had already served as a junior minister at the Foreign Office, and then in Cabinet at two different departments of state, so was far from inexperienced, while Derby was overseeing domestic reform and was not a well man. The Prime Minister’s interventions may have been less detailed, but he followed policy closely and brought his influence to bear when necessary. In July 1866, he issued Stanley with very clear directions as to how to proceed in the face of Prussia’s absorption of Hanover, drafting a despatch, as he had for Malmesbury on occasions of similar significance.15 As the Cretan revolt threatened a re-opening of the eastern question in the autumn of 1866, it is fortunate for us that Derby happened to be at Knowsley while Stanley was working in London, and they conducted a regular correspondence about events. When it seemed that Russia was attempting to come to some kind of deal with Britain over Crete, to the exclusion of France, Derby was clear: ‘You will not’, he warned Stanley, ‘fall into this trap.’16 He went on to explore the dangers of division between the powers. The letters exchanged by the two men in this period, when they were separated     13   14   15   11

See e.g., Derby to Malmesbury, 19 August 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/23. See e.g., Derby to Malmesbury, 6 October 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/35. Derby to Malmesbury, 25 October 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/38. See e.g., Derby to Malmesbury, 8 January 1859, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/450/6. Derby to Stanley, 30 July 1866, Liverpool City Record Office, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/7. 16   Derby to Stanley, 12 October 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/31. 12

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by geography, suggest Derby played a similar role in London, when proximity obviated the need for correspondence. That was certainly the case with the Luxembourg crisis of 1867. It is frustrating that Derby’s critical intervention, which we may be pretty certain persuaded Stanley to accept the necessity of a British guarantee of neutrality, is evidenced only by a note suggesting a discussion ‘at breakfast’ on 6 May 1867.17 Had the Foreign Secretary been anyone other than the Prime Minister’s son, there might have been rather more detail. But it is clear that Derby’s role was decisive. Only after he had explained that he did not think the necessity for a European guarantee ‘need interpose an insuperable obstacle to a settlement’ did Stanley give in to Prussian pressure and agree to it.18 It is interesting to speculate how differently the eastern crisis of 1876‒78 might have turned out if Stanley had been working with Derby, and not Disraeli. Perhaps some of Stanley’s later difficulties stemmed from the fact that until 1874 he had never served under a Prime Minister other than his father, so had not learnt to manage a less benevolent leader, or one for whose diplomatic judgement he had less respect. Whatever Stanley’s subsequent difficulties, though, his first term as Foreign Secretary was largely a success, despite some historians’ scorn.19 The only major European crisis, over Luxembourg, was resolved by a Stanley double-act that wrapped the guarantee up in a semantic ambiguousness which became known as the ‘Derby doctrine’. In 1866 and 1867, Derby played his part setting the course, even if it was Stanley’s hand that was on the tiller. Apart from Palmerston and Salisbury, it is difficult to imagine any other contemporary Prime Minister following foreign policy in such detail as Derby, particularly in his first administration, and intervening with such precision. It was Earl Grey’s technique of allying broad oversight with friendly advice on specifics that Derby’s style in foreign policy most resembled; probably no coincidence, as it was Grey whom he had first served as a minister. But it is difficult to imagine Grey having the time, detail or necessity to produce memoranda of the kind Derby produced in 1852; neither did Grey have to face quite the level of inexperience in his ministers that Derby did. Among subsequent Prime Ministers, Melbourne was too lazy and Russell too distracted by other matters, while both had Palmerston’s broad coat-tails on which to ride. Peel, whose instincts were similar to Derby’s in foreign policy, needed to intervene less because of Aberdeen’s experience. As Prime Minister himself, Aberdeen brought little of his diplomatic skill to bear on the crisis that produced the Crimean War. Disraeli, who professed a great romantic interest in foreign policy, was vague on specifics and dangerous when left without anyone to check him. Foreign policy was always something of an Achilles heel for Gladstone, whose painting of the broad picture was as good as Disraeli’s, but who   Derby to Stanley, undated [5 May 1867], Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/61.   Ibid. 19   See e.g., M.R.D. Foot, ‘Great Britain and Luxemburg 1867’, English Historical 17 18

Review, 67 (1952); Kenneth Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England 1830‒1902 (Oxford, 1970), p. 118.

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was too apt to let decisions drift, while leaving the detailed business to Clarendon and Granville. And Palmerston and Salisbury, former foreign secretaries both, came prepared with much greater experience of diplomacy and an abiding passion for the subject. At times, Palmerston might as well have been his own Foreign Secretary, and Salisbury was his own Foreign Secretary for much of his career. Derby was not experienced in foreign policy, demonstrated no great excitement for the subject – unlike the passion he brought to Irish policy or ecclesiastical matters – and had no desire to dominate or separately direct policy. For all of this, his practical achievement in the management of foreign affairs is impressive. Across the three governments he led, Derby and his foreign secretaries faced a series of difficulties, ranging from minor diplomatic incidents to full-blown European crises and a war between two of the great powers. In geographical terms, the problems he faced might be boiled down to three questions: in the west, how to contain France; in central Europe, how to preserve a stable power bloc between France and Russia; and in the east, how best to preserve the Ottoman empire while frustrating Russian and French designs. None of these problems was, of course, mutually exclusive, but the division of foreign policy in this manner provides a useful framework within which to analyse Derby’s role. In all three areas, Derby sought stability through non-interference, conciliatory diplomacy and the resolution of disputes. Throughout all three of Derby’s premierships, Britain’s principal foreign policy concern in the west lay, as it had done for centuries, just across the Channel. A resurgent France, led by the Bonapartist heir Louis Napoleon, first as President of the Second Republic and then as Emperor Napoleon III, did all it could to undo the Vienna Settlement of 1815. In the course of twenty years, it went to war with every other great power, and successive British governments suspected, not unreasonably, that Britain too might find itself in a conflict with its crosschannel neighbour. By 1858, France was dramatically expanding its naval base at Cherbourg, a good location for an attack on only one European great power, and the only one that had a significant naval presence in the region, Britain. Meanwhile, as Professor Lambert has explained elsewhere in this collection, changes in naval technology meant that there was increasing concern that French naval capacity might outstrip Britain’s. While the general condition of Anglo-French relations and French aggression directed specifically against Britain were naturally the greatest preoccupations, France’s ambitions in the Low Countries and its own internal stability also merited concern. Throughout the period, British and French politics were inextricably linked. In 1852, Derby came to power against the backdrop of deep unease over French intentions in the wake of Louis Napoleon’s coup, and as a result of a Commons division over one aspect of Britain’s defence, the militia. In 1858, a very serious Anglo-French rupture had to be bridged by Derby and Malmesbury, while in 1859 French machinations helped produce a European war. In 1866, it was Prussia that was disrupting European stability, but it was the French desire for a consolation prize in Luxembourg that produced a crisis

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in 1867. It was Napoleon III and France that dominated the processes of foreign policy over which Derby had to preside. Derby’s first object in international relations, as for all British politicians in the mid-Victorian period, was thus to maintain good relations with France. While his foreign secretaries were well aware of the importance of that objective, he played his part in achieving it. Whatever Derby’s suspicions about a Bonapartist government in France in the early 1850s, he appreciated that it was vital to have a stable government there. In this, he applied the same logic as the Duke of Wellington had when the 1830 revolution had toppled the restored Bourbon monarchy and he had recognised the new Orleanist regime. Derby no more approved of a Bonapartist dictatorship than Wellington had approved of LouisPhilippe replacing the French monarchy he had helped restore in 1814 and 1815, but both of them recognised that a government wielding meaningful authority was better than an anarchic republic where the ideologues might triumph. The last thing any British politician wanted, especially those with landed estates, was another French government whose raison d’être was the overthrow of the old order across Europe. Thus, in opposition, Derby and Malmesbury had welcomed the authority provided by Louis Napoleon. In government in 1852, when the diplomatic crisis blew up over the President’s intention to declare himself Emperor, Derby sought to restrain the other powers in the interests of a broader peace. There was no point in provoking Louis Napoleon when he could provide the order the great powers required in France; the objective was, as far as possible, to limit his impact beyond his own borders. What he did within them was, in Derby’s reasoning, his own business. Thus, in his lengthy memorandum, he emphasised that Britain had no intention of challenging the ‘will’ of the French people, and warned of the dangers of interfering before the formal declaration of empire, which ‘would have the appearance of unnecessarily interfering in affairs purely French’.20 In his analysis, the matter on which the powers did have the right to intervene was the retrospective annulling of their recognition of the French rulers since 1815, implied by the title Napoleon ‘III’. Derby was scrupulous in the division of the matters he regarded as properly of international concern and those that were not. This was not legalistic fussiness to abide by some abstract principle of non-interference; it was a practical tool for dealing with other powers on terms that were justifiable at home and abroad. And it helped to achieve the objective of a stable France working as far as possible within the concert of Europe, being provided with as few reasons as possible for hostility to Britain. While Malmesbury and the British ambassador to France, Lord Cowley, managed the business of negotiating with Louis Napoleon, Derby played an equal part reconciling Austria, Russia and Prussia to the changing circumstances. Subsequently, Derby also acted as peacemaker. When his government came to power in 1858, it was plunged into a full-scale row with France. Parliament had 20   Memorandum by Derby, 8 November 1852, enclosed in Malmesbury to Howard, no. 30, 9 November 1852, The National Archive [hereafter TNA], FO 120/270.

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rejected Palmerston’s compromise that had been intended to conciliate the French after it emerged that the Orsini plot had originated in Britain. Public opinion in both countries was inflamed, and although subsequent events suggest Napoleon was focused on his Italian adventure rather than a row with Britain, it would have been a foolish Prime Minister who did not take some care to restore Anglo-French accord. Derby was no fool; and he recognised the importance of following his predecessor’s example, even if Palmerston’s method, the Conspiracy to Murder Bill, had proved unacceptable. But Derby knew that British public opinion must be appeased, too. In his ministerial statement at the outset of his second premiership, Derby went out of his way to deliver warm words to France. Then, in return, when Malmesbury and Cowley succeeded in mollifying the French, Derby stressed the importance of getting a despatch from the French foreign minister, Comte Alexandre de Walewski, that would reduce public anger in Britain. He reminded Malmesbury of his hope that ‘it will contain an explicit disclaimer’ of Walewski’s earlier insinuation that Britain harboured terrorists; that ‘the “law” and “legislation” of England designedly “favoured” such offences, and “sheltered” such criminals’.21 Derby had pored over the detail of the Whigs’ correspondence, and Malmesbury followed his advice to the letter, as the subsequent despatch demonstrated.22 The same day, Derby even went in person to see the French ambassador, the Comte de Persigny, to congratulate him on the resolution of the crisis – a generous gesture which achieved little, because Walewski had not informed Persigny of the course of his negotiations with Cowley and the ambassador resigned in a huff.23 French politics aside, the affair had demonstrated the care Derby took with the AngloFrench relationship, and his attention to its detail. In 1859, as in 1852, he was robust on the independence of Belgium, and consistently remained suspicious of Napoleon’s long-term plans; but throughout his three terms as Prime Minister, he took great pains to avoid provoking France and to dampen down tension. Thus he was concerned about ‘the state of feeling in France’ when two British MPs made anti-French speeches in the summer of 1858, and in 1866 he warned Stanley to handle Napoleon sensitively if, as seemed likely in early July, he were to intervene in the Austro-Prussian war.24 ‘As far as one can judge’, noted Derby, ‘the Emperor’s intentions are very friendly towards us, and we must not intimate any jealousy of his proceedings.’25 Not intimating any jealousy, however, and conciliating France wherever possible, was only one half of Derby’s western strategy. The other half was a robust defence policy. Professor Lambert has written elsewhere in this volume about the role played by Derby in maintaining British naval strength, and the Prime Minister’s correspondence was permeated by his concern about the French threat. Against the backdrop of revolution in 1848 he had     23   24   25   21 22

Derby to Malmesbury, undated [9 March 1858], Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/61. See Malmesbury to Cowley, 9 March 1858, TNA, FO 146/757. Derby to Malmesbury, undated [9 March 1858], Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/58. Derby to Malmesbury, 23 August 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/26. Derby to Stanley, 11 July 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/5.

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been concerned about the inadequacies in British defence, and was no less so in the 1850s. His son observed that Derby, ‘though not believing in the likelihood of war, had always held the opinion that our military and naval defences were too much neglected in peace’.26 He strove to prepare Britain militarily and diplomatically for French perfidy. This began at the outset of his first premiership, with his close co-operation with Russia over the threat to Belgium. In the summer of 1852, he was concerned about the situation in the Channel Islands, where French agents were apparently using the presence of French political refugees to monitor British military preparations as much as their domestic opponents.27 By November, he was again warning Malmesbury about the possibility of French ‘recklessness’, and noting that ‘it behoves all your agents to be on the alert’; in particular, that ‘Cowley should be especially warned to have his eyes open, and not to neglect the means of obtaining such information which I presume he possesses’.28 Famously, it was of course a late increase in defence expenditure which upset the balance of Disraeli’s Budget in the winter of 1852 and helped precipitate the downfall of the government. In 1858‒59, coming to power in the midst of a full-blown war scare, Derby was doubly concerned about defensive preparations. From early in 1858, he was warning Malmesbury that ‘we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by Cowley’s (possibly misplaced) confidence’.29 Throughout 1858, Derby became increasingly concerned about naval preparations and expenditure, passing on to Malmesbury the gloomy news from Sir Charles Napier, ‘as to our ships, none of which, he said, except the Royal Albert, were fit to put to sea; and our lubberly crews would only get laughed at by the French, whose ships & crews are in admirable order’.30 In August 1858, he alerted Malmesbury and Cowley to a Treasury report on the large French orders for sulphur and saltpetre, which may have no peculiar meaning, but which, together with many minor symptoms, exhibits a somewhat urgent anxiety on the part of the French Government to be in a state of more immediate readiness for military operations than is consistent with an entire determination to maintain friendly relations generally.31

While Britain’s military attaché in Paris, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Claremont, was able to provide a ‘plausible’ and peaceful explanation for French plans, Derby 26   Stanley, journal, 5 December 1852, John Vincent (ed.), Derby, Disraeli and the Conservative Party, Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry Stanley, Lord Stanley (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978), p. 87. 27   Derby to Malmesbury, 20 August 1852, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/451/37/1‒2. 28   Derby to Malmesbury, 4 November 1852, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/451/53. 29   Derby to Malmesbury, undated [24 April 1858], Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/450/2. 30   Derby to Malmesbury, undated [?30 July 1858], Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/450/5. 31   Derby to Edmund Hammond, 13 August 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/11.

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was still concerned: ‘But what a store of powder they have in hand! Enough for six Crimean wars! If they are equally well prepared with other warlike stores, we are sadly behind.’32 Derby was by no means an alarmist, but noted of Napoleon that ‘it is clear that he means to place himself in a position to make his power be felt, whenever it suits him that we should feel it’.33 In October, when a copy of an earlier plan for a French invasion surfaced, it reinforced his concerns. He told Malmesbury that I must say that I am not quite easy about your friend the Emperor’s preparations; and the plan of invasion, drawn up in 1857, has an ugly look about it, when coupled with the particular description of armaments which he is strengthening. We must, at all hazards, keep up our naval strength.34

Despite the suggestion by some historians that Malmesbury looked across the Channel with rose-tinted spectacles, he, too, was alarmed at potential British weakness there, and the more so after the Charles et Georges affair, when Britain might have had to go to war with France to defend its Portuguese ally.35 He encouraged Derby to reinforce the fleet: The moral of all this is that with such a neighbour and that neighbour so reckless, if we are to hold our own we must have more ships at our command in the Channel – Every body [sic] is for strengthening our Navy & I am sure you may do what you like in that way – Had the casualty taken place at Lisbon to wh[ich] I have alluded, France would have been mistress of the Channel at once.36

By 1859, against such a backdrop, the Cabinet were disturbed by the state of naval preparations they had inherited from the previous government. In early January Malmesbury was appalled: ‘A greater public iniquity never was committed than that of the Whigs who left our Navy in the state shewn [sic] by the papers we discussed today.’37 While Malmesbury continued to pursue good relations with Paris, Derby was presiding over defence increases. But the maintenance of European security required efforts across a broad geographical spectrum. In central Europe, Derby similarly sought stability. In that sense, his objectives were little different from Palmerston’s. But the means of achieving the desired     34   35   32

Derby to Malmesbury, 19 August 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/22. Derby to Malmesbury, 16 August 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/15. Derby to Malmesbury, 27 October 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/39. Nick Carter, for example, has criticised Malmesbury’s ‘unusually lenient attitude to Napoleon’ in ‘Administering the Constitutional Pill: Britain, Italy, and the Italian Policy of Lord Malmesbury’, R. Stradling, S. Newton and D. Bates (eds), Conflict and Coexistence: Nationalism and Democracy in Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Harry Hearder, p. 15. 36   Malmesbury to Derby, 27 October 1858, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 144/2. 37   Malmesbury to Derby, 15 January 1859, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 144/2. 33

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ends were different. Palmerston had long sought to restructure Italy. But all the time the status quo appeared to be sustainable, Derby was keen to do what he could to maintain it, and was prepared to conciliate the Austrians within reasonable bounds, which Palmerston rarely was. Derby would not be encouraging Hungarian or Italian nationalism, or provoking Austrian outrage. But he had no particular love for Austria per se. His was the analysis of a Castlereagh or an Aberdeen: if a great power existed, it was better to work with it; if one altered the equilibrium (for example by encouraging Italian notions of independence), one ran the risk of unbalancing the whole European edifice. But the equilibrium was more important than any great power. By the mid-1860s, therefore, when a newly-emergent Prussia looked likely to replace Austria as the dominant central European power, Derby regarded the situation with indifference: one central European power was much the same as another. Whether Austria or Prussia provided a barrier between France and Russia was of no great concern to him. And Britain had its role to play in stability; its contribution to European equilibrium included maintaining a good relationship with all the other powers, whatever their system of government. Thus Palmerston’s ostentatious support of liberalism overseas seemed dangerous and counter-productive. But the Conservatives’ outspoken attacks on the more ‘liberal’ aspects of Whig foreign policy fed suspicions in Britain (and expectations in Vienna) that the Tories were pro-Austrian. In central Europe, Derby and his government therefore had to tread a tightrope, particularly in 1852, when they were an unknown quantity at home and abroad. While the Conservatives sought better relations with the Holy Alliance powers, and Malmesbury might wish to ‘get our old friends right’, Derby knew that his ministry could not be seen as an ally of the Holy Alliance, even had he wanted it to be (which he did not).38 He set out the dilemma to Queen Victoria soon after taking office. He had no desire to perpetuate the Anglo-Austrian tension of the Palmerston years, so when overtures were received from Austria, he was keen to renew ‘those friendly relations, which of late years have been unfortunately exchanged for a position of mutual distrust & alienation’.39 But, as he explained to the Queen, the new government would need to make it clear that we draw a broad distinction between abstaining from giving support, physical or moral, to those who are seeking to overthrow the institutions of their own country, & joining with Austria in the maintenance of arbitrary principles of government, & the subversion, through Europe, of constitutional rights.40

The kind of succour Palmerston had given to those who had challenged Austrian rule, such as in his ostentatious support for Louis Kossuth, or his rudeness to the   Malmesbury to Derby, 29 February 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 144/1.   Derby to Queen Victoria, 11 March 1852, Derby Mss, 920 DER (14) 179/2, fols.

38 39

60‒61.

  Ibid., fol. 62.

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Austrians, was entirely alien to Derby: because he found it distasteful, because it aroused dangerous popular passions at home and abroad, and because it was counter-productive. But he had no more intention than had his Whig predecessors of joining the Austrians in the pursuit of ‘order’, and for exactly the same reason that he would not antagonise Vienna. Unlike the Whigs, he was unconcerned with the way in which foreign governments were constituted or behaved within their own borders, or their ideological objectives. As a good constitutionalist he might deplore Austrian autocracy, but the diplomacy over which he presided was driven by the spirit of the 1815 treaties. If the law was that of 1815, all powers were equal before it, and Derby abided by it because he perceived it as being in British interests to do so. Palmerston accepted the settlement of 1815, but when it did not suit his definition of British interests he struggled against it, without perceiving the dangers of the hairline cracks he might have opened up. This was most obvious in Italy. In 1859, Derby viewed the increasing tension between Austria and France over Piedmont with concern, not because of any desire to prop up autocratic Austria and its little empire in Italy, but because of the danger to the broader balance of power. Palmerston thought it would be best for Austria to rid itself of its Italian provinces and thereby enhance its strength. Derby had no time for such dabbling. In his view, stability in the centre of Europe depended on Austro-Prussian unity, which he regarded as ‘the best check upon France’.41 Whatever the government’s Liberal opponents might suspect, he knew that a Conservative government could do nothing to assist Austria if she attacked Piedmont-Sardinia. In such circumstances, our position would be a very embarrassing one – for public sympathy in this country would be on the side of France, or rather of Italy, and this country would never raise a finger in support of Austrian rule over Lombardy.42

Moreover, Derby had little time for the Austrian foreign minister, Count Karl Ferdinand Buol-Schauenstein, whom he viewed as ‘too dogged, and too little adroit, to get well out of a difficulty when he has made one’.43 He was, rightly, sceptical about Buol’s preparedness to enter into a European conference to consider the condition of Italy, and was ‘convinced he and his Emperor [Franz Josef] would prefer being dispossessed by force of their Milanese possessions, to making (I believe even to accepting) such a proposition’.44 Derby’s prognosis was correct, and he perceived what his subordinates and contemporaries had not: that Austrian adherence to Metternich’s treaties and the territorial integrity of empire was absolute. Derby’s recognition that Prussian support would be needed to bolster Austria was an acceptance that Austria did not have the diplomatic,     43   44   41 42

Derby to Malmesbury, 5 January 1859, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/48. Ibid. Ibid. Derby to Malmesbury, 8 January 1859, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/450/6.

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political or military wherewithal to resist French designs, but it was more in hope than expectation. Nevertheless, it did not stop him working with Malmesbury for a diplomatic solution to the crisis as it developed. Thus, they despatched Cowley to Vienna in February, in the hope that they could persuade Austria to negotiate its way out of danger, and then in mid-March they proposed that Britain and France guarantee Piedmont against Austrian invasion for five years, if Piedmont and Austria would disarm. Malmesbury suggested a scheme on those general lines, but the notes detailing the scheme put to France are in Derby’s handwriting.45 Those historians who have condemned British diplomacy in 1859 have consistently overlooked Derby’s and Malmesbury’s efforts to preserve peace. These were no isolationists; for them the stability of Europe was always worth diplomatic intervention. But sustaining Austria was not worth the bones of a British grenadier. When Austria provoked a war with Piedmont, Derby condemned it publicly as ‘criminal’, and washed his hands of ‘Austria’s intolerable stupidity’.46 Thereafter, domestic and foreign considerations dictated that Britain must stay aloof, and it was Derby who instructed Disraeli very clearly to resist the Queen’s desire to rebuke France in her speech at the Opening of Parliament in 1859 – though the historiography would have us believe that it was Disraeli who directed matters.47 British diplomacy nevertheless had little to show for all its efforts in early 1859. Once war broke out, the risk was that matters would persist as they were left at the Peace of Villafranca in July 1859, with a weak and divided Italy, a strong France and a wounded Austria. But this was a situation no British government could do much to influence once its efforts had failed to prevent war. Derby knew this; it was why his government had worked so strenuously to avoid war in the first place. As the Liberals’ impotence amply demonstrated in the summer of 1859, there was nothing that Derby could have done about the peace had he still been in power. The Liberals might advocate freedom for Italy, but they had no more power over events than Derby had. He had recognised the danger of encouraging Italian nationalism; the Liberals were lucky that Garibaldi rescued the situation for them and scotched Napoleon’s hopes of a French client state. In the struggle for mastery in Germany that followed the diminution of Austrian power, it was again the stability of central Europe, not the safety of Austria, that was Derby’s concern. As he resumed the premiership in 1866, central European affairs were dominated by the Austro-Prussian war. In that conflict and its aftermath, the approach he and Stanley adopted was, as he put it, a ‘system of absolute neutrality’.48 That did not mean that Britain stayed entirely aloof 45   Unaddressed, unsigned notes in Derby’s handwriting, 19 March 1859, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/62‒3. 46   Derby’s Mansion House speech, 25 April 1859, The Times, 26 April 1859; Derby to Malmesbury, Malmesbury Mss, 26 April 1859, 9M73/20/51. 47   Derby to Disraeli, 2 June 1859, Hughenden Deposit, Bodleian Library, 57/2, fol. 11. 48   Derby to Stanley, 30 July 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/7.

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from the process of German unification, though a persistent historiographical myth suggests it did – curiously the opposite of the other persistent myth, that Conservative foreign policy was all but indistinguishable from Palmerston’s. Neither is accurate. Derby was innately suspicious of intervention that might have an unnecessary military consequence, or that was carried out for the purpose of assuaging domestic radicalism; but he was no isolationist. His logic, as ever, was to keep interference to the barest minimum, when British interests were materially affected. Three of the examples of his personal role in policy during his third premiership relate to British interests in the unification process. In July 1866 he pressed Stanley to intercede for a generous Prussian settlement with the ousted ruler of Hanover, the Queen’s cousin, George V.49 The matter was of no great geopolitical significance, but saving British (and royal) face was important, and the matter was satisfactorily settled. Later, in an intriguing comment in September 1866, Derby noted that he would ‘not be sorry’ if Britain had to ‘appear as the protector of Belgium’ if Prussia were to attack her, as was rumoured to be imminent, ‘especially if such a quarrel … should give [Prussia] a pretext for obtaining the Rhenish provinces’.50 If the balance of power in the region were to be tilted too far in Prussia’s interest, he clearly considered it a British interest to help tilt it back again. The fate of Austria was not significant; the fate of the balance of power was. Prussian aggrandisement was acceptable only all the time it was within reasonable bounds and in its own sphere of influence. In that light, it is no surprise that in May 1867 it was he who persuaded Stanley to agree to the collective guarantee of Luxembourg’s neutrality, in order to preserve peace and ensure the Great Powers kept out of the low countries, a key British interest. The public ambiguity of Derby’s support for that guarantee when he discussed it afterwards in Parliament served two purposes: it helped deflect concerns that Britain had over-committed itself and it demonstrated Derby’s determination to leave Britain’s hands untied in future. Despite the opprobrium heaped on it by historians such as Foot and Bourne, the Luxembourg guarantee was a very effective political act: it solved an immediate crisis and it preserved British freedom of action. And when war came in 1914, it was not the Derby-Stanley Luxembourg guarantee, with all its caveats, that provided Sir Edward Grey with his casus belli, but Palmerston’s Belgian one. In the east, Derby’s strategy was similar. He sought to keep matters quiet and avoid any re-opening of the eastern question. Throughout his limited dealings with the Ottoman Empire, it is clear that his sympathies, for broader geopolitical reasons, were with Turkey. Although he suggested to Lord Stratford, embarking on a special mission to Constantinople in 1858, that ‘it was desirable that he should take the opportunity of once more urging on the Sultan his old advice as to the policy towards his Christian subjects’, he demonstrated no particular wish to reform the Turks.51 Neither, despite his strong Christian faith, did he share the   Ibid.   Derby to Stanley, 23 September 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/21. 51   Derby to Malmesbury, 25 August 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/27. 49 50

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High Church concern for the Christians in the Ottoman Empire later exhibited by men such as Carnarvon and Salisbury. When the Cretan revolt broke out in 1866, he did not ‘attach much importance’ to the question, ‘nor’, he admitted, ‘have I much sympathy with these eastern Christians’.52 The logic applied to the Vienna settlement in the west was extended to the east. What Derby feared was that any weakening of the Ottoman Empire would be the catalyst for further change. If the Cretan rebels were successful, he reasoned, ‘their success would be the beginning of the end; for an immediate flame would be kindled throughout all the Greek population, and the “Eastern question” be precipitated, while no power is prepared with a solution of it’.53 He had no intention of preparing a solution to the eastern question himself, and his analysis of the situation was brutal. He hoped that ‘the insurrection will be promptly and effectually put down’.54 And it was essential to avoid giving any comfort to either the French or the Russians in their designs on Ottoman territory. The diplomatic morass of 1853‒54 had demonstrated the danger of not firmly discouraging the great powers in the east. The time for great powers to intervene in Crete was only after the Turks had dealt with the problem: When the insurrection shall have been put down, there is no reason why the three courts [France, Russia and Britain] should not interpose, even by a note identique in the cause of humanity, and especially if the Egyptian troops have been guilty of the barbarities which are hardly denied; but to concur with one of the great powers in attempting any ulterior object would be alike contrary to our duty and our interests.55

Time and again, Derby sought to neutralise the eastern question, in whatever form it arose. He had no more time for the Balkan nationalities struggling against Turkish rule than he did for nationalists in western Europe. During the Cretan rebellion he thought that Britain was ‘carrying to an extreme’ its forbearance, given the encouragement of the rebels by ‘that wretched little Kingdom of Greece, whose utter incapacity of government at home is only equalled by its capacity for mischief abroad’.56 He was sceptical that the condition of the Cretans ‘would be improved by being handed over, like the Ionian Islands, to the constitutional (?) monarchy of Greece’.57 He regarded the Montenegrin prince, Danilo, as a ‘demi-savage’.58 His efforts were focused on containing any instability in the region as quickly as possible. He was keen that the Turks should show forbearance, where necessary,     54   55   56   57   52

Derby to Stanley, 23 September 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/21. Ibid. Ibid. Derby to Stanley, 12 October 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/31. Derby to Stanley, 21 December 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/50. Derby to Stanley, 23 September 1866, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/3/7/21. The question mark is Derby’s. 58   Derby to Malmesbury, 2 September 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/30. 53

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in their own self-interest. When the Serbs wanted to replace Prince Alexander with Milosh Obrenovic, his hope was that the matter be expedited as smoothly as possible, and ‘if the Porte has the good sense to swallow the leek without making wry faces, all may go well’.59 In 1858, he was keen to dampen down matters when Jeddah was bombarded by the British ship Cyclops in retaliation for antiChristian riots, after a muddle over instructions which in fact ordered the captain to desist until the Turks had the situation under control. Derby’s concern was to avoid enraging the Turks or setting a precedent which the French could follow, ‘for … France would be only too apt to profit by the example’.60 His instructions to Malmesbury (though they had in fact already been ‘anticipated’ by the Foreign Secretary), were clear: ‘It would therefore I think be well, as the Turk has really behaved very well in the matter, that you should write something, not in the nature of an apology, but of regret.’61 As Dr Laurence Guymer has shown in his detailed research on Britain’s role in the east in this period, Derby’s governments kept firmly out of matters in the east wherever possible, and encouraged others to do the same.62 If there was no re-opening of the eastern question during 1852, 1858‒59 or 1866‒68, Derby and Malmesbury must take some small part of the credit; but they must also take their share of the blame for the fact that there was no long-term strategy for reform beyond the containment of immediate problems. From east to west, stability was the objective. There was no ‘leap in the dark’ in foreign policy. Derby did not preside over great developments in geopolitics: under him, there was no great European treaty, no congress of Berlin, no Munich agreement. He presided over no adventures: there was no Don Pacifico affair, no Suez, no Falklands. Neither was he tested in war. But there were international crises: over Belgium in 1852, Italy in 1859 and Luxembourg in 1867, and twice over France, in 1852 and 1858. In all of them, Derby played a key role in the British response, guiding and supporting his foreign secretaries; and in all but one case the crises were resolved peacefully. In Italy in 1859, no significant British loss was sustained, and it is difficult to see how any British government could have responded differently, short of threatening one or all of the belligerents with war or forming a continental league with the Prussians and Russians to preserve the peace. Neither option would have attracted public support, nor been practical or prudent. Derby’s role in diplomacy was neither showy nor dramatic; it is difficult to imagine him driving Russia to the point of war and then triumphantly negotiating with Bismarck to resolve the eastern question. But that was rather the point. British diplomacy could manage without such Disraelian theatre. Derby sought undramatic foreign policy. In his view, it was neither desirable for domestic   Derby to Malmesbury, 30 December 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/46.   Derby to Malmesbury, 19 August 1858, Malmesbury Mss, 9M73/20/23. 61   Ibid. 62   Laurence Guymer, ‘Curing the Sick Man: Sir Henry Bulwer and the Ottoman 59 60

Empire, 1858‒1865’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, 2009. At the time of going to press, Dr Guymer’s book of the same title is also in press.

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political reasons to create controversy – given that he presided over vulnerable minority governments – nor prudent to dabble with a European system which for the most part delivered peace and stability. Derby saw Britain’s role as Castlereagh had seen it: at the heart of European diplomacy, working actively with the other powers to preserve the status quo, but attempting to avoid intervention in their internal affairs. At the same time, like Chamberlain in the 1930s, he sought to provide an insurance policy by bolstering Britain’s defence. Like Castlereagh, he accepted Austria’s sphere of influence and central role in the European concert; like Aberdeen, he sought to conciliate the other great powers; like his son, he tried to avoid antagonising those powers where he could see no practical reason for doing so. Unlike the Liberals, he did not care about the governments with which he dealt. In diplomacy, his methods were not Palmerston’s or Disraeli’s; neither was his political technique. It is interesting to note that where Palmerston’s provocations led Russell to dismiss him and Disraeli drove the fifteenth Earl to resignation, Derby and his foreign secretaries worked together amiably and effectively. The brevity of his time in power means that no amount of revisionism can present Derby as a colossus in the history of British foreign policy, but it can deliver a balanced verdict. A government’s duties in foreign policy might be summarised in two objectives: to defend the realm (ideally without having to resort to war) and to hand on the country’s relations with other powers in at least as good, if not better, condition than it found them. One of Derby’s successors as Chancellor of Oxford University, Roy Jenkins, was fond of comparing prime ministers, and if one judges Derby against other premiers by those simple but essential measures then his stewardship of foreign affairs holds up well by comparison.

Chapter 5

‘Only wants quiet riding’?: Disraeli, the Fifteenth Earl of Derby and the ‘War-in-Sight’ Crisis1 T.G. Otte

In the history of Great Power relations in the long nineteenth century the year 1875 marks an important caesura. The spectre of conflict returned to the Western half of the European continent in the spring. In the summer, the first tremors of the Great Eastern Crisis alerted the chancelleries of Europe to the now accelerating decline of Ottoman power in the Balkans. Finally, in November 1875, Britain’s purchase of a large stake in the Suez Canal Company further transformed the strategic landscape in the Eastern Mediterranean. Combined, all three developments were to shape the constellation of the Great Powers for the next quarter of a century. The first of these, the so-called ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis in April‒May 1875, has attracted a considerable amount of interest. Especially in the heydays of Bismarckian studies its ground was ploughed over repeatedly and in great depth. By contrast, there are no corresponding studies of British foreign policy during the spring war scare. The few assessments that exist, usually consisting of no more than a few en passant remarks, moreover, tend to interpret the events as a reassertion of some form of continental commitment on the part of the British government.2 This is another instance of the ‘1914 teleology’ and its backwards projection of the political and scholarly concerns of the era of the two world wars onto the long nineteenth century.3 It is true, the events of the spring of 1875 were ‘very largely compounded of imponderabilia, of suspicions, guesses and surmises, which are capable of

1   This volume went to press before the author could consult the most recent study of Bismarckian policy during the ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis: J.Stone, The War Scare of 1875: Bismarck and Europe in the mid-1870s (Stuttgart, 2010). 2   See, for instance, R.W. Seton-Watson, Britain in Europe, 1789‒1914: A Survey of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 508‒10; K. Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England, 1830‒1902 (Oxford, 1970), p. 126. 3   For the problems of this teleology see my The China Question: Great Power Rivalry and British Isolation, 1894‒1905 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 5‒6.

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an infinite variety of interpretations’.4 Even so, the assumption of a continental commitment as the overriding concern of policy-makers is an oversimplification of an altogether more complex set of calculations that drove British foreign policy during the ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis. The war scare itself offers the perfect prism through which to study British diplomacy during a crucial phase in the transformation of the country’s external relations; the relationship between the Disraeli and Derby, which was so crucial to the inner workings of the 1874 Conservative government; Derby’s own attitude towards Europe; and, finally, Britain’s position among the Powers in the middle of the 1870s. The war scare was the first major foreign policy test for the Disraeli government. Its cursory treatment in the scholarly literature is, to no small degree, a reflection of the less than benign historiographical neglect of the person of Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the time, Edward Henry Stanley, fifteenth Earl of Derby. The causes of this neglect are manifold. The inaccessibility for a long time of his private papers, first jealously guarded by his executors and then ‘lost’ in the cellar vaults underneath Knowsley, was one factor.5 The transfer of Derby’s papers and the rediscovery and subsequent publication of his diaries helped gradually to redress this historiographical imbalance. The inaccessibility of Derby’s own records was compounded by the dominance of an historiographical orthodoxy, favourable to Disraeli and his assumed ‘imperial’ policy. It is scarcely surprising, then, that Derby remained hidden in the long and deep shadow cast by the towering figure of Benjamin Disraeli. No wonder also that those who held up the flickering candle of historical enquiry to this figure in the dark soon concluded that Derby’s passivity, his mistrust of foreign governments, and his pronounced isolationist sentiments made him an unsuitable choice for Foreign Secretary; that, in short, he was the proverbial ‘round peg in a square hole’ at the Foreign Office.6 Such judgements touch upon yet another facet of Derby’s neglect by historians, that of his bruised and ‘disjoined personality’.7 The Earl unquestionably struck his contemporaries as an odd and excessively reserved man. Disraeli, for one, adjured 4   R.W. Seton-Watson, Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question: A Study in Diplomacy and Party Politics (London, 1935), p. 15. 5   Apparently, Herbert Stirling Maxwell was invited to write an official biography, but was refused a free hand by Lady Derby, who ‘had very good reasons for not giving me a free run among the late Earl’s letters’, Sir H. Maxwell, Evening Memories (London, 1932), pp. 270‒71. For some insights into the loss and rediscovery of the diaries, see J.R. Vincent (ed.), The Later Derby Diaries: Home Rule, Liberal Unionism, and Aristocratic Life in Late Victorian England (Bristol, 1981), p. 3. 6   A. Cecil, British Foreign Secretaries, 1807‒1916: Studies in Personality and Policy (London, 1927), p. 288; also A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848‒1918 (Oxford, 1954), p. 233. More nuanced and favourable is P.J.V. Rolo, ‘Derby’, in K.M. Wilson (ed.), British Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Policy: From Crimean War to First World War (London, 1987), pp. 102‒18, though this is problematic on account of its limited source base. 7   R. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875‒1878 (Oxford, 1979), p. 5.

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his ‘Dearest of Coll[eague]s’ to ‘step out of his icy panoply’.8 R.B.D. (later Sir Robert) Morier, then minister at Lisbon, offered a scathing indictment of Derby as a man and a politician shortly before his final resignation from the Cabinet in early 1878: ‘Lord Derby is stupid and he is a coward.’ The Earl was ‘morally and intellectually incapable of shaping out an opinion of his own – and his mental attitude is a deprecatory one to the opinion of others’.9 Among foreign diplomats, Derby was thought to be a political light-weight, with no real aptitude for foreign affairs. Count Rudolf Apponyi, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, was searing in his assessment of Lord Stanley, as he then was: Lord Stanley hardly plays the role of an attentive observer, for foreign policy does not interest him and his sole aim is to take part as little as possible in foreign complications. His indifference has the consequence that he is informed badly and late, and unless one has to make a certain communication and address a question to him, a political conversation with him, an exchange of ideas, is nearly impossible. All my colleagues complain of this. Further, he occasionally makes statements in Parliament on matters that were not meant for [public] communication. […] Lord Stanley [is] not desirous of knowledge and never asks a question.10

True, Derby in the 1870s was not the same man as the more inexperienced Stanley in the 1866‒68 government. His stock among foreign diplomats in London, however, did not rise in the following decade. Count Georg zu Münster-Ledenburg, the anglophile German ambassador, later reflected that ‘it was often not easy to overcome the mistrust which is the dominant characteristic of Lord Derby’.11 Such statements by foreign diplomats ought certainly to be taken cum grano salis. No doubt, it served a tactical purpose to masquerade a general ‘wait-and8   Quotes from Disraeli to Derby (confidential), 26 April 1875, Derby Mss, Liverpool Record Office, 920 DER (15) 16/2/1; and to Queen Victoria, 21 March 1875, in W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (6 vols, London, 1910‒20), vol. 5, p. 418. 9   Morier to Jowett, 17 February and 1 March 1878, as quoted in A. Ramm, Sir Robert Morier: Envoy and Ambassador in the Age of Imperialism, 1876‒1893 (Oxford, 1973), p. 141; see also vice versa, 1 and 7 March 1878, in E. Abbott and L. Campbell (eds), Letters of Benjamin Jowett, MA, Master of Balliol College, Oxford (London, 1899), pp. 95‒7. Morier never forgave Derby for reneging on his apparent promise, in 1866, to make him Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, see K. Neilson and T.G. Otte, The Permanent UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs, 1854‒1946 (London and New York, 2009), p. 33. 10   Apponyi to Beust, 16 Apr. 1867, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna [hereafter HHStA], Politisches Archiv [hereafter PA] VIII/76, varia. 11   Münster to Bülow (no. 51), 29 March 1878, in J. Lepsius, A. Mendelssohn Bartholdy and F. Thimme (eds), Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, 1871‒1914: Sammlung der Diplomatischen Akten des Auswärtigen Amtes [hereafter GP] (40 vols, Berlin, 1924), vol. 2, no. 375.

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see’ attitude as ignorance of foreign affairs. Yet, British diplomats formed very similar views of Derby. Lord John Bloomfield, the mild-mannered ambassador at Vienna, commented on his accession to the Foreign Office in 1866 that ‘we shall have some queer work after a while, only I suppose his papa [the fourteenth Earl] … will guide him’.12 Edmund Hammond, a former Permanent Under-secretary at the Foreign Office, found him, ‘[not] a man of very decided opinions’.13 Derby’s extreme reserve, whether or not borne out of shyness, and his failure to display a sufficiently collegial spirit in his dealings with fellow Cabinet ministers did not help either. The Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Carnarvon, complained that ‘Derby does not answer when he disagrees with a letter’. His ‘intemperate conduct’ in Cabinet, and ‘even in the ordering of daily life’, caused Carnarvon some consternation.14 Even his wife, Mary, Countess of Derby, admitted that some of his conduct was a little out of the ordinary for a minister of the Crown: ‘even the prospect of good news does not make L[or]d D[erby] think 14 miles from London quite far enough to keep off F.O. visitors!!’15 Derby’s peculiar personality traits compounded his political problems towards the end of his foreign secretaryship. Its ignominious termination set the tone for his later treatment by his contemporaries and historians alike. The true nature of his illness in early 1878 will, perhaps, never be known. It may have been brought on by physical or psychological exhaustion. Indeed, even Mary Derby hinted that her husband was close to a nervous breakdown.16 It may have been, as his successor as Foreign Secretary surmised, the combination of ‘overwork, alcohol, and responsibility’ that left him ‘in a condition of utter moral prostration’.17 And there may have been an orchestrated campaign by Disraeli and his minions behind the ‘nasty, ugly stories about Derby, who is said to drink too much; about Lady Derby, who is said to be in Schouvaloff’s pocket’.18 Yet whatever the truth about the rumours that swirled around Clubland and West End drawing rooms in early 1878, they were sufficiently credible to dent Derby’s reputation permanently.

  Bloomfield to wife, 22 June 1866, in G. Baroness Bloomfield, Reminiscences of Court and Diplomatic Life (2 vols, London, 1883), vol. 2, p. 223. 13   Hammond to Layard (private), 16 January 1878, Layard Mss, British Library [hereafter BL], Add. Mss. 38956. 14   Quotes from Carnarvon to Northcote (private and confidential), 16 January 1877, and (personal and private), 30 April 1877, Iddesleigh Mss, BL, Add. Mss. 50022. 15   Mary Derby to Cross, 27 March [1877], Cross Mss, BL, Add. Mss. 51266. 16   Mary Derby to Lyons, 18 January 1878, Lyons Mss, West Sussex Record Office, Chichester, box 180. 17   Memorandum by Balfour [on conversation with Salisbury], 8 May 1880, Balfour Mss, BL, Add. Mss. 49688; a sanitised version appeared in B. Dugdale (ed.), Arthur James, First Earl of Balfour: Chapters of Autobiography (London, 1930), pp. 112‒16. 18   Hammond to Layard (private), 23 February 1878, Layard Mss, Add. Mss. 38956. It was not, of course, Shuvalov’s pocket with which Mary Derby was associated. 12

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By contrast, the recent, spirited attempt to salvage Derby’s posthumous reputation as a competent steward of Britain’s foreign relations, and, more especially, as an exponent of a distinct, pre-Disraelian Tory ‘country party’ tradition raises as many questions as it seeks to answer.19 For one thing, its demolition of the ‘black legend’ surrounding Derby’s incompetence and ‘moral prostration’ comes at the price of an exaggerated version of the myth of Disraeli’s neoPalmerstonian policy of prestige. For another, by locating Derby in a specifically Conservative foreign policy tradition, itself perhaps questionable, other, perhaps more significant, connections are missed. Any assessment of Disraeli and Derby, both individually and in their foreign policy relationship, needs to consider the mid-Victorian political background. There is a tendency in much of the scholarly literature to accept the myth, carefully cultivated by Disraeli himself, that ‘he [had] always regarded foreign policy as the most important and fascinating task of the statesman’.20 The events of the Great Eastern Crisis lent credence to this myth. They turned Disraeli into a figure even larger than he had previously portrayed himself to be, larger certainly than life. His acolytes perpetuated this myth, and so do now, albeit implicitly, his neo-Derbyite detractors. Both thus accord a prescriptive function to the notion of ‘Empire’, with all the dizzying prose and Crystal Palace glitter usually associated with it; and they project it backwards into the period before 1875 as a consistent policy guideline. This, in fact, is a problematic interpretation of both Disraeli and the political environment in which he operated. The political reality which Disraeli had to confront when forming his second administration in February 1874 was more complex. Though now invested with the Prime Minister’s power of patronage, and thus more secure in his position, his leadership in the Cabinet and of the Conservative party nevertheless remained inherently fragile. As a perceptive, albeit unfriendly, commentator noted in early 1875, the governing party consisted of three factions: the country party, the backwoodsmen unreconciled, and unreconcilable, to the 1867 franchise reform and regarding their own government as a shade too liberal; the ‘men of business’ in the Cabinet, pragmatists who might equally well have been sitting across the floor of the House of Commons; and, finally, the over-educated section of the Cabinet, headed by Disraeli himself, ‘the inventor of “Democratic Conservatism” … [who] will throw away the “dry bones” of parliamentary economy’.21

19   J. Charmley, Splendid Isolation?: Britain and the Balance of Power, 1874‒1914 (London, 1999), pp. 22‒4 and 398‒9 et passim. 20   R. Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966 (pb.)), 570; K.T. Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846‒1886 (Oxford, 1998 (pb)), pp. 620‒21; see also the pertinent comments by E. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli (London, 2000), pp. 161‒2. 21   ‘The State of Parties’, The Economist, 15 January 1875, p. 62; see also G. Hutton, ‘The Economist and Foreign Affairs’, in The Economist, 1843‒1943: A Centenary Volume (Oxford, repr. 1944), pp. 86‒8.

