Poking around online just now, I ran across the text of the speech given in the House of Commons by Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, regarding his condemnation in the “Don Pacifico affair”.
The Pacifico kerfuffle arose in 1847, when Mr. Pacifico, the Portuguese consul to Athens, had his house plundered by a mob. The corrupt government of Greece offered him no redress. Mr. Pacifico, having been born in Gibraltar, was thereby a British citizen — and so Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, dispatched a squadron of the Royal Navy to blockade the harbor of Athens until the Greeks capitulated.
At the time, Greece had only recently achieved independence from the Turks, and was under the joint protection of England, France, and Russia. There were already tensions between the three powers regarding the configuration of the nascent Greek monarchy, and the English blockade brought them perilously close to war. For this, Lord Palmerston’s policy was condemned by a vote in the House of Lords. In an appeal to the House of Commons to reverse the decision, Lord Palmerston gave a long and persuasive speech based on the same principle — civis Romanus sum — that had saved the apostle Paul from summary judgment at a provincial Palestinian tribunal.
It’s a good one, and I’d never read it before. You can do so here.
4 Comments
Sure hope you land on this post Mr. Duff – should go some distance illuminating you that I’m not the only Yank finding esoteric stuff.
There are some weighty matters in play there, but unfortunately Palmerston does not address them. Can the Foreign Secretary (the US equivalent would be the Secretary of State) unilaterally commence hostilities with a foreign country solely on his own initiative?
whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong
That sounds remarkably like “Might makes right, and we’re mighty”.
And that’s exactly what it was!
A song comes to mind:
Those were the days my friend
We’d thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance
Forever and a day
We’d live the life we’d choose
We’d fight and never lose
Fore we were young
And sure to have our way.
Alas, like all good things Her Majesty’s Royal British Empire also came to an end!