Gladstone took the directly opposite course.
We refer to the Don Pacifico case. Both were at first merely personal
questions, but finally became international. Mr. Gladstone to many
appeared to take an inconsistent course in these seemingly similar
cases, in that while opposing national intervention in the affairs of
Don Pacifico, he tried to stir up all Europe for the relief of the
sufferers in the Neapolitan prisons. "It is not a little remarkable that
the statesman who had so lately and so vigorously denounced the 'vain
conception that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of vice
and folly, of abuse and imperfection, among the other countries of the
world,' should now have found himself irresistibly impelled by
conscience and humanity to undertake a signal and effective crusade
against the domestic administration of a friendly power."
The most memorable debate in the new chamber of the House of Commons,
which was first occupied in 1850, was that associated with the name of
Don Pacifico. It is however conceded that the circumstances from which
it all proceeded were comparatively trivial in the extreme. Don Pacifico
was a Maltese Jew and a British subject, dwelling at Athens. He had made
himself distasteful to the people of Athens, and consequently his house
was destroyed and robbed by a mob, April 4, 1847.
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