"
But what I remember even more clearly than Palmers ton is appearance
or manner--perhaps because it did not end with his death--is the
estimation in which he was held by that "Sacred Circle of the
Great-Grandmotherhood" to which I myself belong.
In the first place, it was always asserted, with emphasis and even
with acrimony, that he was not a Whig. Gladstone, who did not much
like Whiggery, though he often used Whigs, laid it down that "to be
a Whig a man must be a born Whig," and I believe that the doctrine
is absolutely sound. But Palmerston was born and bred a Tory, and
from 1807 to 1830 held office in Tory Administrations. The remaining
thirty-five years of his life he spent, for the most part, in Whig
Administrations, but a Whig he was not. The one thing in the world
which he loved supremely was power, and, as long as this was secured,
he did not trouble himself much about the political complexion of
his associates. "Palmerston does not care how much dirt he eats,
so long as it is gilded dirt;" and, if gilded dirt be the right
description of office procured by flexible politics, Palmerston
ate, in his long career, an extraordinary amount of it.
Then, again, I remember that the Whigs thought Palmerston very
vulgar.
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