Peacock and His "Pet Politician": An Unpublished Latin Squib on the Coalition against Palmerston

Thomas Love Peacock's admiration for the foreign policies of Lord Palmerston is reflected in a previously unpublished political squib on the strange Parliamentary alliance of Radicals, Tories, Peelites, and disaffected Whigs who banded together to censure Palmerston's government for its China policy in March 1857. This amusing satire, written in Latin interspersed with Greek coinages, was sent as a letter to Peacock's friend John Cam Hobhouse, Lord Broughton, on 12 March 1857. Broughton, in turn, translated Peacock's squib into English. Peacock's prediction of defeat for the coalition was largely borne out by the results of the ensuing general election.