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Disraeli’s politics had always been an opportunistic amalgam of radical impulses and aristocratic leanings. Once in office, the latter came to prevail, and with them came caution, certainly at home, but also abroad.22 There were sound reasons for him to be cautious. The Manchester and Crystal Palaces speeches of April and June 1872 have frequently been treated in retrospect as quasi-programmatic guidelines for a ‘spirited’ foreign and imperial policy. They were, in fact, far less policy-specific than concerned with rhetoric and political imagery. And, of course, in this respect there was an almost post-modern quality to Disraeli as a politician in that he all too readily equated rhetorically-generated imagery with reality. Even so, the two speeches of 1872, purporting as they did to expound traditional Tory principles, were, in fact, clever pieces of political triangulation. At Manchester, Disraeli affirmed that foreign affairs mattered. Yet he also suggested that an overly active foreign policy might lead to ‘those immense armaments that are an incubus on national industry and the great obstacle to progressive civilisation’. British policy towards Europe was to be ‘a policy of reserve, but proud reserve’. In his Crystal Palace speech, he emphasised ‘the maintenance of the Empire’, not its expansion, as a principle of Tory policy.23 In the aftermath of Disraeli’s post-1878 Beaconsfieldian apotheosis, the two speeches seemed to acquire retrospectively a prophetic character.24 In the more mundane reality of opposition politics in the early 1870s, this was Disraeli speaking the language of the newly enfranchised, industrial middle classes. Nor did he much change his tune on assuming office in 1874. In his Guildhall address in November, though exulting in the recent annexation of the Fiji islands, he struck a more sombre tone in stressing his government’s resolve ‘to consolidate and confirm that Empire’.25 Indeed, Liberal-leaning journalists commented gleefully that the premier’s foreign policy was ‘everything but spirited’.26 Such criticism was Beaconsfieldism in reverse. The political reality at the time was more prosaic. A spirited foreign policy was not on the agenda. Following the 1867 franchise extension, such a policy was generally considered to be risky. In those halcyon days before focus groups and opinion polls, the political class assumed that the newly enfranchised middle classes, the villa voters in the growing Midlands towns and the northern industrial districts, were averse to an 22   E.J. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party: Conservative Leadership and Organization after the Second Reform Bill (Oxford, 1968), pp. 16‒27. 23   Manchester and Crystal Speeches, 3 April and 24 June 1872, in T.E. Kebbel (ed.), Selected Speeches of the late Right Honorable the Earl of Beaconsfield (2 vols, London, 1882), vol. 2, pp. 516‒17 and 531. 24   For some instructive comments on this see E. Wingfield-Stratford, The History of English Patriotism (2 vols, London, 1913), vol. 2, pp. 561‒5. 25   ‘Lord Mayor’s Day’, The Times, 10 November 1874. 26   P.W. Claydon, England under Lord Beaconsfield: The Political History of Six Years from the End of 1873 to the Beginnings of 1880 (London, 1880), 111. Claydon was on the staff of the fiercely Gladstonian Daily News since 1866.

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adventurous policy abroad, largely on account of its anticipated costs. Commercial prosperity and financial economy were the watchwords of the day.27 The financial constraints of mid-Victorian budgets, moreover, reinforced the trend towards a more restrained foreign policy. Contemporary fiscal orthodoxy and the presumed political preferences of the enlarged electorate did not lend themselves to a ‘spirited’ foreign policy. It would require the events surrounding the 1877‒78 watershed to shatter these assumptions. Derby and Disraeli fully recognised these political realities. The House of Commons showed little interest in foreign affairs in 1874‒75, ‘except to ask two or three questions, rather formal than seriously intended’. Both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary concurred that ‘[w]e can’t have too much foreign [policy]. Its [sic] the taste of the day’.28 As so often, Punch magazine reflected that taste. Under the caption ‘The International “Derby”’ its cartoonist depicted the Prime Minister in turf-accountant’s attire, explaining the virtues and weaknesses of the different Great Power steeds gearing up for the race. This was ‘Europe’s Great International Derby today/ On the broad “road to ruin” is run for a course/ ‘Tis the race of who the biggest of armies shall pay:/ And “deuce take the hindmost” its rule – men and horse’. Amongst the nervous competitors, burdened with armaments, Britain’s horse stood out: ‘Our’s about the best – steady and safe, and only wants quiet riding.’29 Derby fitted the requirements of the day. Disraeli’s half-hearted rival in earlier days, the two were now fused together in close alliance, until they drifted apart at the height of the Great Eastern Crisis. Derby, in fact, was a vital prop to Disraeli’s leadership. As the head of the House of Stanley, and as the son of the previous Conservative leader, the Earl occupied a prominent position in public and party alike. The Stanleys’ prominence in Lancashire, the crucial electoral battleground of the period, was one factor; another was Derby’s personal reputation for ‘highminded and disinterested moderation’.30 His territorial position, his progressive inclinations, and his relative detachment from most of the leading Tories also made him an electoral asset, popular with the middle classes. He was, in the facetious words of one contemporary commentator, ‘a phenomenon considerately framed by a merciful providence to meet the modern necessities of Conservatism, that he thinks with one party and acts with the other’.31 27   P.R. Ghosh, ‘Disraelian Conservatism: A Financial Approach’, English Historical Review, 99/2 (1984): pp. 268‒96. 28   Quotes from Derby to Lyons (private), 13 March 1875, Lyons Mss, box 180; note Disraeli to Derby, 25 January 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. 29   ‘The International “Derby”’, Punch, 6 June 1874, pp. 234 and 238‒9. 30   Feuchtwanger, Tory Party, pp. 9‒10 and 28‒9; for the Lancashire connection see also R.S. Churchill, Derby, ‘King of Lancashire’: The Official Life of Edward, Seventeenth Earl of Derby, 1865‒1948 (London, 1959), pp. 3‒12. 31   ‘Jehu Junior’ [the pseudonym of T.G. Bowles], ‘Statesmen No. 21: Lord Stanley’, Vanity Fair, 26 June 1869; see also L.E. Naylor, The Irrepressible Victorian: The Story of

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Indeed, Derby seemed uniquely placed to articulate the sense of middle-class apprehension when Gladstone’s first administration began to disintegrate from the spring of 1873 onwards. In a speech in October in Liverpool, that bastion of urban ‘Tory Democracy’, he addressed the two most prominent sources of middleclass discomfiture: a stagnant economy and costly military campaigns abroad. He empathised with the economic alarmists: ‘They are crying out before they are hurt, but after all that is the more sensible alternative.’ As for foreign complications, here the Ashanti war, he adopted a moderate position. Britain’s existing overseas territories had to be defended. But Derby warned against ‘visionary ideas of a vast Tropical Empire in Africa’.32 The speech, like all of Derby’s speeches, lacked Disraeli’s oratorical flair and rhetorical display. But in substance there was no difference between him and his leader. This was a more homely version of Disraeli’s Crystal Palace peroration. In his public utterances Derby deployed the clanging cadences of Manchester businessmen, not the dulcet tones of the Tory ‘country party’.33 He not only articulated the apprehensions and ambitions of this now electorally important section of society, his personal habits, too, were, in many respects, profoundly middle-class. In his ‘nine-to-five’ office habits, his preference for a suburban villa rather than Knowsley or his town house in St James’s Square – he was perhaps the first commuter politician – and his shunning of large social gatherings, otherwise de rigueur in London Society, he stood out among members of his own class. These were not merely questions of personal taste or electoral calculations, but also of practical politics. At one level, as Apponyi’s successor noted, Derby’s policy reflected ‘la même confiance dans la superiorité de la position de l’Angleterre’ in international politics.34 In general, as Derby’s former private secretary, Sir Thomas Sanderson, later reflected, he argued from ‘a national and administrative rather than from a party point of view’. In terms of foreign policy, ‘while recognising the need of military preparedness, [Derby] was not afraid to remind his countrymen … that the first of British interests was peace, and that an unnecessary war is a crime’.35 Certainly, in framing his policies Derby sought to reflect the ‘feeling in this country’, and that feeling seemed to favour abstention from an active foreign policy and a degree of retrenchment.36 As he reminded the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Northcote:

Thomas Gibson Bowles (London, 1965), pp. 19‒23. 32   ‘Speech at Dinner of the Mayor of Liverpool’, 16 October 1873, in T.H. Sanderson (ed.), Speeches and Addresses on Political and Social Questions by Edward Henry, Earl of Derby, KG (London, 1893), pp. 116 and 118. For Derby’s middle-class empathy see also The Spectator, 22 March 1875, p. 365. 33   See Charmley, Splendid Isolation?, pp. 2‒3 and 398‒9. 34   Beust to Andrássy (no. 98B), 20 November 1874, HHStA, PA VIII/83. 35   Sanderson (ed.), Speeches and Addresses, p. iv. 36   Derby to Lyons (private), 29 July 1874, Lyons Mss, box 180.

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In the actual state of trade, your estimate should be cautious rather than sanguine. Nobody will find fault with you for overprudence … On the other hand, if you keep a very large margin, the military and naval departments, which have destroyed every Conservative budget in my recollection, will begin the old game of extravagance again.37

For Britain, the 1875 war scare was a challenge to the internal, post-1867 foreign policy consensus. In international terms, and contrary to traditional historical accounts, the crisis was not caused by an attempt by the German chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, to test the reaction of the Great Powers to the prospect of renewed conflict between the two belligerents of 1870. It was caused when a carefully calibrated strategy, consisting of a series of connected diplomatic moves, disintegrated. Historians have for long argued that the 1875 war scare marked the beginning of the Bismarckian web of alliances. The check administered by the joint Anglo-Russian intervention, so the argument runs, forced the German chancellor to abandon his attempts to replicate the diplomatic strategy he had pursued with such startling success prior to 1870. Now, he was forced to operate on the basis of the post-1870 status quo, using entangling alliances to enforce the isolation of France, and so secure Germany’s position in the centre of Europe.38 A closer examination of the extant evidence, however, suggests that in its inception this strategy preceded the war scare; that the latter, in fact, was the inadvertent outcome of this new strategy.39 Central to Bismarck’s calculations was the need to keep France in a weakened position. The speed with which the Paris government repaid the war indemnity imposed upon it in 1871, thus necessitating the withdrawal of German occupation forces from northern France in 1873, had already upset part of this calculation. Although inclined to dismiss the notion of an imminent war of revenge, circumstantial evidence in early 1875 heightened Bismarck’s concerns that the French government was taking financial and military measures to prepare for a renewed contest with Germany. It was in this context that news, in mid-February, of the French importation of some 10,000 cavalry horses   Derby to Northcote (private), 5 April 1874, Iddesleigh Mss, BL, Add. Mss, 50022.   See, for instance, J.V. Fuller, ‘The War Scare of 1875’, American Historical Review,

37 38

24/2 (1919): pp. 196‒226; H. Herzfeld, Die deutsch-französische Kriegsgefahr von 1875 (Berlin, 1922), pp. 13‒18; W.J. Jouwersma, De Duitsch-Fransche Oorlogscrisis van 1875 en haar Voorgeschiedenis: De Verhouding tusschen Frankrijk en Duitsland van 1871‒1875 (Leiden, 1928), pp. 58‒65; T.T. Höjer, Bismarck, Decazes och den Europeiske Krisen 1875 (Uppsala, 1940), pp. 51‒7; W. Langer, European Alliances and Alignments, 1871‒1890 (New York, 2nd ed. 1956), pp. 44‒6; A. Hillgruber, Bismarcks Aussenpolitik (Freiburg, 2nd ed. 1981), pp. 139‒46; implicitly also A. Manfred, ‘Iz prehistorii franko-russkogo soiuza’, Voprosy Istorii, 1 (1947): pp. 33‒6. 39   Here, as in so much else, the editors of the Grosse Politik bear responsibility for skewing the subsequent scholarly debate by limiting the range of published documents to the period after late February, GP 1, ch. 7.

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from central and eastern Europe assumed greater significance. At the end of the month, Bismarck decided to impose a ban on the export of horses from Germany. This was a carefully calculated and precisely limited, politico-military measure. The German chancellor appreciated well enough that France was unprepared for a military campaign at the moment, and indeed was unlikely to be ready for another three years. The embargo was primarily intended to retard France’s military recovery and reorganisation, ‘which bears the character of an armament for war, an armament notoriously directed against us’.40 The immediate military object aside, the embargo was also intended as a deliberate and subtle political signal to the Quai d’Orsay, indicating Germany’s displeasure at the speedy French recovery, and her determination to maintain her current superiority over the recently vanquished neighbour. And it was clearly understood as such by the French foreign minister, Louis Charles Élie Amanieu, duc de Decazes. He ‘treat[ed] the relations of Germany to France with a certain anxiety’, and made the necessary reassuring noises, much to Bismarck’s relief, for the preservation of the present regime in France was very much to Germany’s advantage.41 The embargo on the export of horses was a diplomatic signal of Bismarck’s intention to maintain the status quo, not to upset it. At the same time, the German chancellor directed his attention to St Petersburg and to London. In this he was driven by the growing realisation that the 1873 Dreikaiserbund combination with Russia and Austria-Hungary was no longer a sufficient tool for the protection of German interests. The conservative ideological glue had long lost its adhesive qualities and become brittle; the apparent rapprochement between St Petersburg and Vienna had diminished their relative dependence upon German mediation; and especially in the ‘Eastern Question’ there were signs of closer collaboration between Russian and French diplomats at Constantinople and Cairo.42 In the first instance it was necessary to loosen the ties between Vienna and St Petersburg in order to re-establish a greater degree of German influence over both of   Bismarck to Hohenlohe, 26 February 1875, GP 1, no. 155; F. Curtius (ed.), Denkwürdigkeiten des Fürsten Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (2 vols, Stuttgart, 1907), vol. 2, pp. 151‒2. For further discussions of the evidence see A. Mitchell, The German Influence in France after 1870: The Formation of the French Republic (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979), pp. 124‒5; M. Schmid, Der ‘Eiserne Kanzler’ und die Generäle: Deutsche Rüstungspolitik in der Ära Bismarck (Paderborn, 2003), pp. 68‒9. 41   Hohenlohe to Bülow, 14 March 1875, as quoted in Mitchell, German Influence, p. 126. For Bismarck’s desire to preserve the conservative republic under MacMahon, see Bismarck to Reuss (no. 96), 28 February 1874, in K. Canis et al. (eds), Otto von Bismarck: Gesammelte Werke. Neue Friedrichsruher Ausgabe [hereafter NFA], 3rd ser. (Paderborn, 2005), vol. 2, no. 77. 42   Károlyi to Andrássy (no. 23A-B), 4 April 1874, HHStA, PA III/107; Beust to Andrássy (no. 47C), 22 May 1874, PA VIII/86; Bismarck to Schweinitz (vertraulich), 14 October 1874, NFA (3) 2, no. 145. 40

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them. This consideration led to Bismarck’s decision to despatch Joseph Maria von Radowitz, then German minister at Athens, on a special mission to St Petersburg in February‒March 1875. Few diplomatic incidents have been invested with such notoriety as the Radowitz mission. Yet, contrary to traditional interpretations, the purpose of the mission was not so much to offer Russia a ‘blank cheque’ in the East in return for Russian support of German policy in the West, though this was part of Bismarck’s aims.43 A re-affirmation of the principle of reciprocity in RussoGerman relations, seemingly neglected in recent months, was no doubt important. But it was even more important to Bismarck to encourage a more forward Russian policy in the East as this was likely to entangle St Petersburg with Vienna and London. In turn, it would increase Russia’s dependence on Germany, and it might strengthen the pro-German party at the St Petersburg court.44 Whilst Radowitz’s suggestions to Russian officials remained tentative and suggestive, Bismarck’s simultaneous overtures to Britain were more specific. Already in January 1875, Münster, well-connected in British political circles, had reported on the growing pessimism in London about Turkey’s future. He suggested that some politicians there were prepared to acquiesce in Russian territorial gains in the Balkans in return for a guarantee of British control over Crete and Egypt. Even so, Münster urged caution: ‘Whether any English statesman, and more especially the current government, would have sufficient energy to execute such a policy is doubtful to my mind.’45 Bismarck nevertheless touched upon the issue in conversation with the British ambassador at Berlin, Lord Odo Russell, in early March 1875. Securing peace in Europe, he explained, was the principal objective of German policy. He wished for Britain and Russia to be at peace in the East, and hinted that, through German mediation, an Anglo-Russian modus vivendi in the Eastern Mediterranean could be reached, which would safeguard Britain’s Egyptian interests.46 Indeed, it seems that it was part of Radowitz’s mission to remove Russian opposition to British control over the Suez Canal so as to pave the way for such an arrangement.47 43   Bismarck to Radowitz (no. 153), 27 February 1875, in H. Holborn, Bismarcks Europäische Politik zu Beginn der Siebziger Jahre und die Mission Radowitz (Berlin, 1925), app. doc. no. 19. See also U. Lappenküper, Die Mission Radowitz: Untersuchungen zur Russlandpolitik Otto von Bismarcks (Göttingen, 1990), pp. 301‒27; and, for a useful corrective of the latter, J. Stone, ‘The Radowitz Mission: A Study in Bismarckian Foreign Policy’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 51/1 (1992): pp. 47‒71. 44   Bismarck to Radowitz, 16 February 1875, NFA (3) ii, no. 200; H. Holborn (ed.), Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Botschafters Joseph Maria von Radowitz (2 vols, Stuttgart, 1925), vol. 1, pp. 301‒2. 45   Münster to Bismarck (no. 15, vertraulichst), 24 January 1875, in H. Holborn, Bismarcks europäische Politik zu Beginn der siebziger Jahre und die Mission Radowitz (Berlin, 1925), appendix doc. no. 2. 46   Russell to Derby (private), 9 March 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/15. 47   Russell to Derby (private), 22 April 1875, ibid.

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The scheme outlined by Bismarck stood firmly in the tradition of compensation arrangements, the great lubricants of nineteenth-century Great Power politics. In the event of its successful conclusion, the advantages for Germany would have been substantial. In the first place, the growth of Russian influence in the Balkans would make both St Petersburg and Vienna more dependent on Berlin, thus prolonging the life expectancy of the Dreikaiserbund under de facto German leadership. Russia’s acquiescence in British control over Egypt, meanwhile, would help to terminate the Russo-French rapprochement in the East before it could harden into a more durable combination with a reach possibly beyond the region. Furthermore, it would produce divisions between London and Paris, so deepening France’s international isolation. In essence, the embargo against France and the overtures to St Petersburg and London contained the nucleus of Bismarck’s later diplomatic strategy. Its inception thus preceded the ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis; it was not the result of the war scare. Its implementation failed, however, as the chancellor’s initiatives soon unravelled. Derby remained unresponsive; Radowitz’s mission ran into the quicksands of factionalism at St Petersburg; and further French military preparations and an attempted diplomatic counter-offensive by Decazes rekindled Franco-German tensions. The whole situation was compounded by a diplomatic spat between Berlin and Brussels, which threatened to create a double crisis in the West. All three of Bismarck’s initiatives in early 1875 affected British interests, though the precise connection between them was not necessarily appreciated in London. As the crisis in the West gathered pace, Derby’s decision-making was guided by separate considerations concerning relations with France, colonial affairs, and the role of Bismarck in European affairs. Derby’s attitude towards France was one of general wariness, tempered by calculations of British interests. Given the still confused state of France’s internal affairs, with its shifting combinations and fast changing political fortunes, caution was Derby’s watchword. The duc de Broglie’s ‘restauration manquée’ had produced a monarchist majority in the French National Assembly, but one that was productive of nothing but further chaos since the monarchists were irreconcilably divided between the partisans of three dynastic claimants. The success of the French President, the Marshal Maurice de MacMahon, duc de Magenta, in pushing through the septennat promised a greater degree of stability under the auspices of a conservative republic. Even so, French politics remained highly volatile. As France lurched from one ministerial or parliamentary crisis to the next, Derby confessed to ‘have long given up even the attempt to guess how it will all end. The apparently professed indifference of the French people is not the least singular part of the business’.48

48   Derby to Lyons (private), 29 July 1874, Lyons Mss, box 180. For the background see D. Halévy, La fin des notables ii, La république des ducs (Paris, 1972 (pb)), pp. 35‒87; J.-M. Mayeur, La vie politique sous la Troisième République, 1870‒1940 (Paris, 1984), pp. 47‒58.

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Senior British diplomats warned that further turmoil lay ahead. The Assembly members, commented Francis Ottiwell Adams, the chargé d’affaires at Paris, did ‘nothing but squabble with one another, [and] everything has become a personal question between them, & so it will continue as long as the Assembly continues to exist’.49 His successor, Robert Bulwer- (later Earl) Lytton, argued that the restoration of a constitutional monarchy in France was practically impossible while the republic had not yet taken root. If a republic were established, ‘it w[oul] d soon go to pieces in the Red Sea’. To his mind, ‘Bonapartist Imperialism & Red Republicanism’ were each ‘political accidents, stopgaps, makeshifts’ that could not last long.50 The long-serving ambassador at Paris, Lord (later Earl) ‘The Fetish’ Lyons, pointed to the deep divisions within the chamber, and argued that ‘[t]o govern on the Parliamentary theory with such an Assembly is plainly impossible’.51 For his part, Derby was adamant that ‘we have nothing to do with the internal affairs of France and any, even the slightest appearance of [,] intermeddling in them would be a blunder’. Privately, he thought that the republic ought to be maintained if possible, and kept out of the hands of the Reds in order that it may be maintained. I have much faith in the durability of old monarchies – especially when, as is our case, the monarchs take but little personal part in affairs – but I have no faith at all in the setting up of a new dynasty, or restoring an old one, in a country whose traditions have been violently broken through, as in France.52

The present conservative republic was ‘for France the best possible alternative, and the restored empire probably the worst.’53 Indeed, according to the AustroHungarian ambassador, Count Friedrich Ferdinand Beust, Derby showed ‘une sympathie marquée’ for the conservative republic.54 This preference was not a question of abstract constitutional principles or an early version of a ‘red scare’. It reflected a British desire to see the present rulers of France remain in office for practical reasons. As long as Decazes remained   Adams to Russell (private), 12 January 1874, Ampthill Mss, The National Archive (Public Records Office), Kew [hereafter TNA (PRO)], FO 918/13. 50   Lytton to Forster, 27 November 1874, Lytton Mss, Hertfordshire Record Office, Hertford, D/Ek.C40/49. 51   Lyons to Derby (private), 8 January 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/12; for the ‘Fetish’ nickname see Currie to O’Conor, 22 September [1885], O’Conor Mss, Churchill College Archive Centre, Cambridge, OCON 5/2/3. 52   Derby to Lytton (private), 15 October 1874, Lytton Mss, D/Ek.O30/16. 53   Derby diary, 6 February 1875, J.R. Vincent (ed.), A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826‒93), 1869‒1878 (London, 1994), p. 194 [hereafter DD]; also Lyons to Lytton (private and confidential), 9 October 1874 (reporting a conversation with Derby), Lytton Mss, D/Ek.O30/33/2. 54   Beust to Andrássy (no. 23D), 23 March 1875, HHStA, PA VIII/83. 49

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foreign minister, Lyons opined, ‘France will be prudent in her Foreign Relations’. MacMahon, ‘honest and a brave soldier’ though he was, was also something of ‘a nullité’, but as such was not likely to commit imprudences.55 Derby regarded Decazes as a steadying influence in French politics, and found him ‘a man whose views are so prudent and sensible’.56 Indeed, Lyons and Lytton did their ‘utmost [at Paris] to confirm his position by praising him to the opposition Deputies’.57 Decazes was a man with whom Derby thought he could do business in the colonial sphere as well; and this was a further consideration that influenced British diplomacy during the 1875 war scare. Since the war with the Ashanti kingdom in 1873, the Colonial Office had begun to take a greater interest in West Africa. In April 1874, the French proposed a territorial exchange of the Gambia for the Ivory Coast and the Mellacourie. Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, was a strong supporter of the scheme, which he regarded as a useful measure to consolidate Britain’s imperial possessions in the region. This was also Derby’s view. He saw ‘no harm in [the scheme]; and after [the annexations of] Fiji and the Gold Coast we are not likely to be reproached with a policy of colonial surrender’.58 The matter progressed slowly. Indeed, ultimately, it came to nothing. This, however, lay in the future. In mid-March 1875, the Cabinet discussed the scheme, and agreed to formal negotiations a month later.59 In Decazes the British thought they had just the man to affect the territorial exchange: ‘The important matter for us is that Decazes shall stay where he is. We cannot do better, and may very likely do worse.’60 These considerations throw into sharper relief Derby’s reaction to the second phase of the crisis in Western Europe. The confluence of two developments brought about an escalation of the situation. On 13 March, the French National Assembly enacted the third and final military reform law. At the same time, the simmering row between Berlin and Brussels over the alleged support by senior clergy in

  Lyons to Derby (private), 24 February 1874, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/11.   Derby to Lytton (private), 18 November 1874, Lytton Mss, D/Ek.O30/16; see also

55 56

to Disraeli, 21 March [1874], Hughenden Mss, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Dep. Hughenden 112/2. 57   Lytton to Derby (private), 24 November 1874, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/11. 58   Carnarvon to Derby (private), 12 December, and reply (private), 16 December 1874, Carnarvon Mss, TNA (PRO), PRO 30/6/8 (quote from latter); also A.H. Hardinge, The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1831‒1890 (3 vols, London, 1925), vol. 2, pp. 141‒5. 59   Derby diary, 13 March and 17 April 1875, DD, pp. 199 and 208. For the background see J.D. Hargreaves, Prelude to the Partition of West Africa (London, 1966), pp. 174‒9. The negotiations can be followed in Correspondence respecting the Affairs of the Gambia and the Proposed Exchange with France of Possessions on the West Coast of Africa (1876) (C. 1409). This was rushed out in February 1876 to prove the case for an exchange. 60   Derby to Lyons (private), 13 March 1875, Lyons Mss, box 180. A new government had been formed under Louis Buffet in February, see Halévy, République des ducs, pp. 163‒4.

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Belgium for Roman Catholic opposition to Bismarck threatened to escalate into a double crisis in the West. The passing of the so-called loi des cadres was significant on a number of counts. The two previous pieces of military reform legislation, in 1872 and 1873, had set out the broad principles of army reorganisation; the law on the permanent cadres filled in the details. What made this law so explosive was the prescribed overhaul of the regimental structure of the French infantry by adding a fourth battalion to its peacetime complement. This augmentation of the regiments of the line alarmed the military authorities at Berlin. At one stroke, France had created an additional 144 infantry battalions, and might even have a small numerical superiority during the early stages of mobilisation.61 On the eve of the final passage of the law through the National Assembly, Decazes prepared the ground for the likely diplomatic fall-out. The earlier German ban on the export of horses left him under no illusion that Bismarck would react to the completion of French military reorganisation. The duke, the son of one of Louis XVIII’s court favourites, was a survivor of many previous regimes. A moderate monarchist, he sought to redress the imbalance in the relations with the powerful neighbour across the Rhine, not least also to bolster the current conservative regime in France. This could only be achieved through diplomatic combinations, and these had to include Britain. In 1874, Decazes had welcomed the advent of the Tory government, ‘not that we believe much in the enterprise and initiative of Lord Derby’.62 Now, as the military reforms neared completion, he alerted Lyons to the breakers ahead. Pointing to the embargo and the Belgio-German difficulties, he argued that the German chancellor was ‘threatening the tranquility of Europe’ and that ‘very unpleasant consequences’ might ensue.63 This was not the first such warning uttered by the Duke. In the autumn of 1874, he had variously suggested that Bismarck would exploit Spain’s continued domestic problems to wrest the Philippines from her or that he had designs on Denmark.64 These rather far-fetched notions dulled the impact of Decazes’ renewed warnings of Bismarckian intrigues in mid-March 1875. It was palpably in the French interest to entangle the other Powers with Germany so as to relieve   Krause [section head, General Staff] to Moltke, 18 March 1875, and Bülow [military attaché, Paris] to Hohenlohe (no. 84), 11 April 1875, GP 1, nos. 157 and 159. The law also provided for the increase in size of the other branches of the army, see P.-M. de La Gorce, La République et son armée (Paris, 1963), pp. 17‒18; D.B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic: The Place of the Military in the Political Evolution of France, 1870‒1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp. 57‒62. 62   Decazes, undated, noted [February 1874?], in G. Hanotaux, Contemporary France (3 vols, London, 1905), vol. 2, p. 443; for Decazes’ dealings with Germany see also Mitchell, German Influence, pp. 100‒110. 63   Lyons to Derby (no. 226, confidential), 12 March 1875, FO 27/2106. 64   Lyons to Derby (private), 15 September, and Lytton to Derby, 29 September 1874, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/11. 61

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the pressure on France. But they also touched upon the very axioms of Britain’s abstentionist foreign policy consensus. Active involvement in continental affairs, as entailed in Decazes’ proposal of an international guarantee of Danish neutrality, for instance, was dismissed by Derby: ‘Nothing is so unpopular in England: and reasonably so.’ Such a guarantee would either be ineffectual, and thus ‘little better than a delusion’, or it would embroil Britain in a war, ‘which may not in the slightest degree concern our interests’.65 Lyons supported Derby’s refusal, but added a significant additional consideration. Under present circumstances, Britain had ‘neither the means nor (I grieve to say) the spirit to enforce [engagements] when the casus foederis arises’.66 The Belgian crisis presented an additional complication. Whereas Decazes’ abortive Danish scheme envisaged an additional engagement, the current stand-off between Berlin and Brussels had the potential of triggering an already existing one. The tensions between the two governments had been simmering since the previous February, when a Belgian subject, a coppersmith called Alexandre Duchesne, had offered the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to assassinate Bismarck for the less than princely sum of FF 60,000. Whether or not the would-be assassin had been incited by anti-Bismarckian clerics, the incident offered the German chancellor an additional tool for his Kulturkampf campaign against the ‘ultramontane’ opposition in Germany. The alleged support that it received from senior Belgian clergy, moreover, provided a useful pretext to pressurise the existing conservativeclerical government under Jules Malou in the hope of seeing it replaced with a friendlier, liberal cabinet.67 In the middle of March 1875, Bismarck decided to increase pressure on Brussels by reiterating his demand for a reform of the Belgian penal code with a view to criminalising the incitement of violence in foreign countries. The German note to that effect, moreover, was also communicated to the other Powers. It was, surmised Britain’s minister at Brussels, John Savile- (later Lord) Lumley, an attempt to internationalise the conflict and to involve Belgium in Bismarck’s ongoing Kulturkampf. Hitherto, Derby had treated the matter ‘as lightly as I could, not wishing to increase the disturbance’. Now more was needed. Likely parliamentary questions aside, the Foreign Secretary hoped to pour oil on the churning waters by some public statement ‘of our conviction that Belgian independence is not

65   Derby to Lytton (private), 1 October 1874, Lytton Mss, D/Ek.C36/74/6; Höjer, Europeiske Krisen, pp. 20‒23. 66   Lyons to Lytton (private), 1 October 1874, Lytton Mss, D/Ek.O30/33/2. 67   Bismarck to Leonhardt [Prussian minister of justice], 27 February 1874, and to Reuss [ambassador St. Petersburg], 27 February 1874, NFA (3) 2, nos. 70 and 74. For some of the background see also E. Witte and J. Craeybeckx, La Belgique politique de 1830 à nos jours: Les tensions d’une déocratie bourgeoise (Antwerp, 1985), pp. 80-87; G.-H. Dumont, Léopold II (Paris, 1990), pp. 142‒6; G. Franz, Kulturkampf: Staat und Katholische Kirche in Mitteleuropa (Munich, 1954), pp. 223‒39.

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intended to be threatened’.68 Indeed, a year earlier, when Münster had first explained German irritation over the Duchesne affair, muttering dark warnings of an ‘ultramontane intrigue to bring about the annexation of Belgium to France’, Derby underlined Britain’s commitment to Belgian neutrality: ‘the maintenance of the territorial integrity and independence of Belgium was a principle to which successive Administrations in this Country had again and again pledged themselves, and … national honour was so bound up with the observance of these promises’.69 Derby’s firm statement – surprising perhaps in light of his initially hesitant response to the Luxemburg crisis in 1867 – underlined the constraints of office. Party-specific traditions did not enter into this. In essence, he followed the policy guidelines laid down by Granville in the summer of 1870.70 Bismarck’s raising of the temperature in his dispute with the Belgian government, combined with Decazes’ mounting anxiety, rekindled an ongoing debate about the aims of Bismarck’s policy among senior British diplomats. Lyons and Russell represented the two rival centres of British diplomacy in Europe, and their policy advice was often at variance. Yet, they had for long been in agreement that ‘the one object of Diplomacy should be to reestablish the balance of power in Europe on a peace footing’.71 This, however, could only be done by facilitating France’s recovery and by encouraging her to avoid antagonising Germany. For the moment, ‘Bismarck is now Master of the situation at home and abroad’. Indeed, Lyons’s advice to fellow diplomats was ‘still to keep a sharp look out about Bismarck’.72 Adams shared the ‘Fetish’s’ apprehensions. Bismarck, he warned, ‘may go to Varzin [his Pomeranian estate] with his dog, & yet surprise Europe by some sudden action’.73 For his part, Derby confessed to ‘understand[ing] less than ever the Bismarckian game.’ Germany, he argued, ‘having got all she wants – very monarchical and rather aristocratic – … at the head of Europe in point of military power and political influence – can have no interest …, except that of keeping things quiet’.74 Odo   Undated minute by Derby on Savile-Lumley to Derby (no. 31, confidential), 14 March 1875, FO 10/357; also Buchanan to Derby (no. 79, confidential), 11 March 1875, FO 7/849; Jouwersma, Oorlogscrisis, pp. 68‒9. 69   Derby to Russell (no. 93, confidential), 27 February 1874, FO 244/276; F.A. Arlinghaus, ‘The Kulturkampf and International Diplomacy, 1871‒1875’, Catholic Historical Review, 28/3 (1942): pp. 365‒6. 70   See also the statements in Parliament by Disraeli and Derby on 19 April 1875, Hansard Society (ed.), Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., vol. 213, cols. 1199‒202 and 1212‒14. In 1867, Stanley followed very closely the advice given by the Permanent Under-secretary, Edmund Hammond, see minute by Hammond, 21 April 1867, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 12/1/14. 71   Lyons to Russell (private), 8 April 1873, Ampthill Mss, FO 918/52. 72   Quotes from Russell to Lyons (private), 20 February 1874, Lyons Mss, box 197; and Lyons to Lytton (private), 18 September 1874, Lytton Mss, D/Ek.O30/33/2. 73   Adams to Russell (private), 15 March 1875, Ampthill Mss, FO 918/13. 74   Derby to Lytton (private), 24 September 1874, Lytton Mss, D/Ek.C36/74/4. 68

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Russell provided an answer. The ambassador acknowledged that the prohibition to export horses and Bismarck’s bullying of Belgium would cause alarm at Paris, but saw ‘no reason for us to share it’. There would be no war in 1875, he predicted, ‘only a violent quarrel with the Church to pave the way to future hostilities with Roman Catholic neighbours, if wanted for national purposes’.75 Bismarck’s principal political objective, Russell averred, was the completion of Germany’s domestic unification, the aim also of his anti-clerical legislation. A ‘fourth war’ was not required. France was safe from attack, as long as she remained ‘passive, neutral, and without allies as at present’. A far greater concern for Bismarck was Austria-Hungary’s position. In the event of a renewed war with France, Germany might find Austria and Russia ranged against her: ‘if she attacks Austria she can neutralize that Power … by dividing the spoils with Russia to whom she will offer better terms than France can’. At the root of Bismarck’s Austrian problem lay the Habsburg monarchy’s international position. Having ceased to be a German Power in 1866, it was now free to ‘contract anti-German Alliances with other States, which might under Clerical and Foreign influences become dangerous to German unity’. Bismarck had ‘to neutralize Austria’.76 This had been the leitmotif of Russell’s despatches for some time. To some extent, this may have reflected his close contacts within the dominant National Liberal circles in Berlin.77 Even so, his evaluation of Germany’s position was based on a sophisticated strategic analysis. Indeed, his despatch caused something of a stir in the diplomatic service. Lyons was sceptical. He though it ‘prudent, politically or strategically, [for Bismarck] to finish off France before attacking Austria’. As for France, it seemed impossible for her to appease Bismarck for long, ‘for, as (speaking vaguely) all the women and half the men in France are Roman Catholics, how can any French Government take a strong anti-Roman Catholic line!’78 Lyons may have been too impressed by what he termed ‘the great Chancellor’s anti-ultramontane mania’.79 At any rate, in his comments he exaggerated the main 75   Russell to Derby (private), 6 March 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/15. Much of the diplomatic reporting at the time focused on Bismarck’s efforts to complete the internal unification, see e.g. Morier to Derby (private), 21 March 1874, ibid., 16/1/17. 76   Russell to Derby (no. 130, confidential), 18 March 1875, FO 64/826. For the continued strength of anti-German sentiments in the Habsburg military establishment see the important study by M. Stickler, Erzherzog Albrecht von Österreich: Selbstverständnis und Politik eines konservativen Habsburgers im Zeitalter Kaiser Franz Josephs (Husum, 1997), pp. 392‒438. 77   Russell to Lyons (private), 14 March 1873 and 20 February 1874, Lyons Mss, box 197. For his political contacts at Berlin, see K. Urbach, Bismarck’s Favourite Englishman: Lord Odo Russell’s Mission to Berlin (London, 1999), pp. 84‒90. 78   Lyons to Derby (private), 30 March 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/12. 79   Lyons to Lytton (private and confidential), 9 October 1874, Lytton Mss, D/ Ek.O30/33/2. It is difficult to establish to what extent his own private religious views affected his analysis. His sister had married the Duke of Norfolk, the leading Catholic peer in England,

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line of Russell’s argument, for his colleague at Berlin had never spoken of an actual Austro-German war, merely of the need to neutralise the Dual Monarchy. And this, of course, could be achieved by means of a Russo-German combination or through an Austro-German alliance as much as renewed military conflict. Derby was deaf to such nuances. All was quiet in Europe, he decided, and there was no likelihood of serious complications. The German embargo was a precautionary measure. It and the recent spat with Brussels ‘were too much in accordance with Bismarck’s habitual manner of action to give … grounds for exceptional anxiety’.80 Bismarck’s earlier hints at Russian opposition to Britain in Egypt confirmed him in this assessment. He decided to wait: ‘[Bismarck] may be only trying to stir up jealousy: a game which he often plays.’81 The object of this game was ‘to promote disunion among the European states. The German empire is stronger than any one of them singly, on land, and fears nothing except a combination’. The German chancellor himself was ‘always impulsive & violent’, and had developed quasiNapoleonic delusions, ‘which is the disease of despotism. […] Nothing must be done in Europe in which he does not at least seem to take the lead’. Derby ‘note[d] these things for future use’.82 In the end, he noted but did not act. The ambassador at St Petersburg, the mediocre Lord Augustus ‘Pomposo Magnifico’ Loftus, reinforced Derby’s passive stance. Bismarck, he opined, was ‘unfortunately harried by two Phantoms which [are] continually working on his nervous system and derange his brain. He sees a Jesuit and an Ultramontane at every … corner, and he is constantly under the impression of a conspiracy against his life’.83 And that diplomatic Pollyanna, Russell, reiterated his belief that renewed conflict between France and Germany was unlikely. The ban on the export of horses was a defensive measure intended to retard France’s military recovery. Bismarck’s bullying of Belgium, he conceded, might be designed to bring down the clerical government in Brussels, but ‘I cannot conceive an armed invasion of Belgium’.84 There was, in fact, a strong sense of resignation among senior diplomats. Adams observed ‘that if B[ismarck] was bent upon war, he would [not] stop out of consideration for England. She has not battalions enough to work upon and he himself eventually converted to the Roman church, see J.M. Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk (Chichester, 1995), pp. 204‒5; Lord Newton, Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy (2 vols, London, 1913), vol. 2, p. 427. 80   Derby to Buchanan (private), 17 March 1875, Buchanan Mss, Nottingham University Library, Bu 29/2. 81   Derby to Lyons (private), 16 March 1875, Lyons Mss, box 180; cf. to Queen Victoria, 17 March 1875, in G.E. Buckle (ed.), The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2nd ser., 1862‒1878 (3 vols, London, 1926), vol. 2 [hereafter LQV (2) 2], p. 383. 82   Derby diary, 17 March and 5 April 1875, DD, pp. 200 and 205. 83   Loftus to Derby (private), 17 March 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/22; for his nickname see Holborn (ed.), Radowitz, vol. 1, p. 304; and Sir F. Howard, Reminiscences, 1848‒1890 (London, 1924), pp. 1‒2. 84   Russell to Derby (no. 151, confidential), 28 March 1875, FO 64/826.

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him’.85 For the moment, as Russell impressed upon the Foreign Secretary, there was ‘nothing further to be done, but to wait quietly until Bismarck makes his next move in the matter’.86 The second phase of the crisis opened in early April. By now, Decazes displayed ‘considerable anxiety’ on account of Bismarck’s assumed hostile designs. The German chancellor, in fact, had given the Duke no specific grounds for his apprehensions. It was rather the absence of any move on Bismarck’s part that so alarmed the French foreign minister: ‘This might however be the sort of treatment applied by Churchmen to sinners who were supposed to be sure to die in final impenitence. To make efforts to … reform men in such a case was obviously useless; they might be left quiet until the inevitable day of reckoning.’ The notion of Bismarck employing such Jesuitical tactics made little impression on Lyons, who instead hinted at ‘the danger of overnervousness [sic]’.87 Three days later the bomb shell burst, and the hitherto meandering pace of diplomatic exchanges accelerated. After an alarmist leading article in the Kölner Zeitung on 5 April had warned of the formation of a ‘Catholic League against Prussia-Germany’, the Berlin Post conjured up the spectre of a war in Western Europe on 8 April under the now infamous headline ‘Is War in Sight?’. A conflict, brought on by France, had indeed hove into view, the article argued, and Germany had to act accordingly.88 Whether the two articles were written at the direction of Bismarck himself remains unclear, but they were clearly inspired by the press office of the Auswärtiges Amt.89 Indeed, the chancellor himself was satisfied with the Post article, more especially as this organ had a reputation for being ‘an independent – not official – paper, and that I shall not be called to answer for it’.90 To Paris he wired that the two articles had come as a surprise, but added ‘character of French armaments however disturbing’.91

  Adams to Russell (private), 15 March 1875, Ampthill Mss, FO 918/13.   Russell to Derby (private), 3 April 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/15. 87   Lyons to Derby (no. 291, confidential), 5 April 1875, FO 27/2107; F. Büchler, Das 85 86

Verhältnis Frankreichs zu Russland, 1871‒1878 (Aarau, CH, 1943), pp. 37‒9. For the German press campaign see M. Winckler, ‘Der Ausbruch der “Krieg-in-Sicht”-Krise vom Frühjahr 1875’, Zeitschrift für Ostforschung, 14/4 (1961): pp. 671‒713. 88   ‘Ist der Krieg in Sicht’, reprinted in L. von Ballhausen, Bismarck-Erinnerungen (Stuttgart, 1920), pp. 531‒4; for a summary of the article in the Kölner Zeitung see GP 1, no. 160, note ** [sic]; Herzfeld, Kriegsgefahr, p. 31. 89   Károlyi [Austro-Hungarian ambassador, Berlin] to Andrássy (no. 22B), 17 April 1875, HHStA, PA III/108; K. Klingenfuss, ‘Beust und Andrássy und die Kriegsgefahr von 1875’, Archiv für Politik und Geschichte, 7/2 (1926): pp. 619‒20. 90   Ballhausen, Bismarck-Erinnerungen, p. 72; N. Japikse, Europa und Bismarcks Friedenspolitik: Die internationalen Beziehungen von 1871 bis 1890 (Berlin, 1927), pp. 40‒42. 91   Tel. Bismarck to Hohenlohe (no. 30), 10 April 1875, GP 1, 161.

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The Post bombshell caused much fluttering in the diplomatic dovecots of Europe. Lumley at Brussels reported on rumours of German troop movements in the Rhineland, and mounting Belgian fears that, in the event of another FrancoGerman war, Germany might occupy all or part of Belgium ‘for the protection of this country and in her own defence’.92 From Berlin Russell reported on an orchestrated campaign in the semi-official press against French armaments and ultramontane intrigues. He emphasised the domestic motivations behind the campaign. The ‘existence and safety of the New Empire’, Russell argued, was ‘still precarious’, and a foreign enemy was useful in forging the new Reich, ‘one and indivisible’. Indeed, privately he reiterated the notion that Austria-Hungary was ‘all the time the intended victim’ of Bismarck’s manoeuvres.93 More disturbing news arrived from Dresden. George Strachey, the minister-resident there, reported on the widespread alarm across Germany at the advanced state of French military preparations. A preventive war seemed on the cards. Indeed, a senior Saxon minister drew a parallel with the third Punic war, a rather ominous parallel given the difficult beginning of the war for Rome: ‘Sedan & Metz, and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, [had] created a state of things through which Germany can only open her way with the sword.’94 Meanwhile, on 9 April, Münster returned to the Foreign Office to impress upon Derby the danger posed by the French armaments, which ‘were far in excess of those maintained during the Empire, and utterly disproportionate both to the wants and to the means of the Country’. Since the armaments programme could not be sustained over a prolonged period, the ambassador suggested that an attack on Germany was planned in the near future. Derby admitted the continued strength of revanchist sentiments in France, but dismissed the idea of a war to recover AlsaceLorraine. He also admitted ‘that the French armaments were much greater than those of ten years ago’. This, however, was a reflection of a wider trend in Great Power relations: ‘all over Europe a similar increase in armaments was taking place’. Furthermore, after the humiliation of 1870‒71, the French government merely sought ‘to reassert its position in Europe by a display of material force sufficient to command respect’. Indeed, according to Münster’s report, Derby suggested that the new French army existed only on paper; and that the French ‘would have to be more than foolish to expose their country to the dangers of a new war’. Even so, the Foreign Secretary was not at all optimistic that his soothing utterances would have ‘much effect in dispelling the uneasiness, whether real or 92   Lumley to Derby (private), 5 April 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/7; see also (no. 60, very confidential), 16 April 1875, FO 10/358; E. von Wertheimer, Graf Julius Andrássy: Sein leben und seine Zeit (3 vols, Stuttgart, 1913), vol. 2, pp. 228‒9. 93   Quotes from Russell to Derby (no. 163, most confidential), 10 April 1875, FO 64/826; and (private), 17 April 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/15. 94   Strachey to Derby (no. 12, confidential), 15 April 1875 (copy), FO 146/1793. Sir Andrew Buchanan, the ambassador at Vienna, similarly reported rumours of German military preparations, Buchanan to Derby (no. 126, confidential), 20 April 1875, FO 7/849.

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simulated’.95 Bismarck, he recorded in his diary, seemed ‘disposed to resent as a menace any attempt on the part of the French gov[ernmen]t to re-assert their claim to a place among the Powers – which is not satisfactory in the interests of peace’.96 During the two weeks following the Post’s warnings the tensions between Berlin and Paris remained just below boiling point. Both sides issued reassurances of their pacific intentions.97 Yet neither Bismarck nor Decazes was willing to let matters cool down too much, not while there was some diplomatic advantage to be extracted from the stand-off. While the war alarums seemingly subsided, Derby, laid low with influenza for a week, was increasingly concerned about reports of mounting German pressure on Belgium: ‘I do not like their tone.’98 Recent despatches also alerted Disraeli to the danger of international complications: ‘This is disagreeable, but my judgement is that nothing will happen this year & perhaps not next, but what seems sure is that we shall have no more quiet times in diplomacy, but shall be kept in a state of unrest for a long time: probably till the beginning of the next 30 years[’] war.’99 In the current business of the government, he observed, ‘[a]ll is flourishing felicity except the Bismarck disorder’.100 In the last week of April, the crisis entered its final phase. On 21 April, a post-prandial indiscretion, committed at the British embassy by Radowitz, now a counsellor at the Auswärtiges Amt, rekindled the war scare. In conversation with Russell and the French ambassador, Elie vicomte de Gontaut-Biron, Radowitz indulged in politico-philosophical speculations on the subject of war. If ‘la revanche est la pensée intime de la France’, why should Germany wait until France had augmented her armed forces or concluded alliances? His government, Radowitz opined, was obliged ‘politiquement, philosophiquement, chrétiennement même’ to take preventive measures.101 Bismarck himself argued in a similar vein   Quotes from Derby to Russell (no. 118, most confidential), 12 April 1875, FO 244/287; and Münster to Bismarck (no. 50, vertraulich), 13 April 1875, GP 1, no. 165. 96   Derby diary, 9 April 1875, DD, p. 207. 97   Tel. Gontaut-Biron to Decazes (no. 3), 15 April 1875, in Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (ed.), Documents Diplomatiques Français, 1st ser., 1871‒1900 (14 vols., Paris, 1929‒59), vol. 1, no. 389 [hereafter DDF (1) 1]; Hohenlohe to Bismarck, 21 April 1875, in H. Rogge, Holstein und Hohenlohe (Stuttgart, 1957), pp. 68‒9; Höjer, Europeiske Krisen, pp. 68‒72. 98   Derby to Disraeli (private), 18 April 1875, Hughenden Mss, Dep. Hughenden 112/2; for Derby’s letter of 19 April, ibid. For the subsiding alarm see, for instance, Russell to Derby (no. 175, confidential), 19 April 1875, FO 64/826; Oubril to Gorchakov, 8/20 April 1875, in A. Yerusalemskii, ‘Franko-Germanskii Krizis 1875 g.’, Krasnyi Arkhiv 91 (1938), p. 123. 99   Disraeli to Derby (private), 18 April 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/1; Arlinghaus, ‘Kulturkampf’, pp. 373‒4. 100   Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield, 19 April 1875, in Marquess of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield (2 vols, London, 1929), vol. 1, p. 235. 101   Gontaut-Biron to Decazes (no. 28, confidentielle), 21 April 1875, DDF (1) 1, no. 395. At Bismarck’s direction Radowitz recorded his own, far less dramatic, version of the discussion, see memo. Radowitz, 12 May 1875, GP 1, no. 177; and Radowitz, Aufzeichnungen 95

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in conversation with the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, Count Aloys Károlyi von Nagy-Károlyi. The scale of French armaments allowed for no doubt that they were preparatory to an attack against Germany. It was, therefore, ‘manifestly the duty of the German Government to take the initiative so as to put a stop to war by energetic measures’.102 Decazes made the most of Radowitz’s apparent indiscretion. It provided the perfect opening for a diplomatic counter-offensive. In a circular the Duke instructed senior French diplomats abroad to inform foreign governments of Radowitz’s speculations and ‘[c]ette doctrine étrange’ he had annunciated. The representatives were also instructed to hint that Berlin would in future seek to meddle in the affairs of the smaller nations of Europe, here especially Belgium and the Netherlands, and might make demands of neighbouring Great Powers. In short, Bismarckian Germany, unless now restrained, posed a serious threat to European security.103 Decazes himself had already made use of Gontaut-Biron’s despatch in conversation with Adams on 26 April. He laid particular emphasis on Radowitz’s alleged justification of a preventive war ‘from a Christian point of view’. Decazes showed himself to be profoundly alarmed: ‘He sees in it a determination on the part of Prince Bismarck to attack France, not perhaps tomorrow, but at some, probably not distant moment, which is as yet undefined and to crush her forever.’104 Decazes’ alarm did not fail to make an impression on the chargé d’affaires, who also picked up rumours about an incipient panic at the Paris bourse. The French foreign minister, Adams reflected, ‘was, of course, quite aware of our policy of isolation, but he considered that Europe was on the eve of great events’. He was under no illusion that Decazes ‘would fain involve us in the matter. […] He wanted to get us out of our isolation’.105 Decazes’ diplomats worked with despatch. The French ambassador at St Petersburg, General Adolphe Charles Emmanuel Le Flô, impressed upon Loftus that France was utterly unprepared for war, and that ‘no greater calamity could happen … than to be forced into it’. In such eventuality, the French army would retreat to a line behind the Marne and Seine, and then fight a defensive war. Le Flô painted the grim scenario of a war of attrition without decisive battles: ‘It would not be a war of six weeks or six months[’] duration; but

und Erinnerugen, vol. 1, pp. 318‒20. Curiously, Russell did not record the conversation, Russell to Derby (private), 22 April 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/15. 102   Russell to Derby (no. 183), 27 April 1875, FO 64/826; also W. Taffs, Ambassador to Bismarck: Lord Odo Russell, First Baron Ampthill (London, 1938), pp. 86‒7; K.-E. Jeismann, Das Problem des Präventivkrieges im europäischen Staatensystem mit besonderem Blick auf die Bismarckzeit (Munich, 1957), pp. 91‒6. 103   Decazes circular (no. 46, confidentielle), 29 April 1875, DDF (1) 1, no. 399; Höjer, Europeiske Krisen, pp. 92‒5; Jouwersma, Oorlogscrisis, pp. 88‒93. 104   Adams to Derby (no. 339, most confidential), 26 April 1875, FO 27/2107. 105   Quotes from Adams to Russell (private), 27 April 1875, Ampthill Mss, FO 918/13; and to Lyons (private), 28 April 1875, Lyons Mss, box 173.

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one of ten years.’ Significantly, he argued that such a war ‘could not be tolerated by the other Powers’.106 By now, Derby had descended into a state of complete disorientation. There were different opinions as to the real target of Bismarck’s manoeuvrings, he informed Buchanan, but he himself had none to offer. Under the circumstances, he decided, ‘[w]e can only watch, and do what is possible to prevent pretexts for a general quarrel from being easily found’.107 Derby could not see his way through the current crisis. Inevitably, British diplomacy was forced to be reactive. Of Decazes’, admittedly somewhat transparent, demand for Britain and the other Powers to intervene he complained that it was ‘easier said than done’.108 With Derby remaining immobile, Decazes increased the pressure. This, of course, he could only do by emphasising France’s utter helplessness. He ‘would not give Germany the shadow of a pretext’, he assured Adams. If Germany nevertheless invaded, he would advise MacMahon to retire to the Loire ‘without firing a shot and there [to] remain till the justice of Europe should speak out in favour of France’. At the moment, France appeared to be in the position of ‘a man condemned to death’.109 Charles Gavard, the French chargé d’affaires at London, emphasised the German threat to the peace of all of Europe. Even so, he preferred a more circumspect approach. If he judged Derby’s character right, he wrote to Decazes, it would be useless to pressurise Derby; better to ‘present the facts to him openly and let him work out the consequences by himself’.110 Therein, of course, lay the problem, for Derby could not work out a solution: ‘The situation is perplexing and dangerous.’111 In his perplexity, he decided to do nothing. This was an abdication of policy. That the situation was, indeed, dangerous was not in question. On 1 May, Bismarck warned the Belgian minister at Berlin, Baron Jean-Baptiste de Nothomb, to prepare for a French incursion of Belgian territory in the event of a Franco-German war, and that none of the guaranteeing Powers, especially not Britain, would defend Belgium. Indeed, Nothomb speculated that Bismarck himself contemplated the occupation of Belgium, just ‘as Frederick the Great occupied Saxony [in 1756] when he suspected the Empress Maria Theresa of wanting to take her revenge for the loss of Silesia’.112 On the following day, no doubt despatched by Bismarck, the chief of the general staff, Field Marshal Count     108   109   106

Loftus to Derby (no. 139, most confidential), 28 April 1875, FO 65/908. Derby to Buchanan (private), 28 April 1875, Buchanan Mss, Bu 29/3. Derby diary, 28 April 1875, DD, pp. 211‒12. Quotes from Adam to Derby (nos. 354, confidential, and 360, most confidential), 30 April and 3 May 1875, FO 27/2107 and 2108; see also Adams to Lyons (private), 4 May 1875, Lyons Mss, box 173. 110   Gavard to Decazes (no. 51), 2 May 1875, DDF (1) 1, no. 400. 111   Derby diary, 3 May 1875, DD, p. 214. 112   Russell to Derby (no. 191, most confidential), 1 May 1875, FO 64/827; for the reference to Britain see tel. Lumley to Derby, 3 May 1875, and (despatch no. 106, confidential), 8 May 1875, FO 10/359. 107

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Helmuth von Moltke, appeared at the British embassy. France, he warned, ‘would force it [a war] on by her armaments’. As for Germany, given her geographical position, she ‘must ever be ready to anticipate hostile intentions, and alliances on the part of her neighbours’ – a clear hint at the possibility of a pre-emptive strike. To preserve peace, Moltke concluded, the Powers had to combine against France so as to force her ‘to desist from her intended vengeance’. Britain and Germany, more especially, had it in their power jointly to guarantee the stability of Europe. If the Powers failed to restrain France, ‘Europe would be plunged into another thirty years war’.113 It was an obvious attempt on Bismarck’s part to drive a wedge between Britain and France. But it was also meant to force the Belgian government to yield to German demands in the Duchesne affair, if not to topple the Malou administration altogether. In this respect, Bismarck’s tactics were at least partially successful. Although the existing clerical government at Brussels remained in office, and would last for another three years, it was now most anxious to accommodate the German government.114 Against Decazes, however, Bismarck could acquire no leverage. True, outward appearances seemed to suggest that Bismarck had ‘succeeded in his evident policy to keep France in a perpetual fright’.115 Yet, German hints at a preventive war failed to dissuade the French from persisting with their military reform programme. Decazes even confided to Adams that the government had set aside FF 600 million as a reserve, ready for use in wartime.116 At the same time, Bismarck’s bullying tactics allowed the Duke to portray his antagonist as a menace to European tranquility. And here, too, Decazes proved adept at diplomatic intrigue. To amplify his warning against the Bismarckian threat, he leaked Gontaut-Biron’s report on Radowitz’s philosophical musings to The Times correspondent in Paris, Henri de Blowitz, with the result that, on 6 May, the paper ran an article on the crisis in which it argued strongly against the notion of a preventive war. It was a belated echo of the article in the Post a month earlier, for The Times leader was republished in the leading European papers.117   Russell to Derby (no. 192, most confidential), 2 May 1875, FO 64/827; E. Kessel, Moltke (Stuttgart, 1957), pp. 641‒2. 114   Lumley to Derby (no. 116, confidential), 13 May 1875, FO 10/359. Both Adams and Russell thought that Bismarck sought to engineer the fall of the Malou cabinet, see Adams to Derby (no. 371, most confidential), 5 May 1875, FO 27/2108; and Russell to Derby (private), 8 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/15. 115   Adams to Russell (private), 4 May 1875, Ampthill Mss, FO 918/13. 116   Adams to Derby (nos. 372 and 373, confidential), 6 May 1875, FO 27/2108. 117   ‘A French Scare’, The Times, 6 May 1875; see also ‘The Warlike Rumours at Berlin’, Pall Mall Gazette, 10 May 1875, and Neue Freie Press [Vienna], 11 May 1875. For the background see H.S. de Blowitz, My Memoirs (London, 1903), pp. 106‒14; F. Giles, A Prince of Journalists: The Life and Times of Henri Stefan Oppers de Blowitz (London, 1962), pp. 78‒88. 113

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In terms of British policy, it was Morier who provided the perplexed Foreign Secretary with a possible solution. Bismarck, he observed, was continually preoccupied with all manner of political combinations: ‘That we, with our distaste for new combinations and our tenacity for old traditions, should think an AngloRussian alliance an improbable combination is quite natural, but I do not think it would appear in this light to Bismarck.’118 The precise influence of Morier’s suggestion it is impossible to gauge. Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that his somewhat vague use of the word ‘alliance’ meant anything more than diplomatic cooperation with St Petersburg. Nor did Derby interpret it differently. But crucially, it was only now that Derby began to focus on Russia’s role in the crisis: ‘something may be hoped from Russian intervention, for it is not [in] the interest of Russia to allow Germany to domineer over the whole Continent’. Tsar Alexander II was due to pay an official visit to his imperial uncle at Berlin on 10 May, and Derby pinned his hopes on the ‘bonne influence’, which he believed the Tsar could exercise on that occasion.119 Derby now came under pressure to act from a different quarter, the Queen and the Prime Minister. In a survey of the international situation for the monarch’s benefit, Derby argued that the war alarm at Berlin was ‘simulated and not real’. Bismarck had been caught by surprise by France’s rapid recovery from the defeat of 1870‒71, and the preventive war ideas attributed to him constituted a certain danger to European stability. Yet Derby preferred to rely on ‘moral force’, which he argued would be sufficient to deter acts of aggression.120 Disraeli, although otherwise preoccupied with the budget and Irish matters, had arrived at a different conclusion. Bismarck, he concluded, was ‘playing the game of old Bonaparte’ and ‘must be bridled’. In this the premier and his ‘Faery Queen’ agreed.121 The Secretary of State for War, Gathorne Hardy, was similarly concerned about the ‘heavy clouds in the air’.122 Using the monarch’s clearly stated desire for action and concealing his own role, Disraeli now pressed for cooperation with Russia: ‘we sh[ould] construct some concerted movement to preserve the peace of Europe, like Pam [i.e. Palmerston] did when he baffled France & expelled the Egyptians from Syria [in 1840] ’. At the core of this movement ‘might be an

  Morier to Derby (private), 25 April 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/17.   Quotes from Derby diary, 3 May 1875, DD, 214; and tel. Gavard to Decazes, 6 May

118 119

1875, DDF (1) 1, no. 403. 120   Derby to Queen Victoria, 5 May 1875, LQV (2) 2, pp. 389‒91. 121   Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield, 5 and 7 May 1875, in Zetland (ed.), Letters of Disraeli, vol. 1, pp. 237‒8; and Queen Victoria’s journal, 6 May 1875, LQV (2) 2, p. 391 (quotes from former). Disraeli may well have been nettled by having been forced to apologise for an unfavourable reference to the Arnim trial in the Guildhall speech, see The Times, 16 and 18 November 1874); G.O. Kent, Arnim and Bismarck (Oxford, 1968), pp. 158‒63. 122   Hardy diary, 8 May 1875, in A.E. Gathorne-Hardy, Gathorne Hardy, First Earl of Cranbrook: A Memoir (2 vols., London, 1910), vol. 1, p. 348.

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alliance between Russia & ourself [sic] for this special purpose’, but other Powers, such Austria-Hungary and Italy, might be invited to join.123 The pace of international developments now quickened. Disraeli’s highfalutin’ rhetoric aside, Anglo-Russian cooperation now appeared a not unrealistic proposition. On 6 May, the Russian ambassador at London, Count Pyotr Andre’evich Shuvalov, returning to his post, stopped off in Berlin. Here he informed Bismarck and the Kaiser that the Tsar would use his forthcoming visit to express Russia’s disapproval of the recent bellicose statements emanating from Berlin and would insist on peace. The Russian ambassador did not omit to inform Russell and, on his arrival in London on 9 May, the Foreign Secretary himself. The Tsar’s intervention would be a ‘blow’ to the chancellor, Russell observed.124 Derby, meanwhile, was more impressed by Shuvalov’s account of the German chancellor’s ‘morbid state of mind’ and ‘over-excitement caused by labour, excitement, and imprudent habits of life’.125 Between them Disraeli and the Queen developed a scheme for a two-pronged approach, consisting of an official communication through Odo Russell and a private letter from the Queen to the Tsar.126 A hastily convened Cabinet on Saturday, 8 May, approved the instructions for Russell, which Derby and Disraeli had settled beforehand.127 Accordingly, the ambassador made representations at the Auswärtiges Amt the following day to express his government’s ‘regret [at] the general apprehension which prevails of a disturbance of European peace’, and to offer Britain’s help in removing the present Franco-German misunderstanding.128 As for the Queen’s letter to her ‘très cher frère’, the Tsar, Derby harboured doubts about its utility. He certainly delayed its despatch, quite possibly he sought to abort the project. In the end, the letter, in which she expressed her hope that, through his timely intervention, he would be able to avert ‘une si terrible calamité’, had to be rushed to Berlin by special messenger.129 It was a gesture of support, but arrived too late to have any real impact. What mattered was Russell’s official communication.   Disraeli to Derby (confidential), 6 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/1; Derby diary, 7 May 1875, DD, p. 215. 124   Russell to Derby (private), 6 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/1/15. He also warned against placing too much trust in Shuvalov, same to same (private), 8 May 1875, ibid. 125   Quotes from Derby to Ponsonby (private), 10 May 1875, LQV (2) 2, p. 395; and Derby diary, 9 May 1875, DD, p. 216. 126   Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 7 May 1875, LQV (2) 2, p. 392. 127   Disraeli to Derby, 8 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/1; Derby diary, 8 May 1875, DD, p. 216. 128   Derby to Russell (no. 159), 8 May 1875, FO 244/287; vice versa (no. 201), 9 May 1875, FO 64/827; Oubril to Gorchakov, 27 April/9 May 1875, in Yerusalemskii, ‘FrankoGermanskii Krizis’, pp. 133‒4. 129   Queen Victoria to Tsar, 10 May 1875, LQV (2) 2, p. 396; for the delays see the undated minute by Derby on Corry to Derby, undated [9 May 1875], and Derby to Disraeli (private), 10 May 1875, Hughenden Mss, Dep. Hughenden 112/2. Carnarvon shared some of 123

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Faced with the joint intervention of Britain and Russia, Bismarck had little choice but to beat a quick retreat.130 No doubt the experience of being lectured by the Tsar and his old bête noire, the Russian chancellor, Prince Aleksandr Mikhailovich Gorchakov, was galling; especially so since Gorchakov lost no time to present himself as the peace-maker of Europe.131 Yet, if this was a personal humiliation for Bismarck, the outcome of the war scare left both him and Germany more secure. The Anglo-Russian intervention had reaffirmed his own creation, the status quo of 1871. True, London and St Petersburg would not tolerate a further weakening of French power, but neither could France expect to find allies there for a revanchist war on the Rhine. Indeed, both Lyons and Derby impressed upon Decazes ‘that the French must understand that we will oppose attempts to disturb European peace coming from them as strenuously as we have done when they were the party attacked’.132 At the same time, relations with Berlin were remarkably unaffected by the ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis.133 Britain’s intervention in the double crisis in the West was hesitant and somewhat belated. Indeed, it was more apparent than real. To a large extent, Disraeli and Derby were riding on the Tsar’s enormous coat-tails. Given Russia’s importance to Germany this was a relatively risk-free enterprise. The intervention did not affirm a British commitment to an abstract notion of a continental balance of power. Rather it reflected Britain’s strong preference for the 1871 status quo. Significantly, as Derby’s utterances on the issue underlined, this also included an explicit commitment to the preservation of Belgium’s neutrality, recently reaffirmed by Granville. The war scare in the West was the first foreign policy test for the 1874 Conservative government. For the first time Disraeli asserted his influence over foreign affairs. He had sensed that the post-1867 abstentionist verities no longer held true: ‘We must not be afraid to say “Boo to a goose”’, he observed to Derby after the crisis had abated.134 Yet this did not mark the beginning of a ‘spirited’ foreign policy. On the contrary, for Disraeli, the intervention was a diplomatic

Derby’s misgivings, see Carnarvon to Disraeli, 9 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER 16/2/1; also Hardinge, Carnarvon, vol. 2, pp. 83‒4; and Derby diary, 10 May 1875, DD, p. 217. 130   Tel. Russell to Derby (unnumbered), 10 May 1875, FO 64/827. 131   Tel. Gontaut-Biron to Decazes, 12 May 1875, DDF (1) 1, no. 419; Loftus to Derby (no. 175, most confidential), 26 May 1875, FO 65/909. Bismarck, indeed, later blamed the entire crisis on Gontaut-Biron’s despatch and Gorchakov’s vanity, see Gedanken und Erinnerungen (2 vols, Stuttgart, repr. 1909), vol. 2, pp. 199‒202; E. Eyck, Bismarck (3 vols, Zürich, 1948), vol. 3, pp. 172‒3. 132   Derby to Lyons (private), 20 May 1875, Lyons Mss, box 180; vice versa (no. 411), 18 May 1875, FO 27/2109. 133   Russell to Derby (no. 204), 10 May 1875, FO 64/827. 134   Disraeli to Derby, 18 May 1875, Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli, vol. 5, p. 423.

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intermezzo. Strict aloofness was no longer practicable; constant meddling, however, was not desirable either. Derby, by contrast, acted as a drag-weight on British diplomacy. He stuck, limpet-like, to the rock of reassuring notions of British supremacy, even as the rising tide of international politics washed over him. Preserving the more congenial ‘republic of the dukes’ in France necessitated unmistakable diplomatic support for Paris during the war-scare. Russia’s evident desire for a Central Asian arrangement with Britain made it advisable to demonstrate London’s ability to assert British influence abroad. Yet Derby did not see; nor did he understand. Plagued by the perplexities of power politics, he could rarely see the way ahead. He found consolation in identifying problems, without being able to solve them. For that he had neither the necessary strategic intelligence nor sufficient confidence. Underneath his calm and business-like exterior, Derby was a troubled and insecure politician, whose high office by far exceeded his capabilities. His social standing and paternal political heritage had elevated him to a position of great eminence in the government for which neither his intellect nor his temperament had equipped him. For Derby the question was never whether to say ‘Boo to a goose’; for him the question was whether he dared to acknowledge that there were geese at all.

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Chapter 6

Britain’s ‘most isolationist Foreign Secretary’: The Fifteenth Earl and the Eastern Crisis 1876‒1878 Bendor Grosvenor

History has not been kind to Edward Stanley, fifteenth Earl of Derby. He was Foreign Secretary twice, but his foreign policy is regularly misunderstood. He was very nearly Prime Minister, but is cast as a lightweight who somehow rose above his talent. His reputation mainly derives from his involvement in the Eastern Crisis of 1876‒78. Of the many books on Britain and the Eastern Crisis, nearly all contain the phrase: ‘Derby … was now drinking heavily’, or something like it.1 Other accounts centre mainly on Derby’s personality, which, it is claimed, explains his unusual foreign policy and the fact that he was politically inconsequential.2 But if Derby was not a drunk, which he was not, and if his foreign policy was not odd, but merely a reflection of long-standing Conservative ideology, then his historical reputation is unjustified. If he was so ineffectual, his unique record of being the only man to serve in the Cabinets of both Gladstone and Disraeli is strange indeed. Ironically, Derby’s bad press is in part self-inflicted. Because he had no children, and because his widow refused to allow access to his papers, he was not the subject of the traditional ‘tombstone’ biography after his death, a rare distinction among Victorian statesmen. The accounts of others, chiefly Derby’s rivals, filled the void, thanks to the industriousness of biographers such as Gwendolen Cecil (for Lord Salisbury) and Monypenny and Buckle (for Benjamin Disraeli). Happily, a great deal of new evidence has been discovered in the last thirty years, and we can now reappraise Derby’s career. The most important find was made by Professor John Vincent, who from the 1970s onwards published Derby’s diaries, which are an unrivalled first-hand account of mid-to-late Victorian politics. This chapter focuses on Derby as Foreign Secretary, and argues that appreciating the view from Knowsley, as opposed to Hughenden or Hatfield, allows us to arrive at a very different interpretation of the man and his policies. It will examine the more significant events of Derby’s career in foreign policy, and will focus   Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli (New York, 1993), p. 584.   See e.g., Richard Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question 1875‒78 (Oxford,

1 2

1979).

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particularly on his role in the political battles of the Eastern Crisis of 1876‒78. His actions and policies will be contrasted with those of the Prime Minister, Disraeli, allowing an analysis of whose policies were the most successful in guiding Britain through the crisis as the threat of war with Russia increased. Derby’s Foreign Policy Any analysis of Derby’s tenure as Foreign Secretary must be based on a proper understanding of the underlying principles of his foreign policy. Too many historians have, by casting an overly retrospective twentieth-century eye at midVictorian foreign policy, dismissed Derby as a Neville Chamberlain-like figure, terrified of engaging with Britain’s neighbours. A.J.P Taylor’s comment is typical of this historiographical attitude. He thought Derby ‘the most isolationist Foreign Secretary’ Britain has ever had.3 But Derby was no isolationist. He was a noninterventionist. And there is an important distinction between the two. Contrary to some historiographical opinion, Derby’s aversion to military action and foreign intervention did not stem from his character, however awkwardly he may sometimes have come across (he was, according to Lord Clarendon, ‘an odd man … not simpatico’.)4 In fact, Derby represented an approach to foreign policy that many nineteenth-century Conservatives shared. As one might expect, most of his basic foreign policy tenets are a reflection of those held by his father, the fourteenth Earl of Derby. Despite the mid-nineteenth century Conservative governments being short-lived minority administrations (1852, 1858‒59 and 1866‒68), there is still plenty of evidence from which to discern the principles that shaped the younger Derby’s policy assumptions, and they may be easily summarised. First, basic Conservative foreign policy rested on the fading but extant foundations of the 1815 post-Napoleonic European settlement, and that decreed a degree of faith in the European ‘concert’. Secondly, it assumed that there should be no interference in the internal political structures of other nations, as the elder Derby explained in the House of Lords in 1858: ‘with regard to foreign countries, the peculiar form of Government which best suits the people is, if not a matter of indifference to us, at all events one into which we have no cause or right to inquire’.5 Finally, there was a belief that Britain’s true power was increasingly determined by her economic prosperity, and that war or even the threat of war could affect her capacity to trade and produce.

 

3

p. 233.

A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848‒1918 (Oxford, 1954),

4   Sir Henry Maxwell, Life and Letters of George William Frederick, 4th Earl of Clarendon (2 vols, London, 1913), vol. 2, p. 324. 5   Geoffrey Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics: The Conservatives and Europe, 1846‒59 (Manchester, 2007), p. 13.

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The foreign policy of the elder Derby, formed in conjunction with Lord Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary in 1852 and 1858‒59, shaped the modern concept of Conservative non-interventionism from the mid-nineteenth century until the early twentieth century. True, long periods of Protectionist opposition decreed that it was as much as anything a response to the energetic interventionism of Russell and Palmerston, and was a conservative reaction against the Whig/Liberal approach to the seismic revolutionary events of 1848. But despite being born out of opposition to interventionism, it nevertheless reflected a long-term Conservative policy that was pragmatic, cautious, and above all built on the need for stability, both at home and abroad. The fifteenth Earl of Derby, known as Lord Stanley until he succeeded his father in 1869, accepted wholeheartedly the foreign policy of his father and Lord Malmesbury. The principle of intervening in other nations’ internal affairs, for example, he dismissed as ridiculous: ‘How can we, who maintain in India the most widespread military despotism that the world has ever seen … affirm that we are too free, too pure, too liberal, to tolerate the existence in any other part of the world of a despotism consolidated by conquest?’6 However, Stanley’s own brand of non-interventionism went beyond that of his father. Stanley’s journal records a revealing instance of the fourteenth Earl’s impatience with his son’s foreign policy ideals. During the Schleswig-Holstein debates of 1863‒64, Derby senior described his son’s earnest desire to keep out of the affair as ‘pig-philosophy’. Stanley had advocated the need for ‘non-intervention, keeping clear of continental squabbles, and not undoing by a few months of fighting, all that has been done in the last ten years to make our people prosperous and contented’.7 His much stricter adherence to non-intervention arose in part from his greater interest in the economic prosperity of Britain’s growing middle classes, and from a sincere wish to alleviate the plight of the lower classes. This is not to say that his father and his Conservative colleagues did not share such worthy intentions, but Stanley’s early journals and speeches reveal a deep interest in the social welfare of urban workers, to whom he made repeated visits in factories, asylums, sanitary projects, libraries and model lodging houses, many of which he advocated or supported financially.8 His experiences convinced him not simply that their conditions must be ameliorated, but that the means with which to do so, Britain’s economic prosperity, should never be threatened by the expense and disruption of a war. As one ambassador wrote in 1866, ‘According to Lord Stanley the only great interest of this country consists in the pacific development of its prosperity and

  25 May 1855, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. 138, col. 1245.   Stanley, journal, 3 June 1864, John Vincent (ed.), Derby, Disraeli and the

6 7

Conservative Party, Journals and Memoirs of Edward Henry Stanley, Lord Stanley [hereafter DDCP] (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978), p. 218. 8   Single journal entry for the year, 1856‒57,Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 142.

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its commercial power’.9 Stanley’s strict belief in non-interventionism was further conditioned by the Crimean War of 1854‒56. It was a war he opposed from the outset, and as a result he often found himself at odds with many Conservatives, in particular Malmesbury, who advised him, and those who thought like him, to keep their mouths shut, or at least ‘not open their lips’.10 In correspondence with Disraeli, Lord Henry Lennox gave Stanley the nickname ‘Young Morose’, and in 1855 he was ‘more Morose than ever’ in his desire for peace.11 It was a desire that proved a bar to him accepting the astonishing offer of the Colonial Office from Palmerston in 1855. In turning down Palmerston’s offer, Stanley contrasted himself with the Prime Minister, whose policy he thought ‘the doctrine of diplomatic interference pushed to its utmost limits’. He sought instead to ‘reduce that interference to the minimum amount compatible with harm and safety’.12 An intriguing insight into Stanley’s response to the Crimean War can be seen in his journal entry for 20 February 1854. When describing his disdain for the fact that the war was ‘vehemently applauded’ by many, he concluded that ‘there remains a large number who dislike prospective disturbance in Europe, who object to fight where England has nothing to gain: and in their hearts agree with Cobden’. The impression given is that he himself agreed with Cobden, and we have too the evidence of Lord Malmesbury who, writing in 1853, had claimed that the party was ‘displeased with Lord Stanley, suspecting him to be coquetting with the Manchester Party’.13 Certainly, the Crimean War was as cathartic a moment for Stanley as it was for Cobden. They came together in opposing the war, the excesses of which led to their views, and in Stanley’s case his future policy, becoming so deeply held as to become inflexible. In that respect, Stanley could justly be described as a ‘Broad-brim’. A useful comparison can be made with Disraeli’s approach to foreign policy during the Crimean War. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to discern consistent themes in Disraeli’s attitude to foreign affairs, principally because he was frustrated in his attempts to influence Conservative foreign policy until about 1878 (and the object of his frustration was invariably a member of the Stanley family). For example, what Disraeli most wanted to do in 1855 was to join a government that would vigorously pursue the Crimean War. He was denied this by what one of his biographers describes as the ‘timidity’ of the fourteenth Earl in 9   Document 117, 3 July 1866, ‘An Austrian View of Stanley and the principle of nonintervention’, in Harold Temperley and Lillian M. Penson, Foundations of British Foreign Policy From Pitt to Salisbury (London, 1966, first published 1938), p. 307. 10   Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics, p. 164. 11   Lord Henry Lennox to Disraeli, 15 October 1855, W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (6 vols, London, 1910‒20), vol. 4, p. 19. 12   Copy of Stanley’s letter of refusal to Palmerston, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 138. 13   Sanderson and Roscoe (eds), Speeches and Addresses of Edward Henry, XVth Earl of Derby (2 vols, London, 1894), in W.E.H. Lecky’s ‘prefatory memoir’.

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failing to form a government, and Disraeli therefore felt that the duty of opposition to Palmerston necessitated a peace propaganda quite alien to his instincts.14 So it was that during the course of the war Disraeli came to share Stanley’s peace line, although purely for domestic political reasons, and even employed Stanley to write numerous pacific epistles in the pages of The Press (a newspaper under Disraeli’s control; the ‘cursed Press’ to Malmesbury).15 ‘There is’, wrote Stanley as early as 1850, ‘certainly a very prevalent impression that Disraeli has no well defined opinions of his own: but is content to adopt, and defend, any wh. may be popular with the Conservative party at the time.’16 While the Crimean War perfectly illustrates Stanley’s revulsion with war, for Disraeli peace was merely the means to a political end. Stanley’s non-interventionism manifested itself just as clearly during his first period at the Foreign Office, from 1866 to 1868. This was perhaps most obvious in the case of the Luxemburg war scare of 1867. Initially, Stanley saw only the benefits of a renewed Franco-Prussian tension over Prussian expansion in 1866 and the potential sale of Luxemburg by the King of Holland to France in 1867. ‘We have nothing to fear’, he wrote to Lord Cowley, the British ambassador in Paris, ‘France has a new rival, and in her antagonism to the united Germany which is evidently destined to be, will be found our security and repose.’17 By May 1867, both Napoleon III and Bismarck had backed down from war, thanks first to a suggestion from Russia that a conference be held (in London, under Stanley’s chairmanship), and secondly to the fact that neither the French nor German armies were in a fit condition for war. The London conference was to decide the remaining questions: what to do with the fortress at Luxemburg (the ‘Gibraltar of the North’) and the Prussian garrison therein, and by which means to guarantee the state of Luxemburg itself. Prior to the conference, Germany, France, Russia and Austria had agreed to give a guarantee of Luxemburg’s neutrality along the lines of that granted to Belgium in 1839. Stanley, however, was determined to ensure that Luxemburg did not become another Belgium, and he first attempted to persuade the Powers to aspire simply to ‘respect the neutrality’ of Luxemburg.18 This was rejected, since others – and particularly Germany – insisted that the word ‘guarantee’ had to be included somewhere in the agreed treaty. So Stanley, in conjunction with his father, came up with the ingenious solution that a guarantee would be given, but, as the fourteenth Earl told the Lords, that guarantee ‘is not a joint and separate guarantee, but it is a collective guarantee, and does not impose upon this country any special and   Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 4, p. 2.   See for example, Stanley’s journal, November 1855, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 135;

14 15

Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics, p. 163. 16   Stanley’s journal, 25 July 1850, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 29. 17   M.R.D. Foot, ‘Great Britain and Luxemburg 1867’, English Historical Review, 67 (1952): p. 356. 18   Stanley’s journal, 3 May 1867, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 307.

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separate duty of enforcing its provisions’.19 In which case, as Stanley noted in his diary, the guarantee was ‘nearly worthless, which it is’.20 It is a fitting tribute to Stanley’s policy that, despite German invasion, no mention was made of that tiny state in the call to arms in 1914. Stanley’s early career showed that ‘Derbyism’, if such a doctrine existed, was a pragmatic approach to foreign policy defined by the events he had witnessed in his political adolescence, and was heavily influenced by the Conservative beliefs of his father and his associates. Like the man himself, ‘Derbyism’ lacked any moral baggage, and was based purely on pragmatic ideals. Derby’s second period as Foreign Secretary, 1874‒1878 When Stanley, now the fifteenth Earl of Derby, began his second tenure at the Foreign Office, his most significant shortcoming lay in his reluctance to understand how drastically the political landscape had changed from his formative years. The extension of the franchise in the 1867 Reform Act suited Disraeli far more than it did Derby, for the new landscape, with its enlarged electorate, was potentially more responsive to the former’s brand of populist Conservatism. Foreign policy became one of the most effective tools for generating votes after 1867. Despite his defeat to Gladstone in the 1868 election and subsequent weakness in opposition, it was ultimately Disraeli who, with his sorcerer’s touch, was able to show the Conservatives how to bestir those parts of the electorate that others, most notably the fourteenth Earl of Derby, had found hard to reach. During his long period of opposition between 1868 and 1874, Disraeli scored most success when attacking Gladstone’s supposedly inactive and reckless foreign policy. Previously, Conservatives had been forced into an uneasy sympathy with Cobdenism as a result of prolonged opposition to Palmerston. But the nation’s first experiment with Gladstone’s foreign policy, itself an uneasy mixture of Cobden and Palmerston, had not been a great success. The answer would become Beaconsfieldism; it did not matter particularly what it was in 1874, as long as it was more appealing to the electorate. In the Manchester and Crystal Palace speeches of 1872, responding in part to the threat of his replacement by Derby, Disraeli, in a short passage since made much of by historians, put forward two alternatives: Empire instead of the Crimean system; patriotism instead of Liberal cosmopolitanism. As Queen Victoria commented approvingly in 1875: ‘Mr. Disraeli … has very large ideas, and very lofty views of the position this country should hold.’21   Foot, ‘Great Britain and Luxemburg 1867’, p. 375.   Stanley’s journal, 24 June 1867, Vincent (ed.), DDCP, p. 312. 21   Queen Victoria to Mr. Theodore Martin, 26 November 1875, G.E. Buckle (ed.), 19 20

The Letters of Queen Victoria, Second Series [hereafter LQV] (2 vol. edition, London, 1926), p. 428.

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But if Disraeli’s patriotic populism really was popular, even with the Queen, its significance was missed by Derby. He had no intention of letting the national mood, in whatever form it came to manifest itself, interfere at the Foreign Office. Derby did believe that he could read popular feeling, for example among the commercial middle classes. Unfortunately for him, however, these were the classes to whom Disraeli did not pay particular attention when constructing his own appeal. Disraeli was an idealistic, even romantic, politician, whereas Derby was a pragmatic public servant. Any analysis of Derby’s second spell as Foreign Secretary needs to take account of his powerful position within the Cabinet. There was no doubt that Derby would become Foreign Secretary when the Conservatives won the 1874 election. Historians who collate the comments made by Derby’s various detractors in order to illustrate how ‘odd’ he was, and thus how ‘odd’ his foreign policy was, make the mistake of ignoring Derby’s position in 1874. He was unquestionably the most important Conservative figure after Disraeli, and to some he was just as important as the new Prime Minister. Indeed, had Derby been vigorous and ambitious enough to depose Disraeli in the 1870s there can be no doubt that he could have led the Tories into the 1874 election. At a meeting of Tory grandees at Burghley House in February 1872, amid general dissatisfaction with Disraeli’s ‘two years of apathy’, the party whip claimed that Derby ‘as leader would affect 40 or 50 seats’.22 Yet Derby repeatedly spurned attempts to make him leader of the Conservatives in the years following his father’s death. Derby’s first serious test during his second term as Foreign Secretary came in the summer of 1875 during the ‘War-in-Sight Crisis’, when Europe fell rapidly into a state of alarm over Bismarck’s presumed pre-emptive war against a revived French army.23 Derby had taken a typically relaxed view at the first signs of European unease: ‘It is part of Bismarck’s policy – or an effect of his temper – to keep questions of this sort open, and stir them from time to time. And it is Belgian nature’ he noted with prophetic irony, ‘to live in fear of some neighbour, and to be constantly appealing to England for protection.’24 For months Derby gave no hint of wishing to contemplate any English interference. Indeed, on the eve of Bismarck’s faux fury he made the following note in his diary: ‘Curious position of the great powers: Russia, jealous of German power, is showing more and more sympathy for France: Bismarck sees this, and redoubles his attentions to the Russian govt to prevent a hostile alliance between the two’.25 It says much   Nancy Johnson (ed.), The Diary of Gathorne Hardy, Later Lord Cranbrook, 1866‒1892: Political Selections (Oxford, 1981), 3 February 1872, p. 149, and 9 February 1872, p. 150. 23   The detailed background to this crisis can be found in Chapter 5, above. 24   Derby to Disraeli, 25 February 1875, Hughenden Mss, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/S/1195. 25   John Vincent (ed.), A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby 1868‒1878 [hereafter DD] (Cambridge, 1994), 11 February 1875, p. 195. 22

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about Derby’s inherent desire to keep out of European politics that Britain’s place in such intrigues is not noted. Derby’s unspoken assumption was that Britain had no business interfering in continental diplomacy. He was happy enough that ‘with Germany & France watching one another, both are more likely to be civil to us’.26 However, after two months of wild rumours and stagnant diplomacy, Derby, reappraising the situation as potentially ‘perplexing and dangerous’, contemplated a more active diplomacy.27 Belgium, France, and even Austria, had, one after the other, confided to him that, actually, Bismarck sought to invade them. The Germans, meanwhile, claimed that a French invasion through Belgium was imminent.28 But the Foreign Secretary was used to nervous ambassadors. He was more worried about English public opinion in the event of a second Franco-Prussian war: ‘if France is to be attacked without provocation’, Derby wrote to the Queen on 5 May, ‘there will be in all countries and in no country more strongly than England, a protest against the abuse of force, and a common jealousy, inspired by the sense of a common danger’.29 Derby knew well that an Englishman’s instinctive support for the underdog could have a dangerous effect on British foreign policy, especially if allowed to manifest itself as accepted ‘public opinion’. As if to emphasise his point, the next day’s Times carried a widely-read article entitled ‘The French Scare’, an alarmist piece inspired by the French minister Decazes, claiming a German invasion was imminent. Both domestic and European forces threatened to pull, or push, Derby deeper into the crisis. So he looked to the one power that nobody wanted to invade: Russia. ‘Something’, he noted, ‘may be hoped from Russian intervention, for it is not the interest of Russia to allow Germany to domineer over the whole continent.’30 A pre-planned visit from the Tsar to Berlin presented an opportunity for British intervention, but with a Derbyite hue. When the Foreign Secretary met the Russian ambassador Count Shuvalov on 8 May, after the Russian’s return from St Petersburg, he learnt that the Tsar ‘was determined to insist on peace being maintained’ – and would say so to his Koeniglich kinsman, Wilhelm I.31 At a Cabinet on 8 May, Derby ‘read and got sanctioned a telegram to O[do] Russell [British ambassador to Germany], instructing him to support whatever efforts the Emperor of Russia may make at Berlin for the preservation of peace’.32 In a meeting Russell described as the ‘most anxious episode in my career’, he squirmed as he was compelled to support Russia and watch Bismarck becoming steadily   Derby to Disraeli, undated June 1875, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/S/966.   Vincent (ed.), DD, 3 May 1875, p. 214. 28   For Belgium’s fears, see 3 May 1875; for Germany’s, 18 April 1875; and for 26 27

Austria’s, 23 April 1875, Vincent (ed.), DD, pp. 214, 208, 210. 29   Derby to Queen Victoria, 5 May 1875 (copy), Derby Mss, Liverpool City Record Office, 920 DER (15) 17/2/9. 30   Vincent (ed.), DD, 3 May 1875, p. 214. 31   Vincent (ed.), DD, 8 May 1875, p. 216. 32   Ibid.

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angrier, writhing ‘under desperate attempts to control his tongue’.33 Russell would later note that Bismarck ‘never liked England and Russia to become intimate, because he fears that the Anglo-Russian sympathies of France might lead to an “entente a 3”’.34 So, faced with the prospect of his, and ultimately Germany’s, nightmare coalition, Bismarck gave in. On 11 May, ‘telegrams from Berlin gave entirely satisfactory assurances as to the maintenance of peace’, and Derby ‘had no hesitation in authorising Bourke [Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs] to say to the H[ouse] of C[ommons] that all danger of war is over’.35 The ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis has been presented as the first instalment of Disraeli’s ‘imperial foreign policy’, as espoused in his speech at Crystal Palace in 1872. Here he stands, defiant to the Germans, as later with France and Russia, a Conservative Prime Minister hand-bagging the Europeans as effectively as Mrs Thatcher. No less an observer than Henry Kissinger has accredited Bismarck’s retreat, in part, to ‘Disraeli’s scheme’ and ‘Disraeli’s maneuver’.36 For Buckle, writing shortly after the Great War, there was an obvious parallel between weak Liberals and German aggression: Gladstone in 1870 and, perhaps, Asquith in 1914. The policy of 1875 was not Disraeli’s at all, however. Derby paid little attention to Disraeli’s suggestions during the ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis. The Cabinet seems not have been involved by either. They appear to have held only one meeting on foreign policy during the crucial weeks in May 1875, and that, to Derby, was only a ‘conversation’.37 ‘My own impression’, Disraeli suggested, ‘is that we shd. construct some concerted movement to preserve the peace of Europe, like Pam did when he baffled France and expelled the Egyptians from Syria. There might be an alliance between Russia and ourself for this special purpose; and other powers, as Austria, and perhaps Italy, might be invited to accede.’38 Such advice came only days before the Tsar’s arrival in Berlin, and left little time for construction. It highlighted differences in the means, if not, yet, the ends, of Derby and Disraeli’s foreign policy. What the former saw as a pragmatic and limited intervention against Bismarck only fired the imagination of the latter: ‘I believe, since Pam’, Disraeli wrote to Lady Bradford, ‘we have never been so energetic, and in a year’s time we shall be more.’39 Derby, who had declined office from ‘Pam’ on account of his energetic foreign policy, was always unlikely to see the   Odo Russell to Hastings Russell, Karina Urbach, Bismarck’s Favourite Englishman: Lord Odo Russell’s Mission to Berlin (London, 1999), p. 140; description by Arthur Russell, ibid. 34   Russell to Derby, 3 June 1876 (copy), Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/S/1132. 35   Vincent (ed.), DD, 11 May 1875, p. 217. 36   Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), p. 148. 37   Vincent (ed.), DD, 7 May 1875, p. 215, and Disraeli to Derby 8 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3. 38   Disraeli to Derby, 6 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/1. 39   Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 14 May 1875, Marquess of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield (2 vols, London, 1929), vol. 1, p. 241. 33

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wisdom of Disraeli’s neo-Palmerstonianism. He was even less likely to sanction Disraeli’s wish that ‘we must get our forces in trim. We shall be able to do that next year. The revenue is coming in well’.40 Derby believed simply that he had ‘been lucky … for what we did involved no risk and cost no trouble, while it has given us the appearance of having helped more than we really did, to bring about the result’.41 Such differences were more about style than substance, but pointed to potential problems in the future. The Foreign Secretary was unable to make political capital out of foreign policy, and the Prime Minister was inclined to make too much. It is nonetheless wrong to over-emphasise the importance of the ‘War-in-Sight’ crisis and Britain’s role therein. The crisis was a diplomatic storm in a teacup, and there is no evidence to suggest that it was anything other than a panic. Derby knew this, and evidently Disraeli did too, given that he only took an interest in the affair just days before it was settled. If one wants to use ‘War-in-Sight’ as an example of Derby’s view of European intervention, then we should hardly be surprised at his relatively relaxed attitude. Just five years earlier Britain had sat on the sidelines and watched as Germany and France went to war, and had suffered no ill effects. Later, in 1914, she would not sit on the sidelines, for which she would pay a heavy price. In 1875, however, despite Bismarck’s blustering, there was little to indicate that war was inevitable, and even less to show that Britain’s strategic interests were at stake. It is a mistake, therefore, to assume that Britain had a pre-ordained role as an arbiter of peace in 1875. It is even more of a mistake to assume that Britain saw itself in that role. To take Derby’s relatively disinterested stance throughout the spring and early summer of 1875 as a reflection of his personal inability to deal with a crisis in foreign policy is simply wrong – it was instead a reflection of the accepted policy of non-interventionism. The Eastern Crisis Begins The remainder of this chapter will focus primarily on Derby’s role during the Eastern Crisis. The crisis of 1875‒78 saw Britain come close to war with Russia over the perennial question of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Contemporaries called it the ‘Great’ Eastern Crisis, and rightly, for had cooler heads not prevailed it is likely that any Anglo-Russian war would have triggered a wider European conflict. Europe would then have been faced with either a full-blooded postscript to the Crimean War, or, depending on your view, a precursor to the Great War. The key issue, as far as this discussion is concerned, is whether Britain’s nearinvolvement in war with Russia was due to Derby letting Britain drift into it, Disraeli pushing Britain into it, or a combination of the two. The crisis began in July 1875, when Slavic labourers in Nevesinye, a small village to the east of Mostar in Herzegovina, rose violently against Turkish rule.   Disraeli to Derby, 18 May 1875, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/1.   Derby to Disraeli, 20 May 1875, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 5, p. 424.

