[Anon.], ‘Lord Palmerston as Premier’, Westminster Review, new series, 7 (January–April 1855), pp. 398–424

‘Lord Palmerston as Premier’ is an article from the Westminster Review , a quarterly journal founded in 1824 by the ‘philosophical Radicals’ James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. The Review’s early politics were opposed to those of both of the major political parties, Whig and Tory, and it remained a supporter of radical political reform throughout its early life. War had broken out with Russia in May 1854, while Palmerston was Home Secretary in the Earl of Aberdeen’s Cabinet, but it had not gone especially well. Despite defeats of the Russians at the battles of the Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman, Aberdeen’s government was weakened by the failure to take Sebastopol and events such as the charge of the Light Brigade and stories of failure of supply. If personal aggrandisement or ambition, if the prostration of foes and humiliation of rivals, were the great aims of political life, there are few who ever attained such signal and eminent success as Lord Palmerston.