PALMERSTON, HENRY JOHN TEMPLE, 3RD Vis COUNT ( 1 784-1865 ) , English statesman, was born at Broadlands, near Romsey, Hants, on Oct. 20, 1784, the son of Henry, 2nd Viscount Palmerston and his wife Mary Mee. Much of Palmer ston's early childhood was spent in Italy, but he was sent to Harrow School at eleven. He had just left school when, in 1802, he succeeded his father in the peerage, an Irish one, which did not prevent membership of the House of Commons. From Har row he went to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Dugald Stewart, with whom he boarded. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1803 ; in 1806 he began his political career.
Before he was four-and-twenty he had stood two contested elec tions for the University of Cambridge, at which he was defeated, and he entered parliament for a pocket-borough, Newtown, Isle of Wight, in June 1807. Influence secured for him a junior lord ship of the admiralty in the Portland administration of 1807. He delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons in defence of the expedition against Copenhagen. When Perceval formed his government in 1809, he proposed to this young man of five-and-twenty to take the chancellorship of the exchequer. Palmerston, however, preferred the less important office of secretary-at-war, charged exclusively with the financial business of the army, without a seat in the cabinet, and in this position he remained, without any signs of an ambitious temperament or of great political abilities, for twenty years (1809-1828) under five prime ministers, steadily refusing preferment. During the whole of that period Palmerston was chiefly known as a man of fashion, and a subordinate minister without influence on the general policy of the cabinets he served. Some of the most humorous poetical pieces of the New Whig Guide were from his pen, and he was entirely devoted, like his friends Peel and Croker, to the Tory party of that day. Palmerston never was a Whig, still less a Radical; he was a statesman of the old English aristocratic type, liberal in his sentiments, favourable to the march of progress, but entirely opposed to the claims of democratic government.
He had been elected M.P. for Cambridge University in 181i, and sat for this constituency until 1831 when he was defeated because he had adopted reform principles.
In the later years of Lord Liverpool's administration, after the death of Lord Londonderry in 1822, strong dissensions existed in the cabinet. Palmerston supported the measures of Canning and his friends. The "Canningites," as they were termed— Palmerston, Huskisson, Charles Grant, Lamb (Lord Melbourne) and Dudley—were included by Wellington in his cabinet of 1827, but a dispute between the duke and Huskisson soon led to the resignation of that minister, and his friends resigned with him. In the spring of 1828 Palmerston found himself in opposition. From that moment he appears to have directed his attention closely to foreign affairs; indeed he had already urged on the duke of Wellington a more active interference in the affairs of Greece ; he had made several visits to Paris, where he foresaw the impending revolution; and on June 1, 1829, he made his first great speech on foreign affairs. Palmerston was no orator; his language was unstudied, and his delivery somewhat embarrassed; but he addressed the House of Commons in language adapted to the capacity and the temper of his audience. Wellington sought, in September 1830, to induce Palmerston to re-enter the cabinet, which he refused because he was now committed to parliamentary reform, and from that time forward he may be said to have associated his political fortunes with those of the Whig party. Lord Grey placed the department of foreign affairs in his hands upon the formation of the ministry of 1830, and Palmerston entered on the duties of an office over which he con tinued to exert his powerful influence, both in and out of office, for twenty years.