40 41

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The revolt swiftly spread and, as the Balkans became more unstable, Europe’s statesmen began to turn, vulture-like, to the next logical question: was the sick man finally dying? Was it time to carve up the Ottoman Empire? The first concerted attempt to pacify the Balkans came in late 1875, and immediately highlighted the foreign policy differences between Derby and Disraeli. The Austrian Chancellor, Julius Andrássy, put forward a series of suggestions for reform in the Balkans in a document that came to be known as the Andrássy Note. In bearing its author’s name the Note reflected the anxieties of the man who, by answering the Eastern Question, had perhaps the most to lose, for Andrássy was acutely aware of the dangers posed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by a Slavic uprising: the stability of the Dual Monarchy was, he considered, at stake the moment ‘any part of our population’ decided to join a Slav rebellion.42 The Slavs had close links with Russia, strengthened via the new and powerful notions of ‘Pan-Slavism’. Andrássy’s Note first reached Derby at Knowsley on 4 January 1876, and in his diary he wrote: ‘The long-expected Austrian note is come: I read it rapidly, and with satisfaction, for in tone and general purport it appears moderate, and I can see nothing in it dangerous to Turkish power.’43 The Note chimed perfectly with Derby’s non-interventionist instincts. Despite suggesting such radical measures as ‘the right of the peasantry to the soil’ (at which Derby hesitated, it being a principle ‘nouveaux et inconnus en Angleterre’), he cared little for the detail and found the proposals ‘more moderate than I had been led to expect’.44 Most importantly, Andrássy would leave the implementation of his reforms, such as religious liberty and the abolition of tithes, to the Porte. Derby, therefore, could give ‘general support’ to the Note without any fear of weakening Turkey.45 To remain aloof would, he thought, leave Britain foolishly isolated. Accordingly, on 7 January 1876 he wrote a classically Derbyite letter to Disraeli urging acceptance:

  George Rupp, Austria & Russia, A Wavering Friendship 1876‒8 (London, 1941),

42

p. 84.

  Vincent (ed.), DD, 4 January 1876, p. 265. Indeed, when Derby had first been informed of the Note’s expected arrival, on 15 December 1875 (p. 259), he had arranged to leave Knowsley for London in order to receive it. It seems that Derby was in fact mildly irritated by the delay, and took some pleasure in replying in kind. 44   As quoted by Shuvalov in a despatch to Gorchakov, 13 January 1876, in R. W. Seton-Watson (ed.), ‘Russo-British Relations During the Eastern Crisis (I)’, The Slavonic Review, vol. 3, 1924‒25, (II) p. 659. Seton-Watson published the bulk of the Russian documents in seven sections, in the following volumes: (I) and (II) are in vol. 3, 1924‒25; (III), (IV) and (V) are in vol. 4, 1925‒26; (V) is in vol. 5, 1926‒27; and (VII) is in vol. 6, 1927‒28; Vincent (ed.), DD, 7 January 1876, p. 266. 45   Vincent (ed.), DD, 18 January 1876, p. 270. 43

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If we decline to join what follows? The Porte will refuse and then we are responsible for the failure of what is at least a promising attempt at conciliation; or the Porte will accept and then we stand in the foolish position of being more Turkish than the Turks. Either way we are isolated in Europe and not backed by opinion at home. … We may be dupes, but I think both Austria & Russia desire peace. Mutual jealousy, and fear of the establishment of an independent Sclave [sic] state make it reasonable & natural that they should wish to see the status quo maintained. Whether the old fabric is not too rotten to bear patching is another question; but a question we cannot answer till we have tried.46

The Prime Minister, though, was wholly against Andrássy’s Note, and argued unsuccessfully with Derby, over two weeks, that Britain should reject it.47 The Note was, he said, either ‘an act of imbecility or of treachery’; the measures were ‘erroneous in principle and pernicious in practice’; and it would, he concluded, ‘be preferable to appear isolated’.48 He raised too the prospect of an as yet undisclosed Austro-Russian policy, and, foreseeing a Turkish refusal, feared that Britain could yet be ‘drawn into ulterior measures as a remedy for the failure’.49 This was precisely the thin-end-of-the-wedge argument that concerned Derby.50 These, however, were reasons that Derby considered ‘excellent … but out of place now’.51 When the two finally met in London to argue ‘the matter pretty fully’, it became clear that Disraeli was really concerned with the bigger picture: ‘England’, he declared, ‘ought to lead, and not to follow.’52 He objected to a note in whose construction Britain had played no part. ‘On pourrait presque dire’, ambassador Shuvalov had written earlier, when highlighting Disraeli’s sense of amour propre, ‘que la question de gloriole prime jusqu’a present la question.’53 Andrássy’s Note had posed just such a question. The Eastern Crisis had so far fired both Disraeli’s imagination and his desire to place Britain once more at the heart of continental great power politics; ‘I really believe’, he had written to his confidante Lady Bradford in November 1875, ‘“the Eastern Question”, that has haunted Europe for   Derby to Disraeli, 7 January 1876, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/S/1121.   In his letter to Derby of 9 January, Disraeli couched his language thus: ‘my strong

46 47

conviction that we should pause before assenting’, but it was fairly clear that he was in fact, as Derby noted, ‘against accepting’, Vincent (ed.), DD, 10 January 1876, p. 267. 48   Disraeli to Derby, 9 January 1876, by telegram, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2; Disraeli to Derby, 9 January 1876, letter, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. 49   Disraeli to Derby, 9 January 1876, by telegram, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2; Vincent (ed.), DD, 15 January 1876, p. 269, a shorter quote highlighting the same concerns raised by Disraeli in his telegram of 9 January. 50   And for Salisbury see, Vincent, Diaries, 8 January 1876, p. 266. 51   Vincent (ed.), DD, 10 January 1876, p. 267. 52   Vincent (ed.), DD, 15 January 1876, p. 269. 53   Shuvalov to Gorchakov, 4/16 December 1875, no. 125, Seton-Watson, Slavonic Review, (I) vol. 1, p. 433.

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a century … will fall to my lot to encounter – dare I say to settle?’54 Derby won the argument, and the Note was accepted, but the Eastern Crisis soon took ‘hold of Disraeli’s mind’, Derby would observe in May 1876, by which point he could ‘talk of nothing else’.55 Disraeli did not have long to wait for another attempt at settling the East, for it soon became obvious that Andrássy’s suggested reforms had failed. The insurgents demanded too much, and the Porte granted too little. Fighting continued with increased savagery. In St Petersburg, the Russian Chancellor, Gorchakov, under increasing Pan-Slav pressure, saw an opportunity for Russia to take a lead where Austria had so demonstrably failed, and in early May 1876 proposed that representatives of the Dreikaiserbund, the alliance of the Russian, German and Austrian emperors, meet in Berlin and discuss further measures to ‘pacify’ the Balkans. The result was that on 13 May the Berlin Memorandum was presented by Bismarck, Andrássy and Gorchakov to the ambassadors of France, Italy and Britain in Bismarck’s Palast on the Wilhelmstrasse. Lord Odo Russell declared that he anticipated England’s general adhesion (‘an unheard of step!’, wrote Disraeli), and consequently Gorchakov asked that Britain reply within two days, before he departed for a spa holiday.56 Russell could not have been more wrong in his prediction of Britain’s foreign policy, or the temperament of his London superiors. ‘The last paragraph is remarkable’, exclaimed Derby after digesting the Memorandum. Gorchakov had stated: If, however, the armistice expires without the effort of the powers successfully attaining the object they have in view, the three imperial courts are of opinion that it would be necessary to add to their diplomatic action the sanction of an understanding, with a view to effective measures which would seem to be demanded in the interest of general peace.57

So, ‘in other words’, Derby wrote in his diary, ‘the insurgents are told that if they will only refuse the conditions offered, better terms will be made for them by the Powers!’58 The Dreikaiserbund’s intention to coerce the Porte was precisely the kind of interventionist measure Derby had guarded against since the outbreak of the crisis, and he promptly decided to reject it. On 16 May, the Cabinet discussed

  Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 3 November 1875, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 14.   Vincent (ed.), DD, 24 May 1876, p. 298. 56   Disraeli to Derby, 29 May 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. 57   David Harris, Diplomatic History of the Balkan Crisis 1875‒1878: The First 54 55

Year (Stanford University, CA, 1969), p. 298, quoting from the text of the Memorandum. Efficacious is sometimes used for effective in the translation from the French, which uses ‘efficaces’. 58   Vincent (ed.), DD, 15 May 1876, p. 296.

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‘nothing except the Berlin note. All agreed it will not do, the plan proposed being impracticable, unfair towards the Porte, & certain to fail’.59 Despite the unanimity, however, Derby was concerned by what he called Disraeli’s ‘odd line’ of argument on the Memorandum: ‘he seemed to care very little about the plan itself, whether good or bad, but wished me to profess indignation at our not having been consulted earlier’.60 The Berlin Memorandum had touched a prime ministerial nerve, and, in a foretaste of what was to come, Derby and Disraeli differed not over which course to follow, for both agreed to reject the Memorandum, but over the logic behind that course. Maintaining Britain’s prestige for its own sake, especially by needless intervention, was and always would be an alien ideal to Derby, quite outside the bounds of rational diplomatic thinking. But it was one of the few consistent principles in Disraeli’s ‘foreign policy’, such as it was, throughout his career. Disraeli, suffering increasing frustration, now sought means to resist the constraints and arguments used by his Foreign Secretary. First, there was a marked cooling in their personal relationship. Derby had already realised that he himself was ‘disposed to make as little as possible of what we do’, whereas Disraeli, he noticed, was a ‘little too anxious to excite interest, to astonish … and generally to put on an appearance of greater activity than is either really being shown or than there is need of’.61 And secondly, Disraeli began to look elsewhere for the support he would need to implement his version of Britain’s foreign policy. Derby noticed the former with regret, but failed to appreciate the importance of the latter. The ‘Horrors’ Events soon proved, however, that Disraeli was still dependent on Derby. In the summer of 1876 the Balkans descended yet further into violent anarchy, when a brigade of Bashi-Bazouks, Turkey’s ill-disciplined irregular troops, committed a series of atrocities for which their name became infamous. Reports reached London that tens of thousands of Christians had been massacred, and were sensationally recorded in the Liberal-sympathising Daily News. The famous Bulgarian atrocities, or the ‘horrors’ as they were known, not only affected Derby’s political standing, but also his foreign policy. Within weeks Derby went from basking in general public approbation, to finding himself at the receiving end of a hostile press and public opinion at home, while abroad he was confronted by war. In Britain the atrocities touched the g-spot of Victorian morality, and began a powerful and largely spontaneous protest movement known to history as the ‘Bulgarian agitation’, and to Disraeli as the ‘Bulgarian Bogy’.62 The public’s indignant astonishment was fanned by a feeling of complicit guilt after forty years     61   62   59

60

Vincent (ed.), DD, 16 May 1876, p. 297. Vincent (ed.), DD, 15 May 1876, p. 296. Vincent (ed.), DD, 1 July 1876, p. 306. Disraeli to Derby, 6 September 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3.

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of generally Turcophil policy. The Queen, always a good indicator of the more sentimental section of public feeling, was ‘horrified’.63 At last the British public awoke, with a start, from its apathetic slumber over foreign affairs – and found its government apparently supporting the murderous Turk. The most successful public movements are often based upon existing social and cultural foundations, and in this case religion, in particular the high Anglicanism of Gladstone and the theologian Henry Liddon, played a key role. The fact that Muslim had murdered Christian instilled in the country a crusader-like conviction. The result was a national outburst of popular feeling based, perhaps for the first time in British history, on the plight of anonymous foreigners with whom the country had no previous relationship whatsoever. Gladstone, the Crimean chancellor, could not resist adding his voice to the clamorous denunciations of Turkey. That ‘unprincipled maniac’, thought Disraeli, had ‘one commanding characteristic – whether Prime Minister, or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying, or scribbling – never a gentleman!’64 The heady blend of Muslim atrocities and Christian injustice appealed so perfectly to the vicar in Gladstone that he was bound to end the charade of his semi-retirement.65 Inspired by ‘those rabid cockneys the electors of Greenwich’ (Gladstone’s seat), he entered the political fray once more.66 Gladstone lost nothing by taking up the issue relatively late, and when he published, on 6 September, his famous pamphlet ‘Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East’ – ‘of all the Bulgarian horrors perhaps the greatest’, said Disraeli – he set himself with perfect timing at the head of an evangelical mass movement that cried out for leadership.67 The pamphlet is hardly Gladstone’s best literary legacy, but in its breathless condemnation of all things Turkish chimed perfectly with the public mood and created great difficulties for Derby. He thought it ‘a fierce and violent denunciation of the Turks, the most violent, I think, that has been written … He denounces the Turks as unfit to exist’.68 Gladstone’s pamphlet sold at an astonishing rate: forty thousand copies in the first four days, two hundred thousand within a month. It mattered little, as Derby noted, that its conclusion was relatively tame, ‘a simple recommendation of autonomy’, or that its most famous phrase was misunderstood (perhaps purposefully) – yet it caught on that Gladstone had called for the expulsion of Turkey from Europe ‘bag and baggage’.69 Palmerston once made two prophetic   Queen Victoria to Disraeli, 10 August 1876, Buckle (ed.), LQV, vol. 2, p. 474.   Disraeli to Derby, 12 October 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3. 65   Though formally retired after 1874, with Lord Granville leading the party in the 63 64

Lords and Hartington in the Commons, Gladstone had sat on the opposition front bench, and took the lead in criticising the Suez share purchase and the Royal Titles Bill. 66   Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 26 September 1876, Zetland (ed.), Letters, vol. 2, p. 76. 67   Disraeli to Derby, 8 September 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3. 68   Vincent (ed.), DD, 7 September 1876, p. 324. 69   Ibid.

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observations about Gladstone; the first, that he would ‘lose Ireland, break up the Liberal party [and] go mad’, had yet to be completely fulfilled, but the second, that he would ‘always be more powerful out of office than in it’, was proved correct.70 With Gladstone at its head the agitation was sustained, and throughout the autumn of 1876 had, by threatening to end decades of broadly pro-Turkish diplomacy, a direct effect on British foreign policy. If Gladstone’s response to the atrocities was politically perfect, then the government’s was appalling. We might excuse both Derby and Disraeli, as perhaps the two most Laodicean men ever to hold high office together, for feeling limited sympathy towards the Bulgars. Disraeli complained that ‘the Government have no more to do with the “atrocities” than the man in the moon’.71 But in many ways the public reaction was predictable, and they ought to share some blame for mishandling the government’s response. Disraeli, in an example of how bound in his own rhetorical effervescence he could become, suggested to Parliament on 10 July that ‘oriental’ people ‘seldom resort to torture but generally terminate their … culprits in a more expeditious manner’.72 It was a needless remark, and only added to a storm that threatened to engulf him. ‘What is there to laugh at?’, he exclaimed angrily as the Commons giggled at his gaffe.73 Disraeli blamed the Foreign Office for his lack of information, but three weeks later, during which time there had been official news confirming the occurrence of massacres, he made his more famous blunder, and dismissed the atrocities as ‘coffee house babble’.74 This foolish remark further reinforced the notion that ministers were Turkish apologists. The Economist railed against the Premier’s ‘cold and sneering manner’, whilst The Spectator considered him ‘almost a national disgrace’. 75 70   As recorded in Hardy’s diary, 8 March 1874, Johnson (ed.), Gathorne-Hardy Diaries, quoting Sir W. Hayter from Palmerston; R.T. Shannon, Gladstone & The Bulgarian Agitation (London, 1963), p. 11. 71   Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 1 September 1876, Zetland (ed.), Letters, vol. 2, p. 70. 72   Robert Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), p. 593. 73   As heard by Northcote, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 4, p. 44. 74   On 14 July 1876, Disraeli complained that ‘It is impossible to represent F.O. in the House of Commons in these critical times without sufficient information’ (Disraeli to Derby, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3) And again: ‘The F.O. misled me … I would never have made those answers …’ (7 August 1876, Disraeli to Derby, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3). With some justification he criticised Elliot severely: ‘He has nearly destroyed a strong and popular government’ (Disraeli to Derby, 2 September 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3). When Disraeli received a report from the British ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Henry Elliot, on 14 July he wrote thus to the Queen: ‘The information respecting “the Bulgarian atrocities” has arrived from Sir H Elliot, and it appears quite sufficient to allow him to make a very satisfactory statement on Monday next. Great exaggeration there has been no doubt, but the atrocities seem equally divided.’ Buckle (ed.), LQV, vol. 2, p. 472. 75   W. Wirthwein, ‘Britain and the Balkan Crisis 1875‒78’, Studies in History and Economics, 407 (Columbia University, 1975), p. 74.

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There can be no doubt that the Premier’s ‘careless way of talking’, as Derby called it, exacerbated and inflamed the situation.76 Northcote criticised ‘(in the profoundest secrecy …) that unfortunate levity of our chief’.77 And yet Disraeli had only himself to blame. Since the first reports were confined to the Daily News, which he called ‘the real opposition journal’, he conceived their sole purpose was ‘to create a cry against the Government’.78 He accordingly treated them with the crushing parliamentary sarcasm at which he excelled. His attempts to deny the scale of the Bashi-Bazouks’ barbarism were, however, only a challenge to the Daily News, ‘which I suppose is the 5th Gospel’, to print further detailed reports, each more gruesome than the last.79 ‘Too many of our own people’, Derby’s wife, Mary, wrote at the height of Disraeli’s unpopularity, ‘are saying the premier is nearly “played out”.’80 The master of public opinion had suddenly lost his touch. Derby, while at first sharing Disraeli’s doubts over the atrocities, chose to handle the affair more tactfully. His approach to the agitation is most revealing, and highlights their differing political characters. Derby carefully avoided Disraeli’s nonchalance. In the Lords he hid conveniently behind a lack of official knowledge: ‘I think we are bound to reserve our judgement, and not assume too hastily that statements of the kind [such as in the Daily News] are true’ – which was the same as saying the Daily News printed coffee-house babble, but without the flippancy.81 And in further contrast to Disraeli, who remained unable to admit any error, Derby accepted as early as 10 July the existence of ‘strong public feeling’ on the issue. ‘Above all things’, he warned Disraeli at the outset, ‘we must guard ourselves from the imputation of being too Turkish’.82 Perhaps most importantly, Derby made a show of action. On 6 July he instructed the British ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Henry Elliot, to ‘urge [the Porte] strongly that the local authorities … lose no time in repressing these outrages & punishing those concerned’.83 On 12‒13 July he sent a series of telegrams and despatches to Elliot, in a bid to find out what had happened.84 And on 21 July he ordered Elliot and one of his staff, Walter Baring, to compile an official report into the massacres. Baring’s report, which took much longer than Derby hoped,   Vincent (ed.), DD, 8 August 1876, p. 317.   Northcote to Carnarvon, 4 September 1876, Carnarvon Papers, British Library,

76 77

Additional Manuscripts [hereafter BL, Add. Mss.] 60767. 78   Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 13 July 1876, Zetland (ed.), Letters, vol. 2, p. 58. 79   Disraeli to Derby, 15 August 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2; Millman, Eastern Question, p. 143. The News’ correspondent, Pears, acted as if in a ‘personal vendetta’ with Disraeli. 80   Mary Derby to Sanderson, 20 September 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15), unfoliated. 81   26 June 1876, Hansard, vol. 230, col. 387. 82   10 July 1876, ibid., col. 1168; Vincent (ed.), DD, 3 July 1876, p. 306. 83   Millman, Eastern Question, p. 141. 84   Millman, Eastern Question, p. 133.

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was published on 19 September, two weeks after Gladstone’s pamphlet, and the Foreign Secretary used it as an occasion to outline a modest scheme, swiftly made public, of autonomy in Bulgaria.85 Baring’s figure of 12,000 dead Bulgarians was at least lower than the 100,000 claimed by some, though more than the 1,830 cited as the official Turkish estimate.86 It confirmed ‘a good deal of what the newspapers have said, though disposing of many exaggerations’ (there were no cartloads of heads, at least).87 A figure of 12,000 might seem to have been disadvantageous to the government, but it did not stop the still ardently pro-Turk Disraeli claiming that the massacres were, after all, perpetrated by ‘secret societies’.88 Another speech, another gaffe. The Disraeli-Derby correspondence during the agitation reveals the extent to which the Prime Minister, having shot himself in the foot, became dependent on his Foreign Secretary. He had already discovered there were few others he could rely on, writing to Lady Bradford in early June that foreign policy ‘requires calmness which no one … possesses in an eminent degree except Derby, who takes things coolly enough; but I am not so sure’ he added, ‘of his firmness as of his salutary apathy’.89 At the height of the agitation Disraeli showered Derby with letters urging, even begging, him to remain firm ‘against … conceding anything to the agitation’.90 ‘This is hardly necessary’, Derby thought, ‘since I agree with him.’91 In all Derby’s observations during the ‘horrors’ episode one is aware of an inability to understand both the passion and potential impact of the agitators. Perhaps this lack of political sensitivity was mitigated by his disdain for both religiosity and the new style of loud, declamatory politics. And he was of course right in predicting that, like all such movements, ‘it cannot last long, and a reaction must follow’.92 But still one senses a flaw in Derby’s political modus operandi; one that would prove fatal at the climax of the Eastern Crisis. He too easily dismissed any argument, like the agitation, that existed ‘without reason …’, the reason of a calm, calculating, even cold, variety – or as Disraeli called it ‘clear, callous, 85   Vincent (ed.), DD, 20 September 1876, p. 327, despatch to Elliot the same day, published 21 September 1876. 86   The atrocities are covered in great detail by David Harris in Britain and the Bulgarian Horrors of 1876 (Chicago, 1939), and by Millman, Eastern Question, pp. 121‒65. 87   Vincent (ed.), DD, 20 September 1876, p. 327. 88   In a speech to the electors at Aylesbury for the by-election created by his elevation to the Lords, 20 September 1876. The speech was ‘a very skilful ingenious’ one, according to Derby, Vincent (ed.), DD, 21 September 1876, p. 328. 89   Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 6 June 1876, Zetland (ed.), Letters, vol. 2, p. 51. 90   Vincent (ed.), DD, 7 September 1876, p. 324. 91   Ibid., and again, p. 328, 22 September 1876: ‘Letter from Disraeli … urging me (needlessly) not to make any concession to the popular cry.’ 92   Derby to Cross, 8 September 1876, Cross Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 51266, fol. 32.

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common sense’ – that was the very foundation of his political ideology.93 The Foreign Secretary and passion politics did not mix. War in the Balkans The atrocities storm, while an important event in England, was a relative sideshow in the Balkans. Serbia and Montenegro had declared war on Turkey on 30 June 1876, but lay on the brink of defeat by August. It soon became clear that the conflict could not remain localised as Derby hoped, and he was therefore faced with a particularly uncomfortable situation. Noting a shift in Russian policy, he began to suspect that Russia might ‘wish to prevent the peaceable settlement [between Serbia and Turkey] which they affect to support’, and now he had little doubt ‘that Russia is playing a double game’.94 He was correct, for the defining diplomatic alliance of the Eastern Crisis, which would effectively dictate its outcome, had been made earlier that summer. On 8 July Alexander II of Russia and Franz Josef of Austria met at Reichstadt in Austria.95 The two emperors agreed to pursue a policy of non-intervention during the Serbian war, but decided on joint action at its conclusion. If Serbia was defeated, they would insist she suffer no territorial loss. A Serbian victory, however, would see Bessarabia restored to Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina ceded to Austria, Constantinople made a free city, and autonomy for Bulgaria. Though both emperors agreed that a Congress would have to be called, such plans would effectively herald an Austro-Russian partition of Turkey. The policy agreed at Reichstadt was later developed during several meetings between Russian and Austrian diplomats. All the agreements were, at Andrássy’s insistence, to remain strictly secret, and he further instructed that Britain was to be told only that nonintervention had been discussed.96 Andrássy’s main aim was to prevent a disorderly Turkish collapse, for if the Ottoman Empire in Europe collapsed Austria would, thanks to the competing interests of the Slavs on her borders, assume ‘the role of the “Sick Man”’.97 In July 1876 Andrássy had two options in the event of the  

93

p. 68.

Ibid.; Disraeli to Lady Bradford, 27 September 1876, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6,

  Vincent (ed.), DD, 26 September 1876, p. 329; ibid., 28 September 1876, p. 330. Derby heard of the fighting on the 28th. 95   Excellent narratives of the Reichstadt meeting can be found in Rupp, Austria and Russia, pp. 134‒46; Harris, Balkan Crisis, pp. 431‒8; and Mackenzie, The Serbs and Russian Pan-Slavism 1875‒8 (New York, 1967), pp. 105‒12. 96   Seton-Watson, Disraeli, Gladstone and the Eastern Question (London, 1935), p. 47, citing a telegram dated 12 July 1876, from Andrássy to Beust, who was also kept in the dark. See also Derby to Disraeli, 18 November 1876, once more recording Beust’s denial that Austria was bound by any agreement with Russia, or that she would necessarily adopt a policy of neutrality, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/S/1186a. 97   At a crown council on 29 January 1875. Rupp, Austria and Russia, p. 39. 94

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Serbian victory he anticipated: prevent the formation of a greater Serbia by force (‘There is war and a long one’, as Disraeli noted), or come to an arrangement with Russia to divide the spoils between them, and in so doing secure the great object of Austrian policy – Bosnia.98 With a hesitant Emperor and Austria’s relative weakness to consider, Andrássy chose the latter.99 At Reichstadt it seemed as if Russia and Austria had carved out spheres of influence to their satisfaction. Reichstadt had important implications for British policy, for the Austro-Russian conflict of interests in the Balkans would dictate diplomatic relations throughout the crisis. From a British point of view, Austria offered the best hope of preventing Russian intervention in the Serbian war and checking any Russian advance into the Balkans. But if Russia and Austria settled their differences there would be little, short of war, that Britain could do to resist Russian military intervention. Should Britain choose to resist a potential Russian invasion of Turkey, to what ally could she turn? Even Bismarck seemed to support the agreement: his preferred solution to the Eastern Question had long been partition, and although he baulked at Austria and Russia becoming too close (what use then for Germany?) he certainly did not want, as Derby noted, ‘to allow a quarrel’ between them.100 The Reichstadt agreement therefore left Britain facing diplomatic isolation for the remainder of the Eastern Crisis, and there was little anyone could do about it. Henceforth, the key difference between Derby and Disraeli was their relative understanding of the consequences of Reichstadt: Derby believed the Austrians and Russians had made a deal, but Disraeli refused to, and grew increasingly frustrated at the lack of diplomatic options available to Britain as the crisis progressed. The situation took on a more menacing aspect when, at some point between August and September 1876, Tsar Alexander succumbed to the pro-Serbian and Slavic voices inside Russia and decided that Serbia’s inevitable defeat would damage his and Russia’s prestige. Gorchakov’s decision to order partial mobilisation on 22 September probably represents a good indication of when Alexander first envisaged abandoning diplomacy in favour of military intervention.101 Peace was sustained at first by Derby’s pressure on the Porte to accept a new armistice, but, in the face of Russian defiance which in practice made it impossible to achieve a ceasefire between Serbia and Turkey, he had by late October ‘lost all hope of a peaceful settlement’.102 On 29 October the Serbs suffered a catastrophic defeat at the battle of Djunis, and Alexander delivered an ultimatum to the Porte: cease fighting, or face war   Disraeli to Derby, 29 September 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2; Rupp, Austria and Russia, p. 40. 99   Charmley, Splendid Isolation?, p. 36. 100   Bismarck’s overtures to Britain in January 1876 had demonstrated his aims; Vincent (ed.), DD, 13 September 1876, p. 326. 101   Following the previous day’s telegram to Shuvalov, 9/21 September 1876. Rupp, Austria and Russia, p. 173. 102   Derby to Lyons, 21 October 1876 (copy), Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 18/1/5. 98

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with Russia. To those who focused on the power politics of diplomacy, Russia’s summary ultimatum seemed to place Britain in a weakened position. Turkey’s immediate acceptance of the ultimatum on 1 November made it rather obvious that Derby’s attempt to secure peace by diplomacy had failed. But since the Foreign Secretary worried more about ends than means he was not overly concerned; peace was achieved, and it was agreed that an international conference of the powers would be held at Constantinople.103 However, the Eastern Question had long since ‘taken hold of Disraeli’s mind’, and throughout October 1876 he had become even more alarmed.104 At times he ‘seemed indifferent’ to Derby’s negotiations, and focused instead on arbitrary military solutions, in the process further exhibiting the dislike of diplomatic detail – he was ‘easily wearied by it’ – that struck Derby as unfortunate.105 Disraeli advocated increasingly radical policies (or to Derby, ‘eccentric ideas’), which revealed the Premier’s changing attitude, from understandable geopolitical anxiety to frenzied belligerence.106 As a result, October saw the collapse of the rapprochement between Derby and Disraeli previously necessitated by the Bulgarian agitation. Disraeli’s foreign policy during the final stages of the Serbian war was a series of contradictory suggestions to Derby. He began with partition of Turkey. At the beginning of September Disraeli had advocated a partition in which … we should take the lead … Whatever the jealousies of Russia and Austria, they would prefer a division of the Balkan spoil under the friendly offices of England to war … Constantinople … should be neutralised and made a free port under the custody of, and under the guardianship of England.107

It was, like most of Disraeli’s suggestions, a fairytale solution to the Eastern Question. Raising the Union Jack over Constantinople would have been the single most ambitious act of imperialism undertaken by Britain. Not even Berlin in 1945 could be controlled by a single Power. Derby’s critical response was fully justified: ‘If once we raise the question of partition, the risk of war is great for the Powers will all want something and the division of the spoil is not likely to be made in an amicable manner.’ And it was of course unlikely, he added, that Russia could be reconciled ‘to seeing Constantinople in the hands of a great power, friendly or   Vincent (ed.), DD, 2 November 1876, p. 340: ‘News that the Porte accepts the armistice on Russian conditions, which puts an end to present difficulties, but there are plenty more behind.’ 104   Vincent (ed.), DD, 24 May 1876, p. 298. 105   Vincent (ed.), DD, 19 October 1876, p. 335; ibid., 6 November 1875, p. 250. See also 23 March 1876, p. 285, ‘Disraeli’s indifference to detail and dislike of discussion’ as noted by Cross as a reason for ‘less careful and businesslike’ cabinets. 106   Vincent (ed.), DD, 2 November 1876, p. 340. 107   Disraeli to Derby, 4 September 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3. 103

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not’.108 On 29 September Disraeli first raised the idea of occupying Constantinople ‘as a material guarantee’, with Turkish approval but not that of other Powers.109 On 16 October he added a desire to occupy the Dardanelles in similar fashion.110 The next day Derby received another solution: ‘What if we could negotiate a treaty with Germany to maintain the Status Quo generally?’ Disraeli’s scheme seemed to envisage reciprocal guarantees for Constantinople and Alsace and Lorraine – ‘it wd settle everything for our lives, & immortalize yourself’, he concluded.111 Then Disraeli went off the idea of partition, dismissing an option that gave Britain Egypt and Crete as ‘moonshine’.112 Two weeks later Austria was to be the focus of one of Disraeli’s more sensible ideas – ‘for joint action’ to protect ‘the integrity of the Turkish dominions’ against Russia.113 Disraeli’s policy had thus varied, within weeks, from a British-led partition, to maintaining the status quo by allying with Germany, to unilateral action by Britain, and finally to ‘joint action’ with Austria to guarantee Turkey. Far from being the geopolitical visionary that posterity suggests, Disraeli had no fixed policy at all. He was merely concerned, whatever happened in the Balkans, that Britain should be seen to play a leading role. It seems hard, on such evidence, not to agree with Lord Barrington’s conclusion following a conversation with Disraeli on 23 October 1876: ‘That England should be victorious in diplomacy (and war if necessary, as a matter of course), is Lord B’s grand object, and will be a splendid consummation to his wonderful career.’114 It is no coincidence that Derby chose this moment to compose his strongest criticism yet of Disraeli’s foreign policy: To the Premier the main thing is to please and surprise the public by bold strokes and unexpected moves: he would rather run serious national risks than hear his policy called feeble or commonplace: to me, the first object is to keep England out of trouble, so long as it can be done consistently with honour and good faith. … if war with Russia becomes popular, as it may, we are not unlikely to be on different sides.115

Second only to Disraeli’s yearning for prestige came his exaggerated fear of Russia. In March 1876 he had astonished his colleagues by declaring that ‘the frontiers of Russia … are only a few days march from those of Her Majesty’s dominions in   Derby to Disraeli, 5 September 1876, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/S/1148.   Disraeli to Derby, 29 September 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. Brought

108 109

to Cabinet on 4 October 1876. 110   Disraeli to Derby, 16 October 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. Brought to Cabinet on 19 October 1876. 111   Disraeli to Derby, 17 October 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. 112   Disraeli to Derby, 22 October 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. 113   Disraeli to Derby, 3 November 1876, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/2. 114   Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 84. 115   Vincent, DD, 24 October 1876, p. 337.

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India’.116 Continuing the theme of flawed geography, Barrington’s record of one of his conversations with the Prime Minister reveals one of the more inexplicable instances of Disraelian Russophobia: Russia should not occupy Constantinople – because it was ‘the key of India’. People who believed otherwise (perhaps with Egypt or Suez in mind) ‘must be utterly ignorant of geography’.117 Nevertheless, Disraeli’s achievement during the Eastern Crisis was to make the Russian advance into Turkey appear a greater threat to British interests than it really was. One of the most significant factors underpinning Derby’s policy was his very different appraisal of Russia’s strength. His vision of Russian power was based not unreasonably on the chaotic military display in the Crimea, the unreformed economy and the discordant autocratic system of government. He would, no doubt, have been entirely unsurprised by Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905. Despite the popular sentiment of ‘Russophobia’, shared by the Queen and the Premier, Derby realised that the Russian threat was not great – and, he reasoned, it would be absurd to allow Disraeli to use it as a means to provoke war. Derby was fully aware of Russia’s parlous financial situation before the Russo-Turkish war, and believed that bankruptcy would soon follow any drawn-out campaign: ‘Russia will be crippled for years to come by the war … and for a considerable time we have no aggression in central Asia to fear.’118 With hindsight, we can judge whether Disraeli’s fears were well-founded. Russian objectives in 1876 were limited when compared to Disraeli’s suspicions. Alexander, while under the influence of Slavic and religious ideals, had not wholly lost his ability to think in rational diplomatic terms. Everybody knew that if Russia gained too much at the hands of Turkey, she faced another Crimean War. According to Rupp, ‘When on October 29th [Grand Duke Nicholas] asked the Tsar, ‘What is the final goal of the campaign?’ the Tsar replied “Constantinople”’.119 But it is clear that such an objective was to be an extreme measure, if necessary to force the Turks to make peace. The Tsar himself had rejected in October 1876 the proposal to seize Constantinople: ‘The political aim of the war must be exclusively the temporary occupation of Bulgaria.’120 Derby’s greatest problem during the Eastern Crisis was his inability to point with conviction to Russia’s limited quasi-religious objectives, and prove that Disraeli was talking exaggerated nonsense. Disraeli, Robert Blake claims, was haunted by the ghost of Aberdeen, who failed to prevent the Crimean conflict by not taking the decided steps to stop Russia embarking on war in 1853.121 Implicit in Blake’s analysis is a comparison between Disraeli in the 116   23 March 1876, Hansard, vol. 228, col. 500; Vincent, DD, 24 March 1876, pp. 285‒6. 117   Barrington memorandum, 23 October 1876, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 83. 118   Vincent (ed.), DD, 7 January 1877, p. 365. 119   Rupp, Austria and Russia, p.187. 120   Mackenzie, The Serbs, p. 150, note 254, quoting the Tsar’s rejection of General Obruchev’s plan to seize Constantinople. 121   Blake, Disraeli, p. 609.

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late 1870s and Churchill in the 1930s. Derby was no Chamberlain, but he shared the appeasers’ fate. What many saw as the inevitable next chapter in the crisis began on 24 April 1877, when Russia declared war on Turkey. Both sides had been through the charade of the Constantinople Conference, but Russia had effectively made up its mind to fight Turkey, while the Porte was never likely to swallow the diet of ‘reforms’ fed to it by the Powers. The outbreak of war immediately prompted a new phase of the crisis in London, as Disraeli fretted at Britain’s lack of involvement on the great stage, and Derby became ever more alarmed at the Premier’s wish to intervene. The Cabinet Battle At this point, both Derby and Disraeli, realising that each was immovable in their respective policies, increasingly sought support from other members of Cabinet. The Cabinet discussions from late April 1877 onwards have been described as a search for a policy, but it was really more a case of which policy to avoid. ‘We ought not to allow the matter simply to drift. We ought to have a policy’, mused Stafford Northcote, the Chancellor.122 Like all politicians who sit on the fence, Northcote has been justly labelled a weathervane figure, and here he blew with the Cabinet wind in expressing their discomfort at a lack of direction, torn between Disraeli’s increasing bellicosity on the one hand, and Derby’s cool intransigence on the other. The advance of war between Russia and Turkey presented the Cabinet of 21 April 1877 with the issue that threatened to split them into two opposing factions, and saw Derby set out the position to which he would adhere for the duration of the Eastern Crisis. The main question was ‘what ought to be done in the event of war being declared’ between Russia and Turkey.123 Derby took the opportunity to counter, for the first time in Cabinet, Disraeli’s view that Britain should act with troops in order to prevent a potential Russian occupation of Constantinople or Gallipoli. The action planned by the Premier included, at the very least, a seizure of Gallipoli with 20,000 men, backed by the fleet. At this point Disraeli could only rely on Lord John Manners, the Postmaster-General, and, suddenly, Lord Cairns, the Lord Chancellor.124 Disraeli’s excited claim that Constantinople faced Russian occupation within three months (an exaggeration disproved by Hardy, the War Secretary, on whose departmental briefing Disraeli’s claim was based) further

  Northcote in a draft letter to Disraeli, 21 April 1877, Iddesleigh Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 50018. Northcote’s final letter was toned down. 123   Vincent (ed.), DD, 21 April 1877, p. 391. 124   Vincent (ed.), DD, from 25 April to 28 April, pp. 393‒6, charts Cairns’ progression towards Disraeli’s views. See also Hardy’s diary, 29 April 1877, Johnson (ed.), GathorneHardy Diaries, p. 319: ‘Cairns took a very decided part & evidently surprised many.’ 122

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weakened the case for bellicosity.125 The Indian Secretary Lord Salisbury, on the other hand, with a ‘miserable’ Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary and one of the more Russophil members of the Cabinet, argued strongly against helping Turkey in any way.126 Derby warned against military action beyond a naval demonstration and in doing so informed the Cabinet of his fixed position – that any occupation of Turkish territory by British forces was necessarily inconsistent with neutrality … if we went with the sanction of the Porte … we became allies of Turkey and were at war with Russia: if on the other hand we seized and held a position on Turkish soil without leave asked we were either making war on the Porte, or committing an act of mere buccaneering: in either case, we were giving the signal for a general scramble: which is not our policy.127

In this he was supported by Northcote, who wrote anxiously to the Prime Minister: ‘We must declare ourselves neutrals; and being neutrals I do not see how we can, either forcibly or by consent, take upon ourselves to occupy any portion of Turkish territory without a breach of neutrality.’128 For Derby, it finally became apparent that the course of events could put him ‘on the side of Salisbury & Co. against Disraeli. Hitherto I have always tried to keep the balance’.129 The basis of Britain’s policy towards the war, conditional neutrality, was first proposed by Derby to the Cabinet on 29 April 1877. Derby’s ‘May despatch’ (to Shuvalov), as it became known, warned Russia off Egypt, Suez and Constantinople in a ‘spirited, and though courteous, and even conciliatory, most decided and unmistakeable’ manner, according to Disraeli’s commentary to the Queen.130 Amongst other members of the Cabinet, we find Hardy approving of the document: ‘Derby sends a draft of his proposed announcement of our policy … wh. I like well.’131 Significantly, the despatch was devoid of Disraelian language. It declared that ‘Her Majesty’s Government are not prepared to witness with indifference the passing [of Constantinople] into other hands than those of its present possessors’.132 It did not set out a casus belli.

  Vincent (ed.), DD, 21 April 1877, p. 392; Disraeli to Gathorne-Hardy, 17 April 1877, Gathorne-Hardy Papers, Suffolk Record Office, T501/266 HA43, unfoliated. 126   Vincent (ed.), DD, 18 April 1877, p. 391. 127   Vincent (ed.), DD, 21 April 1877, p. 392. 128   Northcote to Disraeli, 21 April 1877, Iddesleigh Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 50018, fols 22‒4. 129   Vincent (ed.), DD, 21 April 1877, p. 392. 130   Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 5 May 1877, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 135. 131   5 May 1877, Johnson (ed.), Gathorne-Hardy Diaries, p. 320. 132   Derby to Shuvalov, 6 May 1877, Foreign Office Confidential Print, The National Archive, FO 881/3171. 125

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Disraeli’s correspondence immediately after the Cabinet’s agreement to Derby’s despatch shows his immense disappointment with the lack of any further move. He had again tried to impress upon his colleagues the possibility of a British occupation of Gallipoli and Constantinople, which was deftly ignored.133 Derby blamed his mood as much on the gout, but it was clear that Disraeli’s desire for action could not be long suppressed.134 He had hoped instead to make bolder moves, such as strengthening the Navy and occupying Gallipoli, plans that he reluctantly agreed to shelve after the Cabinet agreed to the statement of conditional neutrality. The question of a potential expedition either to the Dardanelles or Constantinople continued to be raised throughout the Russo-Turkish war, and remained the most divisive issue facing the Cabinet until the spring of 1878. Russia’s answer to Derby’s May despatch, given by Shuvalov on 8 June, was largely satisfactory and agreed to every point, including the fact that there would not be a permanent occupation of Constantinople. But it made no mention of a temporary occupation of the city, and so discussion inevitably turned again to preparations for such an eventuality. Disraeli’s ‘determination that for the sake of appearances something must be done’ meant that Cabinet unity was still regularly in danger.135 The following five months were, on balance, a success for Derby. But while he remained able to frustrate Disraeli’s wild policies in Cabinet, he was losing the more significant battle, that conducted outside Cabinet, of which he was dangerously unaware. July to December 1877 were unexpectedly quiet months due to a combination of strong Turkish resistance against Russia, the end of the political session, and general public apathy. Disraeli’s mind, however, was ‘constantly shifting’ towards ever more aggressive suggestions, and Derby became suspicious of an accord between him and the Queen, who now began to call for Derby’s removal.136 It was now that Derby reverted to his favoured policy of what Lord Carnarvon described as ‘wetblanketting’, a means of frustrating what he saw as the Premier’s increasingly flammable proposals.137 Almost every Cabinet in the second half of 1877 saw Disraeli’s ideas of military intervention raised in a new form, and each time Derby tried to counter it with ever more ‘savage and sullen expressions’.138 He now believed that Disraeli’s ‘spirited’ policy would be seen as deliberate provocation by Russia (which in fact it was), and lead to a repeat of the Crimean War. The only comfort Derby could have was the fundamental weakness of Russia. As he explained to Salisbury, he did not particularly mind about a Russo-Turkish war; Russia would be ‘crippled 133   Queen Victoria to Disraeli, 1 May 1877, with a note by Rowton, dating from 1886, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/Co/123. 134   See, e.g., Vincent (ed.), DD, 23 and 26 May 1877, pp. 402, 403. 135   Vincent (ed.), DD, 28 July 1877, p. 423. 136   Vincent (ed.), DD, 4 July 1877, p. 415. 137   Carnarvon Diary, 13 March 1877, Carnarvon Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 60910. 138   Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 29 July 1877, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 158.

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(as, whoever wins, Russia would be for some time)’.139 Derby consoled himself with the ‘desperate state of their [Russian] finance’ and tried repeatedly to impress the same feelings on his colleagues: the Russian fleet, especially in the Black Sea, ‘does not exist’, and, more importantly, ‘what men or money could Russia spare for a campaign against India, if engaged in an invasion of Turkey?’140 The question that proved most vexatious, and forced Derby to move with his ‘resignation in [his] hands’, was what to do if Russia entered Constantinople. Disraeli misleadingly told Queen Victoria, who was by now even more belligerent than the Premier, that the Cabinet had unanimously agreed to ‘declare war against Russia’, when in fact Derby ensured that no such constraint was accepted.141 The more warlike Disraeli became, the more Derby retreated into the safety of isolation and non-intervention, as a means of defence. Disraeli stood prepared to ‘go to war without an ally’ and, according to Derby, sincerely believing that it would be better to risk this ‘great war, & to spend £100,000,000 upon it, than not to appear to have had a large share in the decision come to when peace is made’.142 Derby could not understand his friend: ‘I do not think prestige worth buying so dear’.143 Disraeli’s position simply was ‘not a very intelligible one: as long as our own interests are not touched, why should not foreigners settle their own affairs in their own way?’144 The result of their respective inflexibility and lack of mutual understanding was a polarisation which only further exasperated their colleagues. No longer was Derby seen as the pragmatic conciliator. Forced to rely mainly on his fellow peers Lord Salisbury and Lord Carnarvon for support, Derby necessarily surrendered the middle ground and left himself in danger of isolation. In fact it was Derby’s political manner, as much as his policy, which increasingly alienated his colleagues. Every time Disraeli came up with a new plan Derby would play for time until the frustrated Premier’s mind wandered onto a new idea. His plan worked, but the tactic of ‘wet-blanketting’ also frustrated potential Cabinet allies. It could just as easily be called ‘palavering’, and left others, such as Hardy, ‘afraid of drifting at a time when steerage might though

  Derby to Salisbury, 28 November 1876, Hatfield Archive, Letters from 15th Earl of Derby to Salisbury, fol. 52. 140   Vincent (ed.), DD, 15 December 1876, p. 352; ibid., 1 June 1876, p. 300; ibid., 23 November 1876, p. 346. 141   Vincent (ed.), DD, 31 July 1877, p. 426; Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 22 July 1877, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 155. Disraeli also told the Queen, mistakenly, that Salisbury was also in favour of declaring war. Even the Queen knew this was not the case. Millman follows Disraeli’s line and thus marks Salisbury as being in favour of war far earlier then he really ever was. 142   Vincent (ed.), DD, 21 July 1877, p. 422 (Derby reporting Disraeli’s words, not just an observation). 143   Vincent (ed.), DD, 14 August 1877, p. 432. 144   Vincent (ed.), DD, 2 August 1877, p. 427. 139

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difficult be possible’.145 Anxious as Derby was about the ‘war fever’ increasingly getting hold of his colleagues, he spent too little time winning them over through the summer and autumn of 1877. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, was as vigorous in his search for allies as he was in his search for a belligerent policy, and he began to create a network of which Derby knew painfully little. Disraeli’s most audacious secret negotiations resulted in an ‘understanding’ with Austria – one that was in reality non-existent, but nevertheless held out enough hope in Disraeli’s mind to satisfy the romantic gestures history has come to call ‘Beaconsfieldism’. It seems Disraeli used his private secretary, Montagu Corry, to begin negotiations with Count Montgelas of the Austrian Embassy, with a view to reaching his own agreement with the Austrians. After some hesitation Corry and Montgelas managed to arrange a private meeting between Count Beust, the Austrian ambassador in London, and Disraeli himself in June 1877. The following month, after Montgelas’ private meetings with Andrássy in Vienna, Disraeli heard through Corry that Britain could, in Andrássy’s opinion, ‘shape her line of policy independently from ours with the knowledge that in certain eventualities which it lies in her power to provoke, we will come in’.146 According to Andrássy, Britain should object, with force, to Russia holding Constantinople. If this were to trigger a Russian occupation of the whole of Bulgaria (a big ‘if’) then Austria would join Britain, and Russia would be caught in a trap. Did Disraeli at last have his grand alliance? It all seemed too good to be true, and it was, for two reasons. First, Andrássy used Montgelas to try and dispel any ideas that Russia and Austria already had a secret understanding (which of course they did). Secondly, Andrássy was not about to sacrifice his country’s essential security and interests, as guaranteed by the Dreikaiserbund, for an alliance with England (what use would the Royal Navy be in defence of Austria’s borders?). He therefore insisted ‘that nothing should be known of an understanding [between Britain and Austria], or rather that an understanding should not exist’.147 This was exactly the sort of arrangement that Derby would have dismissed as a ‘canard’ (he had long suspected the secret Reichstadt deal between Russia and Austria, to ‘divide the plunder between them’).148 Andrássy already had his diplomatic cake – and now he wanted to eat it. Amazingly Disraeli let him. He clung doggedly to this version of his long-desired Austrian alliance. But the need for secrecy meant that he could only alarm the Cabinet by continuing to talk of fighting without any allies. He had therefore pushed British policy far beyond any limits that Derby, and the Cabinet, would have permitted, in a desperate attempt to break up the 145   Montgelas to Corry, 11 July 1877, Dep. Hughenden, B/XVI/C/181; GathorneHardy to Disraeli, 28 November 1877, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/H/148. 146   Author’s emphasis; Montgelas to Corry, 22 July 1877, Dep. Hughenden, B/ XVI/C/185. 147   Montgelas to Corry, 22 July 1877, Dep. Hughenden, B/XVI/C/185. 148   Vincent (ed.), DD, 26 January 1877, p. 372.

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Dreikaiserbund. All Disraeli got was a vague, verbal, half-promise from Andrássy, which only succeeded in encouraging his recklessness. Another of the Prime Minister’s clandestine operations involved the new ambassador in Constantinople, Austen Layard, the famous excavator of Nineveh. ‘The thing is ‒’, Disraeli urged Layard in a secret letter sent without the knowledge of the Cabinet or Foreign Office, ‘to secure another campaign, or rather the necessity for one.’149 He believed he could make a second Russian campaign a British ‘casus belli’. ‘If there is a “second campaign” I have the greatest hopes this country will interfere & pronounce its veto against a war of extermination, & the dark designs of a secret partition from wh: the spirit of the 19th Century recoils.’150 Disraeli’s highly unusual suggestion to Layard should be seen in light of his simultaneously sending, in August 1877, the Hon. Frederick Wellesley, a noted rogue, to St Petersburg with a bellicose warning for the Tsar of Britain’s intentions. The message was secret, and again bypassed both Derby and the Cabinet, not to mention all the usual ambassadorial channels. Wellesley was to tell the Tsar that England would be ‘forced to take her place as a belligerent’ in the event of a second campaign against Turkey.151 Buckle argues that the ‘abnormal’ reluctance of Derby to commit to a decided policy forced Disraeli to send Wellesley on his unprecedented mission. But Buckle does not mention, of course, Disraeli’s attempt, via Layard, to ensure that just such a second campaign would happen, by supporting Turkey. As it happened Derby ensured that Wellesley’s threat was never seriously entertained, but the episode stands as one of the odder examples of Disraeli’s belligerence, and the first occasion in British history that a Prime Minister had espoused the policy of time-limited neutrality. Irrespective of all Disraeli’s actions behind his back, Derby believed by November 1877 that it was doubtful ‘whether we can get through the winter together’.152 Disraeli’s language was growing ever more alarming, and his position was ‘constantly shifting’.153 By December 1877 the Russo-Turkish war was on a knife-edge, and in London the solution to the Eastern Question now hinged on the question of the second Russian campaign, the Russians having met with dogged Turkish resistance and making little progress over the Balkan mountains. December 1877 can be seen as the critical month in which the majority of the Cabinet finally aligned itself against Derby. Disraeli, emboldened by the fall of Plevna, a key Turkish fortification, now launched a new strategy to undermine Derby and stepped up his attempts to win support in the Cabinet. Both Derby and Disraeli had tried with varying degrees of success to sway their Cabinet colleagues, and by December 1877 Disraeli seemed to be gaining the upper hand. But Lord Salisbury, already then a powerful figure, still seemed to     151   152   153   149 150

Disraeli to Layard, 6 August 1877, Layard Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 39136. Ibid. Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 173. Vincent (ed.), DD, 27 November 1877, p. 457. Vincent (ed.), DD, 24 November 1877, p. 456.

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support Derby, and it became evident that he could tip the balance. He had so far refused to come out in Disraeli’s favour. Indeed, according to Northcote he would have resigned with Derby in December, but showed signs of vacillating.154 It so happened that in the Christmas of 1877 both Derby and Disraeli made renewed overtures to Salisbury, and their contrasting techniques say much about the differences between the two men. First Derby wrote Salisbury a long and detailed letter in what was for him a rare attempt to garner political support, though as ever it was only with maintaining peace in mind. The letter attempted to play on the lingering fear of Disraeli’s ambitions that remained in Cabinet. He wrote on 23 December to Salisbury, highlighting his uneasiness about the Premier’s plans for military intervention: I know our chief of old, and from various things that have dropped from him I am fully convinced – not indeed that he wishes for war, but that he has made up his mind to large military preparations, to an extremely warlike [Queen’s] speech, to an agitation in favour of armed intervention (recollect what he said in Cabinet ‘The Country is asleep & I intend to wake it’) and if possible to an expedition that shall occupy Constantinople or Gallipoli. Now I am not inclined to any of these things, and I believe others amongst us are not so either; but if we don’t take care we shall find ourselves, as you said last week about the Vote of Credit, ‘on a slippery incline’: each step will make another necessary, and in the end we may find ourselves in a position which none of us either expected or would have accepted beforehand … . We are in real danger, and it is impossible to be too careful. I write without any more specific object than that of general warning: but I know what the pressure of the court is on our chief. I am convinced that the Queen has satisfied herself that she will have her way (it is not disguised that she wishes for war): and the conviction is universal among the diplomatists that the Premier will leave no stone unturned to accomplish their purpose.155

The letter embodies the very essence of a Conservative ‘tradition’ in foreign policy which had for so long been accepted by the party, and which came to be eclipsed by the garish purple of Disraeli’s alternative strategy. It is the most simplistic statement of the assumptions, held by both Derby and Salisbury, that military intervention in foreign countries and wars was to the detriment of Britain’s longterm economic and strategic strength. It was the policy Salisbury was to refer to, with the odd genuflection to Beaconsfieldism, throughout his subsequent career as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. As he read Derby’s letter he had two alternatives: to be swayed either by the argument of policy in which he inherently agreed, or the argument of personality against a man he had never really liked   Northcote to Disraeli, 17 December 1877, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/N/46.   Derby to Salisbury, 23 December 1877, Hatfield Archive, Letters from 15th Earl

154 155

of Derby to Salisbury, fol. 95.

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(and who, for what it is worth, had married his stepmother, Mary, in questionable circumstances). He chose the latter. Disraeli’s letter was a devastating mixture of intrigue against Derby and flattery to Salisbury. What he did not mention, by contrast to Derby, was any argument about actual policy. Disraeli began by admitting Salisbury into his and the Queen’s strictest confidence by recounting Wellesley’s secret mission to the Tsar. But Disraeli’s main focus lay on the question of the recent and troubling leaks of Cabinet decisions, apparently to the Russian ambassador Shuvalov; what he called the ‘evil’ of ‘every resolution of every council … regularly reported by Count Schouvaloff [sic]’. He then dropped his bombshell by referring to ‘the great culprit’ behind the leaks, who was none other than Derby’s wife. Mary Derby, a shrewd, intelligent woman who was in many ways a frustrated politician, had become well known amongst the Cabinet for her busy letters asking for information about foreign policy, which she had once earlier (before the Russo-Turkish war began and in a letter to Salisbury) admitted that she shared with Shuvalov.156 The evidence shows that Mary did seek Cabinet information, but also that she went to great lengths to conceal this from her husband, sometimes using his private secretary, Thomas Sanderson, or even opening Derby’s despatch boxes herself, to gain information.157 But it is also plainly obvious that the limited ‘secrets’ she did learn, and perhaps passed on to Shuvalov, were nothing more than he could have read in the press or discerned from society gossip. Nevertheless, Disraeli concluded his letter by saying We must put an end to mischievous gossip about war parties & peace parties in the Cabinet & we must come to decisions which may be, & will be, betrayed, but which may convince Russia that we are agreed and determined. You & I must go into the depth of the affair, & settle what we are prepared to do – I dare say, we shall not differ when we talk over the matter together … but unless we make an effort to clear ourselves from the Canidian spells environing us, we shall make shipwreck alike of our reputations, & the interests of our country.158

The contrast between high politics and low politics in these two letters is one that would, in the end, guarantee Disraeli’s triumph. Salisbury could not have missed the reference to the word ‘reputation’, but likewise, could he really have taken seriously a condemnation of gossip by the man well known for his indiscreet 156   Mary Derby to Salisbury, 9 March 1877, Hatfield Archive, Letters from Mary Derby to Salisbury, fol. 38. 157   Mary Derby to Carnarvon, 23 January 1878, Carnarvon Papers, BL Add. Mss. 60966A, fol. 155. 158   Disraeli to Salisbury, 25 December 1877, Hatfield Archive, Letters From Disraeli, fol. 265. Reproduced in Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 210, but without the reference to Salisbury’s wife admonishing the ‘great culprit’ Mary Derby; see also Millman, Eastern Crisis, p. 348.

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conversation with Ladies Bradford and Chesterfield, and who coined a famous story about there being ‘six parties’ in the Cabinet variously in favour of war or peace? The cloud of suspicion discrediting Derby did not just influence Salisbury, but had the same effect on society and the Cabinet. The news was, by January, being spread by the ‘wire-pullers of the Carlton’, and thus throughout the Conservative Party.159 By February 1878 many were ‘furious against him [Derby]’.160 This was vitally important for Disraeli, for it was the area where his and Derby’s support were respectively at their weakest and strongest. There is no evidence that implicates Disraeli in mobilising the larger campaign against Derby by Jingo Tory foot soldiers – but this he never had to do. He could secure his objectives by consorting with just a handful of people, among them Salisbury, Corry and Queen Victoria. Thus, in such inglorious circumstances, did Derby’s reputation amongst his Cabinet colleagues collapse so suddenly around him. Whilst such rumours weakened Derby at home, Disraeli continued to undermine Derby abroad. It is evident that Disraeli established a secret, and damaging, discourse directly with Turkey during the most crucial period of the crisis. During early Russo-Turkish armistice negotiations Corry became a personal envoy to ‘our friends the Turks’, as Disraeli called them.161 At a meeting with the Turkish ambassador, Musurus, on 30 December 1877, the Turk assured Corry that ‘it was the resolve of the Turkish government to act, if possible’ on the advice of their most important ally in Europe: Disraeli.162 Corry hinted at Cabinet changes, and advised Musurus to urge Turkey ‘not to hurry – but to wait … it would be folly, on the eve of that event, for Turkey to discard the friendship of this country, however dissatisfied with its present evidence’.163 The Porte, however, was baffled by wildly different signals from London, and could only throw its hands up in amazement and ask, ‘How did Lord B reconcile the existing attitude of H.M. Govt, as explained … by Lord D, with his own confidential negotiation …?’164 It was a question that must have been asked many times in all the major capitals of Europe, as the divide between Derby and Disraeli became ever more apparent. Unfortunately, severe illness was the next blow to befall Derby, leaving him incapacitated for almost two weeks in January, unable to see ambassadors, or, crucially, attend Cabinets to keep Disraeli in check. ‘Ld D was decidedly very

  Carnarvon diary notes for resignation memorandum, citing diary for June 1877, Carnarvon Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 60817, where he first noted ‘personal attacks upon particular individuals such as Derby’. 160   Carnarvon Diary, 13 February 1878, Carnarvon Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 60911. 161   Disraeli to Corry, 6 October 1877, Dep. Hughenden, B/XVI/B/6. 162   Corry to Disraeli, 30 December 1877, Dep. Hughenden, B/XVI/B/35. 163   Author’s emphasis. Corry Memorandum, 7 January 1878, Dep. Hughenden, B/ XVI/B/36. 164   Corry memorandum, 7 January 1878 Dep. Hughenden, B/XVI/B/36. 159

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poorly’, wrote Mary Derby, ‘shivery and altogether wrong.’165 Derby endured far more than physical pain. His reputation suffered too, thanks to the rumours, which, according to Carnarvon, were ‘immediately set in circulation in the Carlton, and thence carefully disseminated through every drawing room in London, that he was suffering from drink’.166 The more scurrilous London journals alluded strongly to the stories. Vanity Fair parodied Derby’s likely appearance, with his ‘hair dishevelled, and the pallour of consternation on his cheek’, while the scandalous Truth referred to him as ‘a muddled dolt’.167 In 1880 Salisbury twisted the knife by telling his nephew Arthur Balfour, that ‘Lord Derby, between overwork, alcohol, and responsibility, [was] in a condition of utter moral prostration’.168 And yet, detailed notes in Derby’s diary as to his symptoms, and a lack of any substantial contemporaneous evidence linking Derby with drink problems, point instead to a recurrence of the gastric flu circulating at this time (both Carnarvon and Corry got it, and Hardy was ‘in perpetual fear of sickness’). It was a complaint to which Derby was particularly sensitive, as the symptoms dogged him throughout his life, and may even have led to his death at 67.169 An attack had most recently occurred in August 1877 (when ‘he felt as if he had ‘swallowed a cannon ball’), and now struck harder: ‘I do not think I have ever suffered so severely, as far as mere bodily pain is concerned.’170 Disraeli was thoroughly aware of the possibilities brought on by Derby’s temporary absence. So too was Corry: ‘I met Beust at dinner’, he told Disraeli, ‘he has been told that Lord Derby will not be well enough to see him for some days! So I invited him to call on you tomorrow.’171 The Premier, desperate as ever to secure demonstrable Austrian assistance against Russia, did not waste time in resuming his confidential liaison with the Austrian Embassy – only now, with Derby ill, he had more freedom of action. The measures proposed included Britain financing a mobilisation of the Austrian army, the fleet going to Constantinople, and an ‘identic’ note to Russia. Disraeli informed Beust that the ‘Government will adopt these measures, and if Lord Derby cannot approve them, he must at once resign’.172 In fact, news came on 23 January that Andrássy rejected the identic note, and Disraeli’s idea of a subsidy. To Disraeli, however, the rejection meant only that     167   168   169   165

Mary Derby to Sanderson, 9 January 1878, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15), unfoliated. Carnarvon resignation memorandum, Carnarvon Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 60817. Vanity Fair, 16 February 1878; Truth, 31 January 1878. Balfour memorandum, 8 May 1880, Balfour Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 49688, fol. 26. J.R. Vincent (ed.), The Later Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826‒1893) between 1878 & 1893 (Oxford, 2003), 1893, passim. Perhaps it was some form of stomach ulcer, diverticulitis, or a recurrence of the long-threatened kidney failure. 170   Mary Derby to Sanderson, 17 August 1877, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15), unfoliated; Vincent (ed.), DD, 14 January 1878, p. 483. 171   Corry to Disraeli, 14 January 1878, Dep. Hughenden, B/XVI/B/38. 172   Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 21 January 1878, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 227. 166

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Austria was seeking some gesture of military courtship, that is, the measures necessary to ‘provoke’ a split between Russia and Britain which Andrássy had communicated secretly via Corry before. Disraeli suddenly believed, therefore, that he could not only appeal to Andrássy with a bold military move, but at the same time put into action a plan to oust his Foreign Secretary. And so in a Cabinet summoned at short notice for 5pm on 23 January Disraeli opened with a lengthy speech in favour of sending the British fleet up to Constantinople. The trick worked, but only partly. Sending the fleet was enough to force Derby’s departure – it was a menacing action of the kind he had fought against for the previous year. Furthermore, though prepared to act with Austria diplomatically, he did not want an Austrian military alliance.173 Not the least of his reasons was a (correct) suspicion that Austria wanted Britain to do her dirty work for her, by warning Russia away from Constantinople but at the same time abiding by the terms of the secret Reichstadt Agreement.174 Thus the Foreign Secretary got up from the Cabinet table and ‘made it clear that my resignation must follow’.175 In the Cabinet room Derby’s resignation was undoubtedly something of an anti-climax (as was Carnarvon’s, presented at the same time), but beyond Downing Street it proved a different story. On 24 January Layard at last learnt details, from Turkish sources, of the peace negotiations at San Stefano, not the least of which was the agreement by Russia to settle the Straits question by European Congress. It seemed that the terms were ‘at first sight not excessive’ and would be accepted by the Sultan, who refused to accept the British fleet in Turkish waters. ‘In that case’, Derby noted, ‘all this trouble of the last few days has been taken for nothing.’176 So ‘the Chancellor of the Exchequer & Ld. Chancellor & Ld B[Disraeli] sent telegrams flying everywhere to stop [the Fleet]’, and Admiral Hornby’s ships, which had not got far, sailed slowly back to Besika Bay.177 Layard, furious that ‘the bellicose mood did not last long in London’ complained that ‘we are taunted with cowardice & are a public laughing stock’.178 And still, to Disraeli’s dismay, Andrássy remained silent. It is almost impossible to understand why Disraeli   Vincent (ed.), DD, 28 December 1877, pp. 472‒3.   ‘The object of the Austrian govmt appears to be to induce us to make a naval

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demonstration, by way of showing the Russians that we are in earnest. But they neither take, nor propose to take, any similar step on their side … there is something suspicious in the way in which he urges us to come to the front, while doing nothing himself.’ Vincent (ed.), DD, 19 January 1878, p. 486. Russia and Austria had of course agreed to a Turkish carve-up at Reichstadt. 175   Vincent (ed.), DD, 23 January 1878, p. 490. 176   Vincent (ed.), DD, 24 January 1878, p. 491. 177   Mary Derby to Carnarvon, 25 January 1878, Carnarvon Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 60966A, fol. 159. 178   Layard to Admiral Hornby, 24 January 1878 (copy), Layard Papers, BL, Add. Mss. 39136.

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never saw through Andrássy, or appreciated that British and Austrian interests in the Balkans were on so many levels fundamentally different. In London the mood was not so much one of mirth, but of panic. Northcote and Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty, hurried up to Downing Street, where they found Disraeli in bed, and pleaded with him to reconsider the decision on the fleet. They also had to reconsider what to do about Derby; the government would be even more of a laughing stock if the Foreign Secretary had resigned for no reason. The issue became all the more pressing when Hart-Dyke, the Chief Whip, reported that the ‘commercial element [of the party]’, not to mention the Lancashire and Cheshire members, ‘was thoroughly alarmed’ at news of Derby’s resignation.179 Northcote shared these fears, and added the news that ‘the Home Rulers [who numbered about 50 MPs], I am also told, have held a meeting and resolved to go as a body against us’. If the government went ahead with Disraeli’s plans, Northcote warned, it ‘must be prepared for a possible overthrow’.180 It appeared Disraeli had underestimated Derby’s political strength in the country at large, which, for now, persisted despite the Premier’s best efforts. On 25 January Derby realised that Disraeli had not formally accepted his resignation, and he sent Sanderson to 10 Downing Street ‘with a paper, as a pretext for any communication which the Premier might wish to make’.181 But Disraeli evaded the issue; plan A had failed, and there was no plan B. The Foreign Secretary would have to come back. Derby’s return to the Cabinet was, as Disraeli noted, a ‘pyrrhic victory’ for the Foreign Secretary.182 But it was a personal defeat for Disraeli, who had to write an obsequious letter (‘Most beloved Sovereign’) to the Queen telling her the bad news. Disraeli’s reasoning tells us that Derby still held significant support outside London, out of the reach of the rumours in Society: ‘the retirement of Lord Derby is producing disastrous results on the Conservative party … A general disintegration is taking place … All the Lancashire members, and others who represent the chief seats of manufacturers and commerce, cannot any longer be relied on’.183 The long-term political victory, though, was in fact the Prime Minister’s, for he had shown that he could quite easily succeed in securing Derby’s resignation whenever it suited him, merely by proposing an aggressive plan that he knew Derby would not approve. It was simply a question of waiting for the appropriate turn of events in the East. From early February to late April the question of war and peace in Europe hung precariously in the balance, and was argued over by just a handful of leading men. In London, disagreements continued as much as they had done before, only now the Cabinet’s job was made almost impossible by rumours and broken telegrams. ‘There is in all these proceedings’, Derby wrote, ‘a certain risk of collision …     181   182   183   179 180

Charmley, Splendid Isolation?, p. 124. Northcote to Disraeli, 25 January 1878, Dep. Hughenden, B/XX/N/62. Vincent (ed.), DD, 25 January 1878, p. 491. Disraeli to Salisbury, 27 January 1878, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 236. Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 26 January 1878, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, pp. 233‒4.

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which may at any moment lead to war’, and he was right, for the Tsar, regarding the despatch of the Fleet as a simple provocation, on several occasions came close to entering Constantinople simply to pre-empt the British.184 In a sense, the two months between Derby’s first and second resignations act as a mere postscript to his spell as Foreign Secretary. It should be noted, however, that there seems to be no evidence to back up the legendary claim that ‘Control [of foreign policy] fell into the hands of a committee of three, Disraeli, Cairns and Salisbury’, and that ‘Derby signed papers in a curiously detached way almost as if he were a clerk’.185 Certainly, Salisbury, Cairns and Disraeli may have met privately to determine their own favoured policy, but this was in opposition to Derby, not in place of him. Derby’s very return to Cabinet – not to mention his support in the party, his despatches, his diary entries relating to Foreign Office business, the records of Shuvalov, and the complaints by Disraeli that the Foreign Office despatches did not reflect the wishes of the Cabinet – makes a nonsense of such a scenario.186 Derby’s only remaining tactic in restraining Disraeli was to play for time, which, as a comment by Shuvalov shows, was the best remaining chance for peace: ‘Gagner un jour, une heure, c’est peut-etre prévenir la rupture entre les deux pays.’187 The threat of further bellicose action by the Cabinet was constant, and Derby continued to win compromises and act as a brake on Disraeli’s proposals. But as his diaries show, the Foreign Secretary did not propose sufficient alternatives to his colleagues’ suggestions (always difficult for a non-interventionist), and accordingly their frustration at his lack of ‘action’ grew at every Cabinet. Derby’s strength of purpose and resolve in these crucial weeks was maintained in part by Disraeli’s attitude: ‘I go to these [Cabinet] meetings with the constant expectation of having some wild scheme to resist.’188 On 11 February Derby found the Prime Minister excited and ‘inclined to swagger, saying war was unavoidable: it would last three years: it would be a glorious and successful war for England’. He was ‘disgusted’ with Disraeli’s ‘reckless way of talking, and evident enjoyment of an exciting episode of history, with which his name was to be joined’.189 Of course, such talk may have been a deliberate attempt on Disraeli’s part to frighten his recalcitrant Foreign Secretary into resignation. But a similar tone can be found almost everywhere in the surviving correspondence, from Disraeli’s assertions to the Queen that war was inevitable to his repeated calculations of troop deployments.   Vincent (ed.), DD, 15 February 1878, p. 508.   Blake, Disraeli, p. 638. Blake’s observation about Derby’s cursory signing

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of despatches is probably derived from Derby’s extraordinary workload at this time; in February he received up to sixteen boxes a day. 186   See, e.g., Disraeli to Derby, 28 February 1878, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3. 187   ‘To win one day, one hour, will perhaps prevent the rupture between the two countries.’ B.H. Sumner, Surveys of Russian History (London, 1944), p. 380. 188   Vincent (ed.), DD, 6 February 1878, p. 501. 189   Vincent (ed.), DD, 11 February 1878, p. 505.

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At times, Disraeli seemed almost delusional. He claimed, to Derby, to have a copy of a secret Russian telegram to Shuvalov which said: ‘Delegates have not signed [the preliminary peace treaty]: we are in full march of Constantinople and only 40 versts distant.’190 Such a telegram never existed (and if Disraeli really did have such a thing it was fake).191 So events continued, with each piece of excitable news from Constantinople quietly suffocated by Derby’s patient diplomacy, and potentially offending gestures delayed until they presented little or no danger. The threat of war seemed to recede when Russia announced its formal peace with Turkey, the Treaty of San Stefano, on 3 March, a date deliberately chosen as the anniversary of the Tsar’s accession during the disasters of the Crimean War. But still Disraeli yearned for a greater British role, and began to focus instead on the prospect of occupying a Mediterranean island, as a ‘material guarantee’ against Russia’s occupation of Constantinople. Disraeli found that while Derby strenuously objected, the remainder of the Cabinet appeared at least to tolerate the idea.192 And so the beauty of the ‘island scheme’ was that it could, at last, remove Derby. Disraeli knew this, and it was merely a question, as he told the Queen, of waiting until the measures were ‘sufficiently matured to be introduced to the consideration of the Cabinet’.193 That moment came amidst reports that Russia would not consent to the entirety of San Stefano coming under discussion at the proposed European conference in Berlin. Disraeli refused to tolerate anything other than the option of being able to alter every clause of the Russo-Turkish treaty, and again raised the stakes. Derby’s record of the Cabinet meeting of 27 March strongly suggests that the occasion was arranged to force his departure. Disraeli began with a condemnation of the policy of ‘drifting’, saying that it had lessened our influence, and caused our power not to be believed in … He proposed to issue a proclamation declaring emergency, to put a force in the field and simultaneously to send an expedition from India to occupy Cyprus and Scanderoon. Thus the effects of the Armenian conquest would be neutralised, the influence of England in the Persian Gulf would be maintained, and we should hold ports which are the keys of Asia.194

The flamboyant language was vintage Disraeli, focusing on prestige and perceptions of power. Armenia had never before been declared to be an area of   Disraeli to Derby, 1 February 1878, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15) 16/2/3.   Richard George Weeks Jr., ‘Peter Andreevich Shuvalov: Russian Statesman’,

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unpublished University of Minnesota PhD thesis, 1977, p. 325. 192   In mid-February Derby alone ‘resisted the various schemes suggested to the best of my power, but without effect … [and] went back to the office ill-pleased and despondent’, Vincent (ed.), DD, 14 February 1878, pp. 507‒8. 193   Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 6 March 1878, Buckle, Disraeli, vol. 6, p. 254. 194   Vincent (ed.), DD, 27 March 1878, p. 532.

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British interest during the Crisis, and one is reminded of Salisbury’s warning about small-scale maps.195 Cyprus had been hurriedly chosen after Mytilene, the previous choice, was found to have a large rock in the harbour. Derby, who the previous weekend had written that he ‘heartily desire[d]’ to leave government, now had little choice but to make it clear ‘that my resignation was to follow’.196 This time he resigned for good, and it again seemed war was possible. In London the Cabinet’s military decision was announced; in St Petersburg the Tsar ordered the occupation of Turkish forts over the Bosphorus overlooking Constantinople.197 Ultimately, peace was ensured largely because the Russian general staff in Turkey was unwilling and unable to comply with the bellicose and contradictory wishes of the Tsar, who by February 1878 had become convinced Britain would go to war, as she had in 1854. Too often, historians of the crisis ignore the critical situation on the front line in Turkey, and assume that peace was maintained because of Disraeli’s firm policy – the opposite was very nearly the case. The argument can easily be made that peace was secured primarily because of Derby’s desperate restraint. One of the key assumptions that drove Derby’s policy over the final six months of the Eastern Crisis was that war with Russia was the likely outcome, even intention, of Disraeli’s policy. This is something the historian of the Eastern Crisis can never conclusively prove. If Derby was wrong and had misinterpreted Disraeli’s flamboyant political manner, then he was guilty of dilation, over-caution, and a lack of initiative. But there is substantial evidence, much of it new and thus missed (or omitted) by Disraeli’s earlier biographers, to suggest that Disraeli was entirely prepared to enter a war with Russia in order to achieve his aims, and, to judge from his intensive interest in military preparations and his repeated statements, that he considered war as inevitable. Given his almost continuous presentation of a series of provocations to Russia in early 1878, he may even have wished for it. Derby’s actions seem perfectly explicable if one accepts, as he certainly did, that Disraeli was happy to risk a collision with Russia. Furthermore, the suggestion that the government’s vacillating policy throughout the Eastern Crisis was a result of Derby’s weak character is simply not sustainable; the vacillating was in fact the result of Disraeli’s frustration with Derby’s stubborn adherence to the policy of conditional neutrality agreed in May 1877.

195   In the Lords, 11 June 1877: ‘I cannot help thinking that in discussions of this kind a great deal of misapprehension arises from the popular use of maps on a small scale. As with such maps you are able to put a thumb on India and a finger on Russia, some persons at once think that the political situation is alarming, and that India must be looked to. If the noble Lord would use a larger map ‒ say one on the scale of the Ordnance Map of England ‒ he would find that the distance between Russia and British India is not to be measured by the finger and thumb, but by a rule.’ Hansard, Third Series, vol. 234, col. 1565. 196   Vincent (ed.), DD, 24 March 1878, p. 530; ibid., 27 March 1878, p. 532. 197   Sumner, Surveys, pp. 393‒4.

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When examining ‘Disraeli’s foreign policy’ we need not to look at the actions of the governments in which he either led or played a leading role. From 1874 to late 1877 and, as Dr Hicks and Dr Hawkins have shown, during the fourteenth Earl of Derby’s administrations, foreign policy was consciously kept out of his grasp. To see Disraeli’s true foreign policy we have to look instead to the various ideas he initiated out of Derby’s sight in the closing stages of the Eastern Crisis, and the brief period after Derby’s second resignation (before Lord Salisbury asserted himself) when policy was at last controlled by the Prime Minister. Disraeli was driven by an artificially high concern for the effect of events on English power, which he measured largely in terms of short-term prestige and honour. The real Disraeli, therefore, thought nothing of contracting military alliances with other powers, of seizing territory from an Empire he claimed to uphold, or of launching unrealistic military expeditions – merely to take three examples – all without discussion amongst his colleagues. Derby was right to label Disraeli’s stream of ideas as ‘wild’ schemes.198 Any study of Derby’s foreign policy, on the other hand, is as much as anything a study in Derby’s failure as a politician. The ‘black legend’ that has governed Derby’s reputation in history was undeserved, and yet in whatever light one sees him one must conclude that he was an odd figure. His foreign policy occupied a pragmatic middle ground between the morality of Gladstonism and the primrosetinted vision of Beaconsfieldism. But, crucially, it lacked the popular allure of either. Derby had the misfortune to have a career in politics when the very definition of the term politician, and the practices of that trade, were changing. Derby was a man whose undoubted talents were unsuited to the period of history in which he found himself, and in some respects, therefore, it is hardly surprising that history has judged him so harshly.

  Vincent (ed.), DD, 6 February 1878, p. 501.

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Chapter 7

Crossing the Floor: Mary Derby, the Fifteenth Earl and the Liberals, 1878‒18821 Jennifer Davey

In 1878 Lord Derby resigned from Disraeli’s government; in 1882 he joined Gladstone’s, becoming the only man to hold office under both men. Despite this fact, and his long service as one of the leaders of the Conservative Party, he had all but vanished before Professor Vincent’s edition of his diaries. His wife, Mary Catherine Derby, has suffered the fate reserved for most aristocratic women: marginalisation and invisibility. In a volume which helps to resurrect Derby’s career, such neglect cannot be allowed to persist in the case of his wife, whose influence upon the demise of his career as a Conservative has already been noted elsewhere. It might be expected, given the recent revival of interest in aristocratic women as political hostesses, that there would be much to say about Lady Derby from this point of view, not least since, as the second wife of James GascoyneCecil, second Marquis of Salisbury,2 she had run one of the leading Conservative political salons of the day; but such expectations fail to survive acquaintanceship with her archive – and with the reality of her marriage to Derby. Reconstructing the political spaces occupied by female aristocrats cannot be done in the way perfected by historians for their spouses: women such as Lady Derby did not speak in the House, nor did they run great offices of State and thus leave a paper trail. Salons leave no written trace, neither do dinner parties, and the gossip over the tea cups is seldom recorded; neither are the reactions of up and coming young men upon receiving the coveted invitation to the Saturday evening salons. That is not to say there are no traces at all left, for political women also wrote letters; but it is to say that the traces are less, for families and archivists have been less careful about keeping correspondence from women. So, even for Lady Salisbury’s glittering salons, little survives beyond their reputation. But when Mary Catherine became the countess of Derby, the salons and parties more or less ceased. Unlike Salisbury, and very unlike his own father, Edward Derby hated spending money, and so his new wife had little hope of again running a political salon. When he was Foreign Secretary between 1874 and 1878, there were the 1   I am grateful to the Marquis of Salisbury for permission to quote from papers at Hatfield House. 2   Mary Derby, born in 1824, married the second Marquis of Salisbury in 1847. She was widowed in April 1868.

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inevitable grand social occasions, which he bore with resignation, but the Derbys’ marriage changed the circumstances of Mary’s engagement with politics. While the doors to her salon would never re-open, the Countess continued to play a role in political society and she achieved unwanted notoriety during the Eastern Crisis of 1875‒78. Derby’s resignation in the spring of 1878 saw both Earl and Countess without a political role. It very quickly became apparent that when Derby resigned ‘he did so without a master plan’.3 His wife had no master plan either. Mary Derby, being no partisan, was driven principally by a desire to maintain Knowsley’s political influence. This chapter, in exploring Mary’s role during the Earl’s conversion to Liberal politics, provides an example of how aristocratic women operated in, and were treated by, the political elite. The Countess’ political activities between 1878 and 1882 offer a useful antidote to the caricatured world of party-planning, mindless gossip and bed-hopping that aristocratic women have hitherto inhabited. Few historians have challenged this caricature. One who has, Kim Reynolds, has sought to move away from the divisions between the public and the private, the work and the home, the male and the female, that have come to define the discourse about the experience of nineteenth century females. Taking a more comprehensive approach, Reynolds adopts the model of ‘incorporation’ to characterise the activities of over forty aristocratic wives.4 The model, borrowed from feminist sociology, which argues that ‘in most societies … married women are in many ways asymmetrically drawn in to the social person of their husbands’, is used to support the notion that wifely influence was an integral feature of Victorian political society.5 The model presents a useful framework within which to assess and quantify wifely influence. However, imposing models upon the past can have a distorting effect. Incorporation recalls uncomfortably the glib remark that ‘behind every great man is a great woman’. The imagery of political wives being two or three steps behind their husband’s, latching on to the political agenda when and if they could, is unhelpful when assessing the political actions of Mary Derby in the years 1878‒82. However, Reynolds’ work does suggest the need to question a feature common to gender and political history, namely the tendency to focus on one sex at the expense of the other. Political historians generally treat male politicians as autonomous figures, with domestic arrangements and private relations confined to chapters on family and home life. Similarly, gender history has, unintentionally, established identity, gender relations and sexuality as themes of history distinct from the political narrative of the nineteenth century. The resulting image tends to   J.R. Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826‒93) between 1878 and 1893 (Oxford, 2003) p. xiv. 4   K. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998). Reynolds’ work looks at the many public roles of aristocratic women, including their role as estate managers, work with local schools and religious organisations as well as their function in political society. 5   H. Callent and S. Ardener (eds), The Incorporated Wife (London, 1984) p. 1. 3

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be a fractured one, with men and women often considered separately. The utility in treating political couples as a unit can clearly be seen in Derby’s journey from the Conservative party to the Liberals. Viewing the four years through one set of eyes, either Mary’s or Edward Stanley’s, would result in an incomplete image of the political process. In treating the couple as a unit and viewing their actions side-byside, a more complete picture emerges of how Derby’s influence was maintained and he came to serve a Prime Minister about whom he was deeply sceptical. The Countess’ political activity during this period took place within the informal spaces that have tended to be overlooked by political historians. Living in a world where private lives were always public, where the social scene was part of the political agenda and business matters were invariably family affairs, most aristocratic women could not fail but to be part of the political fabric. The concentration by political historians on Cabinet minutes, parliamentary debates and diplomatic memoranda has had a distorting effect on the perception of political participation. The overwhelming preoccupation with official sources has served to mute the voices of aristocratic women. For Mary Derby this is particularly unfortunate. But while there is no luxury of copious files in the National Archives or detailed Hansard reports to fall back on, her archive, held at Hatfield House, reveals her unique position in political society.6 For the years between 1878 and 1882, Mary was a correspondent with some of the leading figures of the day; William Gladstone, Earl Granville, William Harcourt, the Earl of Carnarvon and Viscount Halifax all conducted political business with her. The most sustained and revealing correspondence was undertaken with Halifax. For that reason, this chapter draws heavily on these letters. Although the archive at Hatfield House reveals the frequency and quantity of the Countess’ letter writing, comparatively few of her replies have survived. The Halifax-Derby correspondence provides one of the few complete sets of letters. These letters are mostly political in tone. The two used each other as a sounding board for their political ideas and the only time they diverged into domestic matters tended to be when there was little political news. For this period, Mary’s paper trail is the antithesis of her husband’s. The fifteenth Earl’s post-bag for these four years was comparatively empty. There was no sustained correspondence between the Earl and any of the leading Liberal figures. As one reads the couple’s letters, what becomes increasingly obvious is that there was a tacit understanding that the Countess acted as their political conduit. Nevertheless, while Derby wrote few letters, his diary entries offer an invaluable insight into the workings of political society. For his wife’s activity this is particularly valuable. While her letters were often used to organise tea at 5 o’clock in St James’ Square or invitations to a country weekend at Knowsley, the actual proceedings of these events tended to leave very little evidence. But when 6   In weeding out those correspondents writing in the pursuit of patronage or offering congratulations or sympathy, what remains is a web of some thirty correspondents amassing between them over three thousand letters.

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Derby’s detailed diary entries are correlated with Mary’s social calendar, it becomes clear that these four years saw a steady increase in social engagements involving the Derbys and the Liberal elite. The first overture to the Liberals appears to have been the occasion of the municipal election in Liverpool in the autumn of 1879.7 When two prominent Liberals, William Harcourt and Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff, visited Liverpool it gave the Countess the ideal excuse to invite them to Knowsley. Hartington noted that Mary wrote ‘avec empressement as soon as she knew I was going to Liverpool’.8 The significance of this event was understood by contemporary observers. At the Athenaeum, Arthur Russell observed how ‘deep a sensation the invitation … created & one cannot deny that it is an important event’.9 Meanwhile Charles Wood took the opportunity to ‘strongly recommend’ that Mary Derby pick Hartington’s brains, as in doing so she would not find ‘much difference between his views & those of Lord Derby’.10 The visit appeared to be a success, and would form the basis of a lasting political tie between the Derbys and leading Liberals. Over the next few years, similar events would be organised with Gladstone, Granville, the Duke of Argyll and Halifax. Indeed, it is worth noting that until the end of 1881, when Gladstone was formally invited to Knowsley, the social interaction between the Derbys and Gladstone appears to have been conducted solely by Mary. The Countess acted on her appreciation that the couple would have ‘to shift … ourselves & … begin afresh’ and she did with this with great social acumen and subtlety so that by 1881, Knowsley stood as a ‘liberal house’.11 Derby’s resignation had left his, and his wife’s, political affiliations ambiguous. It would take Derby two years from his resignation in March 1878 to his letter in support of Lord Sefton, Liberal candidate in South West Lancashire, in March 1880, to declare himself a Liberal peer. Throughout this drawn-out political manoeuvre, Mary Derby’s role was pivotal. The breach with the Tory leadership had been severe – a fact that Derby recognised immediately, arguing that ‘nothing is to be done with the Conservative Party and that no attempt at a reunion should be made’.12 But it seemed unlikely that Derby’s retreat from front-line politics would be permanent, especially given his wife’s political ambitions. The length 7   Catherine Gladstone had invited the Derbys to Hawarden in September 1878. This invitation was declined. See Catherine Gladstone to Mary Derby, undated 1878, Hatfield House Archives [hereafter HHA], MCD 109, fol. 5. Derby mentions the invitation in his diary on 7 September 1878. 8   Harcourt to Dilke, September 1879, cited in A.G. Gardiner, The Life of Sir William Harcourt, vol. 1: 1827‒86, (London, 1923) p. 354 . 9   Arthur Russell to Mary Derby, 17 October 1879, HHA, MCD 256, fol. 94. 10   Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 20 October 1879, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 63. 11   Mary Derby to Thomas Sanderson, 3 October 1878, Liverpool Record Office, Derby Mss, 920 DER (15), uncatalogued; Arthur Russell to Mary Derby, 27 December 1881, HHA, MCD 256, fol. 114. 12   15 May 1878, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 15.

Crossing the Floor: Mary Derby, the Fifteenth Earl and the Liberals, 1878‒1882 173

of time he took to convert initially is perhaps surprising, given that immediately following his resignation he engaged his wife in ‘much … serious talk … as to the political future’.13 Both Derby’s own personal reflections and contemporary opinion suggest that the Earl’s eventual defection was a logical, even predictable development. In April 1878, Derby considered whether to ‘call myself a Conservative or not’, musing that ‘there has been, irrespective of the question of war, much to disappoint and little to satisfy’ during the Disraeli administration.14 Contemporary opinion viewed the Earl as a ‘fish out of water’ with the Tories, and thought it odd that he did ‘not hold the old family politics’: that is, the Whig politics of his grandfather, and of his father’s early career.15 The Countess appears to have had few ideological ties to either political party, and her politics during 1878‒82 were influenced by her understanding of the fluid nature of parliamentary alliances. The notion of a governing party and an opposing party, with Disraeli and Gladstone being pitched against each other as two opposing titans of Victorian politics, presents an oversimplified, dualistic image of the party system. The years immediately following Derby’s resignation represented a particularly tumultuous time for the ‘cliques and coteries’ that existed within Parliament.16 It was during these years that Mary’s studious indulgence in the epistolary form reaped its rewards; her carefully cultivated political contacts provided her with an insight into the workings of the main political factions. Contemporary political feeling was uncertain as to the future of parliamentary groupings. Disraeli’s belligerence during the Eastern Crisis of 1875‒78 had contributed to an uneasy feeling among moderate Conservative MPs. The rallying call of jingoism was beginning to lose its potency and the decision to call up the reserves in March 1878 had received a lukewarm reception in society. Conservative unease was not helped by the lack of clarity about the future leadership of the party. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Disraeli’s failing health would dictate a change of leader sooner rather than later. It was recognised that Northcote, leader in the House of Commons, was not the solution. Wood told the Countess how his ‘weakness’ in this role had caused ‘much discontent’ among the Conservatives in the lower house.17 The confusion over Disraeli’s successor gave Mary Derby the opportunity to taunt Carnarvon that his party would be left with the uninspiring Duke of Richmond at its head.18 But if the Tories were disunited and fractious, the Liberals were in no better a position.   7 April 1878, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 3.   Ibid. p. 3. 15   31 October 1881, D.W R. Bahlman (ed.), The Diary of Sir Edward Hamilton, 13 14

1880‒1885 (Oxford, 1972), p. 178; Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 15 March 1880, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 88. 16   T.E. Kebbel, ‘The State of Parties’, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 49 (March, 1881), p. 492. 17   Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 23 July 1879, HHA, MDC 329, fols 50‒51. 18   Mary Derby to Carnarvon, 22 April 1881, BL, Add MS 60766, fols 98‒101.

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There was no reason to suspect, until after the Midlothian campaign, if not for some time later, that Gladstone would resume permanent leadership of the Liberal Party. Derby remarked upon the state of the party in his diary in the autumn of 1879, noting a conversation with Harcourt: Whereas the Conservative Party often found it difficult to fill the offices, their supply of available candidates being small, the trouble of the Liberals arose from exactly the opposite cause: they had more effective speakers & useful party leaders than they knew how to find places for.19

Gladstone’s retirement from frontline politics had left the Liberal Party without an obvious leader. This fact was evident after the 1880 general election victory, in which both Hartington and Granville were touted as future leaders, with the Tories’ advice to the Queen ‘to sound for Hartington’ considered ‘a direct slap in the face to Granville’.20 The composition of the House of Commons following the election did little to settle the nerves of jittery Liberals. Gladstone’s majority would rely on an uneasy alliance between the last bastions of Grand Whiggery, the Chamberlainite Radicals and his own followers; it was easy to see how such a grouping could be derailed by a divisive issue such as Ireland. Although the Liberals had strength in the Lords in the form of Granville, Kimberley, Cardwell and Northbrook, it is also easy to see how Derby, with all his experience, would be a welcome addition. As Mary Derby recognised, the delicate nature of party allegiance during the years between 1878 and 1881 could offer an ideal environment in which to re-visit the idea of a centrist ‘fusion’ that had first been explored in the 1860s. In a letter outlining the political differences between himself and the Countess, Charles Wood noted Mary Derby’s continued belief in ‘the utopian notion of a government composed of the reasonable men on the two sides with an opposition of the two extremes’.21 The Countess clearly thought her husband’s strength lay in remaining ‘independent’ as he would be ‘able to bring useful men together’.22 While it would be a leap too far to argue that Mary was engineering a reorganisation of party politics, her behaviour from Derby’s resignation until the passing of the Irish Land Act at the end of 1881 demonstrates that she was acutely aware of his potentially powerful position if there were to be a realignment. With the start of the new parliamentary session approaching, the thorny issue of where Derby would sit in the House of Lords came to dominate the political correspondence of both the Earl and his wife. For Mary Derby there was an added complication. Carnarvon, whose resignation was tended at the time of Derby’s first in January 1878, found himself in a similar predicament to her husband and     21   22   19 20

9 October 1879, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 174. Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 22 April 1880, HHA, MCD 329, fols 100‒101. Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 9 January 1882, HHA, MCD 329, fols 208‒9. Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 8 January 1882, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a.

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as a consequence had a desire to sail in the same boat for as long as possible.23 The friendship between Carnarvon and the Countess was long standing. It had started during Mary Derby’s days as hostess at Hatfield House, and had been strengthened by the upheavals during the Great Eastern Crisis. Nevertheless, his involvement added an extra dynamic to the exertion of normal wifely influence. If Carnarvon and Derby were determined to act together, Mary Derby would have two peers to convince, not one. It was clear that the ‘place of sitting in the House of Lords … is a question which seems … of some importance as regards the public’.24 Any movement away from the Government benches would be highly symbolic, and with Derby’s mind unresolved about his future political career, it was apparent that no one wanted to do anything prematurely. Understanding this, Mary Derby proposed the idea of the two men sitting on the cross benches. Her strategy was based on two assumptions. Firstly, she pointed out that sitting on the cross benches would pledge the two men to nothing – they ‘c[oul]d always go back again’ once the dust had cleared after the Berlin conference.25 More importantly, the Countess saw the political advantage in the men staying ‘aloof for a time’.26 At the time of Derby’s and Carnarvon’s resignations it was ‘supposed that they represented a powerful element in the party’.27 The Countess felt that there was no reason why Derby and Carnarvon should ‘lose their hold over the rational part of the Conservative party’, and that a move to the cross benches would ‘show light’ on the political situation by providing the ‘rational’ MPs somewhere to ‘cast’ their support.28 Derby adopted his wife’s idea, noting on 3 December: ‘Saw Carnarvon … Talk as to where we shall sit in the House of Lords: I suggested the cross benches but he objected, saying that we should speak with more effect in condemnation of everything done by the govt. to which we may object if we speak from their side.29 Parliament opened on 5 December and Derby, having rejected ‘Carnarvon’s renewed advice’ to stick to the Government side, ‘for the first time … [took] a place on the first of the cross benches’.30 Carnarvon stayed on the government benches, sitting near Derby so the two could communicate throughout the debate. For many contemporaries, Derby’s decision to sit on the cross benches at the opening of the session seemed like the first step in the inevitable migration to the Liberals. This was a fact that the Derbys were all too aware of and one with which they were not remotely comfortable. Mary spent the opening months of 1879     25   26   27   23

Carnarvon to Mary Derby, 22 May 1880, BL, Add MS 60766, fols. 90‒91. 7 April 1878, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 3. Mary Derby to Carnarvon, 27 November 1878, BL, Add MS 60766, fols. 51‒2. Ibid., fols 51‒2. Rev. J. Guiness Rogers, ‘The Union of the Liberal Party’, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 30 (August 1879), p. 362. 28   Mary Derby to Carnarvon, 27 November 1878, BL, Add MS 60766, fols. 51‒2. 29   3 December 1878, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 61. 30   5 December 1878, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 62; The Times, 6 December 1878. 24

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being particularly nervous that someone from the Liberal Party ‘will ask anybody from the x benches to dinner before the meet of Parl[iament]’.31 Unfortunately, events overtook the couple. With a by-election on their doorstep and a general election looming, Derby’s neutrality was becoming increasing untenable. Derby’s resolve to ‘keep quiet’ and ‘unconnected with party ties’ would test his wife’s patience.32 The Countess clearly felt some sort of political action was needed and it was during the final months of 1879 that the differences between husband and wife became increasingly noticeable. Derby’s decision to sit on the cross benches had been followed by a process of distancing himself from extra-parliamentary Conservative bodies. The withdrawal from the Lancashire Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations and the Liverpool Conservative Workingmen’s Club in the spring of 1879 signalled the beginning of the end of Derby’s official attachment with the Conservatives, with the final breach coming in November, when the Earl left the Carlton Club. There was little doubting the political significance of such movements, and Mary Derby was left with the unenviable task of having to defend her husband’s actions without committing him to anything. As autumn wore on, Mary was clearly growing tired of her husband’s ‘ambiguous state’, finding it ‘very puzzling, very trying & … [she felt] always on the verge of making some great mistake or gaucherie’.33 She quickly formulated an explanation, and contemporaries noted how she had assured the Conservatives that her husband ‘giving publicly his powerful support to the opposition meant nothing at all’, while the importance attached to it by public opinion only served to ‘show how exceedingly silly the English must be’.34 Privately, however, feelings were becoming increasingly strained. Derby’s conviction that he wanted to ‘stand aloof from all party organisations’ tested his wife’s patience to its limits in the closing months of 1879.35 Writing to Charles Wood in October, Mary Derby, grateful for the opportunity to ‘relieve my mind … for I can hardly trust anybody but you’, outlined her concerns: I am greatly afraid that Ld D will get into a false position in Lancashire in regard to the elections, he hardly realises the impossibility of his remaining neutral in the county, he is showing friendship & goodwill towards the Liberals … but he thinks he can do all this & that nothing more shd. be expected of him by way of declaration.36

This frustration at Derby’s inaction was echoed in a letter to Gladstone, a few days later, in which the Countess outlined how her husband’s position was ‘very     33   34   35   36   31 32

Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 17 January 1879, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a. 7 April 1878, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 3. Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 16 November 1879, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a. Arthur Russell to Mary Derby, 29 October 1879, HHA, MCD 256, fol. 97. 23 April 1879, Vincent, The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley (ed.), p. 119. Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 15 October 1879, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a.

