Who is palmerston

As this suggests, he loved office, was good in it, and was not particularly choosy about his colleagues or their principles. But only late in life did he develop the popularity that secured his premiership. The Temple family were Anglo-Irish landlords with no long tradition of political eminence, but Palmerston, who inherited the title at the age of 17, wanted to change that. His was an Irish peerage, allowing him to serve as an MP, which he did almost continuously from , aged 22, until his death.

Palmerston became Foreign Secretary, a post he held for 15 of the next 21 years. He loved wielding power through blunt, imperious despatches, written at high-speed and full of bold instructions to British diplomats all round the world. He did not mind offending other countries, or even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who had different ideas about Europe. In the s he stood up to France in the Eastern Mediterranean, while he pursued a strong but controversial anti-Russian policy on the Indian frontier.

Nor could greater efficiency in the civil service be expected when recruitment was carried out by nomination — favouring sons of the ruling elite — rather than ability. That Palmerston was acclaimed by much of the press as the obvious man to lead the country may seem surprising, given that he was an integral part of the aristocratic order that was under fire and had been a prominent member of the discredited Aberdeen ministry.

He was finally reaping the political dividend from the reputation he had cultivated over many years as Foreign Secretary, notably in the final period between — Sign up to receive our newsletter!

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Sign up to our free newsletter to get the latest on Queen Victoria and more. Britons on the whole despised foreigners and took great pride in the fact that their country was one of the few to have an effective system of parliamentary government.

It was assumed that this reflected the innate superiority of the British people, whose divine mission was to export their political institutions along with their goods. In this way, he identified himself with a well-developed sense of British national consciousness, and was seen as the personal embodiment of its values.

The positive image that Palmerston projected was aided by depictions of him in cartoons, especially in the satirical magazine Punch. He was characteristically drawn with a piece of straw in his mouth, to convey the idea that he was essentially a countryman, a lover of common pursuits like horse racing and boxing, rather than a metropolitan sophisticate.

When Aberdeen became Prime Minister in December , he included Palmerston in the Cabinet but offered him the less controversial post of Home Secretary. Season three of Victoria opens with him as Britain's Foreign Secretary in , a position he held multiple times from to ; to ; and finally from to and was well-suited for, as he spoke multiple languages fluently. The show also illustrates his enormous public popularity and his sympathy for many of the revolutions taking place across Europe.

He would later go on to serve as home secretary and eventually Prime Minister, and was known for his aggressive foreign policy. His strategies helped give rise to the term "gunboat diplomacy. Palmerston's political views are sometimes simplified to say that he was a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad, but biographer Jasper Ridley summarizes his perspective a bit more accurately here:.

He held the position twice, and died in office in October of at the age of 80, but not before he helped to establish the Court of Marriage and Divorce , which allowed people to get divorced without having to go through Parliament. Her displeasure on the show is based in fact. Eventually, both she and Prince Albert grew to appreciate him.

And when Palmerston died, Victoria mourned. She wrote that he "had often worried and distressed us, though as Prime Minister he had behaved very well. He was so much more in earnest than he appeared, he did not do himself justice. He served in government for 46 years. Although he generally avoided controversial domestic reforms, Palmerston was instrumental in getting Parliament to approve the creation of the Divorce Court in Before this, people wanting a divorce had had to get a private act of Parliament passed.

Read more about Lord Palmerston on the History of government blog. See all Past Prime Ministers.