ABSTRACT
Viscount Palmerston was Foreign Secretary for fifteen of the twenty-five years from 1830 until he became Prime Minister in 1855. As Prime Minister for almost ten years with only a sixteen-month gap filled by Derby's minority government in 1858-59 until his death in 1865 he was still the dominant force in British diplomacy. As a Liberal-Tory near the beginning of his political career, he had learned many political lessons from George Canning, including the value of publicity to explain his policies directly to the electorate, either in speeches or via newspapers. Like Canning, Palmerston stressed the importance of maintaining British interests, especially in Europe where the aftershocks from the Napoleonic Wars still produced disturbing eruptions. His methods were controversial. He was accused of making diplomacy, traditionally a closed, secretive affair carried on between small numbers of national leaders and senior officials, into a matter for dangerously open public debate.