Crossing the Floor: Mary Derby, the Fifteenth Earl and the Liberals, 1878‒1882 177

difficult … just now & personally & socially very uncomfortable’.37 It was under these circumstances that Mary found common ground with her husband’s Liberal supporters. There was a general belief that ‘no man … can … in this country remain neutral in politics’.38 Mary agreed that her husband needed ‘to be made to understand that he cannot be quite neutral’.39 It was during the opening months of 1880 that Mary Derby seized the political initiative, encouraging her husband along a road he otherwise might not have taken. By January 1880, Mary’s frustration with her husband was at its peak. She had little desire to indulge Edward’s ‘delicate feelings’, nor she did share her husband’s ideas about ‘good taste, former colleagues & so on’.40 She was determined to ensure that her husband did not find himself ‘shunted’ by his political neutrality and employed the services of Charles Wood to convince her husband to come out in support of the Liberal candidate for South West Lancashire.41 Mary instructed the Liberal peer to ‘write … [her] a letter’ that she could ‘accidently [sic] show to him [Derby] ‒ not as if … [she] had written … but on the occasion of the vacancy at Liverpool’.42 This was a task he duly carried out, outlining to the Countess his belief that he ‘never thought it possible for Lord Derby to avoid taking a part in Lancashire’.43 While Derby was still determined not to ‘forfeit an independent position’, the letter did serve to highlight the difficulty of his continued neutrality.44 The opening months of 1880 saw a steady increase in the meetings between the Earl and the Liverpudlian Liberals, with the local agent, Holt, cultivating Knowsley support. The death of the MP John Torr in January 1880 forced a by-election in Liverpool which was widely looked to as a gauge of public opinion before the general election. Derby’s commitment to neutrality would put the chances of any Liberal candidate under considerable strain. The Countess was soon used by both the local agents and the Liberal elite to put pressure on her husband. In January, leading Liverpudlian Liberals called on Mary Derby, ‘full of pending elections & anxious that … [Derby] should see Mr Holt, the leader of the Liberals’.45 At the meeting, set up the following day, Derby found Holt ‘agreeable; intelligent & well mannered’.46 It was with similar emotion that the visit to Knowsley of the Liberal candidate, Lord Ramsay and his wife, was reported to Charles Wood:     39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   37 38

Mary Derby to Gladstone, 26 October 1879, BL, Add MS 44446, fols 86‒7. Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 20 October 1879, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 63. Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 15 October 1879, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a. Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 19 January 1880, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a. Ibid. Ibid. Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 20 January 1880, HHA, MCD 329, fols. 76‒8. 25 January 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 208. 18 January 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 203. 19 January 1880, ibid., p. 206.

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Ld Ramsay is indeed a first rate candidate. Ld Derby is perfectly delighted with him. Never have I seen Ld D take to a young man so cordially, so affectionately. I may say he has talked to him, taught him, listened to him, encouraged him to say everything & Ld R[amsay] has not known how to express his gratitude & happiness.47

The visit to Knowsley was closely watched by the Liberal elite. Harcourt, who had the previous year felt that ‘Ld D[erby] had but to hold up his little finger & that two liberals wd come in for this division of Lancashire’, expressed his wish that ‘we [the Liberal Party] could have that letter [from Derby] we talked so much about’.48 But the letter never materialised. Indeed there appears to have been no serious discussion of the Earl abandoning his neutrality in order to support Lord Ramsay publicly. Nevertheless, the increasing contacts would bear fruit. If Derby’s desire to remain aloof from party organisation was viewed as a stumbling block to the fortunes of Lord Ramsay, it would be catastrophic on the eve of a general election. The political significance of Lancashire was appreciated by all parties. Since its creation in 1867, the borough of South West Lancashire had been ‘the homeland of the Conservative ‘reaction’ and … the native habitat of popular Toryism’.49 Disraeli’s appointment of Derby’s brother and heir, Frederick Stanley, to the Cabinet following Derby’s resignation was a crude attempt to consolidate the Knowsley influence, while Hartington’s decision to contest North East Lancashire demonstrated the Liberals’ commitment to the county. The electoral position of the Liberals was precarious. The battle in the county was fierce and Hartington and R.A. Cross, Derby’s former protégé, engaged in a public tit-for-tat debate. To contemporaries, party allegiance in Liverpool was ‘far more theological than political’, and securing the English Roman Catholic vote was of paramount importance for both the Liberal and Conservative candidates.50 The Liberals faced difficulties in wooing Catholic voters. The distancing of the Liberal leadership from the issue of Home Rule was compounded by the allegiance of the Catholic vote to the local Conservative peer, Lord Gerard, as a consequence of which Mary noted how votes ‘in the Weld, Bundell property & also in St Helens’ would fall under Tory ‘influence’.51 It would be the general election that finally forced Derby’s hand. The Earl’s diary entry highlights the extent to which aristocratic responsibility provided the underlying motivation:   Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 27 January 1880, Hickleton MSS, A4/87/a. The meeting took place on 21 January. 48   Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 15 October 1879, Hickleton MSS, A4/87/a; she reported a meeting with Harcourt. Harcourt to Mary Derby, 23 January 1880, HHA, MCD 132, fol. 24. 49   R. Shannon, The Age of Disraeli (Essex, 1992) p. 375. 50   Rathbone to Mary Derby, undated 1880, HHA, MCD 242, fol. 2. 51   Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 18 March 1880, A4/87/a. 47

Crossing the Floor: Mary Derby, the Fifteenth Earl and the Liberals, 1878‒1882 179 Sefton called … After much discussion in which I found him shrewd & sensible, I agreed to write him a letter for publication, making no reference to the election … but saying that I cannot support the government, that neutrality, however I might wish it, would be in my case an evasion of public duty, & that I have therefore no choice but to oppose them. I know this is right …52

Former colleagues told Mary how they were ‘not surprised’, arguing that ‘the time had come in Lancashire when it was necessary for him to make his future position absolutely clear’.53 For Liberal peers, Derby’s move was a very welcome one, with Charles Wood remarking that he would be ‘valuable in steadying the impulses which have sometimes got our leader into difficulties’.54 There was no doubting the importance of the timing of such a letter. The Knowsley influence might have been vital in the election. In January 1878, when Derby had first resigned from Disraeli’s Cabinet, it was the Foreign Secretary’s significance in the north-west that had led his colleagues to persuade him to return. The Conservative Chief Whip had warned that ‘feeling in Lancashire is very strong’, and when Sir Stafford Northcote heard ‘alarming accounts’ of the effect of the resignation in the region, he wrote to Disraeli advising him that Derby should be induced to return.55 Lancashire was a vital electoral asset. Nevertheless, it had to be handled carefully. It was feared that Derby’s late conversion would give the opposition the opportunity of ‘charging him … with interfering in the elections’.56 This concern limited his participation, and as a consequence the public focus was instead on the Countess, whose participation was more politically acceptable.57 Election campaigning had become synonymous with the political activities of aristocratic women since the Duchess of Devonshire’s infamous activities during the 1784 Westminster Election. Recent work by Reynolds, Chalus, Gleadle and Richardson has shown how an election gave aristocratic women the chance to engage directly with the political process.58 Campaigning for their husbands, brothers and sons was viewed as a way in which ‘women could participate legitimately in affairs which fell into the public domain’.59 While Mary Derby’s involvement with the political agenda was more complex than   12 March 1880, Vincent, The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 219.   Carnarvon to Mary Derby, 20 March 1880, HHA, MCD 141, fol. 80. 54   Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 15 March 1880, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 88. 55   Hart Dyke to Disraeli, 25 January 1878, Dep. Hughenden 113/2, fols 50‒51; 52 53

Northcote to Disraeli, 25 January 1878, Dep. Hughenden 107/1, fols 178‒80. 56   Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 17 March 1880, HHA, MCD 329, fols 88‒90. 57   Ibid. 58   K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998); E. Chalus, Elite Women in English Political Life c. 1754‒1790 (Oxford, 2005); K. Gleadle and S. Richardson, Women in British Politics, 1760‒1860: The Power of the Petticoat (Basingstoke, 2000). 59   Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain, p. 16.

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that, she duly engaged in the more traditional activity of electioneering. Election campaigns dominated the political calendar in late 1879 and early 1880, with municipal elections and by-elections in Liverpool and Southwark all leading up to the general election of March 1880. Mary Derby would be forced twice in the space of a few months to fight for the Liberal interest. Stuck in Kent for the first few weeks of the general election campaign, Mary Derby grew increasingly anxious about the fate of South West Lancashire. She felt that the couple had ‘done wrong not to go [to Knowsley] sooner’, noting how she would have ‘given up … [her] breath of air in Kent had … [she] known how important it was we shd be on the spot’.60 Her concerns were well-founded. Despite Derby instructing Hale, the election agent, to ‘let it be clearly known what … [his] opinions are’, the ambiguity about Derby’s political affiliations had given his tenants freedom still to canvass ‘for Cross & Blackburn’ as they clearly ‘had not understood & … they believed his lordship was neutral.’61 Given this, Mary Derby quickly immersed herself in the election efforts, attending demonstrations in Ormskirk with Lady Sefton, accompanying delegations from Croxteth to meetings in Liverpool and spending days driving ‘30 or 40 miles round to the distant tenants’.62 The Countess’ efforts seemed to have a direct political impact. She felt that matters were ‘coming right, now that we are here & that the tenants begin to understand’.63 But her fear that they had returned to Knowsley too late turned out to be correct. In Lancashire, the Conservatives maintained their ‘critical core’ of Birkenhead, Blackburn, Liverpool and Preston, and Halifax recognized that it ‘would be very unnatural if … [she] had not a strong personal feeling’.64 Notwithstanding the disappointment in Lancashire, there had been better news for Derby’s new allies elsewhere, and while the name of the future Prime Minister was still unknown, it was clear the administration would be a Liberal one. The prominent role of the Knowsley influence during the election campaign placed Derby in an awkward position. The continued courting of the Liberal elite at Knowsley had meant the offer of office was a worrying possibility, especially if Granville headed the administration. But Derby did not yet feel ready to accept such an offer. A public refusal of office could render Derby’s return to frontline politics almost impossible. This sentiment would be felt continually by the Derbys over the next two years. After a discussion with Mary, in which husband and wife were apparently agreed, Derby overcame ‘the awkwardness in refusing what has not been offered’ and indicated to Granville that while he could give his ‘cordial support to the new government’ he could not been seen to be a ‘gainer by the   Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 24 March 1880, Hickleton MSS, A4/87/a.   21 March 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 222; Mary

60 61

Derby to Charles Wood, 30 March 1880, Hickleton MSS, A4/87/a. 62   Ibid. 63   Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 26 March 1880, Hickleton MSS, A4/87/a. 64   R. Shannon, The Age of Disraeli (Essex, 1992) p. 375; Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 5 April 1880, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 96.

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change’ by accepting office.65 This was a position to which the Earl stuck following an official overture from Gladstone.66 The strategy of retaining an independent position in order to facilitate political manoeuvrability also underpinned Mary Derby’s role during the passing of the Irish Land Bill. Gladstone’s embracing of the Irish demand for the ‘three f’s’ ‒ fair rents, fixity of tenure and free sale – had alarmed moderate Liberals and Conservatives alike. It quickly became clear that the proposed Irish Land Act would be divisive and encounter serious opposition in both Houses, as Edward Hamilton noted: If any amendments are accepted in the interests of the landlords, it will divorce the Irish party; and if any amendments are accepted in the line which the Irish party will advocate, we shall we meet with difficulties from the Whigs and the Conservatives. It seems therefore, that it must be the Bill, the Whole Bill … nothing but the Bill.67

With the Gladstone administration barely three months old, there was great concern within the Liberal elite that the Irish Land Bill would see the government fall before it had a chance to get going. Gladstone had confided in Mary Derby at the end of June that the Bill ‘had been much misunderstood’ and although he felt ‘the debate would clear up’ matters, there were still ‘twenty questions on hand, each of them enough to upset a government’.68 It was under such circumstances that, as Professor Vincent notes, ‘what stirred Derby most in 1880 and 1881 was the need to avoid a clash between the Lords and Commons’.69 Despite suspicions that Derby was intending to ‘lead the opposition against the bill’, rumours that the Countess quickly stamped out, Derby resolved to ensure that the Lords did ‘not … throw it out … but amend it in committee’ and his steadying influence in the House of Lords confirmed his position as a leading peer.70 With the majority of political activity taking place in Parliament, Mary Derby was, for a while, reduced to sitting and watching events unfold. Even then, though, she had a role to perform. Through her correspondence with Charles Wood it is apparent that she was taking a keen interest in the proceedings, and as a consequence became a valuable political asset. When Halifax was out of town, he used his connection with Mary Derby to keep himself informed of the mood within both Houses, especially as to Whig voting intentions. Such information was invaluable to Halifax as he orchestrated joint action between the Commons and the     67   68   69   70  

14 April 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 227. 24 April 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 230. 25 April 1881, Bahlman (ed.), The Diary of Sir Edward Hamiliton, p. 133. 30 June 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 247. Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. xvii. Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 22 July 1880, Hickleton MSS, A4/87/a; 2 August 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 260. 65 66

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Lords in an attempt to shed the more disagreeable clauses of the Bill. Meanwhile, it seems that Gladstone cultivated his friendship with the Countess as a way of assuaging the fears of her husband and his supporters as to the apparent radicalism of the Bill. During the Bill’s passage, there was a flurry of social engagements involving the pair, culminating in Gladstone’s first visit to Knowsley in October 1881. Wood and Gladstone, like many contemporaries, understood the potential influence that Derby could exert, if he so wished. The worsening distress and agitation in Ireland made it all the more urgent that the Irish Land Bill should pass, and there was a movement, in part orchestrated by Charles Wood, ‘for some joint action of communications between the members of the two houses’ to be established.71 In the House of Commons, three young Whigs – Halifax’s nephew Albert Grey, Henry Brand and John Dundas – had all taken part in moving amendments on the Land Bill.72 This opened up the opportunity of action with the leading Whig peers – the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne; the Duke of Argyll, who had in March 1881 resigned from the Cabinet over the bill; the ninth Duke of Bedford, Mary’s brother-in-law who would threaten his wife’s resignation from the Queen’s staff; Lord Tavistock, Bedford’s eldest son and an early opponent of the bill – and Derby.73 Special significance was attached to Derby, whose independent position undoubtedly strengthened his appeal. In the bid to convince the Whig peers that there would be ‘no difficulty in getting hold of some Whigs’, Mary Derby, along with her daughter, Lady Galloway, would be influential.74 As Jenkins suggests, the Countess was pivotal in ensuring an approach was made to her husband.75 Halifax explained the strategy to his nephew: She [Lady Derby] wrote to me that Lord Derby, the D of Argyll, the D of Bedford & Lord Tavistock did not know of any young Whig MPs who would undertake amendments to the Land Bill … Lady Galloway’s message [to Grey] evidently comes from the same source & probably my mentioning you to Lady Derby led to this communication to you.76

Unfortunately, there is a limited amount of evidence from the negotiations of June 1881. It is possible, tentatively, to outline the role that the Countess, together with Halifax, played in ensuring the young Whigs met with the three peers. In a letter dated 31 May, Wood urged Mary to organise a meeting between Tavistock and Grey. We cannot know for certain that the Countess orchestrated the appointment;   Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 17 June 1881, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 169.   For a detailed discussion of the young Whig party and the Irish Land Bill see

71 72

T.A. Jenkins, Gladstone, Whiggery and the Liberal Party 1874‒1886 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 159‒61. 73   16 May 1881, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 327. 74   Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 31 May 1881, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 162. 75   Jenkins, Gladstone, Whiggery and the Liberal Party 1874‒1886, fn. 86, p. 160. 76   Charles Wood to Albert Grey, 6 June 1881, Grey MSS 211/6.

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but given her previous role, and the fact that the meeting took place, it seems reasonable to suppose that she did. Halifax’s subsequent letter explained to her how Grey had met with Tavistock showing him ‘the amendments which they [the young Whigs] propose’.77 In the same letter, Wood reported that the Duke of Argyll had also ‘seen them [the amendments] & approves’, and as a consequence it was felt that Derby would ‘find on his return to town that matters were more as he would wish’.78 The formal overture to Derby would come through Lansdowne’s brother Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, whom Halifax presumed had been approached by the three young Whig MPs to act ‘as a sort of President’.79 Although this letter is noted with satisfaction in Derby’s diary, the Earl failed to raise amendments in the House of Lords. There is nothing in the diary or among the Countess’ papers to suggest the reason for this decision. While it would be easy, conjecturally, to assign this episode to the catalogue of Derby’s inactions, it is equally plausible that the Earl had no desire to threaten the stability of the Liberal administration by tabling unwelcome amendments. For the Countess’ part, her ambitions for her husband at this point seem uncharacteristically vague. It may have been that she saw no political benefit in speaking out against the Land Bill, sensing that it would be unwise to challenge Gladstone. While the immediate impact of this episode was limited, it does serve to demonstrate the extent to which leading politicians appreciated the influence wielded by the Countess over her husband, and within wider political society. The Knowsley couple nevertheless stood united in their belief that the time was not right for the Earl to enter the Cabinet. Derby’s reflections support the contention that ‘after two years of Liberal government [he] was no office seeker and certainly no Gladstonian’.80 He was clearly anxious that no offer would be made, because while he had no desire to serve in a Cabinet ‘descredited with the public … a refusal would make it difficult to return to active public life’.81 The Countess still thought her husband was better maintaining an independent position, arguing how she felt his ‘time … [had] not yet come’, still believing ‘he w[oul]d do better in an emergency’.82 Bearing this in mind, it is of little surprise that the Countess quickly shot down Gladstone’s suggestion to Granville in November 1881, that it would be a ‘very great object to bring Derby, supposing him to be willing, into the Government’.83 Granville reported the major stumbling block to the Premier’s   Charles Wood to Mary Derby, 6 June 1881, HHA, MCD 329, fol. 165.   Ibid. 79   Charles Wood to Albert Grey, 12 June 1881, Grey MSS 211/6: Fitzmaurice to 77 78

Derby, 8 June 1881, LRO, 920 DER (15), uncatalogued. 80   Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. xix. 81   1 May 1882 (ed.), Vincent, The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 419. 82   Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 8 January 1882, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a. 83   Gladstone to Granville, 13 November 1881, A. Ramm (ed.), The Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville (2 vols, 1962), vol 1: 1876‒82 (Oxford, 1962), p. 310.

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plan: ‘Lady Derby told a person on whose accuracy I have perfect reliance, that she hoped much that no offer would be made to her husband, that he would decline and that in her opinion, the refusal would do harm to him and to us.’84 It is notable that communication was via Mary Derby. It was becoming increasingly clear that it was both Derbys that needed to be convinced. Hamilton recorded the Liberal strategy: ‘L[ord] G[ranville] has been sounding Lord D[erby] himself. Mr G[ladstone] has been trying to negotiate through Lady Derby.’85 This approach was followed during May 1882. At the beginning of the month, the murder of Frederick Charles Cavendish, Chief Secretary for Ireland, precipitated a Cabinet re-shuffle. The formal offer was made on 15 May, as Derby recorded in his diary: After luncheon Granville called & with a little circumlocution proposed to me, on the part of the Prime Minister, that I should join the Cabinet. His offer was either the post of Lord President or that of Indian Secretary: in the event of my accepting the latter … Hartington would take the Exchequer … I told him, with compliments, that I received the proposal with gratitude: that I knew of nothing in the state of politics to make acceptance impossible: but that I must consider the matter at leisure. He should have an answer on Wednesday.86

Granville, reporting the meeting to Gladstone, was clearly concerned that ‘Derby’s inclination not to do a thing, strengthens with time and reflection’.87 It would be this sentiment that prompted the Foreign Secretary to suggest to the Premier that he was ‘not sure that a visit to the Countess might not be of use if you can find time’.88 Gladstone took up the suggestion, visiting Mary Derby ‘at the sacred hour of tea’, and reported back to Granville: I have had a conversation with Lady Derby … . It was long and friendly, but scarcely hopeful. It left pretty clearly traced on my mind these two impressions: first, he has no political difficulty whatever and has absolutely renounced in his own mind all idea, even in remote possibility, of re-joining his own party: secondly that, if I were out of the way he would be yours tomorrow. There was nothing said to shut the door but I do not think it very widely open.89

  Granville to Gladstone, 25 November 1881, Ramm (ed.), The Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, vol. 1, p. 314. 85   17 May 1882, Bahlman (ed.), The Diary of Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 273. 86   15 May 1882, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 424. 87   Granville to Gladstone, 15 May 1882, Ramm (ed.), The Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, vol. 1, p. 370. 88   Granville to Gladstone, 16 May 1882, Ramm (ed.), The Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, vol. 1, p. 370. 89   Conversation with Mary Derby, 24 May 1882, BL, Add MSS 44766, fols 77‒80. 84

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Gladstone’s pessimism was justified. Derby declined the offer on 17 May, blurting out to Granville at dinner that night that it was ‘a private & family reason’.90 This was reflected in his diary: ‘There are some circumstances connected with this offer & refusal which I think is better not to note down: But they are entirely personal & do not concern me alone.’91 It is quite clear that Derby ‘was a politician in need of an excuse’, but it is certainly plausible that it was an allusion to Mary Derby’s failing health and fragile mental state.92 Professor Vincent conjecturally assigns the couple’s limited political activity between 1880 and 1882 to the depression that haunted both Edward and Mary.93 Remarks about Mary’s mental state are easily found in Derby’s diary entries, with the Earl recording how he ‘found it painful to witness’ his wife’s ‘condition of gloom and depression’.94 However, while the spectre of depression should provide some context to the domestic narrative, one should not overstate its significance; the continuing negotiations between the Countess and the Liberal elite offer an interesting counterpoint to Derby’s official excuse. The link between the Gladstones and Mary Derby was strengthened further by her meeting with the Prime Minister’s wife the day after Derby’s refusal.95 Catherine Gladstone recorded how the two ‘got more and more as confiding in one another’, which in turn reaped its rewards.96 The Premier’s wife ‘gathered the time might be to do something’, and that the Countess felt ‘it would be well worth if possible not to shut the door now’.97 Catherine Gladstone noted how ‘touched’ Mary Derby had been with Gladstone’s letter, sent the previous day, in which he stated how Derby’s refusal had been a ‘horrid blow’ to him.98 The conversation between the two wives seems to have bought Mary Derby some time. For the rest of the month, Mary’s post-bag remained comparatively empty and while Derby’s diary records no fresh overture, it seems likely that Mary had been charged with the task of persuading her husband. Gladstone’s hopes would be dashed once again following tea with the Countess on 24 May. He went ‘to learn finally whether any door is open in

90   Granville to Gladstone, 17 May 1882, Ramm (ed.), The Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, vol. 1, p. 371. 91   18 May 1882, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 425. 92   Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. xxi. 93   Ibid, p. xix. 94   1 November 1880, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 278. 95   The two were not known to be friends. Although there are a number of letters from Catherine Gladstone to Mary Derby at Hatfield House, the majority of them concern Mrs Gladstone’s charitable efforts and normally contain a request for money. There is no evidence to suggest that the two ladies met regularly. 96   Note by Catherine Gladstone, 18 May 1882, BL, Add MSS 44766, fols 75‒6. 97   Ibid. 98   Ibid.; Gladstone to Mary Derby [copy], 17 May 1882, BL, Add MSS, 44475, fol. 156.

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that quarter’.99 It became clear that the door was shut for the time being, with the Countess suggesting that an offer ‘would be better in a short time hence’, arguing that Derby ‘could render more effective support out of office’.100 It did not take very long for a fresh approach to be made. Gladstone held the two key offices of state, the Exchequer and the Premiership, and made no secret of his increasing weariness with his burdens. Cabinet re-shuffle rumours were fuelling society gossip, and it was not long before Derby’s name was linked yet again to the Liberal administration. Early November saw the first hint of a possible offer, with Derby noting in his diary how Gladstone’s calling on Mary had put the Countess ‘into some confusion, thinking that offer might be coming’.101 It was not, but Gladstone’s visit to the Countess, and not Derby, displayed the continuation of the two-pronged approach the Liberal leadership had adopted. While Gladstone wooed the Countess, Granville pursued the Earl. For Granville, the process of getting Derby to join the administration had become a ‘labour of love’ and he joked that ‘the great quality of a collection of orders was to have the skin of a rhinoceros’.102 This time around, things would turn out in Granville’s and Gladstone’s favour. On 29 November, Derby and Granville met to discuss the possibility of Derby taking the India Office. Derby reported how the two peers had a long conversation, discussing ‘many things’ including Egypt and Home Rule. This meeting had left Derby ‘anxious & weary’ and he was clearly grateful for the opportunity to confide in his wife, who was ‘entirely for … [his] accepting, both on public & private grounds’.103 The formal invitation to join the Cabinet came on 15 December from Gladstone, but Derby’s marriage had further implications for the post offered: the Colonial Office, not India. In a letter to Halifax, Mary Derby outlined the ‘real secret’ in the appointment. The Countess revealed that the offer had reflected Gladstone’s desire to conciliate the Queen: The Great Lady dislikes Ld D very bitterly & me too. India seems to her her own Empire & she tries to interfere & she is well aware Ld D is antagonistic to her & she never forgave his speech on the Afghan policy. Mr G has had collisions enough in that quarter.104

Fears about Queen Victoria’s reaction to Derby were understandable. She had made no secret of her distaste for Mary, and had previously stated that Derby ‘was the most difficult and unsatisfactory Minister she or indeed anyone had to   Conversation with Mary Derby, 24 May 1882, BL, Add MSS 44766, fols 77‒80.   Conversation with Mary Derby, 24 May 1882, BL, Add MSS 44766, fols 77‒80. 101   8 November 1882, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 474. 102   Granville to Derby, 28 November 1882, LRO, 920 DER (15), uncatalogued. 103   29 November 1882, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 478. 104   Mary Derby to Charles Wood, 16 December 1882, Hickleton MSS, A4/87a. 99

100

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deal with’.105 This sentiment made for a particularly awkward reception upon Derby’s appointment, when ‘lips were pinched till they were sharp as a knife’s edge’.106 Having to offer Derby the Colonial Office, instead of the Indian, had clearly worried the Prime Minister, who sought reassurance from the Countess. This reassurance was forthcoming: May I say I am confident that so far from disliking the Colonial Office ‒ it is the one he could have chosen had he thought that there were a chance of it being vacant. He said this to me at once in so many words on his return on Friday & he allows me to repeat this to you. Do not therefore for a moment think that there was annoyance or disappointment.107

Derby’s appointment was a welcome relief: Arthur Russell was not alone in asserting that Derby’s ‘presence in the Cabinet must calm millions of nervous people’.108 The Liberal administration, despite some successes over Ireland and Egypt, was still plagued by divisions between the moderate and radical sections of the party. Derby felt that his presence had some utility, noting how he was ‘bound to do’ what he could to ‘prevent the two sections of Whig & Democrat from quarrelling’.109 Derby did not merely fall into bed with the Liberals. His appointment in December 1882 stood as testimony to his wife’s political activity during the preceding four years. Her motivation between 1878 and 1882 was entirely personal. The Countess, in stark contrast to some of her contemporaries, notably Emily Lamb and Lady Waldegrave, was no partisan, and she, like her husband, was certainly no Gladstonian. The political power and influence sought by Mary Derby depended on her husband’s standing. Equally, if Derby was treated as politically significant after 1878, it was with the full appreciation of his wife’s political ambitions, acumen and authority. The two-pronged approach on the Derbys instigated by the Liberal leadership demonstrated contemporary appreciation of this dynamic. It suggests that historians wishing to understand the fifteenth Earl’s career would be wise to take cognisance of the Countess. In placing the two side by side, treating tea at St James’ Square as seriously as a hushed conversation at a West End club or within the corridors of Westminster, a more complete picture of Derby the statesman emerges. For these four years, he was a man pulled by   Queen Victoria to Granville, 30 May 1880, G.E. Buckle (ed.), The Letters of Queen Victoria, Second Series (3 vols, London, 1926‒28), vol. 3, 1879‒85 (London, 1928) p. 105. 106   Gladstone to Granville, 19 December 1882, Ramm (ed.), The Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, vol. 1, p. 470. 107   Mary Derby to Gladstone, 19 December 1882, BL, Add MS 44478, fol. 131. 108   Arthur Russell to Mary Derby, 18 December 1882, HHA, MCD 256, fol. 256; Robert Lowe and Charles Wood also wrote to the Countess in a similar vein. 109   30 November 1882, Vincent (ed.), The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, p. 478. 105

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aristocratic duty on the one hand and his natural inclination towards caution on the other. No one was more aware of this than Mary, and while she never forced her husband along a path he did not want to take, she was there cajoling, nudging and gently pushing her husband towards the Liberals. In June 1881, Halifax offered his nephew a rare pen-portrait of the Knowsley couple: There is no doubt of Lord Derby being difficult in the quality of active courage & being very cautious as to committing himself to anything … She [Mary Derby] is very pleasant & he is somebody with all his faults & she is anxious to get him to put himself more forward. Whether she will succeed or not is doubtful.110

It is this interconnection between husband, wife and politics that has been ignored by consecutive historiographical traditions. For Derby’s political career this is unfortunate. In treating him as an autonomous politician a crucial aspect of his political life has been ignored. The Countess’ legal and constitutional exclusion from the formal political process has led to a presumption of silence by historians concerned with the proceedings of high politics. Similarly, in the field of gender history, although there has been a sustained debate about the ‘separate spheres’ model, leading to a more complex and nuanced understanding of the public and private roles of women lower down the social scale, little attention has been paid to the aristocracy. As a consequence, the invisibility of aristocratic women in the narrative of the nineteenth century has, for the most part, been allowed to continue unchallenged. Mary Derby’s engagement with the political process between 1878 and 1882 was diverse. Her political letters, country weekends, electioneering efforts and teas à deux serve to highlight the extent to which she was embedded within the political fabric. The Countess’ centrality to the political process suggests that historians should treat women like Mary Derby as seriously and as conscientiously as their political contemporaries did.

  Charles Wood to Albert Grey, 24 June 1881, Grey MSS, 211/6.

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Chapter 8

Oiling the Entente: the Seventeenth Earl of Derby and the Paris Embassy, 1918‒1920 David Dutton

Edward George Villiers Stanley, seventeenth Earl of Derby, followed the example of his distinguished predecessors in pursuing a long career in the public service. That he would make his primary contribution in the field of diplomacy was not, however, immediately apparent. Entering the House of Commons as a Unionist member for South-East Lancashire (Westhoughton) in 1892 at the age of 27, Stanley became Financial Secretary to the War Office in November 1900 before serving as Postmaster-General with a seat in the Cabinet from October 1903 until December 1905. In this latter post he gained notoriety by referring to his employees who were engaged in a postal strike as ‘bloodsuckers’ and ‘blackmailers’. Thereafter, his career fell victim to his party’s exclusion from power over the following decade. Like many other prominent Tories he went down to defeat in the Liberal party’s landslide general election victory of January 1906. Though himself a declared free trader, Stanley suffered from his party’s association with the Chamberlainite policy of tariff reform. His father’s death in June 1908 at least allowed the newly ennobled earl to return to Parliament, albeit in the upper chamber. In the years that followed Derby enhanced his position within the Conservative party, above all as the man who made Lancashire’s political weather. This county was widely seen to hold the key to the political complexion of the Westminster government, and the uncrowned ‘King of Lancashire’ emerged as the essential conduit through which the Conservative leadership became acquainted with Lancashire opinion and through which that opinion in turn influenced the party hierarchy. He was thus ‘perhaps the last great aristocrat more powerful for what he was than what he did’.1 By the summer of 1914 the Conservative party, locked into the political culde-sac of Unionist opposition to the Liberal government’s bill to enact Irish Home Rule, contemplated the prospect of an imminent general election with no real confidence of victory. Much would depend upon whether the Liberal and Labour parties could restore their relationship sufficiently to recreate the Progressive Alliance which had thwarted Tory hopes at the last three contests. As it was, the coming of European war transformed both the prospects of the Conservative party and those of Derby himself. The war and, more specifically, the never   R.J.Q. Adams, Bonar Law (London, 1999), p. 86.

1

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ending need for manpower gave him the opportunity to exert the sort of local leadership which, historically speaking, the aristocracy had long been expected to provide. His success in encouraging men to the colours led to his appointment as Director-General of Recruiting in October 1915. The so-called Derby Scheme, launched that month, was a necessary exercise designed in practice to prove the need for conscription. Derby himself seems to have nurtured ambitions to become Secretary of State for War, ambitions that were encouraged by the attractions which his largely apolitical stance had for the army high command. In the event, when Lloyd George succeeded Kitchener as War Secretary in July 1916, Derby became his junior minister. The Welshman seems to have calculated that, in an increasingly tense civil-military environment, the bluff and popular Derby had the capacity to act as a buffer between the government and the armed forces: ‘His genial disposition, his talent for bringing opponents together, his distaste for forcing things to an issue were all of service in this useful task.’2 Their differing political backgrounds did not make Derby and Lloyd George natural allies, but the former quickly fell under the latter’s spell, admiring his resolute determination to bring the war to a successful conclusion. Then, Lloyd George’s rapid elevation to the premiership inevitably created a vacancy at the War Office, which Derby was well placed to fill. In part it was a reward for his loyalty to the new Prime Minister; in part also a reflection of Lloyd George’s need to fill the vacant office with an appointment capable of securing the approval of both the Conservative party and the army. Ambassadorial appointments at this time have often been discussed in terms of a conflict between the ‘new’ diplomacy and the ‘old’ – the clash between Lloyd George’s determination to place loyal political cronies and allies in important embassies and the claims and expectations of the clearly laid-out career structure of the professional diplomatic corps.3 In the case of Derby’s appointment to Paris in April 1918 such a framework of analysis is only partially relevant. True, Derby was a Foreign Office outsider and his transfer from the War Office to the Paris Embassy was almost entirely the work of the Prime Minister. It involved setting aside the aspirations of the most senior official within the Foreign Office, the Permanent Under-Secretary Lord Hardinge of Penshurst. Towards the end of 1916, Hardinge had approached the then Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, and secured a promise that he would be appointed as Britain’s next ambassador to France whenever the elderly incumbent, Lord Bertie of Thame, finally retired.4 Yet Lloyd George was less concerned in April 1918 to place his man in Paris than to ensure that this particular man was no longer involved in the higher war directorate in London.   Randolph Churchill, Lord Derby ‘King of Lancashire’ (London, 1959), p. 219.   See for example, Gaynor Johnson, The Berlin Embassy of Lord D’Abernon,

2 3

1920‒1926 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 21‒4. 4   Ephraim Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1919‒1926 (Brighton, 1994), p. 42.

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Indeed, Derby had never been as prominent within Lloyd George’s coalition government as his status of Secretary of State for War might have suggested, and the relationship between the two men had declined steadily between December 1916 and the spring of 1918. Derby’s firm conviction that it was his principal task to support the army high command inevitably came up against Lloyd George’s equally inflexible determination to re-establish civil control of the country’s war effort. In addition Lloyd George became increasingly alienated by Derby’s manifest irresolution. The latter’s repeated threats of resignation did little more than earn Lloyd George’s contempt. More than twenty years later, when Derby’s son Lord Stanley pondered his future within the government of Neville Chamberlain, Leo Amery recorded that it was Derby’s intervention that had kept him from resigning, waspishly adding that ‘talk of resigning is hereditary there’.5 The newspaper magnate, Lord Riddell, noted Lloyd George’s changed opinion: He has been resigning twice a day. He has no courage, and funk is often equal to treachery. I can see why they call him ‘Genial Judas’ … He is frightened to death of criticism.6

Matters came to a head in the first months of 1918 as Lloyd George determined to act against William Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and subsequently, perhaps, Douglas Haig, the British commander on the Western Front. By this stage one Whitehall insider judged that Derby had become a ‘public danger’, while the Prime Minister’s confidant, Philip Kerr, believed that the War Minister was only retained so that Lloyd George could use him ‘as a tool’.7 Derby himself found the effort of trying to defend Robertson the ‘most trying time I have ever had’.8 In the event Lloyd George, having dislodged Robertson from power, never felt strong enough to remove Haig, not least because the latter enjoyed the favour of the King, and he was prepared to wait for a suitable moment to act against Derby. That opportunity was not long in coming. The German spring offensive made it possible for him to argue that a change of ambassadors in Paris was necessitated by an evident crisis in the war, while a serious decline in Bertie’s health only confirmed the need for immediate action. So if Derby’s removal to Paris was in many ways a demotion – one journalist judged that the embassy had been used as

  John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds), The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries 1929‒1945 (London, 1988), p. 591. 6   John McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908‒1923 (London, 1986), p. 218. 7   Keith Middlemas (ed.), Thomas Jones: Whitehall Diary 1916‒1925 (London, 1969), pp. 52, 57. 8   Derby to Haig, 20 February 1918, Liverpool Record Office, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 27/2. 5

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a wastepaper basket for discarded politicians9 – it was never necessary to present it in these terms. Meanwhile, the vacant War Office passed, as Lloyd George had wished for some time, to Lord Milner, who now exercised a level of authority in that post which Derby had never attained. Indeed, according to Leo Amery, ‘the little triumvirate of Lloyd George, Milner and Henry Wilson … really ran the war during the crucial spring and summer months of the German offensive’.10 Further proof that Derby’s appointment should not be viewed as evidence of the ‘new’ diplomacy in action is provided by his conduct while in Paris. While never anything but honourable towards the Prime Minister, Derby’s first loyalty was to the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour. This was scarcely surprising. Derby had never fully reconciled himself to Balfour’s loss of the Conservative party leadership in 1911, telling the King that in six months time the party would want him back and ‘wonder at their disloyalty to him and I hope be ashamed of themselves’.11 A year later he was still urging Balfour to return and had not ruled out the possibility of another Balfour premiership as late as the mid-1920s. Even after Balfour was succeeded as Foreign Secretary by Lord Curzon, with whom Derby enjoyed an altogether cooler relationship, the Ambassador still had no doubts that his chain of command ran directly through the Foreign Office and not via 10 Downing Street. The Embassy Derby began his Paris embassy with few obvious advantages. In the words of one critic, ‘he dines out with people whose faces he doesn’t know, whose names he can’t remember and whose language he is unable to talk’.12 The ambassador himself reputedly told Bonar Law that he would have to go to bed with a dictionary.13 This lack of expertise in the French tongue was potentially a fatal handicap. At the outbreak of hostilities the, in the circumstances, inappropriately named commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir John French, had invited ridicule by his total inability to converse other than in English.14 But Derby, though he never became genuinely fluent in French, was at least prepared to make the effort, not least because, relieved to leave the intrigues of British domestic politics behind him, he threw himself into his new duties with energy and enthusiasm. Haig found

 

9

p. 299.

    12   13   14   10 11

C. à Court Repington, The First World War 1914‒1918 vol. 2 (London, 1920), Leopold Amery, My Political Life, vol. 2 (London, 1953), p. 157. Adams, Bonar Law, p. 87. David Gilmour, Curzon (London, 1994), p. 490. Repington, First World War, vol. 2, p. 276. Edward Spears, Liaison 1914 (London, 1999), p. 75.

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him ‘a different man! In such good spirits and eating well’.15 Most significantly, Derby was determined to understand the workings of the French political system, something which few British observers had mastered. It did not take the new ambassador long to appreciate that, within the French government, Prime Minister Clemenceau was almost all-powerful. Indeed, when Clemenceau was away, ‘the Government does not really exist’.16 By contrast, Derby soon realised that the French Foreign Minister, Stephen Pichon, through whom his ambassadorial duties should normally have been channelled, was not the source of executive authority in the making of French foreign policy. Offering the sort of pithy advice that Derby appreciated, Lord Esher pointed out that, among the ‘governing blokes’, Pichon would ‘never get half round the course at Aintree’.17 Having established the realities of power within the French government, Derby made it his priority to win the ‘Tiger’s’ confidence and a genuine friendship developed between the two men which did much to ease relations between London and Paris and which comfortably survived the end of Clemenceau’s premiership. The fact that the Frenchman, having spent four years in America after the Civil War, spoke English fluently no doubt facilitated matters. At all events, in September 1920, at Derby’s farewell interview with the by then former French premier shortly before his return to London, Clemenceau remarked that ‘during all the time we have been associated we have never had a quarrel of any sort or kind which, he added, “is more than I can say with regard to your colleagues”’.18 Yet, having ascertained the central realities of the French political scene, Derby was also determined to explore and connect with its highways and by-ways, not least because he was soon aware that those realities were always subject to change. Such a strategy involved a degree of risk for it meant consorting with opponents, and sometimes enemies, of the existing regime. But the ambassador judged that Clemenceau’s position at the head of the government was less secure in the final months of the war than history has tended to assert. As a result, he did ‘not propose to discontinue seeing men who will inevitably come to the front one day’, even if this meant that Clemenceau viewed him ‘with some sort of suspicion’.19 Whereas, therefore, Bertie had derived most of his information from an intimate circle of close associates, never straying beyond a strictly diplomatic role, Derby determined to cast his net far wider and extend the scope of his ambassadorial contacts. He soon made the acquaintance not only of leading politicians but also of diplomats, members of the military hierarchy, figures from the business and commercial world and key personalities from the press. This network fed, in turn, 15   Robert Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig 1914‒1919 (London, 1952), p. 305. 16   Derby to Balfour, 12 October 1918, Parliamentary Archives, Lloyd George MSS, F/52/2/39. 17   Churchill, Derby, p. 356. 18    Diary, 17 September 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/6. 19   Derby to Balfour, 22 June 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1.

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into contacts with a corresponding array of leading British figures as they passed through Paris. During Derby’s time in Paris the British embassy operated on an unprecedented scale. His lavish hospitality became legendary and it was said that six footmen were brought over from England for special functions, while guests had the pleasure of eating from the Stanley family’s gold and silver plate.20 Only a man with something like his private wealth could have sustained Derby’s largesse. When Hardinge expressed an interest in succeeding Derby, while doubting whether he could ever do so on the available salary, Derby offered to ‘show him all my accounts which showed that it required twice the salary to run this place’.21 This was not mere self-indulgence on the ambassador’s part, but an intrinsic element in his attempt to collect as much useful information as possible. ‘The French’, he explained towards the end of his time in Paris, ‘take very much the idea of cutlet for cutlet, and if you don’t entertain them they don’t get to know you and they don’t entertain you.’22 His entertaining was ‘National business’.23 Indeed, it would be fair to say that, had Derby not run his embassy as extravagantly as he did, his effectiveness would have been considerably diminished. The French responded well to Derby’s qualities of bluff geniality and forthrightness. He had the capacity to gain the confidence of his contacts and tease out information from them. As he once declared, ‘I will make it my business to sniff about’.24 In the process the ambassador revealed acute powers of observation which had not hitherto been apparent.25 Curzon once confided that he received better information from Derby than he did from any other ambassador.26 It was in fact easy to underrate the new ambassador. According to the newspaper proprietor, Lord Riddell, Derby was ‘much shrewder than appears – very observant, a good judge of character and an intriguer of the first water. A proclivity which is aided by his bluff John Bull manner’.27 Preparing for a meeting with Philippe Berthelot, the Directeur Politique at the Quai d’Orsay, whom he soon recognised as the real power behind the throne of the French Foreign Ministry, Derby confided: ‘Berthelot is a very able fellow. Nobody can pick a man’s brains better than he can

   Cynthia Gladwyn, The Paris Embassy (London, 1976), p. 181; John Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader (London, 2002), p. 478. 21   Diary, 7 July 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/4. 22   Derby to Sir G. Grahame, 7 September 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/3. 23   Diary, 2 July 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/1. 24   Memorandum to Lloyd George and Curzon, 3 October 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/4. 25   R.A. Barlow, ‘Lord Derby and the Paris Embassy’, M.Sc dissertation, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1976, p. 23. 26   John Vincent (ed.), The Crawford Papers (Manchester, 1984), p. 413. 27   McEwen (ed.), Riddell Diaries, p. 312. 20

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so I shall certainly play the part of the ignoramus and do all the questioning myself and not let him ask me any questions.’28 That said, Derby could on occasion get matters hopelessly wrong. In October 1919 he speculated as to Clemenceau’s possible successor: There is no doubt that Briand has lost ground. It is impossible in France to say that any man is a past number but I really think it looks as if Briand was and the same can be said about Barthou. On the other hand Viviani has gained ground enormously … and I am sure at the present moment if anything was to happen to Clemenceau public opinion would put Viviani in his place.29

In fact, Aristide Briand would become an essential and almost permanent fixture of French governments throughout the 1920s, ‘the archetypal figure of the regime; middleman and conciliator, ceaselessly forming and reforming coalitions’.30 Similarly, Louis Barthou was actually Foreign Minister of France at the time of his assassination in October 1934. By contrast, the ministerial career of René Viviani, Prime Minister at the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, was already over by the time that Derby wrote. Clemenceau’s actual successor as Prime Minister, Alexandre Millerand, did not enter the ambassador’s calculations at this particular time. For the most part, however, Derby’s judgement was sound and he offered a more than usually reliable assessment of the French political scene for his masters in London. During and indeed after his tenure of the Paris embassy, Derby became a strong advocate of the continuing importance of the Anglo-French entente. To an extent he could be accused, like many other ambassadorial appointees over the decades, of ‘going native’. But Derby never became an uncritical supporter of the French cause. He did not seek to justify French actions when he regarded them as inappropriate or damaging. When Clemenceau demanded authority to send a French military planner, Colonel Roure, to London to advise the British on manpower mobilisation – in practice, to check whether Britain could shoulder a higher proportion of the military burden on the Western Front than she claimed – Derby dismissed the French premier’s request as ‘a great piece of impudence’.31 He was equally clear that to allow the French to consolidate their position along the North African coast and possibly fortify Tangier would be ‘one of the most fatal things we could do’.32 This French ambition was one that Britain was ‘bound

  Derby to Curzon, 24 October 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/2.   Memorandum to Lloyd George and Curzon, 3 October 1919, Derby MSS, 920

28 29

DER (17) 28/1/4. 30   Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France’s Bid for Power in Europe 1914‒1940 (London, 1995), p. 112. 31   Derby to Balfour, 1 May 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1. 32   Derby to Curzon, 7 March 1919, British Library, Curzon MSS, F112/196.

