The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston

Written: 1853
Source: The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston, Swan Sonnenschein, 1899;
First Published: New York Tribune, and People's Paper in England. See editorial note below;
Transcribed: by Sally Ryan.

Publishers' Note (International Publishers edition, 1969)

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston was originally published in 1853 in the New York Tribune and in England in the People's Paper. At the close of 1853 the third chapter was published under the title "Palmerston and Russia" in the Glargow Sentinel and as a political flysheet by E. Tucker in London. This flysheet was republished by Tucker in 1854 under the title "Palmerston and Poland". Tucker also published Chapters 4 and 5 in 1853 under the title "Palmerston, what has he done? or Palmerston and the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi". The whole work was republished in successive numbers of the London Free Press from November 1855 to February 1856.

In this edition the text of The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston reproduces the text as edited by Eleanor Marx in 1899. As with the other pamphlet, she introduced some minor stylistic improvements. She also corrected some errors in the text as published in the Free Press (for example, some obvious misprints, such as "Turkish" for "Grecian" on page 17 of the pamphlet, and an incorrect date in one of the Parliamentary quotations).

In Chapter 7 of his polemical work Herr Vogt (Werke, Vol. 14, page 474, Dietzverlag, Berlin) Marx himself explained in a lengthy footnote how these two works came to be written:
Karl Marx

"Vogt naturally ascribes the attacks made by the Marx clique against Lord Palmerston to my opposition to his own bumptious person and to his friends. It would therefore seem to be useful if I were to outline briefly my relations with D. Urquhart and his party.

"I was excited but not convinced by Urquhart's writings on Russia and against Palmerston. In order to arrive at a definite standpoint I made a very close and careful study of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates and the diplomatic Blue Books as of 1847-50. The first fruit of these studies was a series of leading articles in the New York Tribune at the end of 1853 in which I outlined Palmerston's connections with the Cabinet in Petersburg in relation to his dealings with Poland, Turkey, Circassia, etc. Shortly after this I agreed to the republication of these articles in the People's Paper, the organ of the Chartists, edited by Ernest Jones, which included new material about Palmerston's activities. In the meantime, the Glasgow Sentinel also printed one of these articles, which was drawn to the attention of Mr. Urquhart. Following a meeting between us, Mr. Urquhart asked Mr. Tucker of London to print parts of this article in pamphlet form. This Palmerston pamphlet was later issued in various editions and sold between 15,000 and 20,000 copies.

"As a result of my analysis of the Blue Book which dealt with 'The Fall of Kars' (this appeared in the London Chartist paper in April 1856), the Foreign Affairs Committee in Sheffield sent me a letter of appreciation. In digging at the British Museum into diplomatic manuscripts, I came upon a series of English documents going back from the end of the eighteenth century to the time of Peter the Great, which revealed the secret and permanent collaboration of the Cabinets at London and St. Petersburg, and that this collaboration dated from the time of Peter the Great. I want to devote to this subject a detailed study to which I have so far published only the introduction under the title 'Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century'. It first appeared in the Free Press of Sheffield, then in the Free Press of London, both Urquhartist journals. To the latter journal I have contributed various articles ever since its foundation.

"As can be seen, my preoccupation with Palmerston and with Anglo-Russian diplomacy in general proceeded without the slightest intimation that behind Lord Palmerston there stands--Herr Vogt."