Conclusion

Abstract

Many of the eulogies for Palmerston in 1865 spoke glowingly of his place in history. Gladstone’s comment that ‘Death has indeed laid low the most towering antlers in all the forest’,¹ testified to Palmerston’s impact on his age. The question remains, however, what was that influence and how do we assess it? As indicated at the outset of this study, the caricature of Palmerston as the crude John Bull of nineteenth-century Britain, practising gunboat diplomacy abroad and obstructing reform at home, no longer suffices as a definition of the man. More accurately, historians are left with a paradoxical figure whose long and complicated life lends itself to varied interpretations. Just like the times he personified, he represented conflicting points of view.