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to resist’.33 Derby was also sure that some leading French politicians could not be trusted. The wartime President and post-war Prime Minister, Raymond Poincaré, was ‘a very mean, narrow-minded creature … with a happy knack of saying even the nicest things in a most aggressive way’.34 ‘The man is not straight. He never has been.’35 What Derby’s proximity to the French establishment made possible was a sympathetic appreciation and understanding of the French point of view – even when it ran counter to a narrowly British perception – which few inside the British government managed to emulate. Only two months after his arrival in Paris Derby was seeking permission from the Foreign Office to return to England to make a public speech, ‘putting the point of view of France as I now see it’. This, he felt, would help him in his ambassadorial role, as ‘what I said would be of a complimentary nature’.36 The tableau of Anglo-French relations which Derby entered in April 1918 was more complex and nuanced than the existence since 1904 of the Entente Cordiale and the experience of nearly four years of fighting side-by-side in the First World War might immediately suggest. The signing of the entente had not succeeded in changing the perception of France as Britain’s hereditary enemy as far as a substantial proportion of the country’s policy-making elite was concerned. Memories of recent disputes in locations as far apart as Fashoda and the Newfoundland fishing grounds were not easily forgotten. In the words of Paul Hayes, ‘the basis of the entente was a common apprehension rather than a feeling of shared purpose’.37 Equally, fighting in common cause between 1914 and 1918 did not fully obliterate images of the Napoleonic era and its threat to British security. While the British Cabinet had accepted readily enough a Russian proposal to turn the Triple Entente into a military alliance in September 1914, the provision that no party to that alliance could insist upon peace terms which had not first been concerted with its partners was not without significance. It reflected an appreciation that, beyond the common objective to defeat Germany, visions of the basis of an acceptable peace were sufficiently diverse to tear the alliance apart.38

  Derby to Curzon, 24 November 1919, cited Gillian Bennett, ‘Britain’s relations with France after Versailles: the  problem of Tangier 1919‒1923’, European History Quarterly, 24 (1994), p. 61. 34   Derby to Curzon, 16 July 1920, cited Christopher Andrew and A.S. KanyaForstner, France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion (London, 1981), p. 240. 35   Derby to Hardinge, 3 July 1922, cited J.D. Goold, ‘Old Diplomacy: The Diplomatic Career of Lord Hardinge 1910‒1922’, University of Cambridge PhD, 1976, p. 295. 36   Derby to Balfour, 21 June 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1. 37   Paul Hayes, Modern British Foreign Policy: The Twentieth Century 1880‒1939 (London, 1978), p. 118. 38   David French, ‘“Had We Known How Bad Things Were in Germany, We Might Have Got Stiffer Terms”: Great Britain and the German Armistice’ in M.F. Boemeke, G.D. 33

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The pattern of Anglo-French relations was scarcely improved by the experience of war. On the one hand it is perhaps too easy to focus on the divisions and strains that threatened at times to tear the alliance asunder; the fact is that the AngloFrench partnership survived unbroken for the duration of hostilities and was fundamental to bringing the conflict to a successful conclusion. But on the other, day-to-day association between the politicians and generals of the two countries served in most cases to reinforce the sort of unfavourable national stereotyping that had existed before the outbreak of war. The French sensed an intolerable air of superiority on the part of their British allies; the British saw the French as incorrigibly unreliable. Being allied to the French once in a lifetime was, judged Sir John French, more than enough, while, according to the French liaison officer, General Huguet, the British were ‘grim, implacable, somewhat unscrupulous, sometimes treacherous’.39 The restoration of peace in November 1918, by removing the German menace that had given the two countries a common purpose for the previous four years, tended to restore a more traditional pattern of international antagonisms. An often quoted exchange between Clemenceau and Lloyd George bears repetition. ‘I have to tell you’, remarked the French premier, ‘that from the very day after the Armistice I found you an enemy to France.’ ‘Well’, responded the British Prime Minister, ‘was it not always our traditional policy?’40 In like vein, less than a month after the armistice, Lord Curzon noted his apprehension that ‘the great Power from whom we may have most to fear in the future is France’.41 It was this sort of thinking that led Lord Hardinge, Derby’s eventual successor at the Paris embassy, to conclude that Britain’s ‘relations with France never have been, are not and probably never will be sufficiently stable and friendly to justify the construction of a Channel Tunnel’.42 But the return of peace also threw up a new strain in Anglo-French relations, visible in the peace negotiations and for many years afterwards. How should the defeated powers, and Germany in particular, now be treated? Divisions on this issue were almost inevitable. With Germany’s pretensions to naval and imperial hegemony safely thwarted, Britain could look upon the victory of 1918 with a feeling of confidence and satisfaction at a job well done, that was never shared by Feldman and E. Glaser (eds), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge, 1998), p. 70. 39   Richard Holmes, The Little Field-Marshal: Sir John French (London, 1981), p. 283; P.M.H. Bell, France and Britain 1900‒1940: Entente and Estrangement (London, 1996), p. 105. 40   Georges Clemenceau, Grandeur and Misery of Victory (London, 1930), p. 113. 41   Paul Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy 1865‒1980 (London, 1981), p. 211. 42   Hardinge memorandum, April/May 1920, cited Alan Sharp, ‘Standard-bearers in a tangle: British perceptions of France after the First World War’ in David Dutton (ed.), Statecraft and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (Liverpool, 1995), p. 69.

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the French. The latter remained only too aware of their land border with Germany, of their continuing demographic (and hence, potentially, military) inferiority compared with their neighbour and of the failure to secure the sort of overwhelming victory in 1918 which would have seen allied troops deep inside German territory, if not occupying the enemy capital. As Derby explained, the French were still in a mortal funk of Germany … The disparity between the populations of the two Countries is a perfect nightmare to them. They are … determined to get a big buffer State between them and Germany and I feel confident that they will sacrifice almost anything to secure our support for that.43

This fundamental difference of view soon translated into opposing perceptions of the Treaty of Versailles. For the French the treaty was a one-off opportunity to subjugate their enemy into a state of permanent inferiority and thereby ensure their own security. The British, by contrast, quickly saw the need to revise Versailles and bring Germany back into the European family of nations, partly as a valuable trading partner but also and not least as a counterweight to the alternative prospect of French predominance on the continent.44 Before the end of Derby’s embassy there had been a perceptible lessening of anti-German feeling in Britain, but no comparable development was evident in France. Derby’s Paris embassy lasted just two and a half years, but it divides naturally into three distinct phases between which the background of Anglo-French relations and the ambassador’s position within them subtly changed. On his arrival, of course, the war still had more than six months to run. Indeed, not only were some of the conflict’s darkest moments yet to come, but few observers in April 1918 would have had any expectation that the enemy would be defeated before the year was over. Derby’s role at this time was first and foremost to maintain the military alliance between the two countries and, as far as he could, to smooth out on-going frictions at both political and military levels. With the armistice in November attention immediately turned to the construction of the peace settlement. During this period – the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 – Derby’s role was inevitably diminished, partly because he was not a member of the British delegation to the peace conference and partly because the presence in the French capital of leading British politicians largely removed the intermediary role which he had previously occupied. Nonetheless, Derby remained a perceptive observer of the evolving scene at one remove from the decision-making process. The ambassador was ill for several months in the second half of 1919 and, by the time that he returned to service, the situation had changed again. The principal   Derby to Curzon, 7 March 1919, cited Michael Dockrill, ‘Britain, the United States, and France and the German Settlement 1918‒1920’ in B.J.C. McKercher and D.J. Moss (eds), Shadow and Substance in British Foreign Policy 1895‒1939 (Edmonton, 1984), p. 208. 44   Bennett, ‘Britain’s relations with France’, p. 57. 43

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peacemakers had returned to their countries and Derby had a new role to play in the implementation of the peace settlement. This he performed, in part at least, as the British representative at the Conference of Ambassadors which began to meet at the start of 1920 and which was intended to settle the multifarious items of unfinished business left over from the peace treaties. In this final stage of his ambassadorship, Derby became more than ever concerned at the decline in AngloFrench relations and increasingly convinced that Britain would have to make a significant gesture in order to halt and reverse this trend. Not surprisingly, returning to England in November 1920 and resuming his Cabinet career in October 1922, Derby emerged as a leading advocate of a formal Anglo-French alliance and a powerful critic of Curzon’s Foreign Secretaryship and the damage it was doing to cross-channel relations. Criss-crossing these three periods were significant changes of personnel which inevitably affected Derby’s capacity to exert influence. Of these the most important was probably the replacement of Arthur Balfour by George Curzon as British Foreign Secretary in October 1919. ‘I hope and believe’, Derby told Balfour at this time, ‘I shall get on all right with George but it can never be quite the same thing to me serving under him as it was serving under you.’45 Derby always believed that his friendship with Balfour had allowed him access to the highest levels of the British policy-making process. In France, the end of Clemenceau’s premiership in January 1920, especially in conjunction with his failure then to secure the Presidency of the Republic, also deprived the British ambassador of his most valuable personal contact. Derby was convinced that Clemenceau was ‘really the best friend that England has got in France’ and was therefore keen that as many outstanding questions as possible should be settled while ‘the Tiger’ remained in office. Thereafter, ‘we may … have somebody much more difficult to deal with’.46 Derby’s relations with Millerand were civil enough, though never intimate. But, whatever the difficulties, the ambassador never relaxed his efforts in the interests of Anglo-French friendship, convinced that this remained a vital factor in the preservation of world peace. Derby’s Changing Role In the spring of 1918 the First World War witnessed one of its decisive and, from an Allied point of view, most threatening moments, as the German High Command put all its available resources into a final effort to secure victory on the Western Front before American troops arrived in full force to support their French and British ‘associates’.47 History suggests that, by the time Derby arrived in Paris,   Derby to Balfour, 24 October 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1.   Derby to Curzon, 15 October and 17 November 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17)

45 46

28/2/2.

  The United States declined to use the term ‘allies’.

47

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the main thrust of the German spring offensive had already peaked, halted at the rail centre of Amiens on 4‒5 April. Yet this was not apparent to contemporaries for several weeks. Indeed, the British army had suffered over 200,000 casualties between 21 March and 15 April, a figure which exceeded that incurred in any comparable earlier period of the conflict. As late as June, plans were being made for the possible evacuation of Paris. ‘There is no doubt’, Derby reported to Balfour on 14 June, ‘the Germans have only a very little further to go before being able to bombard at all events the outskirts of Paris and I am afraid of a panic and everybody wanting to get away at once.’48 In such a situation the question of whether Britain was making a fair and equitable contribution to the land war re-emerged, as it had done periodically throughout the conflict, as a key irritant in Anglo-French relations. ‘There is no doubt’, warned the ambassador, ‘a very strong undercurrent of feeling existing in the country against us, and it is based on the idea that we are not doing all we can in the way of man power.’49 While he believed that French complaints in this respect were, on the whole, unjustified, Derby was exasperated by Lloyd George’s apparently unlimited capacity to alienate the French Prime Minister. ‘With his radical and populist sympathies and his unwavering determination to secure final victory’, writes Keith Jeffery, Clemenceau ‘had much in common with Lloyd George.’50 This was true enough – but it did nothing to stop the two men rubbing one another up the wrong way. It was, Derby later concluded, the fault of the characters of the two men: ‘Whereas Lloyd George does not mind what anybody says to him in the heat of the moment and bears no resentment, it is quite different with Clemenceau.’51 As Derby wrote in August 1918: We must make Lloyd George decently civil to Clemenceau. I am all for his sticking up to him in anything in which he has to be stuck up to, but there are two ways of doing that and LG has so far taken the wrong way and it does an infinity of harm not only in the relations of the two Governments but incidentally in the relationships between the two countries.52

The British premier failed to ‘realise in the very least what the great danger here is, namely that favourable terms will be offered to France and she will accept them and it will be we who will have to be called upon to pay the price’. As long as Clemenceau remained in power, Derby continued,

  Derby to Balfour, 14 June 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1.   Derby to Balfour, 1 May 1918, ibid. 50   Keith Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier (Oxford, 2006), 48 49

p. 210.

  Derby to Curzon, 21 October 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/2.   Derby to Balfour, 4 August 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1.

51 52

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I do not think there is any fear of a separate peace, but still at the same time if Germany does make a favourable offer to France I do not believe we could afterwards get the French soldiers to fight or the French Nation to continue the War as they would say it would be simply and solely to fight for our interests. What will happen then Heaven only knows.53

Back in January 1918, over lunch with Lloyd George and Douglas Haig, Derby had bet the Prime Minister 100 cigars to 100 cigarettes that the war would be over by the next new year.54 Yet, granted the military ascendancy enjoyed by Germany for several months over the year that followed, even Derby must have been surprised by the accuracy of his own prediction. In the late summer of 1918 the German armies were rapidly defeated by an allied counter-offensive. Meanwhile, Germany’s co-belligerents in the peripheral theatres of war quickly reached the point of capitulation. Derby was quite clear in his own mind that the British forces deserved the lion’s share of the credit for this victory. But it was inevitable that the allies, and particularly France, would talk up their own roles in an attempt to strengthen their individual negotiating positions prior to the opening of the peace conference. Sometimes, Derby believed, it was not worth the candle to engage in such disputes: It seems to me … that we are being rather petty complaining that the French do not give us enough credit for Palestine and for the part we have played at Salonika. I really do not see that that matters in the least. If they like to think France is doing everything let them do so. It cannot for one minute alter the fact that we have done all the fighting in Palestine; that the War with Turkey is ours and nobody else’s.55

Germany’s rapid collapse occurred at least a year before the majority of the British political establishment expected it. Relatively little thought had been given to the construction of peace, though policy makers were at least clear that they needed to secure the maximum possible advantage for Britain and its empire. This meant protecting the country’s interests from both existing foes and existing friends. But into the already complex pattern of Anglo-French relations the last months of the war had witnessed the intrusion of the power and might of the United States. During October and November it seemed that this might have the effect of drawing Britain and France closer together, as both countries viewed with alarm the apparent determination of the American President to handle armistice negotiations with Germany unilaterally. At the same time the Pact of London of September 1914, which had converted the Entente Cordiale into a formal military alliance, automatically lapsed with the termination of hostilities. Furthermore,   Diary, 2 June 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/1.   Blake (ed.), Private Papers, p. 278. 55   Diary, 5 October 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/1. 53 54

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Britain’s unilateral negotiation of an armistice with Turkey placed a considerable strain on Anglo-French harmony even before the peace delegates arrived in Paris. For his part Clemenceau informed the Chamber of Deputies on 29 December that his ‘directing thought’ at the forthcoming conference would be to maintain the wartime coalition. ‘To this unity’, he insisted, ‘I will make every sacrifice.’56 The British commitment was less public, but apparently no less firm. The War Cabinet agreed to work for Anglo-French co-operation. It was too risky to rely exclusively on partnership with the United States. After all, in the words of Sir Eyre Crowe, ‘we must remember that our friend America lives a long way off. France sits at our doors’.57 But the experience of the peace negotiations in Paris made it difficult to fulfil such good intentions. No clear pattern of alignment emerged as between Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson. On some issues the British found themselves closer to the Americans; on others they felt a stronger rapport with the French. As far as both Derby and Balfour were concerned, Lloyd George remained part of the problem. The Foreign Secretary, who was looking forward to the Conference ‘with considerable apprehension’, noted that our little friend has somehow contrived to get into personal collision with the leading statesmen of our three principal Allies [France, the United States and Italy]. Of these facts he is entirely unconscious; though even if he knew them, I doubt whether it would make much difference.58

Before long Lloyd George was complaining about France’s conduct at the Conference – ‘bullying, cajoling, lying, sowing dissension’.59 But the Prime Minister was not alone and Lord Hardinge, whose appointment as ‘organising ambassador’ caused Derby understandable, if unnecessary, concern, later commented that the French were ‘opening their mouths very wide and would like to reduce Germany to servitude for the next fifty years’.60 As in the past, Derby found it easier than many of his colleagues to understand the French position, even if he did not necessarily agree with it. This was particularly the case in relation to France’s somewhat desperate quest for long-term security. A month after the armistice the ambassador tried to explain Clemenceau’s views on this subject:

  David Stevenson, ‘France at the Paris Peace Conference’ in Robert Boyce (ed.), French Foreign and Defence Policy, 1918‒1940 (London, 1998), p. 16. 57   V.H. Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy 1914‒1918 (Oxford, 1971), p. 254. 58   Balfour to Derby, 16 November 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1. 59   Lloyd George to Philip Kerr, 12 February 1919, cited Dockrill, ‘Britain, United States and France’, p. 206. 60   Hardinge to R. Rodd, 6 December 1919, cited ibid., p. 204. 56

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He said that the Rhine was a natural boundary of Gaul and Germany and that it ought to be made the German boundary now, the territory between the Rhine and the French frontier being made into an Independent State whose neutrality should be guaranteed by the great powers. I can see that he intends to press that very strongly. Foch had put forward a suggestion that an Independent Army should be raised in those parts for its defence, but Clemenceau had vetoed that on the grounds that it was unnecessary and dangerous. He tells me however Foch looks upon it as a military necessity and will press for it at the Conference.61

Derby also better understood than did many in London the dire financial burden facing the French government and its people. Appropriate reparation payments from Germany were not simply a question of natural justice, but also of the economic viability of the French state. In the end the peace treaty with Germany was signed on 28 June 1919. France gave up her claim to a frontier on the Rhine and even the idea of a Rhineland buffer-state in return for the promise, never to be honoured, of an Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee. The principles governing the payment of reparations were agreed, though the scale of German indebtedness was left for later deliberation. Derby was ‘full of admiration’ for the way in which Lloyd George had conducted the British case at the Peace Conference, keeping the country’s interests always to the fore. But there was a price which, Derby seemed to sense, would have to be paid for Lloyd George’s success. Both France and the United States were soon complaining that the Peace was ‘an English peace and that we have got everything that we want’. The ambassador predicted particular difficulties for Anglo-French relations in Syria and Tangier. The French were ‘a greedy Nation’ and did not think they had ‘got enough’. In advance of the forthcoming French elections they were likely to seek a ‘popular arrangement’ with regard to both territories. Derby’s advice was that Britain should be ready to make extensive concessions over Syria in order to be better placed to make a stand over Tangier. ‘We certainly cannot give France a mandate for Tangier. That would constitute a really grave danger to my mind to our command of the Mediterranean.’62 In fact Anglo-French relations deteriorated steadily over the second half of 1919. In addition to the issues highlighted by Derby, there were problems over the peace treaties with the lesser defeated powers, differences over policy towards Russia and a growing divergence over the enforcement of the German settlement, so recently arrived at. Very quickly, Britain saw the need to relax the terms of the Versailles Treaty in order to enable Germany to make a contribution to the economic recovery of the European continent as a whole. This was not an attitude for which France felt much sympathy. Indeed, British suspicions soon grew that the French had not accepted Versailles’ Rhineland settlement as final. By the end of the year Clemenceau was looking to despatch a warning to Germany that Allied   Derby to Balfour, 14 December 1918, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/1.   Derby to Curzon, 30 June 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/2.

61 62

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military action might be renewed if the Germans continued to prevaricate over the ratification of the peace treaty. The overall situation was scarcely helped as the inter-allied policy-making process became ever more confused. With the heads of government back in their capitals, the on-going peace conference could not definitively settle many of the outstanding issues without constant reference to London and Washington for final confirmation.63 Lloyd George’s belief that he personally should remain at the head of his country’s diplomacy was a far from unqualified asset and his relations with Clemenceau deteriorated still further. A fortnight after returning to duty after illness, Derby reported the French leader’s bitterness: ‘He says that he has been tricked by [Lloyd George] … he says he can’t believe a word the PM says.’64 For the ambassador it was often an exercise in damage limitation, for which his simple geniality proved a priceless asset. Conveying a strongly worded message from Lloyd George on Syria, Derby was not surprised that Clemenceau ‘flew into one of his fits of passion’. In response Derby ‘only laughed and he gradually ended by calming down and laughing too’.65 In the background there remained the issue of the Anglo-French Treaty of Guarantee. For Clemenceau this, and particularly the specifically British part of it, was ‘the keystone of European peace’.66 But the British guarantee was dependent upon the prior ratification of the American treaty and, as doubts grew in Paris over Woodrow Wilson’s ability to get the whole peace settlement through the American Congress, the question of the continuing validity of the British commitment became ever more acute. Whether Lloyd George had carefully drafted the relevant second article of the guarantee so as to give Britain a possible escape route should America renege on its pledge has been exhaustively explored elsewhere.67 But late in 1919 the French press carried a story, for which Derby was probably responsible, to the effect that the British government was ready to waive its rights under article two and thus offer France a unilateral guarantee.68 Derby recorded a meeting with the French journalist ‘Pertinax’ in the pages of his diary. According to the journalist, the fact that the Americans had not yet ratified the treaty might give Britain too an opportunity to withdraw from the agreement. Derby responded with clear indignation: ‘I told him that … I thought he completely misunderstood the English people.’ Britain had given her word and, though the American stance 63    Michael Dockrill and J.D. Goold, Peace without Promise: Britain and the Peace Conferences 1919‒1923 (London, 1981), p. 81. 64   Derby to Curzon 16 Oct. 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/2. 65   Ibid. 66   Clemenceau, Grandeur, p. 232. 67   Antony Lentin, ‘The Treaty That Never Was: Lloyd George and the Abortive Anglo-French Alliance of 1919’ in Judith Loades (ed.), The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (Bangor, 1991), pp. 115‒28. 68   Antony Lentin, ‘Une aberration inexplicable? Clememceau and the Abortive Anglo-French Guarantee Treaty of 1919’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 8, no. 2 (1997), p. 43.

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was to be regretted, ‘our word stood and would stand’. Furthermore, ‘it would be as well that France should recognise that such a decision meant an extraordinary proof of our loyalty to France and it would be as well if in minor matters France should show equal loyalty to us’.69 Granted that Lloyd George did in fact renege on the British commitment, it seems likely that Derby’s increasing tendency to espouse the French point of view was based on a sense of guilt over his country’s dishonourable conduct. After all, the ambassador understood only too well how important the treaty of guarantee was to France. As Antony Lentin has written, ‘more than any other consideration, it was the failure of the guarantee treaty which accentuated French feelings of vulnerability and alarm at the inadequacies of Versailles’.70 But a letter to Curzon throws light on an interesting additional dimension in Derby’s thinking: I have given a hint that if America goes out it naturally alters the basis of the agreement. I presume and hope that we shall come to some understanding with the French on this subject, even if America does not come in; but it is such a lever that, if I might suggest it to you, I should make no pronouncement on the subject until you had got many of the various matters now outstanding between us and the French definitely settled.71

Derby’s proposed strategy was not followed. Not surprisingly, the task of oiling the entente during the last twelve months of his embassy became ever more difficult. Deprived of what had, after all, only ever been a second-best option, the French retreated to a stance of strict adherence to the letter of Versailles as their only remaining guarantee against a renewed German threat. Any breach of the treaty’s provisions would necessitate immediate retaliation. Derby warned that, unless Britain also took a ‘perfectly strong line’ in maintaining the spirit and letter of Versailles, ‘endless difficulties’ would arise when the French government tried to secure ‘something more out of Germany and perhaps out of us, than is contained in the Treaty’.72 The peace conference finally ended on 21 January 1920, after just over a year in session, but the procedures for the enforcement of the settlement were complex and confused.73 The key factor, however, was Lloyd George’s determination to continue to play the leading role in ‘larger questions of policy’ by holding a

  Diary, 27 November 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/4.   Antony Lentin, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 60‒61. 71   Derby to Curzon, 8 December 1919, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/2. 72   Derby to Curzon, 3 January 1920, cited Dockrill, ‘Britain, United States and

69 70

France’, p. 216. 73    Alan Sharp, ‘The Enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles 1919‒1923’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol 16 (2005), p. 427.

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series of regular meetings with European leaders.74 In the resulting succession of international gatherings, Derby played only a minor role. Indeed, his presence was only occasionally required.75 The new French President, Paul Deschanel, was not alone in believing that the situation would improve if ‘things [could] be taken out of the hands of the Prime Ministers and conducted on the old lines of diplomacy’.76 Meanwhile, as Derby had anticipated, the new Millerand government and its Chamber of Deputies proved to be ‘troublesome on colonial questions’.77 Then, in April 1920, the German government reacted to an outbreak of civil disorder in the demilitarised Rhineland by sending in 20,000 troops to restore order. As this was in clear violation of Versailles, the French responded – without securing British approval – by despatching their own troops to Frankfurt, Darmstadt and three other German towns. The immediate British response was Derby’s temporary withdrawal from the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris, and the whole episode brought the two countries ‘very near an absolute break’.78 By March Derby was writing of his concern at the rapid growth of anti-English feeling in France. In his most revealing statement on the subject to date, he put aside the immediate sources of friction between the two countries and focused on the underlying causes. He decided to address Curzon ‘as if I was talking as a Frenchman to an Englishman’: I should say to you: What is the result of the War? We have lost 2 million men; we have had some of our large towns, many of our villages and a considerable portion of our agricultural districts, from all of which we draw a large revenue, utterly devastated. We have incurred huge expenditure, in fact we are almost in the position of a conquered rather than a conquering country; and what have we to show for it?

A natural British response to this question, Derby suggested, was that the French had got back the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and had seen their hereditary foe, in terror of which they had lived for the last fifty years, ‘crushed to the ground’. Yet to this a Frenchman would reply:

  Ibid., p. 426; Henri Cambon (ed.), Paul Cambon: Correspondance 1870‒1924 vol. 3 (Paris, 1946), p. 383. 75   Alan Sharp, ‘The Foreign Office in Eclipse, 1919‒1922’, History, 61 (1976), p. 212. 76   Diary, 11 March 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/6. 77   Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, France Overseas, p. 214. 78   Diary, 11 April 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/6. Derby’s withdrawal from the Ambassadors’ Conference was ‘forced upon the Cabinet by Lloyd George’: Curzon to Derby, 9 April 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/3. 74

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Alsace and Lorraine really belong to us and you have only given us back what was our right; and when you talk of Germany being crushed are you so certain that she is crushed?

The focus of the conversation was then likely to turn to Britain, or at least the French perception of the British position: We admit you have lost very nearly as many men as we have; we admit that you spent freely of your money, but you have not got a devastated area, and on the other hand you have got absolute security from Germany who was as great a danger to you as she was to us. You have crushed her fleet without any hopes of its possible resuscitation; you have taken her colonies from her and as a commercial and colonial competitor with you, you have reduced her to incompetence.

In sum, Derby emphasised the terror still felt by France at the possibility that Germany would rise again and eventually overwhelm her, and the feeling that Britain had retreated, not just to her pre-war position but to that which had existed before 1904. Satisfied now that she had nothing to fear from Germany, Britain looked again towards a policy of splendid isolation, cutting herself off from the affairs of Europe, though prepared to exploit all other countries for her commercial advantage. Derby insisted that he had always sought to convince the French that this picture was grossly inaccurate and that, in the last resort, France would never be left to stand alone against a German attack. But what the French wanted, and what Derby was now ready to endorse, was to see this commitment ‘in black and white’: They say that they gave up any idea of possessing the left bank of the Rhine as a frontier because they had the assurance of the definite Treaty in which both England and America promised to give France aid if any unprovoked attack was made on her. They admit that the fact that America has dropped out of necessity alters the whole position and gives England justification also to withhold her signature to the Treaty. But they still cling almost like a drowning man to a straw to their wish that England single-handed, even if America won’t agree, should sign some sort of pledge.79

During his remaining time in Paris Derby did his best to stem the tide of worsening Anglo-French relations. It was an uphill task. In his official capacity he could do little to champion the cause of a formal British commitment to France as long as this was not the policy of his government. He was not helped by the attitude of his political masters. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, who had arrived in his post well-disposed towards France, found his enthusiasm increasingly strained as the   Derby to Curzon, 5 March 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/2/3.

79

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months went by. Lloyd George gave Derby the impression he would like to break with France, or at least see France get into such difficulties that she would have ‘to come on bended knees to ask for assistance’.80 Derby at least heard that his private papers had been read to the British Cabinet and believed that they did some good in modifying the line taken by the government towards the Frankfurt-Darmstadt episode.81 He hoped that out of the crisis the French would at least learn that they could not act independently of Britain, while the British would understand how strongly the French felt over the question of German disarmament.82 The best that Derby could now do was to try to convince the French that they were not helping their own cause. An interview with Maurice Paléologue, the newly appointed Secretary-General at the Quai d’Orsay, gave the ambassador the opportunity to complain of the damage being done by the anti-British tone of the French press, and especially the Echo de Paris: I exaggerated of course as much as I could the effect that these attacks were having and told him what I believe to be absolutely correct that if the English Government put forward at the present moment a Bill to legalise our Alliance with France in case of attack by Germany and left it to the House of Commons to decide, they would not get 50 people to support it.83

Derby’s approach meant understanding the French point of view, but not always agreeing with it. This was certainly the case in relation to the German economy: The difference as I understand it is roughly this. English view: Germany ought to be assisted by an external loan which will enable her to buy food and raw material to set her industries on their feet again, in order that by the produce of such industries they may pay the indemnity. French view: That no loan should be given especially on any German securities which are already pledged towards the payment of the indemnity and I fancy they would prefer to see the industries absolutely and definitely ruined, even if that meant that we should get no repayment, rather than that Germany should get on its feet again and become a strong and menacing power.84

Derby considered the French were quite wrong in this. It was possible to destroy industries, but not to crush for all time a country of 70 million inhabitants and the French had got to be brought to understand this.

    82   83   84   80 81

Diary, 20 August 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/6. Diary, 16 April 1920, ibid. Diary, 26 April 1920, ibid. Diary, 12 March 1920, ibid. Diary, 15 March 1920, ibid.

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Aftermath Derby was determined to leave his embassy before the close of 1920. He was pleased that he would be replaced by Charles Hardinge and not, as had at one time seemed to be the Prime Minister’s wish, by the Marquess of Reading – ‘being a Jew would hopelessly handicap him socially’.85 When the time came for Derby to depart, The Times published a well-deserved tribute: The retiring Ambassador, when he first came to Paris, declared that, so far as he could see, the only reasons why he had been offered the post were that he did not speak French and was not a diplomatist. Lord Derby has demolished whatever truth there may have been in this joke. He does now speak French, and he has become a diplomatist – and one who will be affectionately remembered in France for many years to come.86

Lord Birkenhead, Lord Chancellor in Lloyd George’s government, later voiced similar sentiments: his name will certainly be recalled at the Quai d’Orsay with those of the long succession of English Ambassadors who by bonhomie, tact, hospitality and charm have endeared themselves to a nation which they perfectly understood.87

Yet in terms of the departing ambassador’s most pressing task, strengthening the Anglo-French relationship, it would be difficult to argue that his embassy had ended in success. The best that can be said is that without his presence the situation might have deteriorated much further. It was a failure of which Derby was fully aware. As late as November 1920 he heard from Lord Robert Cecil that anti-French feeling in Britain was growing all the time and that, more worryingly, Lloyd George ‘with his usual power of divining public opinion in England is rather going to head the movement’. If Derby intended to champion the French cause on his return home, he would find it ‘a very uphill task’.88 A few weeks earlier, at one of his last meetings with Georges Clemenceau, the former French premier announced that he was glad Derby was leaving, for the latter’s sake: ‘Things are not going to get any easier between England and France … Therefore you are well advised … to go.’89 But Derby had no intention of abandoning his underlying mission, even if his formal appointment was coming to an end. ‘I told Millerand that when I got

    87   88   89   85 86

Diary, 12 July 1920, ibid. The Times, 20 November 1920. Earl of Birkenhead, Contemporary Personalities (London, 1924), p. 129. Diary, 11 November 1920, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 28/1/6. Diary, 17 September 1920, ibid.

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back to England I should probably have to make speeches in my own part of the world and in one of them I might deal with Anglo-French relations.’90 This, however, was a considerable understatement. Derby did indeed use a speech in Manchester in December to champion the cause of an Anglo-French alliance, arguing that its existence in 1914 might have prevented the outbreak of the First World War and that its existence now might help prevent another worldwide disaster. But, as he also declared, it was his intention to repeat this argument ‘through thick and thin’.91 Over the next few years Derby emerged as the most prominent and vocal British advocate of righting the wrong of 1919 and giving France the security for which she craved. Turning down Lloyd George’s offer of an immediate return to the Cabinet as Colonial Secretary, Derby was able to use his new freedom from official responsibility to pursue an independent line, becoming in the process an increasingly vocal critic of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon. But his task proved as difficult as Cecil and Clemenceau had predicted. The cause was nearly ruined altogether as disputes over Silesia threatened to drive a fatal wedge between Britain and France in the course of 1921. Versailles had laid down that competing German and Polish claims to this important area of mineral and industrial wealth should be settled by a plebiscite. By August, however, it was clear that French support for her new ally Poland was in danger of running up against Britain’s determination to deal fairly with the German case.92 At least Derby was no longer alone. A clear division was emerging among British policy makers and the crisis over Silesia gave a boost to the pro-French camp. Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary, believed that Britain should consider giving France a defensive alliance in return for France accepting the British policy of building up friendly relations with Germany. Derby’s successor in Paris, Charles Hardinge, soon dropped his opposition to an Anglo-French pact, arguing that until France obtained a guarantee of British assistance against possible German aggression, she would continue to be ‘unreasonable and tiresome over all questions affecting her relations with Germany’.93 At the heart of the Foreign Office, the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Eyre Crowe, insisted that the maintenance of the entente remained of supreme importance. Those who favoured substituting an entente with Germany in place of that with France deluded themselves. ‘This is a chimera under present conditions and it must remain so for a long time to come.’94 But while Lloyd George and Curzon were not often in agreement on matters of   Diary, 11 November 1920, ibid.   Churchill, Derby, pp. 383‒6. 92   Hines Hall, ‘Lloyd George, Briand and the Failure of the Anglo-French Entente’, 90 91

Journal of Modern History, vol. 50 (1978), p. D1122. 93   Hardinge to Lloyd George, 22 June 1921, cited Sharp, ‘Standard-bearers’, p. 65; J.D. Goold, ‘Lord Hardinge as Ambassador to France, and the Anglo-French Dilemma over Germany and the Near East, 1920‒1922’, Historical Journal, 21 (1978), p. 921. 94   W.N. Medlicott et al. (eds), Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919‒1939, lst Series, vol. 16 (London, 1968), p. 828; Sharp, ‘Enforcement’, p. 432.

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foreign policy, both remained sceptical about France. ‘I do not think’, explained Hardinge, ‘that the mentality or susceptibilities of these people are understood either by Lloyd George or Curzon.’95 The Foreign Secretary, suggests Alan Sharp, ‘was aware of the world-wide nature of the Anglo-French relationship and of the need to preserve as much co-operation as possible’.96 But if Curzon’s head pointed in this direction, his heart led him elsewhere. ‘Of course’, he explained to Hardinge, ‘the real objection to any Alliance is this – that we cannot trust them.’ Loyalty, sincerity and candour were ‘unknown in the mentality of these people’.97 By the end of 1921 even Lloyd George seems to have become convinced of the need to improve Anglo-French relations. Nonetheless, on 18 January 1922 the Cabinet decided to allow any further initiative to come from France. As the French ‘began to find themselves isolated in Europe and … to realise that we did not regard the pact as of supreme importance to ourselves, it was likely that they would approach us in a more reasonable frame of mind’.98 The following month, however, the Prime Minister entrusted Derby with the task of opening up an unofficial channel of communication with the new French Prime Minister, Raymond Poincaré.99 Significantly, the whole manoeuvre was carried out behind the back of the Foreign Secretary and, although the envisaged Lloyd George/ Poincaré meeting never took place, Curzon was predictably outraged when details of the former ambassador’s activities appeared in the French press. For Curzon it was one more illustration of the Prime Minister’s incurable determination to pursue his own diplomacy independent of the Foreign Office. Derby excused his own involvement in the matter by stressing that he had insisted that Lloyd George should keep his Foreign Secretary informed of what was going on.100 Not surprisingly, when Lloyd George again invited him to return to the Cabinet, this time as Secretary of State for India, Derby declined, explaining that ‘Curzon’s and my ideas of foreign policy are so very different that it will make co-operation with him very difficult’.101 Described as ‘one of the leading movers in the events which brought the [Lloyd George] Coalition to an end’ in October 1922,102 Derby finally rejoined the cabinet under the premiership of Andrew Bonar Law in his old post of War Secretary.   Hardinge to Lord Grey, 20 February 1922, cited Goold, ‘Old Diplomacy’, p. 255.   Alan Sharp, ‘Lord Curzon and British Policy Towards the Franco-Belgian

95 96

Occupation of the Ruhr in 1923’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 8 (1997), p. 87. 97   Goold, ‘Lord Hardinge as Ambasssador’, p. 922. 98   Cabinet, 18 January 1922, The National Archives, CAB 23/29. 99   Lloyd George to Derby, 18 February 1922, Diary, 18 February 1922, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 29/1. 100   Diary, 20 February 1922 and 15 March 1922, Derby MSS, 920 DER (17) 29/1; Keith Wilson, ‘A Venture in “the caverns of intrigue”: the Conspiracy against Lord Curzon and his Foreign Policy, 1922‒3’, Historical Research, 70, pp. 312‒31. 101   Churchill, Derby, p. 427. 102   Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour 1920‒1924 (Cambridge, 1971), p. 417.

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Friction between himself and Curzon, who retained his position at the Foreign Office, was inevitable. The Foreign Secretary complained that it seemed to be Derby’s mission in life to ‘vary attendance at Parisian race meetings with attempts to correct the blunders of the British ambassador and Foreign Secretary’.103 Indeed, when terminal illness forced Law’s early resignation in May 1923, Derby was adamant that he would not serve under Curzon and helped ensure that the succession passed to Stanley Baldwin, although there were those who believed that he nurtured ambitions to take over the top job himself.104 This final period of Derby’s ministerial career saw Anglo-French relations sink to a post-war nadir, when French forces marched into the Ruhr after Germany defaulted on her schedule of reparations payments. In the face of Curzon’s hard-line policy, Derby did his best to moderate the British government’s stance. ‘What I don’t feel the Cabinet realises’, he complained, ‘is that France has the whip hand of us – we can’t turn her out of the Ruhr, we can only try and persuade her to make occupation as little onerous as possible. G[eorge] C[urzon] can’t dictate to her, much as he would like to do, and I don’t want to see the Cabinet put itself in an impossible position, and to demand something which it cannot enforce’.105 By August, in an increasingly fractious and heated Cabinet, Derby, who wanted Baldwin to agree to meet Poincaré, was again threatening resignation unless relations with France were improved.106 Only the foundations of a settlement were laid during the lifetime of Baldwin’s government and it was left to Ramsay MacDonald’s minority Labour administration, which took office in January 1924, to bring that settlement to fruition. The fall of the Conservative government marked also the end of Derby’s ministerial career and, when the Tories returned to power in November 1924, the cause of closer Anglo-French relations needed a new champion. Derby himself now retreated to his Lancashire base, his excursions on to the national political stage becoming increasingly rare. In constructing his second Cabinet Baldwin’s key decision was not to restore Curzon to the Foreign Office. His simple motivation was to improve Anglo-Foreign relations.107 The Prime Minister’s move was entirely predictable in the light of an entry in Derby’s diary of a year earlier. Baldwin made an extraordinary statement which was that in his opinion Curzon’s four years as Foreign Minister had been more harmful to this Country than any previous Foreign Secretary. It was thanks to him that foreign nations had not only lost confidence in us but no longer believed in our honesty or truthfulness.

   

Curzon to Bonar Law, 8 December 1922, cited Gilmour, Curzon, p. 591. John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds), The Leo Amery Diaries 1896‒1929 (London, 1980), p. 328. 105   Elspeth O’Riordan, Britain and the Ruhr Crisis (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 88‒9. 106   Ibid., pp. 93, 97. 107   Wilson, ‘A Venture’, p. 330. 103 104

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He would not disagree with me in any remarks I made about Curzon’s administration of his office.108

Under Curzon’s successor, Austen Chamberlain, an apparent breakthrough was made. Chamberlain shared Derby’s empathy for the French point of view and, in particular, his realisation that only a British guarantee of French security comparable to that which had been tantalisingly on offer in 1919 could bring the two countries closer together. The Treaties of Locarno guaranteed the Franco-German frontier against German aggression and also, significantly, that same frontier against French aggression. There followed half a decade which represented the most stable period of the inter-war years, but the Locarno era failed to survive the impact of the World Economic Crisis which began in 1929. And there was perhaps always an element of illusion about the Locarno guarantee. Contemporaries such as Leo Amery doubted from the outset whether Britain would ever be called upon to honour it. Britain’s guarantee was contingent upon any violation being ‘flagrant’ and constituting ‘unprovoked aggression’, with Britain left to judge whether these two conditions applied. Furthermore, having given her guarantee, without preference to both France and Germany, Britain was logically obliged to concert her military arrangements with both countries or with neither. She opted for the latter course. There was then always a danger that the British guarantee might lack meaning. In the event, Locarno collapsed at the first trial of strength when Hitler’s troops marched into the Rhineland in March 1936 and the British government sat on its hands. Arguably, it was not until the first months of 1939 that Britain began to make the sort of arrangements to oppose German aggression in Western Europe for which the French had so long craved. By then, however, it was too late, at least as far as the peace and stability of the continent was concerned. This broader context helps to set Derby’s ‘failure’ in perspective. Britain and France may have found much over which to disagree in the months and years after the end of the First World War, but in the longer term they perhaps had more in common that either readily understood. The failure of the two countries to agree on the maintenance or modification of the 1919 peace settlement was one of the greatest tragedies, if not the greatest, of inter-war diplomacy. It would be a bold and probably unsustainable proposition to suggest that success in this field could have prevented a Second World War, but it would at least have made it less likely. To his credit Derby showed a greater understanding of the realities of this situation than the majority of his contemporaries, even if his diplomatic mission remained unfulfilled.

 

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Diary, 28 August 1923, Churchill, Derby, p. 516.

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Chapter 9

Traditions of Conservative Foreign Policy John Charmley

Many years ago Rab Butler commented that it was impossible for a global empire to have one ‘simple traditional policy’, because British interests ‘and the world itself are too complicated to enable us to follow any one high road’.1 Butler was writing at the time of the Munich crisis, and it is precisely at such moments that the unspoken assumptions which inform much of what passes for tradition assume at least literary, if not lapidary form. Custom and practice, which embody so much of any tradition, are frequently ‘accompanied by traditional formulas of recitation and incantation’.2 Churchill’s The Gathering Storm might be taken as the canonical book for our purposes here. Speaking to the Conservative Committee on Foreign Affairs in March 1936, Churchill declared: For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent, and particularly the Low Countries falling into the hands of such a Power.

He cited the defeat of Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm II as examples which proved his point. Creating coalitions to achieve this purpose, and thus ‘preserve the liberties of Europe’ was, he declared: ‘the wonderful unconscious tradition of British foreign policy’.3 Canonical as Churchill’s writings are in terms of this tradition, they are far from being its only repository. His friend and admirer, Duff Cooper, alluded to it in the speech he gave to the Commons on the morrow of his resignation from Chamberlain’s Cabinet after Munich. Comparing the idea of a war over the future of Czechoslovakia with one in 1914 over Belgium, he told the House that: ‘We were fighting then, as we should have been fighting last week, in order that one great Power should not be allowed, in disregard to treaty obligations, of the laws of nations and the decrees of morality, to dominate by brutal force the Continent of Europe.’4 Cooper then recited the traditional formulae: Philip II, Louis XIV, 1   Butler to Ian Black, 21 April 1938, Trinity College, Cambridge, R.A. Butler Mss, RAB G/9/13. 2   J. Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (Yale, 1984), p. 6. 3   W.S. Churchill, The Second World War (6 vols, 1948‒54), vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (1948; Centenary Edition, 1974), p. 131. 4   J. Charmley, Duff Cooper (London, 1986), p. 128.

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Napoleon and the Kaiser – all stopped by the heroic British. The formula found expression in a letter sent to Churchill at Munich time by the Soviet ‘mole’, Guy Burgess, who wrote that: ‘Traditional English policy since the days of Elizabeth, the policy of Marlborough, of Pitt, of Eyre Crowe, of Vansittart, has been blindly set aside.’5 Whatever Rab Butler might write, there were plenty who not only thought that there was ‘one tradition’, but who also knew exactly what it was. Britain’s role in international affairs was to act as a regulator on the balance of power in order to prevent one Power dominating the European continent; in refusing to behave in this way, Neville Chamberlain was, to use a favourite Churchillian phrase, failing to rise to the level of events. That he did intervene a year later, and that he signally failed to maintain any balance of power has counted for naught; ‘appeasement’ has gone down as an aberration from the ‘tradition’ of British foreign policy. Churchill’s wartime ‘Grand Alliance’ and its Anglo-American successor have been seen as a restoration of the old tradition. In this essay a more Butlerian view of these matters will be offered. That said, it cannot be denied that the Churchillian construction existed, or that it represented a version of events; Burgess’s letter gives us a clue to the location of the tablet of stone upon which it was inscribed. The great historical names, Elizabeth I, Marlborough and Pitt are all good canonical figures whom one might expect to appear in such a list, but Eyre Crowe was a mere diplomat; yet it is his presence in it which gives us the clue to its place of origin. In the third volume of their British Documents on the Origins of the War, Gooch and Temperley print, as Appendix A, a document written by Crowe on 1 January 1907.6 Crowe, who served as Permanent Under Secretary in the early 1920s, laid out the line that would be taken by Churchill, Cooper and Burgess as ‘traditional’. He arranged the history of British foreign policy since the reign of Elizabeth I around the theme of the regulation of the balance of power; those monarchs and ministers who had pursued this line were to be praised; those who had not were duly condemned. This was the high ground from which Churchill condemned Chamberlain, and it was from thence that Crowe’s successors would descry the shape of post-war foreign policy. The Atlanticism which has dominated British foreign policy since 1945 was the natural development of a line of thought which took it as axiomatic that Britain’s role in the world was to act as a check on the balance of power; but there is more to be said for Rab Butler’s obiter dictum than has always been realised. It is the central contention of this volume that the absence of the view from Knowsley has had a distorting effect upon our perception of nineteenth-century British history; nowhere is this clearer than in the arena of foreign policy. Dr Geoff Hicks has argued elsewhere that our view of British foreign policy in the midnineteenth century has been dominated by Palmerston to such an extent that the 5   Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill (8 vols, 1966‒88), vol. 5, Companion Vol. 3 (London 1983), p. 1193. 6   G. Gooch and H. Temperley, British Documents on the Origins of the War (11 vols, London, 1926‒38), vol. 3 (London, 1928), Appendix A, pp. 397‒420.

