, GCB
, PC
(20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865), known popularly as Lord Palmerston, was a British
statesman who served twice as Prime Minister
in the mid-19th century. Popularly nicknamed "Pam", he was in government office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865, beginning his parliamentary career as a Tory and concluding it as a Liberal
.
He is best remembered for his direction of British foreign policy through a period when Britain was at the height of its power, serving terms as both Foreign Secretary
and Prime Minister.
Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.
The beer shops licensed to have the beer drunk on premises are a pest to the community. They are haunts of thieves and schools for prostitutes. They demoralize the lower classes. ... The words "licensed to be drunk on the premises" are by the common people interpreted as applicable to the customers as well as to the liquor.
Our interests require that Egypt should remain what it is, an integral part of the Turkish empire. We do not want it or wish it for ourselves, any more than any rational man with an estate in the North of England and a residence in the South would have wished to possess the inns on the North Road.
I am heartily glad that James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin|Elgin and James Hope Grant|Grant determined to burn down the Summer Palace and that "the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood"... It was absolutely necessary to stamp by some such permanent record our indignation at the treachery and brutality of these Tartars, for Chinese they are not.
It is in the highest degree likely that the North will not be able to subdue the south, and it is no doubt certain that if the Southern union is established as an independent state it would afford a valuable and extensive market for British manufactures but the operations of the war have as yet been too indecisive to warrant an acknowledgement of the southern union.
Great Britain is in a better state than at any former time to inflict a severe blow upon and to read a lesson to the United States which will not soon be forgotten.
It is difficult not to come to the conclusion that the rabid hatred of England which animates the exiled Irishmen who direct almost all the Northern newspapers, will so excite the masses as to make it impossible for Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln and William H. Seward|Seward to grant our demands; and we must therefore look forward to war as the probable result.