The Don Pacifico affair was a diplomatic episode which occurred in 1850 and concerned the governments of Greece, the United Kingdom and Portugal, and is considered an example of gunboat diplomacy.
[5] Three days after the incident, Don Pacifico himself wrote to Sir Edmund Lyons, British Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece:[6] It is with much grief that I feel myself obliged to communicate to your Excellency a dreadful event which has happened to me, and as an English subject to beg your protection.
Last Sunday, Easter-day, at about 12 o'clock, a crowd of people, amongst whom were some soldiers of the gendarmerie, just come out of church, presented themselves at the door of my house, which they very soon battered down with large pieces of stone.
After having broken the windows, doors, tables, chairs, and every other article of furniture, they robbed me of my jewels, forcing open the closets in which were vases, candlesticks, gold and silver ornaments, diamonds, and lastly a box containing money to the amount of 9,800 drachmas, of which 2,300 were my own private property, and 7,500 which had been deposited with me by the Jewish community of Italy for the projected erection of a temple, and for the poor of this kingdom.
Pacifico complied on February 22, 1848, and Lyons duly dispatched a demand for payment to M. Drossos Mansolas, the Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Moreover, he had been forced to abandon his house during the Easter celebrations of 1848; and he drew to the attention of Lyons that several years earlier two Jews had been massacred at Patras, and likewise the synagogue at Negroponte had been burned down.
[13] After additional exchanges of letters among all the parties, on October 15, 1848, Don David Pacifico appealed again to the British Government to obtain the settlement of his claims.
You will, of course, in conjunction with him, persevere in the suaviter in modo as long as is consistent with our dignity and honour, and I measure that time by days – perhaps by some very small number of hours.
The next thing would be a blockade of any or all of his ports.... On January 22, 1850, Admiral Sir William Parker reported[15] that all the vessels of the Greek government had been detained, but that the machinations of the French Minister Thouvenot and the Prussian Chargé d'affaires were encouraging King Otto to resist.
On June 17, 1850, Lord Edward Stanley (the future Earl of Derby), the Leader of the Conservative Opposition in the House of Lords, proposed a motion in the House: "That, while the House fully recognizes the right and duty of the Government to secure to Her Majesty's subjects residing in foreign states the full protection of the laws of those states, it regrets to find, by the correspondence recently laid upon the table by Her Majesty's command, that various claims against the Greek government, doubtful in point of justice or exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by coercive measures directed against the commerce and people of Greece, and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with other powers.
The MP for Sheffield, John Arthur Roebuck, an independent and sometimes contrarian member, proposed to reverse this condemnation, by stating "That the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government have been regulated have been such as were calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country; and in times of unexampled difficulty, to preserve peace between England and the various nations of the world."
Palmerston delivered a famous five-hour speech in which he sought to vindicate not only his claims on the Greek government for Don Pacifico, but his entire administration of foreign affairs.
"As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say, Civis Romanus sum,[17] so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him from injustice and wrong.