Gladstone and Palmerston, Being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston With Mr. Gladstone, 1851-1865

Edited with an introduction and commentary by Philip Guedulla. New York: Harper & Bros. 1928. 8vo. 367 pp. $5.00.

HISTORIANS will long remember gratefully the editor who drew two hundred and eighty-five letters and memoranda, almost wholly unpublished, from the private archives at Hawarden and Broadlands. Nine tenths of this new material deals with the years 1859 to 1865. Prefaced by a commentary in Mr. Guedulla’s best vein, and illustrated with fourteen cartoons from Punch, two portraits, and four facsimiles, the frank exchanges of the Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer present an unsurpassed record of the inner life of a Cabinet.

Students of finance will find admirable models in the letters which precede Gladstone’s masterly Budgets. In 1864 the two calmly discussed the nationalization of railways ‘with a view not to State Management but to a large reduction of charges and an approach to uniformity in the rates.’ Gladstone outlined a system of short leases, running five or seven years, or less. To Palmerston it appeared ‘a wild and more than doubtful Project.'

At no time in the nineteenth century was British naval supremacy so clearly in danger. France pressed close in the number of fast wooden capital ships and took the lead in the introduction of ironclads. As early as 1859 Gladstone opposed the conversion of sailing ship of the line into slow and vulnerable steamers, and urged that the money thus saved he devoted to ironclads, Palmerston and the Admiralty, however, rushed the construction of wooden capital ships until 1861, when the progress of the French armored vessels provoked a furious race in ironclad building. To curtail expenditure for fortifications and fleets, Gladstone battled tirelessly against a prime minister who retorted that ‘no doubt a full Exchequer is a good Foundation for National Defence, but if the superstructure is wanting, the Foundation would be of small avail, and if the French had the Command of the Sea they would soon find means to make a full Exchequer empty. ’

Although Italy brought the two men together in 1851 and 1859, the letters contain few references to Italian affairs. There is much, however, as to British policy concerning the American Civil War. If Mr. Guedulla had read the printed diplomatic correspondence of the Confederate States, he might have noted that the story of Palmerston’s visit to Judge Mann, the Confederate Commissioner, at the time of the Trent affair, is not borne out by Mann’s reports. In July 1862, Gladstone discussed with an unnamed Southern gentleman — it was Henry Hotze, the able director of Confederate propaganda, who distributed Havana cigars and American whiskey among friendly editors ’the Border between the Northern and Southern Republics, presuming there will be only two, of which he does not feel quite sure.’ The choicest gem, perhaps, in this admirable collection, is Gladstone’s cabinet memorandum favoring recognition of the Confederacy, if both France and Russia would join in a move to end what he described as ‘perhaps the most purposeless of all great civil wars that have ever been waged.’

JAMES P. BAXTER, 3RD