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three short-lived Conservative Governments led by the fourteenth earl of Derby have tended to be treated as though they had no ideas save to continue minding Palmerston’s shop until he came back.7 Challenging this massive condescension, Dr Hicks has shown that there was a distinctively Conservative policy on offer. This Conservatism was one which supported the Vienna settlement of 1815, rejected the notion that it was Britain’s duty to act in support of the excesses of European liberalism, and thought it needful to get on good terms with Powers despised or distrusted by the great ‘Pam’, such as Austria and Russia. It shared the distaste of the young Lord Robert Cecil for the ‘bounce and baseness’ which characterised Palmerston’s methodology, and it even partook, a little, of his dislike of Liberal enthusiasms, although its own world-weary tone prevented it from fully entering into his rhetorical condemnations. Like any orthodox tradition taken for granted by those who inherited it, this Conservative tradition tended to define itself in terms of what it was not: it was not bellicose; it was not marked by an insolence of tone and temper; it was not seeking an ally; neither was it seeking isolation. It was infused by a concern for British interests, which were naturally taken to be identical with that of the landed classes. It disdained ideology, preferring good Conservative common sense. It is tempting to define this tradition by all the things it was not, as a kind of apophatic foreign policy. In so far as it could be identified with anything it was with those broad Conservative principles of fair play, patriotism, order and stability, which, when taken together expressed a Conservative philosophy of life. Human nature was touched by original sin, which meant foreigners could not be trusted, but neither could home-grown utopian schemes; if one could avoid doing harm, that was a considerable achievement. Variety was to be preferred to uniformity, which meant that foreigners had the right to misgovern themselves as they saw fit and stood in no need of lectures from Britain. Above all, human reason was greatly over-rated by human beings; there were no universal panaceas, and even improvement was seldom linear in its direction. If these things seemed common sense, then they correctly expressed the Conservative mind-set, which distrusted philosophising and theory. The heir to this tradition was the fifteenth Earl of Derby. The dramatic circumstances attending Derby’s departure from the Foreign Office in 1878 have over-shadowed his career as Foreign Secretary. Some historians have taken the view that he was not really a Conservative at all; as he did join the Liberals in 1882, this suggestion is natural enough.8 Others have opined that he was simply an isolationist.9 Yet others have dismissed him as either

  G. Hicks, Peace, War and Party Politics: The Conservatives and Europe 1846‒1859 (Manchester, 2007), passim. 8   R. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875‒1878 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 1‒12. 9   A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848‒1918 (Oxford, 1954), p. 233; R. Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), pp. 374‒5. 7

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an inveterate ditherer or a drunken cuckold who had lost his way.10 At a time when decision was needed, he seemed to offer indecision; when boldness was of the essence, he evinced timidity, and when swagger and bluff were called for, he had none to offer. All of that is to assume that Disraeli’s preferences defined Conservative foreign policy; question or remove that assumption and Derby’s position appears somewhat different. If we view Disraeli as the fourteenth Earl of Derby did – a useful man for parliamentary business, but a crass amateur in the field of foreign affairs, and if we take the fifteenth Earl as continuing with the foreign policy preferences favoured by his father, then we arrive at a more balanced view of things. Derby’s working assumptions were those he had grown up with. It was not the duty of a Conservative foreign secretary to disrupt the Concert of Europe; when it was disrupted, it was his duty to seek to restore it; and when there was the danger of a second Crimean War, it was incumbent upon him to seek to prevent it. There was a sense in which being a Conservative foreign secretary consisted of being as unlike Palmerston as possible; the difficulty for Derby was that, increasingly, it was becoming clear that Disraeli’s aim was to be as like Palmerston as possible. From late 1876 he anticipated trouble arising from this conflict. The kernel of the differences between Derby and the Prime Minister can be seen from their attitude to the attempt by the Continental Powers to force reforms onto the Ottoman Porte in May 1876 – the Berlin Memorandum. Derby could not see how it could work; if the Ottomans rejected their demands, what then? Disraeli rejected it because Britain had not been consulted; he was not being treated as though he was the Prime Minister of Belgium. For the one, policy considerations were all; for the other, prestige. In the initial stages of the crisis, the two men found common ground. Disraeli was infamously indifferent to the plight of those attacked by the Turks. Derby was less tactless, but equally unmoved by the furore caused by the ‘Bulgarian Atrocities’. He told a deputation of working men that to judge from some of the things being said, ‘you would begin to think, as I certainly do, that there are a great many people in England who fancy that Lord Beaconsfield is the Sultan and that I am the Grand Vizier’.11 But even at this stage Derby was wary of Disraeli’s propensity to play to the gallery, noting as early as October 1876 that: I foresee the probability, or at least, the chance of a breach between us: not that we have yet differed materially in regard to anything that has been done, but that our points of view and objects are different. To the Premier the main thing is to please and surprise the public by bold strokes and unexpected moves; he would rather run serious national risks than hear his policy called feeble or commonplace: to me the first object is to keep England out of trouble, so long as it can be done consistently with honour and good faith. We have agreed in

  Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, pp. 4‒10.   11 September 1876, Sir T.H. Sanderson and E.S. Roscoe (eds), Speeches and

10 11

Addresses of Edward Henry, XVth Earl of Derby (2 vols, London, 1894), vol. 1, p. 296.

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resisting the agitation got up by Gladstone; but if war with Russia becomes popular, as it may, we are not unlikely to be on different sides.12

This assessment was both shrewd and far-sighted. In the autumn of 1876 Disraeli was happy to defend Derby against his critics, telling a sceptical Salisbury that: Derby has really only been working on the lines agreed on when we separated: the only difference is, that, whether it were, that he was piqued by being described as a minister who never did anything, or whether he saw that golden opportunity, that, every now & then, occurs in public life, he has suddenly taken the conduct of affairs out of the hands of the other powers, who, from various reasons, were indisposed to move, & has shown an energy & a resource, & a firmness of purpose, which cannot be too highly praised, & for wh[ich]:, much as I appreciated his many great qualities, I did not entirely give him credit.13

When Disraeli wrote to tell him this in October 1876, a grateful Derby responded in kind: A thousand thanks for your cordial note. One really wants encouragement just now. I sometimes feel like the juryman who complained of having been sitting along with eleven of the most obstinate men he ever met.14

But, as Derby had feared, it could not last. The failure of the Constantinople Conference to resolve the tension between the Ottoman Porte and the Russians led to a war between them in the spring of 1877. The question of how Britain should react to that event exposed the real gap between the views of the Prime Minister and those of his Foreign Secretary. After the Cabinet had discussed Derby’s idea of presenting the Russians with a protocol which would set out the terms on which Britain would abstain from interfering in the war, Derby noted that whilst there were scarcely any divergences of opinion … Disraeli vexed me by talking in his swaggering vein about the deference paid to English opinion, & the change in that respect since the Berlin mem[orandum] – which to my mind is a

  Diary, 25 October 1876, J.R. Vincent (ed.), A Selection from the Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826‒93), between September 1869 and March 1878 (London, 1994) [hereafter DD], p. 337. 13   Disraeli to Salisbury, 26 September 1876, Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, Salisbury Papers [hereafter SP], fols 152‒7. 14   Derby to Disraeli, 1 October 1876, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Dep. Hughenden 112/4, fol. 200. 12

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mere matter of vanity, & of no real consequence: but he sees things that way, & it cannot be helped.15

Carnarvon and Salisbury pondered the merits of resignation and the dangers that Disraeli was bent on causing a war with Russia, but were content to come in behind Derby’s position – at least until the unpredictable Prime Minister revealed his real intentions.16 The Cabinet met on 21 April 1877 to consider what to do if war broke out in the east. Disraeli ‘pressed strongly for action’, which Derby was sure entailed a British ‘occupation of the Dardanelles’. There was pressure from the Queen to act. According to Derby, Lord John Manners wanted to defend Constantinople. The Lord Chancellor, Cairns thought that action would have to be taken, whilst Salisbury and Carnarvon opposed helping Turkey. Derby, supported by the Secretary of State for War, Gathorne-Hardy, thought that any British occupation of Turkish territory was dangerous, and proposed consultation with the other Powers. Unsurprisingly, no decision was taken.17 In the event, the Cabinet settled for Derby’s warning to Russia not to violate British interests at the Porte; but it was clear that Disraeli would have liked a more active line. Unknown to Derby, he sent a private message to the Tsar warning him that Britain might have to intervene if the Russo-Turkish war was to continue into 1878.18 The scene was set for the denouement between Disraeli’s preferences and those of Derby. The argument that Derby’s line of policy was somehow not consonant with the traditions of Conservative foreign policy is difficult to sustain in the light of the support he enjoyed throughout one of the most troublesome autumns any Cabinet has encountered. Disraeli attempted to rally support for firmer action, even if it risked war with Russia, and he openly poured scorn on those members of the Cabinet whose opposition prevented him from doing so, stigmatising Derby as wanting ‘peace at any price’. But for all his invective, Disraeli was unable to prevail. The real problem was that preventing the Prime Minister from making the wrong decision could not really be described as a policy. The Chancellor, Northcote, complained to Salisbury that: I am afraid of the most serious consequences if Derby cannot rouse himself to take a lead and give us a line of his own. He would find a good backing in the Cabinet if he would do this; but we cannot go on without a policy, or with nothing but a non possumus: and a break-up in the present state of affairs may lead to chaos and to war.19

  Vincent (ed.), DD, 13 March 1877, p. 382.   Carnarvon to Salisbury 25 March 1877, Hatfield House, SP, fol. 294; Salisbury to

15 16

Carnarvon, 26 March 1877, Carnarvon Papers, BL, Add MS 60759, fols 25‒8. 17   Vincent (ed.), DD, 21 April 1877, p. 391–2. (21 April 1877, pp. 391–2.) 18   J. Charmley, Splendid Isolation? (London, 1999), pp. 88‒90. 19   Northcote to Salisbury, 14 December 1877, SP, unfoliated.

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That Derby would have found ‘good backing’ from the Cabinet was not simply wishful thinking on Northcote’s part. When its members met on 14 December 1877, Disraeli pressed for action: Parliament should be brought back into an emergency session in early January; £5 million should be allocated to increase Britain’s readiness for war; and the belligerent Powers should be offered British mediation. With only Carnarvon and Salisbury openly defying the Prime Minister, Derby threw his weight on that side. He argued that if Parliament were summoned back so early it would ‘create alarm’ and would be ‘misunderstood’ abroad; moreover there was no need for such haste: Britain’s interests had been clearly defined and there was no sign that they had been threatened. To couple rearmament with an offer of mediation was ‘in reality a menace. Did we mean to act on it, or not? If we did that was a new policy, which I had not sanctioned, & did not agree in: if not, we should only create false expectations abroad, & make ourselves ridiculous at home’.20 Afterwards he received assurances from Salisbury, Carnarvon and Northcote that he would have support in pursuing his preferred policy.21 Far from Derby being an isolated figure, senior colleagues supported him; their only criticism was that his policy appeared to amount to telling Disraeli what he could not do; with public opinion in a state of excitement about Russian troops camping at the gates of Constantinople, something more was needed. The Cabinet of 17 December showed, once more, how much support there was for Derby’s caution. Disraeli argued eloquently for ‘asserting the position of England’, asserting that there existed a ‘golden opportunity’ which, if spurned, ‘would never return’ and would open the way to ‘discredit’ for themselves and ‘disaster to the country. We should end as the ministry of L[ord] Aberdeen ended’. He made it clear that, if necessary, he would have to consider his position. Derby remained unmoved. He responded to Disraeli’s request for a meeting by telling him that: I will call on you – a little after eleven – and happy indeed I shall be if we can see our way out of this mess. We all want to keep together: and no one in the Cabinet will feel as I shall if circumstances separate me from my old friend and teacher in public life.22

Their meeting on 18 December was ‘friendly & frank, but we did not conceal from one another that differences existed’. Derby admitted in his diary that Disraeli sees things in a way that is not intelligible to me: holding that the mere fact of Russia and Turkey coming to a mutual understanding as to terms of peace will be disgraceful to us, even if the terms themselves are unobjectionable.23

    22   23   20

21

Vincent (ed.), DD, 14 December 1877, p. 463. Ibid., 15 December 1877, p. 463. Derby to Disraeli, 17 December 1877, Dep. Hughenden 113/1, fol. 223. Vincent (ed.), DD, 18 December 1877, p. 465.

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As he told Salisbury on 23 December: I have no feeling towards the Premier but one of personal friendship and good will, and would make personal sacrifices to help him out of a difficulty; but his views are different from mine, where such matters are concerned, not in detail but in principle. He believes thoroughly in ‘prestige’ – as all foreigners do, and would think it (quite sincerely) in the interests of the country to spend 200 millions on a war if the result of it was to make foreign states think more highly of us as a military power. These ideas are intelligible, but they are not mine nor yours, and their being sincerely held does not make them less dangerous.24

This takes us to the heart of the difference between the tradition which Derby had inherited and Disraeli’s quite different preferences. Because we know that Derby was to lose the struggle it is too readily assumed that this was because Disraeli’s principles were those of the Conservative Party. However true that might have become, it was not so at the time. It was part of the tradition Derby had inherited that it did not regard emotional sincerity as a substitute for reasoned arguments; that there remains something to be said for such a position is clear. That other members of the Cabinet saw this is clear from the fact that they continued to sympathise with Derby. The central weakness in Derby’s position was that it did, indeed, amount to a non possumus against Disraeli, which was fair enough as far as it went, but by itself gave the impression of negativity for its own sake. It was a situation in which an ambitious man could have made a bid for the premiership; but therein lay Derby’s problem. He did not want to be Prime Minister.25 But if he pressed too hard and Disraeli did resign, it would be very difficult for Derby to have escaped the office. Disraeli, on the other hand, did know what he wanted to do, and he was prepared to take whatever steps necessary. In these circumstances British policy risked becoming one of inaction by default. This was too much for Salisbury. Taking the view that any policy was better than none, he threw his lot in with Disraeli in early January; that he was putting himself in the way of the reversion of the Foreign Office was something even his friend Carnarvon thought might have occurred to him.26 Salisbury’s adhesion certainly gave Disraeli the opportunity to press for firmer action to be taken to deter the Russians, which, in turn, provoked a fresh Cabinet crisis. In late January when Disraeli decided to order the British fleet through the Straits, Derby decided he had to resign; the mere rumour that he had done so panicked the Chief Whip, who wrote to Disraeli, pressing on him the adverse 24   Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (4 vols, London, 1921‒32), vol. 2 (London, 1921), p. 171. 25   B.G.R. Grosvenor, The Politics of Foreign Policy: Lord Derby and the Eastern Crisis 1875‒8 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, 2009), Chapters 6 and 7. 26   Charmley, Splendid Isolation?, pp. 130‒35, for a discussion.

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electoral consequences of losing Derby. Although Disraeli’s intermediaries pressed Derby to withdraw his resignation and take any place in the Cabinet he liked, he determined to remain as Foreign Secretary. To do otherwise at this juncture risked foreign affairs falling into the hands of someone who ‘will do whatever the Queen and Disraeli wish’, which might very well lead to war; public duty impelled him to put aside private desires; the fact that some of his colleagues assured him they would resist any drive to war decided things for him.27 In Derby’s eyes the differences between him and his old friend transcended party boundaries, as he told him in the letter agreeing to his return to office: There is always a certain awkwardness in the renewal of interrupted official relations: and it seemed to me that this awkwardness would be best avoided by our meeting first in Cabinet, and under such conditions as to make explanations neither necessary nor possible. I know your difficulties and will do what I can to lessen them: the difficulty of the position is this, that the question now dividing the whole political world is one which cuts across the existing divisions of parties, so that men who have always acted cordially together find themselves separated. It was the same in the Crimean time, as we both recollect. I do not despair of a solution: and will help to the utmost of my power.28

But his hopes were not realised. Much of Derby’s position had depended upon his conviction that the Russian ambassador, Count Shuvalov, was speaking the truth when he assured him that his Government was not seeking a ‘Pan Slav’ peace which would partition the Ottoman Empire in Europe; this turned out to be wrong. Once this was clear, Disraeli pressed for Britain to secure a base from which to conduct military operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. This was too much for Derby, who resigned for good, his place being taken by Salisbury. The new Foreign Secretary and Disraeli were able to take advantage of Russia’s greed to force her to a Congress at Berlin in June at which she was forced to accept a peace more in line with the wishes of the European Concert; they returned bearing ‘peace with honour’. But, as even this sketch has shown, Derby was correct when he wrote that the difference between him and Disraeli was one which transcended party boundaries. Disraeli certainly left his Party with a powerful myth to which it could appeal – that of being the ‘patriotic Party’; but that should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Derby’s preferences were quite as Conservative as those of Disraeli. The notion of a single ‘traditional’ policy of maintaining the balance of power cannot be sustained from the evidence. But the power of evidence is not great in the face of a convenient national myth. As Thomas Otte has shown, by 1914 the notion that Britain did operate in   Vincent (ed.), DD, 26 January 1878, p. 493.   Derby to Disraeli, 28 January 1878, Dep. Hughenden 113/2, fols 59‒60.

27 28

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international affairs to rectify the balance of power was a commonplace.29 The reason is not far to seek. Disraeli’s triumph at the Berlin Congress of June 1878 was the apogee of British diplomacy between Vienna and Versailles; indeed it was an Everest amongst foothills. Salisbury was able to bathe in its glory for many years afterwards, even if he realised that he had ‘backed the wrong horse’ at the time. He was able to align Britain with Germany in the last years of Bismarck’s increasingly desperate attempts to maintain his diplomatic system. Kaiser Wilhelm’s erratic diplomacy and the advent of the Franco-Russian alliance created circumstances which, as the period from 1893 to 1895 showed, left Britain seemingly isolated. Sir Edward Grey’s experiences as Rosebery’s deputy left a permanent mark on his attitude towards the balance of power.30 When Grey came to office as Foreign Secretary in 1905 he took the view that the 1904 entente with France was a ‘cardinal point’ in ‘our foreign policy.’31 This was to place that agreement on a higher plane than had its creator, the Unionist, Lord Lansdowne. The notion, advanced by Thomas Otte, that criticising Grey for this implies that he was neglecting British imperial interests, is somewhat wide of the mark. The point is simple enough. Grey’s experiences in the 1890s made him an adherent of the idea of the balance of power which, given that, as Otte rightly remarks, ‘impermanence is the main characteristic of international affairs’, means that Grey nailed his, and Britain’s, trousers to the mast. There certainly was a period between about 1892 and 1905 when Britain was in danger of being ‘isolated’, and although it had helped bring Salisbury’s career at the Foreign Office to an end, he had never believed it to be dangerous.32 Russia’s defeat in her war with Japan helped create a set of circumstances in which France felt more vulnerable. France’s entente with Britain made Germany feel the winds of change, and it was not unnatural she should have sought to capitalise on France’s isolation to press her for diplomatic concessions; it was equally natural for Grey to seek to support her diplomatically. The criticism of Grey lies elsewhere – that long after these circumstances had been succeeded by others, he remained as attached to his particular version of the ‘balance of power’ for long after it had outlived its utility. It is certainly true that the Moroccan crisis of 1911 had transformed the entente into a ‘virtual diplomatic alliance’ in the eyes of the British Foreign Office; unfortunately no one had told most of the Cabinet or Parliament.33 Diplomatic historians, like the diplomats themselves, are sometimes apt to overlook such trifling technicalities. Few things did more than this to generate the toxic distrust of ‘secret diplomacy’ which was to help fuel the post-war mistrust of the diplomatic arts; a high price was to be paid for Grey’s definition of Britain’s vital 29   T.G. Otte, ‘“Almost a Law of Nature”? Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Office, and the Balance of Power in Europe, 1905‒1912’, Diplomacy and Statecraft (2003). 30   Otte, ‘Grey’, p. 81. 31   Trevelyan, Grey, pp. 90‒92. 32   Otte, ‘Grey’, p. 80. 33   Otte, ‘Grey’, p. 105.

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strategic interests. Whether it was any more valid than his view that nothing could be worse than Britain staying aloof from the war which broke out in 1914, is a question worth asking. Perhaps the triumph of Wilhelmine Germany over France and Russia would have been worse than the deaths of millions, the bankruptcy of Europe and the Russian revolution; but then again, that is to set a high standard by which to judge. As the British diplomatic historians who helped canonise the notion of the balance of power compiled their collection of documents on the ‘origins of the war’ to show, oddly enough, that the war was necessary and caused by Germany, they were clearly struck by the prescience of the memorandum which Eyre Crowe composed on 1 January 1907. It showed, quite plainly, that Britain’s diplomats had been concerned with the balance of power, and helped provide a narrative more compelling, convincing, and complimentary to them than the Lloyd Georgian allegation that they had all ‘slithered’ into war. It fitted the imperialists’ dreams of expansion, and it provided an explanation of how what had happened had been worth all the blood and treasure spent on it. Less noticed was Appendix B, which was a commentary on Crowe by Lord Sanderson. Unlike Crowe, Sanderson had been in a senior position for most of the thirty years after 1874, and his counternarrative reminds us of the existence of the other Conservative tradition. What is especially significant for the story of the view from Knowsley is that Sanderson had been private secretary to the fifteenth earl of Derby. He was close enough to Derby to have been paid a private retainer by him and to have been named as his co-executor; he was also, whether he knew it or not, the residuary legatee of the old Conservative tradition. Sanderson saw things in a far more pragmatic way, and it is one which historians need to recover if they are to escape the gravitational pull of the teleology of 1914. He rejected the ‘Napoleonic’ explanation offered for Germany’s behaviour, locating it more sensibly in a combination of things; nor did he exclude accident and clumsiness from his explanation of Germany’s policy choices; only after 1914 did Crowe’s narrative seem more convincing. Nor is this surprising; after all, accident, misconception and misperception are less glorious reasons for a holocaust than preventing Germany from achieving its aim of dominating Europe; 1914‒18 demanded a good reason – and the Crowe version of British history provided it. Sanderson’s version, uncoloured by the knowledge that 1907 was a stage on the way to 1914, represents another version of how British foreign policy might be constructed. Indeed, for all the emphasis placed by Churchill, Cooper and others on the ‘Eyre Crowe’ version of events, British foreign policy between the two world wars had about it more of the older Conservative pattern. Neither of the Chamberlain brothers was enamoured of ‘prestige’ and they both preferred the pragmatic approach of doing what was possible. Their approach was well summed up in a comment by Lord Halifax, a man in the Derbyite mould: ‘perhaps the greatest difficulty in the conduct of foreign affairs, and the one least appreciated by those not actually engaged in it, is the fact that the ideal policy is scarcely ever practicable’. Everyone wanted to see ‘peace established, injustice righted’ and ‘law

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respected’, but when it came to the ‘practical working out of what we want to see done we find ourselves faced with harsh and obstinate realities which often turn the ideal into the Utopian’.34 It was in that mood that he and Neville Chamberlain concluded the Munich settlement in 1938. Duff Cooper resigned and talked about the balance of power, but neither he nor Churchill had any alternative to it – save committing the country to war over Czechoslovakia, a ‘far away country’ about which most of their fellow Britons cared little. The advent of war a year later created circumstances in which Churchill and Cooper could wax lyrical about ‘honour’ and how Britain should have gone to war earlier. Churchill’s war created a new consensus which enshrined his version of events as the new orthodoxy. It also created an Atlanticist orientation in which the only way Britain could play her ‘traditional’ role was by allying closely with the USA. In his ‘Stocktaking after VE day’, the deputy undersecretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Orme Sargent, made the case for a continuation of the Grand Alliance with America and Russia on the ground that such a system ‘will, it is hoped, give us a position in the world which we might otherwise find it increasingly difficult to assert and maintain were the other two Great Powers to act independently’.35 Like Cooper, by then ambassador in Paris, Sargent thought Britain might do ‘something about organising our side’, by which he meant Western Europe and the Dominions, so that she could play her rightful part in the triumvirate which would rule the world. It was axiomatic, of course, that Britain’s part in the victory over Nazi Germany meant that she had to continue to regulate the balance of power. No questions were asked about the utility of a policy which, after six years, required a fresh bout of effort. Had they been, then the Foreign Office would soon have had an answer to the question of exactly who it was who was disturbing this troublesome balance of power. As the hopes that the Soviets would cooperate with Britain were dashed in the next three years, British policy makers sought to update, rather than re-evaluate this ‘traditional policy’; the USSR now became the ‘dominating power’, and America became the instrument through which her domination of the Continent could be thwarted. This was the line of policy which the Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, urged on the Cabinet in early 1948. The USSR, Bevin argued in March, was a ‘threat to Western civilization’ and had to be stopped.36 Attlee, the Prime Minister, had, back in 1945, questioned the whole idea of trying to act as the regulator of the balance of power. He represented another of the rich traditions which had nurtured thinking on British foreign policy, the one described by A.J.P. Taylor in his The Troublemakers. Taylor lovingly delineated a radical alternative to   Draft letter, November 1938, The National Archives, Halifax MSS, FO 800/328, Hal/38/101. 35   R. Butler and M.E. Pelly (eds), Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series 1, volume 1 (London, 1984), no. 102, pp. 181‒7. 36   R. Hyam (ed.), The Labour Government and the End of Empire [hereafter DEE], 1945‒51, Part 2 (London, 1992), pp. 328‒30; see also pp. 319‒28. 34

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the idea of the balance of power, with a line of succession stretching from Charles James Fox to CND. Disapproving as he did of the way Attlee’s Government committed the country to NATO and nuclear weapons, Taylor missed the fact that Attlee himself was something of a fellow traveller with his ‘trouble makers’. The Prime Minister favoured a foreign policy founded on the United Nations and collective security.37 He argued against Bevin’s line, wondering why the defence estimates had to be so high since ‘there was no one to fight’; it was, he argued, surely better to disengage from those parts of the world, such as the Middle East, where Britain could no longer hold her own. The idea that Britain needed to command the Mediterranean was, he argued, to ‘give hostages to fortune’ for ‘sentimental reasons based on the past’.38 Bevin would have none of this sort of talk. In a paper written on 13 March 1946, he told Attlee that a presence in the Middle East was ‘vital to our position as a Great Power’; Britain had to pursue her traditional policy of maintaining the balance of power, and her determination to do so would, he told the Prime Minister, help bring the USA into the diplomatic arena on her side.39 And so it came to pass. From that point, through to the creation of NATO in 1949, the Atlanticist orientation of British foreign policy has been a central feature of Britain’s diplomacy; through Macmillan to Thatcher and more recently Blair, it has been taken for granted that the modern version of the ‘traditional policy’ has been the American alliance. The rich historical deposits which constituted the traditions of British foreign policy became the bold simplicity of the Churchillian version. That this version was served by the advent of the Cold War helped integrate it into the Churchillian mythology which permeated the historiography of the post-World War II period. Thus, to take Butler at his word, and question whether there has been one ‘traditional policy’ is to question the very basis upon which the post-war consensus on foreign policy has been founded. This naturally arouses strong feelings for the generations nurtured on the bold and heroic story told by Churchill; but that is all the more reason to hold it up for inspection. The older Conservative tradition of which the fifteenth Earl of Derby was a part was a genuinely conservative policy; it might be doubted whether Churchill’s neo-whiggery was anything of the sort. In his four volumes on his great ancestor, the first Duke of Marlborough, Churchill makes clear his preference for the policy of the continental strategy favoured by the Whigs; Godolphin’s Tories are a bunch of myopic isolationists more concerned with money than glory, and their triumph was, for Churchill, a tragedy; he recognised them as the spiritual ancestors of Halifax and Chamberlain. Whilst he would have meant nothing complimentary by the comparison, we can be more neutral in seeing the line of succession. As the 37   R. Smith and J. Zametica, ‘The Cold Warrior: Clement Attlee reconsidered’, International Affairs, 61/3 (1985), passim. 38   Attlee memorandum, 2 March 1946, Hyam (ed.), DEE, p. 215. 39   Bevin’s memoranda, 10 September 1945, 2 March 1946; Hyam (ed.), DEE 3, pp. 213‒18 for the exchange.

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ancestors of A.J.P. Taylor’s own position, Cobden and Bright, recognised, the Whig aristocracy tended to do well out of continental entanglement; Marlborough’s own grandiose estate of Blenheim at Woodstock, near Oxford, stood as a permanent monument to the spoils of war. What Derby called ‘the foreign view’ regarded such a state of affairs as right and proper; ‘prestige’ was worth paying for. Derby himself doubted that. The real source of the country’s strength was its wealth and commerce, both of which would only be damaged by war. The Churchillian version of British history sees the two world wars of the last century as glorious episodes in our history; the view from Knowsley in the nineteenth century suggests there might be another version of events to be offered. The Great War, despite its huge costs, destabilised both Europe and its imperial attachments, paving the way for the advent of the USSR, Nazism and the Second World War. That, in turn, failed to produce any balance of power. The Churchillian glosses barely hid the truth which surfaced at Suez or during the Falklands, or more recently in Iraq, that Britain was little more than an instrument of American foreign policy. This has certainly allowed successive Prime Ministers to bask in the ‘prestige’ of a special relationship which is more real in their eyes than those of the Americans; whether it has served the interests of the country is a matter on which there might be a variety of views. But if they are to be expressed, then rediscovering the one from Knowsley might not be a bad place to start.

Index

Aberdeen, fourth Earl of 13, 14, 16, 27, 68, 69, 70, 74, 86, 92, 98, 151, 221 Adams, Francis Ottiwell 111, 115, 117, 121, 122, 123 Addington, Henry Unwin 84 Albert, Prince 51, 53, 58, 81 Alexander II, Tsar of Russia 124, 125, 126, 136, 137, 147, 148, 151, 157, 159, 164, 165, 166 Amery, Leopold 191, 192, 213 Andrássy, Count Gyula 156, 157, 162, 163 Andrássy Note (1875) 139, 140, 141, 147 ‘Appeasement’ 7 Apponyi, Count Rudolf 101 Argyll, eighth Duke of 172, 182, 183 Ashanti War 112 Ashburton-Webster Agreement 68 Attlee, Clement 226, 227 Auckland, Lord 45, 47, 55 Austria (from 1867 Austria-Hungary) 15, 28, 53, 62, 63, 69, 76, 84, 85, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 108, 116, 117, 119, 125, 136, 139, 140, 141, 147, 150, 156, 161, 217 Baldwin, Stanley 29, 38, 212 Balfour, Arthur 161, 192, 199, 200 Baring, Francis 45, 47, 55 Baring, Walter 145, 146 Barthou, Louis 195 Bedford, ninth Duke of 182 Belgium 28, 51, 52, 53, 58, 62, 84, 87, 89, 90, 95, 97, 112–18, 120–26, 133, 135–8, 148, 215 Bentinck, Lord George 24 Bentley, Michael 4 Beresford, Charles 24, 34 Berkeley, Maurice 45, 55 Berlin Memorandum (1876) 14, 141, 142, 218

Bernstorff, Count Albrecht von 85 Berthelot, Philippe 194 Bertie of Thame, Lord 190, 191 Best, Antony 7 Beust, Count Friedrich Ferdinand von 111, 156, 161 Bevin, Ernest 226, 227 Biagini, Eugenio 4 Birkenhead, Lord 209 Bismarck, Otto von 97, 107–10, 113–18, 120–26, 133, 135–8, 148, 224 Blair, Tony 227 Blake, Robert 151 Bloomfield, second Baron 102 Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon (afterwards Napoleon III) 15, 29, 50–51, 52, 53, 57, 75, 81, 82, 87–9, 91, 94, 133 Bonar Law, Andrew 192, 211, 212 Bosnia 147, 148 Bourne, Kenneth 5, 7, 14, 95 Broglie, Duc de 110 Brown, David 7, 17 Bradford, Lady 137, 140, 146, 160 Brand, Henry 182 Briand, Aristide 195 Bright, John 228 Brunnöw, Baron Ernst Philipp von 84 Buchanan, Andrew 122 Buckle, George Earle 12, 19, 129, 137, 157 Budget (1852) 50, 54, 55, 58, 90 Bulwer, Henry 84 Bunsen, Baron Christian von 84 Buol, Count Karl Ferdinand von 93 Burgess, Guy 216 Burgoyne, John 52 Burke, Edmund 23 Butcher, Samuel 34 Butler, R.A.B. 38, 215, 216

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Cairns, first Earl 152, 162, 164, 220 Canada 53, 67, 68 Cannadine, David 8, 9, 10, 11 Canning, George 60, 77, 82, 84 Cardwell, Edward 174 Carnarvon, fourth Earl of 96, 102, 112, 153, 154, 155, 161, 162, 171, 174, 175, 220, 221, 222 Carr, E.H. 3 Castlereagh, Viscount 13, 14, 27, 92, 98 Catholic Emancipation 20, 22, 34, 60 Cavendish, Lord Frederick Charles 184 Cecil, Gwendolen 12, 129 Cecil, Lord Robert 209, 210; for the third Marquis see Salisbury Chamberlain, Austen, 213 Chamberlain, Muriel 7 Chamberlain, Neville 29, 98, 130, 152, 191, 215, 216, 226, 227 Charmley, John 7, 12, 13, 18 Churchill, Winston 9, 38, 152, 210, 215, 216, 225, 226, 227, 228 Church of England 21, 22, 23, 30, 34, 35, 38 Church of Ireland 22, 23, 33, 34, 35, 66 Claremont, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward 90 Clarendon, fourth Earl of 36, 87, 130 Clemenceau, Georges 193, 195, 197, 199, 200, 202, 204, 209, 210 Cobden, Richard 132, 134, 228 Cold War 7, 227 Conspiracy to Murder Bill (1858) 75, 89 Cornewall Lewis, George 73 Corn Laws 20 Repeal (1846) 23, 37 Cowley, second Lord 28, 49, 52, 88, 89, 90, 94, 133 Crete 16, 85, 96, 109, 150 Crimean War 7, 15, 74, 86, 132, 138, 151, 154, 165 Cross, Richard Assheton 178, 180 Crowe, Eyre 202, 210, 216, 225 Curzon, George 192, 194, 197, 199, 205, 206, 207, 211, 212, 213 Cyprus 16, 165, 166 Czechoslovakia 226

Davey, Jennifer 3, 7, 11 Decazes, Louis Charles Élie Amanieu, Duc de 108, 110–15, 118, 120–23, 126, 136 Denmark 25, 27, 113, 114 Derby, Edward Geoffrey Stanley, fourteenth earl of 2, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, chapters 1–4 passim, 102, 130, 131, 133, 134, 169, 173, 217, 218 Derby, Edward Henry Stanley, fifteenth earl of 2, 3, 8–17, 55, 70, 72, 75, 82, 83, 85, 86, 90, 94, 95, 98, chapters 5–7 passim Derby, Edward George Stanley, seventeenth earl of 2, 3, 11–12, 13, 16, chapter 8 passim Derby, Frederick Stanley, sixteenth earl of 2, 3, 178 Derby, Mary Catherine Stanley, countess of 2, 3, 7, 11, 12, 16, 102, 129, 145, 159, 161, chapter 7 passim Deschanel, Paul 206 Devonshire, Duchess of 179 Disraeli, Benjamin (later first Earl of Beaconsfield) 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14–17, 19, 24–6, 29, 32, 37–8, 42, 45, 47, 49–51, 54–5, 57–8, 70, 74–7, 82, 84, 86, 90, 94, 100, 102–5, 120, 124–6, 129–30, 132–5, 137–9, 141–2, 144–6, 148–67, 173, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224 Government of (1868) 7 Government of (1874–80) 3, 7, 169, 173 Dom Miguel 63–4 Dom Pedro 63 Don Carlos 63–4 Don Pacifico Affair 27, 69, 70 Dreikaiserbund 14, 108, 110, 141, 156, 157 Duchesne, Alexandre 114–15, 123 Duff Cooper, Alfred 215, 216, 225, 226 Duncombe, Arthur 43, 44, 50 Dundas, James Whitly Deans 49 Dundas, John 182 Dutton, David 11, 13

Daily News 142, 145

East India Company 25

Index Eden, Anthony 9 Ecclesiastical Titles Bill 24–5 Economist, The 144 Eglinton, thirteenth Earl of 24 Egypt 53, 62, 109, 110, 117, 150, 151, 153, 186, 187 Elections (1852) 49 (1859) 56 (1868) 35, 134 (1874) 135 (1906) 189 Ellenborough, first Earl of 29 Elliot, Henry 145 Empire, British 13, 19, 22, 29, 30, 106, 112 Esher, Viscount 193 Evans, Richard J. 4 Falklands War 228 Ferdinand VII, King of Spain 63 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond 183 Foch, Marshal 203 Foot, M.R.D. 95 Fox, Charles James 227 France 27–8, 32, 51–3, 57, 63–4, 68–9, 76, 79, 81–2, 84–5, 87–8, 90–94, 96–7, 107–8, 110–24, 126–7, 133, 135–8, 192–213 passim, 224, 225 July Revolution (1830) 62, 63, 88 Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria 93, 147 French, John 192, 197 Froude, J.A. 3 Galloway, Lady 182 Gash, Norman 37 Gavard, Charles 122 George V, King 192 Gerard, Lord 178 Germany 16, 25, 27, 28, 62, 94, 95, 107–10, 112, 113, 115–24, 133, 135–8, 141, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213, 224, 225; for Germany before 1870 see also Prussia Gladstone, Catherine 185 Gladstone, William 2, 4, 9, 10, 16, 32, 33, 35, 37, 76, 86, 106, 129, 134, 137,

231

143, 144, 146, 169, 171, 172, 174, 176, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186 Goderich, Viscount 20 Gontaut-Biron, Elie, Viscomte de 120–1, 123 Gooch, G.P. 216 Gorchakov, Prince Aleksandr Mikhailovich 126, 141, 148 Graham, James 23, 41, 42, 55, 66, 69, 72, 77 Granville, second Earl 31, 87, 115, 126, 171, 172, 174, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186 Grant-Duff, Mountstuart Elphinstone 172 Greece 28, 62, 69, 84, 96 Green, E.H.H 5 Greville, Charles 36, 72 Grey, Albert 182, 183 Grey, Charles (secretary to Queen Victoria) 27 Grey, Edward 190, 224 Grey, second Earl 63, 65, 66, 86, 95 Government (1830–34) 20, 22, 34, 60, 62 Grosvenor, Bendor 3, 7, 14, 15, 17, 18 Guedalla, Philip 5 Guymer, Laurence 97 Haig, Douglas 191, 201 Halifax, Charles Wood, first Viscount 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 183, 186, 188 Halifax, Edward Wood, third Viscount 225, 226, 227 Hamilton, Edward 181 Hammond, Edmund 102 Hardy, Gathorne (later first Earl Cranbrook) 124, 152, 153, 155, 161, 220 Hart-Dyke, William 163, 222 Hartington, Lord (later eighth Duke of Devonshire) 33, 172, 174, 178, 184 Harcourt, William 171, 172, 174, 178 Hardinge, first Viscount 52 Hardinge of Penshurst, Lord 190, 194, 197, 202, 209, 210, 211 Hawkins, Angus 2, 6, 58, 77, 79, 82, 167 Hayes, Paul 196

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Herbert, Thomas 44, 49, 50 Hicks, Geoffrey 12, 78, 167, 216, 217 Hitler, Adolf 213 Holy Alliance 65, 84, 92 Hornby, Phipps 43, 44, 49 Hornby, Geoffrey Thomas Phipps 162 Home, Alec Douglas- 9 Hotham, Charles 57 Howe, Anthony 4 Huguet, General 197 Illustrated London News 31 Illustrated Times 31 India 25, 29, 151, 165 Mutiny (1857) 13, 25, 74, 75 Iraq 228 Ireland 22–3, 49, 60, 124, 144 Coercion Act (1833) 22 Home Rule 11 Land Bills 25, 181, 182, 183 Isabella, Queen of Spain 63–4 Italy 15, 62, 69, 76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 89, 92–4, 97, 125 Japan 151, 224 Jeffery, Keith 200 Jenkins, T.A. 182 Jolliffe, William 31 Jones, W.D. 2 Kerr, Philip 191 Kimberley, first Earl 174 Kitchener, Field Marshal Earl 190 Kossuth, Louis 92 Lambert, Andrew 8, 14, 87, 89 Lancashire 3, 10–12, 31, 35, 105, 163, 172, 176–80, 189, 212 Lansdowne, third Marquess of 20, 24, 60 Lansdowne, fifth Marquess of 182, 183, 224 Layard, Austen Henry 157, 162 Le Flô, Adolphe Charles Emmanuel 121 Lentin, Antony 205 Leopold I, King of Belgium 52, 53, 58 Liddon, Henry 143 Liverpool 26, 106, 176, 178, 180

Lloyd George, David 12, 17, 190, 191, 192, 197, 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 208, 209, 210, 211, 225 Locarno, Treaties of (1925) 213 Loftus, Lord Augustus 117, 121 London, Treaty of (1852) 25, 28 Louis Philippe, King of the French 88 Louis XIV, King of France 215 Lovaine, Lord 56 Lumley, Lord 114, 119 Lushington, Stephen 49 Luxembourg 15, 83, 86–7, 95, 97, 115, 133 Lyons, second Baron 111–12, 114–16, 118, 126 Lytton, Robert Bulwer- 111–12 MacDonald, Ramsay 212 MacMahon, Marshal Maurice de 110, 112, 122 Macmillan, Harold 38, 227 Malmesbury, third Earl of 12, 13, 25, 28, 51–5, 72, 76, 78–9, 81–5, 88–92, 94, 97, 131, 132 Malou, Jules 114, 123 Mandler, Peter 4 Manners, Lord John 152, 220 Maria Cristina, Queen Dowager of Spain 63 Maria, Queen of Portugal 63 Marlborough, first Duke of 216, 227, 228 Mather Affair 83 Matsumoto-Best, Saho 5 Matthew, Colin 4 Mehemet Ali 62 Melbourne, Viscount 67, 86 Metternich, Prince Klemens von 62, 93 Mill, John Stuart 25 Millerand, Alexandre 195, 199, 206, 209 Milne, Alexander 44, 45, 50 Milner, Lord 192 Moltke, Count Helmuth von 123 Montenegro 147 Montgelas, Count 156 Monypenny, William Flavelle 12, 19, 129 Morier, Robert 101, 124 Munich Crisis (and Treaty, 1938) 29, 215, 216, 226

Index Münster-Ledenburg, Count Georg zu 101, 109, 115, 119 Napier, Charles 43, 44, 90 Naples 28, 84, 85 Napoleon I, Emperor of France 29, 215, 216 Napoleon III, Emperor of France, see Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon Navigation Acts (repeal) 24 Neilson, Keith 7 Netherlands 121, 133 Neuchâtel 28, 34, 84 Newdegate, Charles 24 Newcastle, fourth Duke of 30 New Zealand 8 Northbrook, first Earl of 174 Northcote, Stafford 106, 145, 152, 153, 158, 162, 163, 173, 179, 220, 221 Northumberland, Duchess of 49 Northumberland, fourth Duke of 42–50, 52, 54–6 Orsini crisis (1858) 25, 28, 75, 79, 87–9 Otte, Thomas 3, 7, 14, 17–18, 223, 224 Ottoman Empire 14, 16, 62, 64, 82, 87, 95–7, 109, 138–40, 143, 147–55, 157, 160, 165–6, 218, 219, 220, 223 Oxford University 31, 98 Paléologue, Maurice 208 Palmerston, Viscount 5, 7, 8, 11, 14, 16, 17, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 41, 51, 53, 56, 57, 82, 84, 86, 87, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95, 98, 124, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 143, 216, 217 Palmerston, Lady (formerly Emily Lamb) 11, 72, 74, 79, 187 Paris, Treaty of (1856) 16 Parker, Hyde 43, 45–8, 50–51, 55 Parry, Jonathan 4, 5 Peel, Robert 19, 20 Pelham, Frederick 45, 47–50 Philip II, King of Spain 215 Pichon, Stephen 193 Piedmont-Sardinia 28, 84, 85, 93, 94 Pitt, William 216

233

Poincaré, Raymond 196, 211, 212 Poland 210 Portugal 28, 62–4, 85, 91 Prussia 27, 63, 84, 86, 87, 88, 92, 93, 95, 97, 133; for Prussia after 1870 see Germany Pugh, Martin 6 Punch 105 Radicals 9, 17, 30, 31, 33, 57, 75, 78 Radowitz, Joseph Maria von 109–10, 120–21, 123 Ramsay, Lord 177–8 Reading, Marquess of 209 Reform 21, 22, 32, 65, 71, 74 Reform Act (1832) 19 Reform Act (1867) 19, 26, 37, 103, 104, 134 Reform Bill (1857) 26 Reform Bill (1859) 25, 76 Reichstadt Agreement 147, 148, 156, 162 Reynolds, Kim 9, 10, 11, 170, 179 Richmond, fifth Duke of 24, 66 Richmond, sixth Duke of 173 Riddell, Lord 191, 194 Robertson, William (C.I.G.S), 191 Rosebery, fifth Earl of 36, 224 Roure, Colonel 195 Russell, Arthur 172, 187 Russell, Lord John 21–6, 31, 44, 54, 66, 70, 71, 73, 78, 82, 86, 98, 131 Russell, Odo 109, 115, 116–20, 125, 136–7, 141 Russia 16, 28, 53, 63, 64, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 92, 96, 97, 107–10, 116, 117, 124–7, 133, 135–41, 147–57, 160–62, 165–67, 196, 217, 219, 220, 224, 225, 226 Salisbury, James Gascoyne-Cecil, second Marquess of 169 Salisbury, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, third Marquis of 6, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 82, 86, 87, 96, 153–5, 157–61, 164, 167, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224 Sanderson, Thomas 106, 159, 225 San Stefano, Treaty of (1878) 162, 165

234

Conservatism and British Foreign Policy, 1820–1920

Sargent, Orme 226 Schleswig-Holstein 25, 28, 131 Sefton, Lady 180 Sefton, Lord 172, 179 Serbia 97, 147–9 Seymour, Lord (later twelfth Duke of Somerset) 55–6 Sharp, Alan 211 Shuvalov, Count Pyotr 223 Smith, Paul 6 Smith, W.H. 163 Spain 62–4, 113 Spectator 144 Spooner, Richard 34 Stafford, Augustus 43–8, 50, 54–6 Stanley Cup 2 Stanley, Lord Edward (son of the seventeenth Earl) 2, 10, 191 Stanley, Oliver 2, 10 Steele, David 5, 11, 79 Stewart, Robert 2 Strachey, George 119 Strachey, Lytton 4 Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount 95 Suez Canal 109, 151, 153 Crisis (1956) 228 Tankerville, Lady 74 Tavistock, Lord 182, 183 Taylor, A.J.P. 13, 130, 227, 228 Taylor, Miles 4 Temperley, Harold 216 Test and Corporation Acts 20, 22 Thatcher, Margaret 4, 38, 137, 227

Times, The 26, 123, 136, 209 Torr, John 177 Turkey 202; for Turkey before 1919 see Ottoman Empire Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 228 United States of America 22, 53, 76, 199, 201, 205, 226, 227, 228 Vansittart, Robert 216 Vatican 25, 84 Versailles, Treaty of (1919) 16, 198, 203, 205, 206, 210, 213, 224 Vickery, Amanda 10 Victoria, Queen 34, 51, 53, 58, 71, 72, 81, 92, 94–5, 124–5, 134–6, 143, 155, 159, 163, 165, 172, 176, 220, 223 Vienna Settlement (1814–15) 15, 28, 52, 87, 93, 96, 110, 130, 160, 217, 224 Vincent, John 2, 7, 56, 59, 129, 169, 181, 185 Viviani, René 195 Waldegrave, Lady 187 Walker, Baldwin 45–51, 55–6 Walpole, Spencer Horatio 75 Wellesley, Frederick 157, 159 Wellington, first Duke of 51, 62, 64, 88 Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany 124–5, 136 Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany 215, 216, 224 Wilson, Henry 192 Wilson, Woodrow 201, 202, 204