Lord Palmerston (b. Henry John Temple) | 1784-1865 England's great renegade in the arena of foreign affairs. As Foreign Secretary and then as a Whig Prime Minister, he was often the bane of both Albert and Victoria's existence Lord Palmerston . . .was not fashionable; the great Whig aristocrats looked askance at him, and only tolerated him as an unpleasant necessity thrust upon them by fate. But Lord Palmerston was English through and through; there was something in him that expressed, with extraordinary vigour, the fundamental qualities of the English race. And he was the very antithesis of the Prince [Albert]. By a curious chance it so happened that this typical Englishman was brought into closer contact than any other of his countrymen with the alien from over the sea. It thus fell out that differences which, in more fortunate circumstances, might have been smoothed away and obliterated, became accentuated to the highest pitch. All the mysterious forces in Albert's soul leapt out to do battle with his adversary, and, in the long and violent conflict that followed, it almost seemed as if he was struggling with England herself. Palmerston's whole life had been spent in the government of the country.... He lived by instinct -- by a quick hand and a strong eye, a dexterous management of every crisis as it arose, a half unconscious sense of the vital elements in a situation. He was very bold; and nothing gave him more exhilaration than to steer the ship of state in a high wind, on a rough sea, with every stitch of canvas on her that she could carry. But there is a point beyond which boldness becomes rashness -- a point perceptible only to intuition and not to reason; and beyond that point Palmerston never went.... "England," he used to say, "is strong enough to brave consequences." Apparently, under Palmerston's guidance, she was. While the officials protested and shook in their shoes, he would wave them away with his airy "My responsibility!" and carry the country swiftly along the line of his choice, to a triumphant destination, -- without an accident. His immense popularity was the result partly of his diplomatic successes, partly of his extraordinary personal affability, but chiefly of the genuine intensity with which he responded to the feelings and supported the interests of his countrymen. The public knew that it had in Lord Palmerston not only a high-mettled master, but also a devoted servant -- that he was, in every sense of the word, a public man. -Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria