# Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations/Part 1/Chapter 2

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London: Oxford University Press, pages 14–76
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The indispensable qualities for a diplomatist, according to French official statements of the eighteenth century, are prudence, address, and dexterity; alertness, circumspection, sagacity. Our own favourite words for the qualities desirable are ‘discretion’ and ‘tact’: above everything else, tact—the gift of touching and handling with nice discernment and ​skill. Knowledge, ability, earnestness, without tact, will not make a career in the diplomatic world. Lord Brougham, for an example, could never have been a successful diplomatist. It is told of him that, when he was visiting Stuttgart, he was taken round the royal stables by the King of Würtemberg’s Master of the Horse. The King was very proud of his magnificent stud of Arab horses, which he had procured at great expense from Syria. The day was bitterly cold, and Brougham, who was lightly clad, and ‘with trousers scarcely reaching to his ankles’, ran hurriedly through the stables, never (it is said) looked at a horse, and on coming out reduced the Master of the Horse to silence by merely remarking that ‘the money spent on the stables would be more advantageously spent in building a suitable university for the education of the nobility’. Brougham, disputatious and cantankerous, would have borne himself ‘more like a pedant than an ambassador’, in Bacon’s description of a learned ecclesiastic who was a member of an unsuccessful mission from Charles VIII of France to Henry VII of England.
History, perhaps, does not reveal to us any diplomatist who combines the manners and tact, in high degree, and, in less degree, the subtlety of a John Churchill with the political penetration, firmness and force of mind (the other qualities we omit) of a Bismarck; and the types, when thus personally presented, are almost mutually exclusive. But that is the combination that has proved desirable for the eminently successful diplo​matist in the conduct of great affairs between States. Cavour we may rank above Bismarck for success, if allowance be made for a slighter use of the expedients that are deemed questionable and that transform la diplomatie into la polissonnerie; and of Cavour—whose maxim was at times, as that of others similarly placed, ‘tout ou rien—per fas aut nefas’—it was said by his countryman, Manzoni, that he had both all the prudence and all the imprudence of the true statesman.
The first ambassadors—those of Biblical and Homeric times, and of times much later—were orators, men skilful of speech; and in those early days there were those, even as there are those to-day, who practise ‘open’ diplomacy, who have the bad manners actually to speak to the people in their own language, instead of merely to the King or his officers and in a language that the people understand not. When the King of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, he sent with him a large army—an effective aid to the conduct of diplomacy, whether before or after the outbreak of hostilities, since speech is not at all seasons persuasion, nor persuasion always, of itself, force. To Rabshakeh there came forth ‘Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son, which was over the house, and Shebna, the scribe, and Joah, Asaph’s son, the recorder’.
‘Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it; and speak not to us in the Jews’ language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall. But Rabshakeh . . . stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: ​for he shall not be able to deliver you. . . . But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king’s commandment was, saying, Answer him not.’
Wisdom may be better than weapons of war, though one sinner destroyeth much good.
In the fifteenth century and the sixteenth, in Europe, the word ‘orator’ is the usual word for the envoy to whom is entrusted a special mission to a foreign Court. An agent residing abroad in the interest of his king and country, in the fifteenth century, was looked upon as a spy. Long after ​permanent embassies were accepted the resident ambassador did not divest himself of that character; nor has he entirely done so yet. The part has become merged in a larger function and has almost assumed the dress of constitutional propriety, but he is still the eyes and the ears of his State. There is still to-day a distinction in character between the reception by a State of an envoy accredited to it for the special purpose of negotiating an understanding, and the recognition of permanent envoys, representatives of foreign States. The reception and use of the former were essential to the conduct of the art of negotiating. But to send or to receive the latter is discretionary on the part of a State, although it has become an established convention for all full-Sovereign States to send and to receive them, with a view to the maintenance of intercourse among the members of the Family of Nations. With ​the exception of the Papacy from an early date in the Middle Ages, and of the Italian States from the thirteenth century, of which Venice became conspicuous for the excellence of the reports of its representatives, it was not till the fifteenth century that permanent legations were established; and it was during that and the following century that most of the European States instituted a special department of government for foreign affairs. The first main function of the permanent legation was to watch the growth of that new portent—the standing army; and that force was to be deemed an army which was made up of enough soldiers to dare openly to invade the dominions of another, for in judging of what numbers make an army we must think of the strength of him against whom it is sent or is intended. Between a man armed and a man unarmed no proportion could hold; and the saying of Pope Alexander VI, with reference to the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France, had become classic—that the French entered Italy with chalk in their hands to mark their ​lodgings, rather than bearing swords to fight. It was only gradually that the function of ambassadors broadened out into the conduct of relations, and the maintenance of good relations, between their own States and those to which they were accredited. From the time of the Treaty of Westphalia—the treaty basis of much of the modern history of Europe—that higher and broader function could not be escaped; and it is from that Treaty that the institution of permanent diplomatic representatives became general in Europe. In all the development of diplomacy from Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494 to the close of the Thirty Years’ War, thence, for a hundred years, to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and occasionally, at least, since that Treaty, the leading influence has been exerted by the consideration of the balance of power, with its nice avoidance of a hegemony, and its requirement of guarantees, in principle and in effective force, for the rights and security of the smaller States. The process has been a long and arduous one, tortuous and inconclusive. In shaping its ​course, the art of diplomacy, and, in the narrower, more precise and most exacting sphere of that art, the art of negotiating, must not be denied recognition for pertinacity and adroitness and a large measure of good intention.
The mere fact that permanent legations were accepted and approved was at once a consequence and a proof of the importance of the interests that were represented by them. Those interests grew as the several nations grew, and as their contact became more immediate and more vital to each. Throughout all this development, the gift of persuasive speech has continued to be a primary quality for the diplomatist. His function is to carry on political business, never against the interest of his own country, by personal intercourse and persuasive speech with foreign statesmen and other diplomatists. According to the testimony of Lord Lyons—an accomplished ambassador, and, at a critical juncture for this country and the United States of America, a highly successful one—‘the faculty of influencing others by conversation is the qualification peculiarly necessary to a diplomatist’; and to this end, he added, ‘besides higher qualities’, quickness in observing, readiness in reply, tact and even good manners are of far greater use than much learning.
Broadening our view, we may think that Lord Augustus Loftus, in passing a eulogy on Lord Clarendon as Minister for Foreign Affairs, was almost ascribing to him the qualities of a perfectly equipped representative of the service of which he was himself an experienced and distinguished member. ‘Courteous and dignified, with charming manners, he won the regard and confidence of all with whom he came in contact. Firm and courageous, with consummate judgement, he was neither open to flattery nor to the influence of fear. He had a remarkable perspicacity and knowledge of human character, ​which, blended with that chivalry and disinterestedness which marked his character, rendered him one of the most popular, as he was one of the most able statesmen of the age.’
Is there anything in all this to suggest that diplomacy must be Machiavellian? Machiavelli himself does not require that it be so, except in so far as human nature, in general, and the nature, more especially, of particular men and particular circumstances, impel it to assume devices that have vulgarly taken name, rather than derived qualities, from one of the most powerful of all writers and thinkers. What Machiavelli did was to insist on prudence and efficiency. He would say, if to interpret him in brief—not from The Prince alone—be not impossible:
Be not deceived by mere appearance. Discover men, things, and conditions as they are. It may be that in deriding sentimentalism and emotionalism, in warring against uncalculating benevolence, in the conduct of public and international affairs, I shall seem to many to despise sentiment itself and all idealism even I who love books, and cherish Dante, and rank him imperishably with the immortals of Greece and Rome. But the times are rough and full of strange mutations. Fidelity to bonds, and gratitude for services, let no man count on who would face the facts and seek security. Be not timid of counsel, nor slothful in execution. Thucydides and the ancient Romans (especially should I value Tacitus, although I comment on Titus Livius) have uttered their warnings and their rebuke: nor are men, nor the heavens, the sun, the elements altered from what of old they were, in their motion, their ordering and power. The maxim, ‘Leave it to time’, did not commend itself to the ancients. Be not too late. Uncontrolled forces there are; forces uncontrollable there may be. With these we must do our best to reckon. ​Men have been impelled by Necessity to achieve, with their hands and tongue, that excellence whereunto we see them by their labours to have been brought; and it behoves men to consider well the quality of the times always, for often the good or the evil that befalls is in no other wise to be explained than by the manner of the encounter of their proceedings with the times, and by their proceeding conformably to them, or not conformably. Fortuna is fickle and mysterious. But, where she cannot be humoured, by weaving her webs, and by not breaking them, then, like a jade, she may by strength and decisiveness be mastered. Be not over-scrupulous, with fine sensibility of conscience, when conditions are adverse, and when to lose time is to miss success. Do not resolve on the end until you are assured it is that which reason and interest—cool judgement——enjoin. But, when you have so resolved, command the means. Not without cause the voice of the people, in the things of their knowledge, is likened to the voice of God; yet the ills of a people may have to be cured by the Prince by remedies sharp and strong and seemingly cruel. In my work, The Prince, intended for a special set of circumstances, and confirmed, amplified, and proportioned by my Discourses and other of my writings in many places—in that, my little gift to The Magnificent Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, with what motive fashioned men after me may inquire and not agree—I have said what will, I do not doubt, be charged against me as preaching sin, when I was merely warning my fellow-men—’fellow-Christians’ I will not say—against committing mistakes. And yet all that I have meant to enjoin on men, and on my own countrymen first, for their good, is hidden away in these words I wrote to my friend, Francesco Vettori, Ambassador at Rome: ‘When ​I see a man commit one capital error, I have a right to assume he may commit a thousand; for names do not impose on me, and in such cases I never yield except to the authority of reason.’
‘Be ruled by me, for in extremity We ought to make bar of no policy.’
To these add this aphorism from Machiavelli’s equally sagacious, and almost equally learned and able, countryman and contemporary, Guicciardini—an aphorism supported by words from Thucydides, Polybius, Lucan, and others, and by citation of a lesson from History: ‘The vicissitude of things and change of times, begets new counsailes and deliberations in States, and enforceth necessarily the knitting or dissolving of Alliance between them. What is usefull to day, may be hurtfull to morrow, as showers that are seasonable in the Spring, and unwelcome in the Harvest. Wherefore, to temporise by levelling and adapting our actions to the occasion present and presented, is requisite policy.’ Gather these sententiae; or ​even transmute and dilute them so that they become little more than commonplaces in thought in relation to action: and there is no need to make special and pre-eminent appeal to Machiavelli. Rather should we venture to say this, that much of the undoubted ‘Machiavellianism‘ in diplomacy—before as well as after Machiavelli—would never have been called for, had Machiavelli’s own injunction been complied with: Examine well and master betimes the elements in the situation, know your mind, and be decisive: it is only on occasion that you need temporize. Had there been more of Machiavellism, there would have been less that is Machiavellian.
​The need and opportunity for subterfuge and chicanery, fencing and finessing, are greater in international policy than in the conduct of domestic. The very function of a nation's laws is to mediate between interests, and even to establish a concord of interests, within one body politic. But in the case of the international system we assume the existence and force of the interests of the units—the several States; and there has not been established an international constitution, with an authority that shall superintend, mediate, and be sovereign. The formula of a 'balance of power' was often and for a long time spaciously applied, and can still be, even while it might be interpreted, in the official language of French diplomacy, according to one's own views and special interests. But it is a formula that testifies, in itself, both to the deep-rooted rivalry of interests among the Powers, and to the absence of a duly-constituted authority for regulating those interests. In the words of Bolingbroke, the scales of the balance could never be exactly poised. The Primacy of the ​Powers and the European Concert of the nineteenth century were, in like manner, only secondary and conditional expedients—the second best, and not a bashful one, in the accepted absence, at a distance, of the best desirable. The 'Concert of Europe' has often been made use of as a fiction to cloak the mutual jealousy and enmity of the Powers. If there was something of despair, there was also much that was robustly British and healthy in Canning's exclamation in 1823: 'Things are getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation for itself, and God for us all!' It is possible, as has been said, to agree with both sentiments at the same time. There ceased to be any European law, such as was projected in the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, to which the weaker States could appeal in defence of right as against the might of the stronger. It was aptly observed by Prince Gortschakoff on the occasion of the Schleswig-Holstein dispute, 'qu'il n'y a plus d'Europe'.
In the vigorous era of diplomacy, during the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, diplomatists, accredited to ​foreign Courts and capitals, were by conditions constrained to be more politic, procrastinating, prevaricating than in our own day. There was an ample supply of 'instructions'— general and specific, initial and supplementary, royal and ministerial; and these two last were at times, and in a notable instance, irreconcilable. But time and space were then so far from having been overcome that ambassadors had, in many emergencies, to act at their own discretion, to temporize, and make false or merely conditional promises: they had to wait until explicit orders came to them from their Government or their royal master, or from both, thus making explanations necessary, and, it might be, a fresh line of action, a new plan of campaign. We have an impressive illustration in the history ​of the diplomacy of our own country in the early part of the nineteenth century. Stratford Canning, Minister Plenipotentiary at Constantinople, received from the Foreign Minister and the Under-Secretary between 1810 and 1812 sixteen dispatches, and not one of them had any direct and immediate bearing on the troublesome and momentous negotiations which he was conducting at the Porte at the time.
The telegraph has very greatly increased the importance of the Foreign Office of the several States alike in the initiation, in the development and in the control of diplomacy. It has lessened both the difficulties and the independent value of the ​intermediaries, and by doing so it has led to an increase of steadiness, of continuity and of general reliability in the conduct of foreign affairs, All that is to the good. But telegraphic advice may also at times be obscure and misleading. We should, moreover, be going against the recorded testimony of ambassadors of the nineteenth century themselves, if we were to conclude that the need for judgement and discretion—for acting on the spot in the right way at the right time—has been lessened thereby, that there has been much lessening of the sense of responsibility, or that the Foreign Office and the telegraph can ever take the place of personal intercourse with the Sovereign abroad and his representatives.
With regard to diplomatic morality and the factors making for success in diplomacy, opinions differ. The first Earl Grey professed himself a great lover of morality, but 'the intercourse of nations canno'’, he said, 'be strictly regulated by that rule'. 'If they lie to you', said Louis XI to two of his envoys, 'you lie still more to them'. Metternich, regarding whose capacity for lying Napoleon was in no doubt, has recorded in his Autobiographical Memoir that he had never been afraid of succumbing morally, In an attempt to propound in a few principles the meaning of politics and diplomacy, he ​characterized the modern world, in distinction from the ancient, by the tendency of nations to draw near to each other, and to enter into some form of league resting on the same basis as the great Christian society of men; and that basis is 'the precept of the Book of books, "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you."' Accordingly, the main task of politics in his age seemed to him to be to establish international relations upon a basis of genuine reciprocity under the guarantee of respect for established rights and the conscientious observance of contracts. Such was the science of politics, according to one who was fin, faux, and fanfaron; and diplomacy was the art and daily application of the science. When Count Buol Schauenstein retired from the office of Foreign Minister in Austria, Metternich's strongest recommendation of Count Rechberg as successor consisted in the formula that he was 'a pupil of his school'. Lord Augustus Loftus doubted whether the recommendation would have the weight with Lord Palmerston which was attached to it by the venerable Prince.
In a chapter which it is difficult to reconcile in tone and purpose with the Preface of his great work, Grotius admits a wide latitude to 'amphibologies', and, although he disallows them where the 'honour of God', or charity toward our neighbour, or reverence toward superiors, or the making of contracts, or 'the nature of the thing itself' of which we treat, requires a clear unmasking of ourselves, he is manifestly troubled by the discord between word and deed in the affairs of men, and by the fact that mendacity has been a frequent instrument and support of success. In a less awkward and ​less equivocal treatment of this subject, Vattel starts impeccably from the position that good faith consists not only in the observance of promises, but also in not deceiving on any occasions that put us under any obligation to speak the truth; he throws over those writers, 'especially divines', who have made of truth a kind of deity, to which for its own sake, and without regard to consequences, we owe an inviolable respect; and he commends and takes his stand with those philosophers of 'more accurate ideas and more profound penetration' who acknowledge that truth, as the soul of human society, is in general to be respected, being the very basis of confidence in the mutual intercourse of men, but who ground the respect due to it on its effects. The word 'lies', accordingly, is to be given only to the words of him who speaks contrary to his ​thoughts, on occasions when there rests on him an obligation to speak the truth. The word 'falsiloquy' (falsiloguium) is to be used of a false discourse to persons who have no right to insist on our telling them the truth in a particular case.
'Mon grand art, s'il m'est permis de me citer, est de paroître simple et vrai. Je me pique de posséder cette dernière qualité; cependant vous connoissez ma manière de manœuvrer, vous m'avez suivi pas à pas, imitez-moi donc.' Thus did a French ambassador to Vienna in 1717 instruct the secretary to the embassy who was temporarily left in charge. Sir Robert Walpole, a master-worker of large visible results by means of little positive action, asked Lord Stanhope to remember that 'in England the manner of doing things is often more to be regarded than the thing is itself'. Lord Stanhope, the immediate and distinguished precursor of the still more brilliant Carteret in the conduct of foreign affairs and international diplomacy, used to say, according to Lady Mary Montagu, ​that during his ministry he 'always imposed on the foreign ministers by telling them the naked truth'. Thinking it impossible that the truth should come from the mouth of a statesman, 'they never failed to write information to their respective Courts directly contrary to the assurances he gave them'. Lord Palmerston, at the beginning of the session of 1848, found the formula for the guidance of British Ministers in the expression of Canning, that with each of them the 'interests' of his own country ought to be 'the shibboleth of his policy'. In his intercourse with the Ministers of other States he had desired a certain measure of personal freedom, as he claimed in the notable letter in which he gave an account of the circumstances of his dismissal from the charge of the Foreign Office in 1851: in such intercourse the Foreign Minister could not always act merely as the organ of a previously consulted Cabinet. That the measure of freedom he claimed and exercised had results of the kind that he approved is clear from his declaration to his biographer, that he occasionally found that foreign ministers 'had been deceived by the open manner in which he told them the truth'. 'They went away convinced that so skilful and experienced a diplomatist could not possibly be so frank as he appeared, and, imagining some deep design in his words, acted on their own idea of what he really meant, and so misled their own selves.' 'In politics, in stormy times', said Ségur, writing of Louis XV's secret correspondence, 'true dexterity consists in courageous good faith'; it is by character, frankness and sincerity that durable ​success is won. According to the first Lord Malmesbury—the guardian of Palmerston, who in turn became the guardian ​of the third Lord Malmesbury, to whom reference has already been made—'no occasion, no provocation, no anxiety to rebut an unjust accusation, no idea, however tempting, of promoting the object you have in view, can need, much less justify, a falsehood. Success obtained by one, is a precarious and baseless success. Detection would ruin, not only your own reputation for ever, but deeply wound the honour of your Court. If, as frequently happens, an indiscreet question, which seems to require a distinct answer, is put to you abruptly by an artful Minister, parry it either by treating it as an indiscreet question, or get rid of it by a grave and serious look; but on no account contradict the assertion flatly if it be true, or admit it as true, if false and of a dangerous tendency.' ​We are perhaps reduced to the half-cynical maxim and device of Torcy, that the best way of deceiving foreign Courts is always to speak the truth. Or, are we led to some via media, in the words of advice of a senior in diplomacy to a junior: 'Take snuff often and slowly, sit with your back to the light, and speak the truth; the rest you will learn by observing your older colleagues'? Does that really mean to seniors priority in niceties of conduct that shall not be Machiavellian, as well as in resolute avoidance of the mixture of a lie which, Bacon tells us, doth ever add pleasure? Halifax's 'Trimmer' adored the goddess Truth and all who worshipped her, but ​he lamented that in all ages she had been scurvily used, and that of late she had become such a ruining virtue that mankind seemed to be agreed to commend it and to avoid it.
If we were asked to point to an illustration of the normal advice uttered for the general conduct of the weighty matters of international policy, we might instance the words of Palmerston to Malmesbury when the latter became Foreign Secretary. After warning him very impressively of the power which this country owes to her prestige, he continued: 'All the Foreign Ministers will try at first to get objects which they have been refused by successive Governments; so take care you yield nothing until you have well looked into every side of the question. When the diplomates call, do not be too reserved but preface your observations by stating that what you say is officious.' Is it normal advice? In the sense that it enjoins a looking to right and to left and all round, the advice is normal.
In a less scant treatment of our subject, we should have attempted a more precise differentiation of diplomacy and analysis of its kinds, not after the manner of the international lawyer, but for historical study and political appreciation—such as the diplomacy of courtesy and of rudeness, the diplomacy of frankness, of cynicism and deceit, the diplomacy of forcefulness and of irresolution, of a weak benevolence and a slothful overtrust and inertia.
The diplomacy of courtesy we may illustrate from the letter written by President Tyler of the United States of America ​in 1843, when he approached the Chinese for the making of a treaty and for the same privileges as had just been accorded to the British in the Treaty of Nanking. The letter was the first communication addressed by Washington to Peking:
'I, John Tyler, President of the United States of America—which States are: Maine, … Michigan—send you this letter of peace and friendship, signed by my own hand.
'I hope your health is good. China is a great Empire, extending over a great part of the world. The Chinese are numerous, You have millions and millions of subjects. The twenty-six United States are as large as China, though our people are not as numerous, The rising sun looks upon the great mountains and rivers of China, when he sets upon rivers and mountains equally large in the United States. Our territories extend from one great ocean to the other; and on the west we are divided from your dominions only by the sea. Leaving the mouth of one of our great rivers and going constantly towards the setting sun, we sail to Japan and the Yellow Sea.
'Now, my words are that the Governments of two such great countries should be at peace. It is proper and according to the rule of Heaven that they should respect one another and act wisely. I, therefore, send to your Court Caleb Cushing, one of the wise and learned men of this country. On his first arrival in China he will inquire for your health. He has strict orders to go to your great city of Peking, and there deliver this letter. He will have with him secretaries and interpreters.
'The Chinese love to trade with our people and to sell them tea and silk, for which our people pay silver, and sometimes other articles. But if the Chinese and the Americans ​will trade, there shall be rules, so that they shall not break your laws or our laws. Our Minister Caleb Cushing is authorized to make a treaty to regulate trade. Let it be just. Let there be no unfair advantage on either side. Let the people trade not only at Canton, but also at Amoy, Ningpo, Shanghai, Foochow, and all other such places as may offer profitable exchanges both to China and the United States, provided they do not break your laws or our laws. We shall not take the part of evil-doers, We shall not uphold them that break your laws, Therefore, we doubt not that you will be pleased that our messenger of peace with this letter in his hand shall come to Peking and there deliver it; and that your great officers will by your order make a treaty with him not to disturb the peace between China and America. Let the treaty be signed by your own imperial hand, It shall be signed by mine, and by the authorities of our great council, the Senate.
Among subordinate traits and qualities we may especially mention irony—a dangerous weapon in politics, whether we think of it as the ironical rudeness of a Bismarck in his Circular ​touching the Emperor Napoleon’s visit to Salzburg in 1867, or the more highly polished Voltairean irony of Frederick II, of which one may instance, in particular, his letters to Louis XV just before the Christmas treaties of 1745, and the letter of Christmas Day of that year. To Frederick, who had himself been a doubtful ally, Louis, another doubtful ally, had written, in effect, according to Frederick: if misfortune should befall you, you have my promise that the Academy will deliver a funeral oration over your kingdom. In his letter of Christmas Day, Frederick said:
'I had expected some real help from your Majesty in consequence of my application in November last. I will not discuss the reasons you may have for leaving your allies to their own resources, but I feel happy that the valour of my troops has saved me from a critical situation. If I had been unfortunate, you would only have pitied me, and I should have been helpless. How can an alliance subsist, unless the two parties co-operate heartily towards the common end? You wish me to take counsel of my own wits: I obey. And they enjoin me to put an end at once to a war, which, as it has no object since the death of the Emperor, is merely causing a useless sacrifice of blood. I am told that it is time to think of my own safety; that a large force of Muscovites threatens my country; that fortune is fickle, and that I have no help of any kind to expect from my allies; … that after the lester I have just received from your Majesty, nothing is left but to sign peace,
and to remain the most affectionate brother of his Most Christian Majesty. On the same day, in a communication ​to Valori, the French Minister at Berlin, Frederick expressed his pleasure—his 'consolation'—that he had 'never received the alms of France'.
Illustrations of diplomacy—personal illustrations and illustrations of type—history furnishes in large number and impressive variety, and from many lands and nearly all times, whether we think of the intrigues and discussions preserved and improvised for us by the ancient classical historians, or of the rise of modern diplomacy in the city-states of Italy, or of the successes due to the prudence of Richelieu and the subtlety of Mazarin, or the cool and calculating policy of William III—Ranke's man of true international nature—the brilliance and fragmentary triumph of a Carteret, the cynicism and wit of a Talleyrand.
Successful diplomacy in modern times—diplomacy sustained by political supports in well-considered relation to military equipment, and successful in, at least, its immediate practical purpose—has had no more cogent example than Bismarck; and Bismarck, as he once declared, was no doctrinaire in politics. In 1861 he outlined his programme to Disraeli—at a dinner in London. He expected, he said, to be called upon, in a short time, to undertake the direction of the Prussian Government. His first duty would be to reorganize the army, He would then seize the first really good pretext to declare war against Austria, to dissolve the German Diet, to overpower the middle and smaller states, and to give to Germany a national unity under the leadership of Prussia. Disraeli remarked, 'Take care of that man; he means what he says'. The programme was carried out to the letter. Do not let your diplomacy outrun your preparations. ‘That was the burden of the charge brought by the elder Pitt against the incompetents at the outset of the Seven Years' War. It is a maxim for all time in the conduct of foreign policy; and for Bismarck, with the plans ​he had formed, it was necessary to see that the preparation was continuous—that Prussia was always and increasingly prepared.
In the history of our own country—for we must not, in smug complacency and with a show of unctuous rectitude, merely look abroad for the marks of diplomacy—we might go for illustration of its sinister attributes to quarters where, perhaps, they are least expected. It has been claimed for Oliver Cromwell that he was 'no Frederick the Great, who spoke of mankind as diese verdammte Race—that accursed tribe': he belongs to 'the rarer and nobler type of governing men who see the golden side, who count faith, pity, hope among the counsels of practical wisdom, and who for political power must ever seek a moral base'. We should not be content with that character for the Protector even in his home policy; still less in his foreign policy. A knowledge of the diplomacy of 1654 is of itself sufficient to destroy the picture and discredit the artist. It used to be thought that Cromwell then stood forth as arbiter among the rulers of Europe, and, in particular, that the monarchs of France and Spain were suitors for his support. Instead of this the facts show him courting France ​and Spain alternately, 'constant only in his inconstancy'. In April 1654 the Baron de Baas, a special agent of Mazarin, astonished Cromwell, at an audience, with the abundance and accuracy of his information regarding the Protector's designs and intrigues, and concluded with the ironical request that Cromwell would extricate him with honour from the labyrinth. Oliver's countenance, we are told, fell; the words came from his mouth more slowly than was his wont; and the interpreter, after conveying a halting explanation of the words of the Protector, 'conveniently remembered that his Highness had an engagement which made it impossible to prolong the conversation, though he would be glad to resume it on a more fitting occasion'. At no other time in the history of England have the profession and the pursuit of an ideal in the conduct of foreign policy been so deeply and confusedly involved with material motive; and it was entanglement with the ideal that brought Cromwell to his gravest perils both in morality and in achievement. Be it added, in this connexion, that, although many of the facts and circumstances were unknown to the great royalist historian and statesman, Clarendon, in The History of the Rebellion we find the true discreet type of mind that is required for estimate of the interests that underlie the conduct of policy among nations; and Clarendon is appreciative of Cromwell's regard for such interests.
But farther back still we might with advantage go—back as far, perhaps, as Henry VII for the lessons to be gathered from one who is unsurpassed among English kings and statesmen for combined sagacity and subtlety; back, certainly, to ​Wolsey, master of diplomatic divagations; back, more especially, to that other Cromwell, whose manual of statecraft, according to his enemy, Cardinal Pole, was The Prince of Machiavelli. In Thomas Cromwell's letters diplomacy is revealed in its tortuousness, hardness, and relentlessness. “Let us take a moderate example and an extreme personal case.
In October 1537 Cromwell wrote to Sir Thomas Wyatt directing him to sound the Emperor concerning the mediation which Henry VIII had proffered between Charles V and Francis I:
'… Your parte shal be nowe like a good oratour, both to set furthe the princely nature and inclynacion of his highnes with all dexterite, and soo to observe Themperours answers to the said overture and to the rest of the pointes in the same letteres expressed, as you may thereby fishe the botom of his stomake, and advertise his Majeste hee he standeth disposed towardes him, and to the contynuance of thamytie betwene them. … You must in your conference with themperour take occasion to speake of all those matiers, and soo frankely to speake of them as you may feale the depenes of his harte wherein you shall doo good service. … Gentle Maister Wiat nowe use all your wisedome rather to trye out howe themperour is disposed towardes the kinges highnes, thenne to presse him anything to agre to the overture of mediacion if he woll not as gentilly embrace it as it is made freendly unto him. For to be plain with you thother parte declare him in wordes towardes his Majeste to make ale faire wether, and in his ​harte dede and workes, to doo all that he canne to his graces dishonour, insomoche as they bost themselfes to have refused some honest offres for themselfes bicause they were knytt with vile and filthie conditions towardes his Majeste. And if it be true it is pitye there shuld be such dissimulacion in suche a prince, and specially towardes him, whom he ought of congruence all thinges considered to observe love and honour to his uttermost, if you thinke that the speaking of thise thinges unto him may be any meane to disciphre his very meanyng bolte them out of yourself as signified unto you by some of the Agentes of the Kinges highnes in Fraunce. And whenne you shal be in communication of thise matiers handle them with suche a plain franknes as youe may drawe sumwhat out, that percace resteth yet hidden undre a colored cloke of freendeship or at the least manifest and make open that like a prince of honour he meanith as he pretendeth.'
For the personal case, the following, from a letter, in September 1537, to Michael Throgmorton, when Thomas Cromwell wished to secure him as his agent at Rome against the intrigues of Cardinal Pole in Italy:
'… I myght better have judged, that so dishonest a maister, cowlde have but evyn suche servantes as youe ar. No, no, loyaltie and treason dwell seldome togethers. There can be no feithfull subject so long abide the sight of so haynous a traytour to his prince. Yow cowld not all this season have byn a spie for the king, but at some tyme your cowntenance shuld have declared your harte to be loyall towardes your prince. … Yow thinke youe doo goode servyce there to the kinges hieghnes; for asmuche as yow now se thinges, that being absent, youe shulde not have seen, such verelye as might have done greate damage; if youe hadde not seen them. Yow have bleared myn yee ones: your credite shall nevermore serve youe so farr, to deceyve me the second tyme. I take youe as youe ar.'
​'You have bleared my eye once … I take you as you are.' The words are worthy of Machiavelli.
There is no smooth and easy path for the conduct of international policy; nor for its study. The fortunes of nations should not be left to the hazards of the unforeseen. Those who are responsible for guiding relations between States need a vast equipment in knowledge and in aptitude. They must know the resources, the constitution and manner of government, the treaty obligations, the character of the dominant personalities, the national temperament and national objects, both of their own State and of its connexions—sometimes unruly and suspicious connexions—in the Family of Nations. They must well consider the relation of means to ends. Here, without any doubt, there is need of eyes for the past, the present, and the future—need of the three eyes of prudence: memory, intelligence, providence. By these Fortuna is won. Of all the regions of politics there is no other of which it is so strictly true as of the international, that only the most complete knowledge and command available of all the factors should be allowed to count, whether for those who direct or for those in a succeeding age who try to judge them. There is often in History and Politics some 'one thing unknown' that is required as the key to all. Especially has that been true of policy between State and State.
It is not otherwise, in its own degree, with the study of foreign policy. As the work, so the study. Here, too, there is need of alertness, circumspection, sagacity. It is necessary to search ​out and to estimate all the factors. But at the several crises of international relations, and in the decisive leading-up to them, it is the more particular factors, or general factors in particular forms, that are at work, and that are to be discovered, scrutinized, and estimated; and here most of all in history it is necessary to get to the sources, and necessary at times to admit that the sources are not wholly adequate, because they have not been, and may never be, fully revealed. It is necessary also to remember that the sources are not in one land only, and that the tinctures are from mixed and varied soils. It is more than useless—it is culpably misleading—for a writer to take only one set of dispatches, or those of one State only, when he is expounding some development, or even a mere phase, in foreign policy. He must collate the dispatches of a State to several capitals, and set these against those of foreign Powers, on the question that is being considered. The inquirer, for example, into the immediate antecedents of 'the Diplomatic Revolution' of the eighteenth century will find, at the crisis of things towards the close of 1755, more to engage his attention at Petersburg than at London or Berlin, Paris or Vienna. The volumes of the French Recueil des Instructions données aux Ambassadeurs et Ministres de France depuis les Traités de Westphalie jusqu'à la Révolution française afford an excellent opportunity for partial collation in the study of diplomacy, and for the exercise of historical caution.
Not least must the inquirer observe and faithfully report whether the dispatches and other official papers which he presents and builds upon are complete or merely fragmentary Does he find, or can he himself divine, the ominous word 'extract' in the dispatches he reads? Are the dispatches, as published, such as the late Lord Salisbury once described: ​'mere headless trunks of despatches, without heads or legs, and with a large hole run through the body'? He must try to find out whether the 'most secret letters' that precede, accompany or follow even confidential dispatches are still available, and how far they explain what the dispatch has intentionally left partly hidden. Much remains; and for that he will have to go, not to speeches and writings of the day, whether officially inspired, independent or irresponsible—however helpful and necessary these may be for a knowledge of the general situation and an understanding of the psychology of a people—but to the most intimate revelations of the prime movers, and to private letters and journals of those who had the privilege of knowing, or to whom came the chance of hearing, with perhaps a fatal facility and imagination in describing. For material of this kind we have usually had to wait at least a generation after the time of the events themselves. Even then there may be the 'one thing unknown'. The admission should be less rare—and why churlish?—on the part of historical writers.
Bismarck is reported to have said that diplomatic reports are little better than paper smeared with ink, if the object in view be the truth of things and possession of material for history. Even the dispatches that do contain information cannot be understood except by those who know the writers and the men and the things written about. One must know, he said, what a Gortschakoff, a Gladstone, or a Granville had in his mind when he made the statements that are reported in the dispatch. ​It is to private letters and confidential communications and to verbal ones that we must look for information of the real influences at work. 'The Emperor of Russia, for instance, is on the whole very friendly to us—from tradition, for family reasons, and so on—and also the Grand Duchesse Hélène, who influences him and watches him on our behalf. The Empress, on the other hand, is not our friend. But that is only to be ascertained through confidential channels and not officially.'
The chief danger to be averted in the conduct of foreign policy is, as has already been said, that of allowing diplomacy to outrun preparations and the strength on which success in diplomacy must ultimately depend. If we turn our view inward upon the nation itself, we shall translate that formula without violence into the expression, that a nation must not acquire a reputation for inconstancy and caprice. In this part of our subject we might have been not unhappily. spacious where we shall now be severely concise. We might cite well-known examples of the inconsistencies, arbitrariness, and excesses of the Athenian democracy in the realm of foreign affairs, and one might point in contrast to the impressive eulogy passed by Mommsen on the Roman Senate in the ​days of its greatness amid grave problems for the State abroad, and, in turn, we might contrast that eulogy with the strictures pronounced by the Marquess Wellesley on the Spanish Junta as a political instrument. But we do well to remember that politics as a study is apt to be made a playground of analogies, and we should come to no absolute judgement as to whether an autocracy, open or veiled, a bureaucracy, howsoever founded and inspired, or the moderated democracy is the best fitted for the conduct of foreign affairs. We should go back to our primary tests, and inquire who the people are we are considering, what is the work to be done, what the conditions.
We cannot by mere examples prove or disprove in such a matter as this. One will point to the cases of instability and untrustworthiness where parliamentary conditions have held sway. Another, with equal force, will warn us that a Frederick II required for Prussia a Frederick II as his successor, whereas there came not a Solomon but a Rehoboam. A third will ​draw attention to the vicissitudes of the foreign policy of Russia. Forgetting, perhaps, that autocracy was at times far from prevailing there, he may be tempted from one case to deduce and learn all, since in 1762, within seven months—months most momentous to Prussia—the policy of Russia, or policy from Russia, toward Frederick was at first strongly hostile, under Elizabeth, then cordially and melodramatically favourable under Peter III, and finally, on his deposition, discreetly neutral and watchful under Catherine II. Well may one point to the warnings of the French Government to its representatives at Petersburg,a few years later, to watch over the 'convulsive movements' and warring counsels at the Russian court; and a few years later still we have the vivid ​and despairing pictures of Sir James Harris, the British representative, when he had to manœuvre with Catherine, with Panin and Potemkin. In a dispatch of July 1780–a critical year for Britain–Harris states that Prince Potemkin, the favourite of the Empress, assured him that at certain moments she seemed to be determined to join Britain; but she was restrained by the prospect of bringing on herself the sarcasms of the French and of Frederick of Prussia, and especially by the dread of losing by ill-success the reputation she had won. In these circumstances the 'enervating language' of Count Panin, her Minister for Foreign Affairs, was more agreeable to her than the advice of Potemkin. Still, in this matter of fostering the League of Neutrality against the interests of Britain, she began to feel, according to the declaration of her favourite, that she had been influenced too far by the Minister: she really regretted her action as ill-considered, and yet her pride would not allow her to recant. 'When things go smoothly', said Potemkin, 'my influence is small; but when she meets with rubs she always wants me, and then my influence ​becomes as great as ever.' Two months before these words were written, Harris had described the French as indefatigable in their efforts to get round the Empress: their agents were many at Petersburg, and they spared no expense and no pains to overset everything that he undertook. In this very month–May 1780–the British representative had his character drawn not unfairly in an instruction, signed by Louis XVI and by Vergennes, to one regarding whom Catherine had given the assurance that he would be very well received at her Court as Minister Plenipotentiary from France: 'Il paroît que le ministre anglais à Pétersbourg est l'homme le plus capable de mettre à profit ce que la ruse et les petits moyens peuvent faire pour suppléer aux avantages qu'il sent bien avoir perdus.'
Monarchy rests, in principle, on unity, and it emphasizes the need for stability in the conduct of affairs of State. Effective monarchy affords, during its continuance, a better guarantee for persistence in policy and consistency in action than a democracy or a parliamentary government, based on diversities, on discussion, on considerable publicity, and on provisions duly made within the constitution for changes in policy in response to changes in opinion. But facts and conditions relative to each constitution—the extent, for example, to which monarchy can proceed without carrying the nation with it—are the determining forces. They overrule forms, and mould the instruments of rule. A monarchy may pursue methods that are essentially democratic—methods that not only have the ​approval, but require the active co-operation, of the community. In methods adopted for a definite end, democracy may be secretive, repressive, arbitrary. A 'free government' (to continue the language of an earlier day) is still government. It cannot evade the tests of success to which all government is subject. A 'government by consent' (the now approved definition of democracy) may accept a one-man power and ascendancy—a Pericles or an Abraham Lincoln, a military dictator, or a soldier-statesman, and not merely a War Cabinet. Still, a constitution that is predominantly monarchic differs from a constitution that is predominantly democratic and parliamentary in requiring less regular, less continuous, and less immediate dependence on the expressed or ascertainable will of the nation or of the majority or the stronger part of those who are invested with political rights and power. A democratic constitution may be held to be necessary in domestic government in a modern State, but may, without inconsistency, be condemned, or in essentials curtailed, in its application to international policy. The spheres of application are different. In seeking to shape and control foreign policy the politically enfranchised majority of a people are passing beyond the concerns of one nation—their own—to those of others. In these others the methods adopted may not be in consonance with freedom of discussion and unrestrained publicity. They may be methods that recognize, tacitly or frankly, that rule has its mysteries, its rites, and even its hierarchy. In them special capacity may be assigned -its sphere and may inspire confidence; or particular ways and means may be on their trial. Against monarchy and despotism, however, charges of vacillation due to whims and jealousies, as well as to limits of knowledge and capacity, have been many. The materials for such charges were abundant in Russia before she had fixed her purpose in an Eastern policy, and before she had a tradition ​to maintain in policy and in the zeal and tenacity of State officers, themselves genuinely Russian.
The path of inquiry in comparative politics is very alluring, but it is dangerously devious. It is better to concentrate on one political system, and to get the lessons as sharp and decisive as possible. If we look to our own government since the time when a parliamentary system began to prevail in England, we find an almost unbroken line of appeal to close the ranks and maintain unity of mind and purpose for unity in action, where the interests of the country have had to be adjusted to the interests and the contentions of others. We need not press very far the charges made at the time, both at home and abroad, and later by historians, more especially Continental, that on several notable occasions Britain, through the force of party influences, was false of faith to her allies—during the Spanish Succession War, and again in the War of the Austrian Succession, without taking account of the more exceptional case of the 'desertion' or 'betrayal', as it has been termed, of the cause of Frederick II of Prussia before his day of danger was over. The historical and political writer, to whom probably more than to any other these charges have owed wide currency, stated them dispassionately, without acrimony. They were urged as charges due to the faults of a constitutional system; they were not brought forward as unqualified charges of a violation of public faith. The minister who was chiefly responsible for terminating the war in each case was not the minister, and did not represent the party or the political connexion, that had been in power when the war was entered ​upon, or when it was prosecuted with vigour and success. Hence, it was concluded, without reserve, if also without bitterness and the injustice of extremes, that the Government in Britain cannot guarantee with the same assurance as others the performance of its obligations; and, it was rightly contended, the consequence in respect of foreign Powers was most pernicious, It was, however, admitted that on the part of Continental Powers physical impossibilities—a total subjugation or some extreme trial and distress—might prevent the fulfilment of their obligations: 'a case which can scarcely be supposed to occur with respect to England'. The capacity of Britain to endure physical strain was acknowledged to a degree that Montesquieu would have commended—that high degree which the experience of two great wars, in spite of a bitter lesson in an intervening one, seemed to have established for the people of Britain since the eulogy of her by the author of the work De l'Esprit des Lois had been published. Britain's non-fulfilment of obligations to foreign Powers was to be ascribed, if not to a clear breach of political morality, at least to the character and consequences of conventions, and to conventions that had acquired the force of principles, in the ordering of her political life. The non-fulfilment of obligations by Continental Powers was to be ascribed to physical duress, to the imperious calls of nature, to which the State for its own safety, the community for the sake of bare existence, must submit.
It is instructive to observe how such a critic and apologist finds no need to condone, as though it were reprehensible, the action of Frederick II as an ally of France in the course of his Silesian Wars—and the designation of the wars is at once almost Frederick's condemnation and his defence—between 1740 and 1745. He sees in Frederick's action ground for ​praise for consummate skill; he claims for him political judgement almost unique. Frederick began the war on his own account against Austria, and without the help of France. Soon he was in active alliance with the French, but as early as 1742 he came to terms with Austria, and left France fighting. Two years later he resumed the struggle, was again allied to France, and again, after only sixteen months, abandoned her; and his Christmas letter of 1745 to Louis we have already produced. The interests of Frederick did not coincide with those of France; he was not a champion, accredited and self-sacrificing, of the interests of France, of the Westphalian rôle and historic mission of France. He had no desire to witness the aggrandizement of France at the cost of the annihilation of the monarchy of Austria. Therefore, it is contended, to understand him is to admire him. 'The art, till then unknown in Europe, of concluding alliances without committing one's self, of remaining unfettered while apparently bound, of seceding when the proper moment is arrived, can be learnt from him and only from him.' Intrepidity in conduct, freedom characterizing every movement, a straightforwardness which was not, however, unaccompanied by cunning—in a word, superiority over his contemporaries: these are claimed for Frederick, and deduced from his conduct as an ally. 'The immutable truth, that independence of character is of more value in negotiation than brilliant talents, and rises in importance proportionately to the eminence of the station in which the possessor is placed, no one has more strikingly attested by his own example than Frederic at that period,'
The apologist of Frederick well knew the fortitude displayed, in the course of the Seven Years' War, by Prussians and preeminently by the Prussian King—a 'truly great King', his ​fellow-worker, the elder Pitt, called him. He had, moreover, lived through the years of Prussia's humiliation and agony under the iron heel of Napoleon, and had witnessed her political recovery and her national triumph. He was a student of Frederick's historical writings, and from laudation of his achievements and success he went back, and was almost forced, to approval of his means—to an apologia of his political morality. The same thinker declared that history would never forget the almost incredible exertions made by Britain in the final struggle against Napoleon for the liberation of Europe. In appraising her achievement he thought not only of the advantages conferred upon her by her insular position, but also of the fertilizing effects of her constitutional system in propagating on the Continent those political opinions which inspired the last fight against the despot and called for sustenance and constant encouragement if they were to prevail. He was no advocate for imposing her constitutional system as a general model, and yet he was so gravely impressed with the results of its working and with the force of its example, and so favourably disposed to the mediating function which Britain exercised among Continental Powers, as to express, not less for her than for his own country, the wish Esto Perpetua. The recording of such judgements has at least the value that we may guard ​ourselves against losing all sense of perspective when we are concentrating attention on the bearing of one political system on the conduct of foreign policy.
William III was his own Foreign and War Minister. That was the condition of his action. It is also, in large part, the explanation of his success. He would not be a mere Doge of Venice. No more bitter anxiety of mind fell on Marlborough in the conduct of war than that which came to him from uncertainty of the course of party politics at home; and it was the most continuously depressing of all his anxieties. With the accession of George I the constitution became still more parliamentary and still more dependent upon party and a party ministry. But, with the bearings of a parliamentary constitution better understood through an accumulating and diversified experience, criticism of its working and effects becomes more direct; misgivings assert themselves. Yet, the ministerial changes and uncertainties of the reigns of George I and George II were changes and uncertainties within one party, and were not primarily due to the criticisms and the policy of the Tories. Within a year of the accession of the new House we find the French Government instructing its representatives abroad to observe that one of the grounds for the failure of Stanhope's mission to the Emperor was the Emperor's recognition that little reliance could be placed on a Government subject to changes so frequent as there had lately been in Britain. An additional element of uncertainty was ​presented by the character of the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover. The Elector of Hanover persisted in the exercise of his right to treat with foreign Powers regarding Hanover as Elector merely, without having to submit to the galling restraints imposed upon the British sovereign in the conduct of the foreign policy of Britain. The confusion of issues that followed was hardly avoidable. But it was the manner of conducting the policy of Hanover that almost equally with the substance of that policy led to opposition and to outspoken resentment in Parliament. It was the means adopted as well as the ends pursued that inspired the critics of the Hanover policy. The true inwardness of that policy, and the way in which it could be related to the furtherance of the interests of Britain, were grasped, in varying degrees and in changing situations, by Stanhope, by Carteret and, after his years of waywardness and irresponsibility, by the elder Pitt; and they did not vastly differ in the view they took of the use that was to be made of the rights of the executive in carrying out the policy. It was necessary to reckon with Parliament, and with a Parliament that was moved by home politics more than by foreign, except at a national crisis, and that was influenced by great family connexions and by the barter of patronage for power. For this Carteret, unlike Walpole and the Pelhams, was too proud, too brilliantly independent, to make the due allowance that discretion demanded; and he fell before those who were his inferiors in knowledge and capacity. It was necessary for ministers to win over Parliament, to manage it and even coerce it. It was expedient, under the imperious conditions of the parliamentary ​system of the eighteenth century, to attend to the making of bishops and of revenue officers not less than to the fulfilling of the boast of Carteret—the making of kings and emperors and maintaining the balance of power in Europe. But it was equally necessary for ministers of the Crown to assert a right to initiative and to a considerable measure of discretionary authority in the conduct of foreign affairs.
Addison, writing in The Freeholder of the mutability in politics charged by foreigners against the English, tells how the famous Prince of Condé would ask the English Ambassador, on the arrival of a mail, 'Who was Secretary of State in England by that post?' One of the chief arguments advanced for the passing of the Septennial Bill was the greater trust that foreign States would repose in this country if general elections and changes of ministers were less frequent. Just a little later, at the time of the Whig Schism, we find Lord Stair, Ambassador to France, invoking a plague on both parties, and especially on Whig factions. In his own words, in a letter to Craggs, who within a few months was made Secretary of War, 'I look upon what has happened, as the most dangerous thing could befall us, both as to the matter, and as to the manner. What the devil did Lord Sunderland and Stanhope mean, to make such a step without concerting it? … I am afraid these ​convulsions at home may hurt our affairs abroad.' 'Head, and hearts, and hands' there must be. Surely there was a sound common platform on which leading men of the party could stand together: 'half a dozen of good men would go far; but they must be men indeed'. Only essentials of conformity should be exacted as a test.
And so we might by illustration proceed. We might show, on the one side, how Carteret in the conduct of his diplomacy, whatever in substance and objects be its merits, was obstructed by the intrigues and jealousies of the Pelhams in the ministry, and, on the other side, the great and brilliant results achieved ​under the elder Pitt when party was forgotten, and the Council, in the words of the aged Carteret, Lord Granville, was a happy conciliabulum. Or, again, we might show why precisely it came that Frederick II of Prussia conceived his deep distrust of the English constitution for its influence on the conduct of foreign affairs, and 'abused Parliaments'—sentiments which were entertained also, in different degrees of bitterness and contempt, by Catherine II, by Kaunitz, and others. The composition and the cohesion of parties in Britain, the cohesion and security of ministries, seemed to depend upon temporary and changing circumstances of a domestic character. Could anything be taken for certain in dealings with a State whose politics were thus founded, and thus displayed to foreign observers? Such assertions and charges, even when they were not justified, or were but little sustainable, from facts, had a diplomatic use: they could be made to serve a diplomatic end, immediate or ulterior.
While foreign princes and foreign ministers, as well as some ministers and critics at home, were thus passing adverse judgement on the British constitution for its imperfections and excesses caused by the parliamentary system, leaders of the Opposition were demanding the production of dispatches, papers, and reports which the Government was withholding on the plea of State necessity. Of many complaints the two following are typical. They are taken from the Lords' Protests: they are drawn from the armoury of the Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole. In the first it was contended, with reference to the trading interests of the British colonies and ​plantations in America, that treaties alone would not bind those Powers which might seem to have advantages in prospect from opportune aggression, and that 'the interposition of a British Parliament would be more respected and more effectual than the occasional expedients of fluctuating and variable negotiations, which in former times have been often more adapted to the present necessities of the ministers than to the real honour and lasting security of the nation'. The second Protest was framed on the rejection of a motion that a secret committee, consisting of those Peers who were Privy Councillors, be appointed to inquire into the conduct of the war against Spain towards the close of Walpole's ministry. 'The so-often urged argument of secrecy', which in another Protest of the same times was termed 'the stale objection', is an argument, it was said, that 'proves too much, and may as often without as with reason be used in bar of all inquiries, that any Administration, conscious either of their guilt or their ignorance, may desire to defeat'. Secrecy of this 'timorous' and 'scrupulous' kind was 'much oftener the refuge of guilt than the resort of innocence'. The case for inquiry and for openness in the conduct of foreign policy was ably presented in the House of Commons by Wyndham in the session 1733–4, when the Polish Succession—or Election—War was in progress. A motion that the letters and instructions to British ministers in France and Spain be produced was rejected by 195 votes to 104. Wyndham argued that Parliament, if denied such knowledge, could not sustain its part in upholding the interests of the nation abroad, and could not comprehend the extent of the interests of Britain in the war which was at that time being fought on the Continent without her. Even if we were to take no part in the war, it was necessary to provide for the safety of the nation; ​and the grounds for making adequate provision were not disclosed. How (he asked) could members of the House of Commons judge of the estimates to be laid before them as a provision for national safety, if they did not know by what danger the nation was confronted? How, further, could we know our danger without knowing how we then stood with regard to foreign alliances and engagements?
The case for the Government in these and like transactions was moderately and clearly put by Henry Pelham in the House of Commons. His ministry was criticized for not having laid the preliminaries of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle before Parliament, so that its opinion might be taken beforehand, as had been done on the occasion of the Treaty of Utrecht. Pelham, in his defence, disclaimed any intention to limit in any degree the right of Parliament to examine and criticize any treaty after it was concluded, and to censure and punish those who advised and negotiated the treaty if it should seem to have wantonly or unnecessarily sacrificed the interests or the honour of the nation. Such a right on the part of Parliament was to be upheld as a salutary check on the conduct of ministers. But, 'if Parliament should encroach upon the prerogative of the Crown, by assuming a right to make peace or war, and to inquire into foreign transactions under negotiation, our affairs will be reduced to a dangerous predicament; for no foreign State will negotiate with our ministers, or conclude any treaty with them, either political or commercial.' These considerations of national advantage similarly required that Parliament should not assume a constitutional right to prescribe rules to the Crown for its conduct in any future negotiation or treaty. Advice either House is competent to offer; but, if the advice be coupled with the condition that ​in no case can it be departed from without the consent of the House, it ceases to be advice: it becomes a rule or law, which Parliament has no right to prescribe to the Sovereign, and which no minister, faithful to his position and its obligations, could advise him to accept as a rule or law. For ministers to seek the approval of Parliament—it might be a tame and controlled and submissive Parliament—in the course of negotiations and in the acceptance of the preliminaries of a treaty, might reveal that they were conscious of failure to secure the interests of the nation, rather than that they were moving towards an indubitable success such as could never fear the light of criticism in days to come.
But it was more especially with the establishment of a more democratically based constitution in the nineteenth century that criticisms of the parliamentary system of Britain, in relation to the conduct of foreign policy, became sharp and severe, Under a parliamentary party system, resting on the ultimate power which is vested in a wide and inconstant electorate, it has been only with the utmost care and difficulty that the principle of continuity in foreign policy has been, in general, successfully asserted in Britain; and, with continuity, has come the gain of a large measure of trustworthiness in the eyes of foreign States. The presumption in a system that rests on parties and majorities is in favour of change and towards instability. Bismarck, pre-eminently on this account, distrusted the foreign policy of Britain and the making of compacts ​with her. He spoke with contempt of newspapers having more force than was commanded by settled principles of policy, and of ruling by the mere opinions of the day. Since the Reform Bill of 1832, he said in 1859, it had been impossible for the old hereditary wisdom to discipline the uncurbed passions of party, and he could not place confidence in a country in which an article in a newspaper was of more value than a principle. 'Good Heavens!' he continued, 'if that lot should befal the Prussian monarchy—if she also should have her Reform Bill—if the power were to be taken from the sacred hands of the King only to fall into those of the lawyers and the professors and the babblers who style themselves Liberals!' The Danes do not forget the expectations, with a semblance of promises, by which they were deluded on the Schleswig-Holstein question through British newspapers and British party politicians; and Bismarck expressed the view that the Schleswig-Holstein diplomatic campaign was the success in diplomacy of which he felt most proud, so that when he was made Prince he would rather have had Schleswig-Holstein than Alsace and Lorraine put into his armorial bearings. If, again, we turn to Lord Lyons at the anxious time of excitement over the 'Trent' affair, we shall commend him for ignoring popular clamour whether in the United States of America or in Britain, and for deliberately and resolutely abstaining for six weeks from uttering any opinion of his own, and by such prudent reticence going far to save the situation. A wise diplomacy must know how to delay decisions as well as how to anticipate; there have been critical times when it showed its wisdom by knowing how to put off till to-morrow what could not be safely done to-day, and when it not the less truly interpreted the public interest by opposing a barrier ​to the demands of a clamorous public opinion—of a 'will of all' that may not have known the true 'general will'. 'If I could from this place address the English people', said Lord Derby in 1878, 'I would venture to ask them how they can expect to have a foreign policy, I do not say far-sighted, but even consistent and intelligent, if within eighteen months the great majority of them are found asking for things directly contradictory'. The measuring of public opinion is for the statesman as hard a task as its instruction. Even to public opinion, when voiced by representatives, and in its action not immediate and not impulsive, there are limits of competence, bounds imposed by discretion. We should not forget that in 1890, in the course of discussions on the proposed cession of Heligoland to Germany, Mr. Gladstone questioned both the constitutionality and the high expediency of asking the Houses of Parliament to share the treaty-making power—a power exercised by ministers who are well aware of their responsibility to Parliament and to the nation. And who shall yet say how far diplomacy in the decisive week at the end of July 1914 had to reckon with a consideration that should have been out of the reckoning altogether—the limits to party cohesion and party allegiance where the interest and the honour of the whole British Commonwealth were at stake?
The lessons of example and the force of historical evidence are not wholly cast in one mould. But the very nature of the problems should preclude, in the modern State, anything like direct participation of a vast number of minds and tongues in the initiation, the conduct, and the control of foreign policy; not least in Great Britain. A plainer foreign policy than there has usually been may be possible. But that any ​large number of men should ever be qualified, or that they should even seek, with good results, to qualify themselves, for the exercise of an initiative that shall be wise, and for a control that shall be well informed, in the conduct of foreign affairs, where the conditions are of necessity complex and the issues involved are momentous, no student of history and no honest mind will ever admit. Even were it possible, it would not be desirable. In the modern State democracy is and must be indirect, not direct: it loses impulsiveness, and it gains in knowledge, in impressiveness, and in power, through being ​representative and mediate. Democracy needs checks for its own security, just as monarchy has needed and submitted to checks against its own abuse. The power of a democracy when once it is set in motion along any line may be irresistible, but it stands in need of guarantees of stability and endurance.
In Britain, even more than in the American Commonwealth, adequate provisions exist for an ultimate and true national control over the determination of foreign policy. They are found in the nation's capacities being represented, and in their being raised, in the process of representation, to a higher level of efficiency. They are found formally and practically, to the knowledge of every citizen, in the command of the purse held by the House of Commons, and in the daily and continuous responsibility of ministers to that House—the House of the nation's chosen representatives. No foreign policy can be maintained, and none, in prudence, can even be embarked upon, that does not look to the interests of the nation—interests of commerce and material well-being, and not less for Britain the interests of honour and prestige; and any foreign policy once embarked upon must reckon with the necessity of making the general and substantial title to such support clear and convincing. That condition may prove to be a defect in the execution of policy—an opinion which has already been sufficiently implied and enforced. But acceptance of the condition is required for the ultimate sustenance of policy and for the assurance of its strength. Among political virtues prudence stands the first and the last. Much will depend—more in the near future than in the recent past—upon the prudence of party leaders and party men and ​the press, and upon the restraints which they may freely and wisely accept.
But diplomacy will still remain, It will still be a means to ends. Those who have to conduct business between nations cannot, without detriment and disaster, violate the rules and methods that are essential to the conduct of business and to success. Instruments and agents may vary with conditions. They may come to be quite unexceptionable in work and character. But the need for circumspection is not likely to become less. For the conduct of international business, in whatsoever atmosphere of mind and morals, men who understand men and affairs will still be required. A Duke of Albany as drawn by the Earl of Surrey, son of the victor of Flodden, may still have a place and successors, but his is not the place of a discreet diplomatist.
'And by many wayes I am advertised that the Duke of Albany is a mervelous wilfull man, and woll beleve noo mannys counsaill, but woll have his owne opinion folowed. And bicause the Frenche King hath be at soo greate chardges by his provoking, having his wiffs inherytance lying within his domynyons, dare not for no Scottish counsell forbere t' envade this realme. I am also advertised that he is so passionate that and he bee aperte amongis his familiers, and doth here any thing contrarius to his myende and pleasure, his accustumed manner is too take his bonet sodenly of his hed and to throwe it in the fire; and no man dare Ee it oute, but let it be brent. My Lord Dacre doth affirme that at his last being in Scotland he did borne above a dosyn bonetts after that maner. And if he be suche a man, with Gods grace we shall spede the bettir with hym.'
Is it the picture of an open diplomatist? Travesty let it be: by no accession of the merit of plainness can the conduct of ​the business of States be attuned to openness so markedly naked and so frankly unabashed. A Duke of Albany thus active and thus open may have his successors: yet, whether we are thinking of individual politicians or of masses of men. But his place is not that of Managing Director of the Board of Control for Foreign Affairs. Still, even to open diplomacy must be conceded its several types, its several grades.
Those in Britain who have lately criticized the very foundations of the British plan of conducting foreign policy, on the ground of its disregard of democratic methods and national rights, are neither genuinely democratic nor genuinely national. They do not recognize the nature of democracy in the large and extended communities of to-day, and they convey the impression that the foreign policy of Britain can be, and has been, conducted, under the prevailing forms and facts of her politics, not only with the secrecy but even with the independence which characterized the methods and the powers of the Council of Ten in the Republic of Venice. They protest on the ground of 'freedom'. They have probably false notions of freedom. They do not inquire, as we should always be asking ourselves, and should inquire of others, when that word is used, 'Freedom?—From what?' 'Freedom?—For what?' 'Freedom?—To whom?' May it be freedom to those who repudiate a State obligation at a time of national danger? If we were to carry farther our analysis of this species of democratic fervour and of the movement which it inspires and is designed to help, we should find that many of those who speak and labour under its influence cannot take a dispassionate view of the manner and the instruments of the conduct of foreign policy. Many of them there are who have been influenced by considerations of an extraneous kind—by an economic bias, for example, with the consequences it seems ​to entail in spheres not primarily or not exclusively economic, or by a diffused and bounteous humanitarianism of not less insecure foundations.
We must never forget that any movement of this character—and there are more than one in our midst, and there are likely to be more still—must proceed with some approximation to equal step and equal weight in the several leading States, if it is not to carry with it grave misfortune for that State which outruns the rest in its trust and confidence in men and humanity. Neither for means nor for ends is it specially called for in Britain. For the means it advocates it may contain elements of good for a State—a State, let us say, strongly organized and mechanically efficient—which does not yet know the parliamentary system, knows not responsibility of ministers to Parliament, knows not democracy. Nor for its declared end—a better and more stable international understanding—is any appeal, justifying such movement, specially required in Britain. The highest interest of Britain for herself and for the Empire has been known to be—was too well known to be—peace; and in future her interest will still be peace, but without a slothful overtrust. She can enter in spirit into a true League of Nations, even without requiring to be attached to it by compliance with prescribed and rigid forms; and no League of Nations, for unity and concord, can have being by mechanism chiefly and without the disposition that is requisite to give it life.
But if we in Britain do modify, as we shall and already have begun to modify, the kind of indirect national control which has prevailed with us, this we shall do wisely by imparting to it greater breadth, a larger representative character, a character truer to the facts, a stronger vitality. We shall make it representative not of the British at home only, but of the whole British ​Commonwealth, in accordance with a community of interest and a partnership in achieving. We should have the assurance that this more representative direction and control of foreign policy by a Council of the Empire would express the mind of a Commonwealth of peoples, and would be the informed check of mind upon mind. It would help to promote the collective responsibility of all civilized nations in upholding International Law and developing and safeguarding international morality. This it would do without relaxing its grip on the solid truth that there is only one effective way of resisting wrong done by force, or of warding off wrong threatened by force: there must be the means, and there must be readiness, to exert force on the side of right and justice.
* ↑ e.g. in the ‘instruction’ to d’Hautefort, ambassador to Vienna, 1750: ‘Plus elle [cette commission] est importante et délicate, plus elle exige dans le ministre qui doit la remplir, une naissance distinguée, de la dignité dans la représentation, de la sagesse accompagnée de fermeté dans les discours, enfin beaucoup d’activité et de circonspection dans la conduite.’—Recueil des Instructions données aux Ambassadeurs et Ministres de France depuis les Traités de Westphalie jusqu’à la Révolution Française: Autriche, 312.
* ↑ Prudence, ‘that stale daughter of Hugo Grotius’, hangs fetters upon the end of the goose-quill (Sir Robert Keith, Memoirs and Correspondence (1849), i. 444); but it is ‘in all things a virtue, in politics the first of virtue’ (Burke, Correspondence (1844), iii. 118).
* ↑ This has at times assumed the form of ‘a sort of dignified torpor, which seems to imply—“My slumbers are deep politics, my lead is worth other people’s gold.”‘ Keith, ii. 401, who had in mind some Austrian ministers.
* ↑ Lord Augustus Loftus, Diplomatic Reminiscences, 1837-77 (l892, 1894), i. ch. vii.
* ↑ Gagvien (Gaguin), ‘who, when he turned his back, more like a pedant than an ambassador, dispersed a bitter libel, in Latin verse, against the King; unto which the King, though he had nothing of a pedant, yet was content to cause an answer to be made in like verse; and that as speaking in his own person, but in a style of scorn and sport.’—Bacon, History of the Reign of King Henry VII, ed. by Lumby, 88.
* ↑ A designation of office, not a proper name. The Assyrian word is Rab-saq, said to mean ‘chief of the officers’. Skinner, Isaiah (1900), i. 263.
* ↑ The Syrian language was the medium of international communication in Western Asia.
* ↑ For much curious and not inept information and reasoning regarding the function of the orator, see Le Parfait Ambassadeur, traduit de l’Espagnol [of Vera: 1621] en Français par le Sieur Lancelot (1642). ‘Pour advoüer le vray, on ne peut pas estre bon Ambassadeur, sans estre bon Orateur, d’autant que tout cet office consiste en la science de persuader & dissuader, mais cela ne se peut bien pratiquer sans estre doüé d’une grande capacité d’esprit, d’Eloquence & d’elegance; aussi plusieurs tiennent que c’est de là que les Latins apellent un Ambassadeur, Orateur: car si un homme n’a qu’une mediocre capacité d’entendement, & n’est parfaittement instruit en l’Art de bien parler, comment pourra-il avoir l’adresse de bien faire une harangue, exposer & donner à entendre ses affaires, s’estendre sur un suiet quand il en sera besoin, exciter la ioye ou la tristesse aux cœurs d’une assemblee, selon les occurrences, mettre la paix & la concorde entre les Princes qui sont divises, ou recommander l’amour, la foy, & la Religion? la Rethorique & l’Art de bien dire est necessairement requis en la personne d’un Ambassadeur.’—177–8. ‘Antipater, Roy des Iuifs, n’estoit pas bien content de ce que les Atheniens luy envoyoient Demosthene pour Ambassadeur, parce qu’il le reconnoissoit si bien pourveu de prompt & subtil entendement, de beau & riche langage, qu’il luy estoit facile de persuader tout ce qu’il vouloit, & que l’on ne luy pouvoit rien refuzer qu’avec honte. Il disoit aussi qu’il craignoit d’envoyer des Ambassadeurs à Athenes, parce que Demosthenes estoit du corps de ce Senat.’—179. ‘L’Eloquence est une qualité si propre à l’Ambassadeur, que ie pense que ce fut pourquoy Dieu connoissant tant de bonnes parties en Moyse pour le faire son Ambassadeur vers Pharaon, & le voulant employer à son utilité, supplea au defaut de sa langue, en luy donnant pour Collegue, Aaron, qui estoit fort eloquent.’—183. See also Appendix below, pp. 216 sqq.
* ↑ The character was continued in the standing general duties of ambassadors, such as all during their residence were required to discharge. These are usually stated at the conclusion of the ‘Instructions’ to the French Ambassadors of the eighteenth century and earlier: see Recueil des Instructions, e.g. t. i.: Autriche, 77, 103, 113, 123, 148, 336. Definite information was sought regarding ‘l’état des cours et des pays dans lesquels ils auront été employés, la qualité et quantité des troupes qui y sont entretenues, le bon ou mauvais état de leurs finances, sur l’étendue et qualité de leur commerce, sur le génie et les inclinations des princes et de leurs ministres, tant ceux qui dans toutes les cours ont la part principale à l’administration des affaires génerales, mais aussi de tous ceux qui, sous quelque denomination que ce soit, ont quelque influence dans les déliberations et résolutions relatives aux intérêts publics, enfin sur tous les objets, soit de simple curiosité, soit d’intérêt réel pour le service du Roi’ (anno 1756)—op. cit. 336. Cf. t. viii: Russie, i. 81, 98 (‘enfin il [M. Baluze, in 1702] doit rendre un compte exact de tout ce qui pourra mériter la curiosité de Sa Majesté dans un pays éloigné d’elle et où jusqu’à présent elle a eu peu de relations’), 134, 467.
* ↑ Grotius, whose great work was published in 1625, thinking, as his illustrations show, of the abuse of having resident ambassadors, and ignoring the convenience, was on the side of ancient custom in holding that they may be rejected: ‘Optimo autem iure reiici possunt, quae nunc in usu sunt, legationes assiduae, quibus cum non sit opus, docet mos antiquus, cui illae ignoratae.’—De Iure Belli ac Pacis, ii. 18, 3. Vattel, whose work was published about the middle of the following century (1758), agrees with Grotius on the ground of right, but is against him on the ground of comity and convenience. There is no obligation, he admits, on the part of a sovereign to accept permanent ministers—such as have nothing to negotiate; but the custom of keeping resident ministers had become so strongly fixed that to refuse to conform to it would give offence, unless the reasons were very good for refusing. Le Droit des gens, iv. 5, §66.
* ↑ On the institution of legations, see the authorities cited by Oppenheim, International Law (1905), i. 416, and for the first and early Relations des ambassadeurs venitiens (from 1268), and the connection—‘par une filiation directe’—with Byzantine diplomacy, see Recueil des Instructions . . . de France: Russie (Rambaud), i. 2–3, and authorities cited; also Villari, Machiavelli and his Times, translated by Linda Villari (1883), iii. 235.
* ↑ Grotius, ii. 16, 1.
* ↑ Machiavelli, Il Principe, xiv.
* ↑ Instructions, passim, to ambassadors for more than a century thereafter, and even down to the French Revolution, are ample evidence of its importance. Wheaton chose the Peace as ‘the epoch from which to deduce the history of the modern science of international law’. It ‘continued to form the basis of the conventional law of Europe’ until the French Revolution. It closed the age of Grotius, and coincided with the foundation of ‘the new school of public jurists, his disciples and successors in Holland and Germany. The peace completed the code of the public law of the empire, which thus became a science diligently cultivated in the German universities, and which contributed to advance the general science of European public law. It also marks the epoch of the firm establishment of permanent legations, by which the pacific relations of the European states have been since maintained; and which, together with the appropriation of the widely diffused language of France, first to diplomatic intercourse, and subsequently to the discussions of international law, contributed to give a more practical character to the new science.’ History of the Law of Nations (1845), 69, 71–2.
* ↑ Report (1861), 442.
* ↑ Loftus. Diplomatic Reminiscences, ii. ch. i.
* ↑ Machiavelli would have commended Montesquieu for his standard: ‘Je n’ai point tiré mes principes de mes préjugés, mais de la nature des choses.’—(De l’Esprit des Lois: Preface.)
* ↑ Discorsi, ii. 29; Il Principe, 25.
* ↑ Discorsi, i. 58.
* ↑ For Machiavelli’s correspondence with Vettori, see Villari, Machiavelli, iii. 191–216. ‘In the correspondence of Guicciardini and his other contemporaries, we only descry the writer’s real mind as though through the folds of a thick veil; for all these men merely described and analysed that which they did, never that which they felt. Machiavelli showed a fuller self-consciousness, a livelier need of opening his soul; therefore—rarely as he spoke of himself—his letters afford us the first really clear manifestation of the modern spirit.’ 192. ‘Machiavelli’s real life was all in his intellect; there lay the true source of his greatness. His predominating mental gift and that in which he outstripped his contemporaries, was a singular power of piercing to the innermost kernel of historical and social facts.’ Ibid. iv. 434.
* ↑ It should not be necessary to say that Bacon’s worldly wisdom for example, in the Essays (in part, even as Montaigne, ‘ie suis moy mesme la matière de mon livre’), in the second book of The Advancement of Learning, and in his Commentarius Solutus—is saturated with the influence of Machiavelli. ‘Concerning government, it is a part of knowledge secret and retired in both these respects in which things are deemed secret; for some things are secret because they are hard to know, and some because they are not fit to utter.’—Adv. of L., II. xxiii. 47. ‘And experience showeth, there are few men so true to themselves and so settled, but that, sometimes upon heat, sometimes upon bravery, sometimes upon kindness, sometimes upon trouble of mind and weakness, they open themselves; specially if they be put to it with a counter-dissimulation, according to the proverb of Spain, “Di mentira, y sacaras verdad: Tell a lie and find a truth”.’—ii. xxiii. 18.
* ↑ Written between 1588 and 1592. In the Prologue Machiavelli speaks: ‘I count religion but a childish toy And hold there is no sin but ignorance.’ Shakespeare, in Henry the Sixth, twice, by anachronism, makes use of the conception of Machiavelli current in his age: in Part i, Act v, sc. 4, York: ‘Alençon, that notorious Machiavel’; in Part III, Act iii, sc. 2, Gloucester (soliloquising): ‘Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile, And cry, “Content“, to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. . . . I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor, . . . I can add colours to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, And set the murd’rous Machiavel to school.’ ‘Noe times have bene without badd men’, wrote Spenser, in A View of the Present State of Ireland (Globe ed. (1890), 675); and its author, as became a representative Elizabethan, was not without knowledge and appreciation of the ‘rugged brow of carefull Policy’ of a Christopher Hatton, a Francis Walsingham, the Lord Burleigh, and others. In places unexpected and expected one comes upon evidence of the use made of Machiavelli’s name within the century following the publication of The Prince. In a record of the Star Chamber for 1595 a scoundrel and turncoat is described as ‘a most palpable Machiavellian’ (cited by Cheyney, A History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth, (1914), i. 141).
* ↑ Barabas, Act I. sc. 2.
* ↑ Aphorismes Civill and Militarie . . . out of the first Quarterne of Fr. Guicciardine (R. Dallington), 2nd ed., 1629, 316–17. See also Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini, translated from the Italian by Ninian Hill Thomson, 1890, e.g. Nos. 6, 30 (Fortuna: ‘Whoso well considers it will scarce deny that in human affairs Fortune rules supreme. . . . And though discernment and vigilance may temper many things, they cannot do so unhelped, but stand always in need of favourable Fortune’); 41, 48 (‘States cannot be established or maintained by conforming to the moral law’); 76 (cf. 336), 78, 109 (freedom, security and ‘self-government’); 140 (‘the people’ ‘a beast, mad, mistaken, perplexed, without taste, discernment, or stability’: cf. 345); and 147 (‘He mistakes who thinks the success of an enterprise to depend on whether it be just or not. For every day we have proof to the contrary, and that it is not the justice of a cause, but prudence, strength, and good fortune that give the victory. It is doubtless true that in him who has right on his side there is often bred a firm confidence, founded on the belief that God will favour the righteous cause, which makes him bold and stubborn, and that from this boldness and stubbornness victories do sometimes follow. In this way it may now and then indirectly help you that your cause is just. But it is a mistake to suppose that directly any such effect is produced.’ Cf. 92: ‘Never say God has prospered this man because he is good, or that another has been unprosperous because he is wicked. For we often see the contrary happen. Yet are we not therefore to pronounce that the justice of God falls short, since His counsels are so deep as rightly to be spoken of as unfathomable.’) For an estimate of Guicciardini, and a comparison of him with Machiavelli, see Villari’s Machiavelli and his time, iii. 236-63. Regarding Guicciardini’s Ricordi politici e civili Villari says, ‘It would be hard anywhere in modern literature to find another series of maxims and sentences revealing, as this does, the whole political and moral structure, not of one individual only, but of an entire century’, 257.
* ↑ 'L'équilibre de pouvoir en Europe est le mot de ralliement qui réunit dans un même concert de mesures, quoique par des motifs fort différents, les cours de Vienne et de Londres, les États généraux des Provinces-Unies et la plupart des princes d’Allemagne. Quoique cet équilibre soit, à dire vrai, une chose de pure opinion que chacun interprète suivant ses vues et ses intéréts particuliers, il a cependant toujours servi de prétexte et de mobile aux ligues qui, depuis près de quatre-vingts ans, se sont formées et renouvelées contre la France. L'Angleterre et la Hollande, qui se croient spécialement intéressées au maintien de cet équilibre de pouvoir, regardent la cour de Vienne comme la seule puissance qui, aidée de leurs secours, soit en état de contre-balancer les forces de la maison de Bourbon.'—Recueil des Instructions …: Autriche, 310–11 (September 14, 1750). Cf. 330; and the Instructions from 1757 on the effects of 'the change of system'—'the diplomatic revolution'—of 1756. 'En s'unissant étroitement à la cour de Vienne, on peut dire que le Roi a changé le systéme politique de l'Europe', 356.
* ↑ Letters on History, No. 8.
* ↑ 'The system of preserving some equilibrium of power,—of preserving any state from becoming too great for her neighbours, is a system purely defensive, and directed towards the object of universal preservation. It is a system which provides for the security of all states by balancing the force and opposing the interests of great ones. The independence of nations is the end, the balance of power is only the means. To destroy independent nations, in order to strengthen the balance of power, is a most extravagant sacrifice of the end to the means. … In truth, the Balancing system is itself only a secondary guard of national independence. The paramount principle … is national spirit. … The Congress of Vienna seems, indeed, to have adopted every part of the French system, except that they have transferred the dictatorship of Europe from an individual to a triumvirate.'—Sir James Mackintosh, Speech on the Annexation of Genoa to the Kingdom of Sardinia, April 27, 1815, Miscellaneous Works (1851), 708–9.
* ↑ Bernard, Four Lectures on Diplomacy (1868), 96.
* ↑ Loftus, Diplomatic Reminiscences, I. ch. xxi.
* ↑ The obstacles imposed by distance upon the rapid transmission of reports and communication of instructions must never be omitted in an estimate of diplomacy before the nineteenth century, and of its 'manœuvres machiavéliques' (Note du Comte de Ségur pour le Prince de Nassau, Pétersbourg, January 31, 1789: Instructions: Russie, ii. 453). 'L'éloignement de Pétersbourg à Versailles étant trop grand pour qu'on puisse toujours recevoir des instructions précises au moment où il seroit convenable dans certaines circonstances, il faut en profiter avec sagesse,' Instructions: Russie, ii. 335 (November 21, 1777). Cf. i. 485: 'Si des incidents imprévus et qu'il faut ensevelir dans le silence, si une conduite quelquefois peu régulière de la part de nos ministres que l'éloignement ne nous permettoit pas de guider, ont paru apporter quelque refroidissement entre les deux cours …' (December 1747). Cf. i. 320, ii. 184. The third Lord Malmesbury, editor of the Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, the first Earl, has said (iv. 417): 'The difference of character between old and modern diplomacy fostered his disposition to assume responsibility, and seek the most laborious and hopeless missions; for when the European Capitals were, in point of communication with England, at treble the distance at which they now [1844] stand, the resident Minister had necessarily far greater latitude and scope for action, and was constantly obliged and expected to trust to his own judgment, when instructions were beyond his reach.' Harris, writing in July 1779 from Petersburg to Morton Eden at Copenhagen, said: '… You will see the difficult and delicate task I have to perform, particularly (speaking still most confidentially) as I am without a single instruction from home', i. (2nd ed., 1845) 209. Cf. dispatch from Harris at Petersburg to Viscount Weymouth, Secretary of State (northern department), September 9–20, 1779: 'If on reading the following lines it should appear that I have not entirely met the ideas of His Majesty and of his confidential servants; that I have given too great a latitude to my full powers, and not entirely fulfilled the principal object of my mission; I must entreat your Lordship to believe that I should not have ventured to have taken, on so important a subject, so much on myself, if it had not seemed to me that the exigencies of the times required unusual efforts,' i. (2nd ed.) 211.
* ↑ The Earl of Malmesbury, in his Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, writing, February 23, 1852, of Sir Stratford Canning—later, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe—with reference to Lord Derby sounding him in 1851 about taking the Foreign Office, said: 'His talents are beyond dispute, but his temper is so despotic and irritable, that he can only display them in a peculiar kind of diplomacy. He managed the Turks in their own way, and it was Sultan versus Sultan.' He was Ambassador at Constantinople from 1825 to 1828 and again from 1841 to 1858, including one period of absence of two years, and one of seven months.
* ↑ 'This age of rapid communication, of what I would call the telegraphic demoralisation of those who formerly had to act for themselves and are now content to be at the end of the wire.'—Sir Horace Rumbold (sometime H.M. Ambassador at Vienna), Recollections of a Diplomatist, 2 vols. (1902), i, 111–112. See also ii. 242.
* ↑ See Appendix, pp. 251–3. See also First Report from the Select Committee on Diplomatic and Consular Services: Commons Papers, 1871, vii. 197, p. xiv.
* ↑ Acton, Introduction to Burd, Il Principe, xxvii. 'By plausible and blameless paths men are drawn to the doctrine of the justice of History, of judgment by results, the nursling of the nineteenth century, from which a sharp incline leads to The Prince,' xxvi–xxvii.
* ↑ Cf. the following from a letter describing a stage in the tortuous negotiations that led to the Treaty of Troyes: 'Cirtes alle the ambassadors, that we dele wyth, ben yncongrue, that is to say, yn olde maner of speche in England, "they ben double and fals:" whyth whiche maner of men I prey God lete neuer no trew mon be coupled with',—Ellis, Original Letters (2nd series, 1827), i. 77.
* ↑ Memoirs of Prince Metternich, translated by Mrs. Alexander Napier, i. 36–8.
* ↑ De Iure Belli ac Pacis, iii. c. 1.
* ↑ Spinoza, in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, published in 1670—forty-- five years after the De Iure Belli ac Pacis—reasons from experience to the conditional nature of the sanctity of international compacts. Such contracts are valid as long as their basis of danger or of advantage holds, inasmuch as no one enters into an engagement, or is bound to stand by his compacts, unless there be a hope of some good to result, or the fear of some evil: remove this basis, and the compact becomes void; and this has been abundantly shown by experience ('… quippe nemo contrahit, nec pactis stare tenetur, nisi spe alicuius boni, vel sollicitudine alicuius mali: quod fundamentum si tollatur pactum ex sese tollitur; quod etiam experientia satis superque docet'). For, although different States agree among themselves not to do injury to each other, they take all possible precautions to prevent such agreements from being broken by the stronger party, and they do not rely upon the words of the compact ('nec fidem dictis habent'), unless it is clearly to the interest of both parties to observe it ('nisi utriusque ad contrahendum finem et utilitatem satis perspectam habuerint'). Otherwise they would fear a breach of faith; nor would there be wrong done. For what man of sense, who takes account of the right of sovereign powers, would put his trust in the promises of him who has both the will and the power to do what he likes, and who recognizes no higher law than the safety and interest of his dominion? ('cui sui imperii salus et utilitas summa lex debet esse')—c. xvi.
* ↑ Bk. iii, ch. x.
* ↑ Le comte du Luc to M. du Bourg: Recueil des Instructions: Autriche, 192–3. Du Luc in his Mémoire concernant l'Ambassade de Vienne writes incisively of ministers near the Emperor: 'Le prince de Trautson … me paroît un bonhomme, mais d'un génie assez borné. Sa femme le gouverne.' Le comte de Starhemberg: 'Je le tiens le plus capable de tous les ministres de cette cour; mais il veut s'enrichir, quoiqu'il ait déjà des biens immenses. C'est là son but principal.' 'Le comte de Zinzendorf est chancelier d’Autriche. … Il est bonhomme; il voudroit faire plaisir, mais il ne finit rien. J'ai lieu de croire qu'il n'est pas parfaitement instruit. Il suit l'ancien esprit de sa cour. Son tempérament le porte à éluder toute conclusion pour s'épargner de la fatigue et jouir uniquement de la vie qu'il aime et dont il fait usage. Sa table est sans contredit la meilleure et la plus délicate de Vienne.'—Ibid., 164, foot-note.
* ↑ Robert Walpole to Secretary Stanhope, January 1/12, 1717, on the occasion of Townshend's removal from office. Coxe, Memoirs of … Walpole (1798), ii. 163.
* ↑ Quoted by Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Cabinet ed., i. 369–70, foot-note.
* ↑ Ashley, Life of Palmerston, i. 63.
* ↑ Ibid., i. 314. In a speech of self-defence, he asked: 'Is Her Majesty's Minister to sit like a dolt, when a Foreign Ambassador converses on some great event, without giving him any answer or making any observation?'—Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, under date February 3, 1852.
* ↑ Ashley, ii. 301.
* ↑ 'En politique, dans les temps d'orage, la bonne foi courageuse est la véritable habileté; le caractére touche le but que l'esprit manque; la franchise sauve des écueils où la finesse échoue, et la sincérité ferme peut seule donner, ou la solidité dans les succès, ou la gloire dans le malheur.'—Politique de tous les Cabinets (3rd ed., 1802), i. 87, Ségur's note. Ségur's contributions to this work are rich in lessons for the understanding of motives and ends in policy. 'Un Politique, à Paris, ne doit se faire ni Espagnol, ni Anglais, ni Autrichien, ni Prussien, ni Russe, ni Turc; il doit étre Français, et calculer les intérêts de son pays et les Alliances qui lui conviennent, selon les temps, la force respective des Puissances étrangères, et, surtout, selon le génie de ceux qui les conduisent.'—Ibid. i. 19 (cf. iii. 368). 'Il est parfaitement inutile de chercher quelles peuvent être les causes de la haine qui divise les peuples. A la honte de l'humanité, toutes les nations du globe se haïssent entr'elles, d'autant plus qu'elles sont plus voisines l'une de l'autre. Les Suédois détestent les Danois et les Russes; ceux-ci haïssent les Turcs et les Allemands; les Allemands, les Français, les Anglais se jalousent et se blâment réciproquement; on l'éprouve dans toutes les coalitions: aussi ce sont des mariages que suit promptement le divorce. Un intérêt momentané les unit, une jalousie constante les sépare. Le patriotisme même, si nécessaire, n'est qu'un égoïsme politique, d'autant plus indestructible, que l'intérêt de chaque nation l'érige en vertu.'—ii. 281. 'On dédaigne la politique; on la croit inutile; on la critique sans examen; on la confonde avec l'intrigue; on oublie que tous les états de l'Europe sont encore loin d'embrasser nos principes; on oublie que, tant que les princes auront des passions, la politique existera, comme la médecine et la jurisprudence existeront, tant qu'il y aura des maladies et des crimes. Il existe donc une politique nécessaire. Je conviens que celle d'une nation libre et éclairée ne doit point ressembler à la politique insidieuse, intrigante, corruptrice des princes conquérans et des peuples esclaves. La politique des Français doit se borner à conserver la paix tant qu'ils le pourront avec sûreté, et à pacifier leurs voisins, pour ne pas être entraînés dans leurs querelles. Cette noble et simple politique, digne de notre constitution, rendra les fonctions de nos ambassadeurs plus augustes, plus sacrées; mais elles seront encore difficiles; elles exigeront encore beaucoup de prudence, d'habileté, d'adresse.'—ii. 332. '… un code trés-imparfait, nommé droit des gens, code perpétuellement éludé par l'adresse ou violé par la force, et qui n'est au fond qu’une collection de traités souvent contradictoires que les vainqueurs dictent aux vaincus, qui sont respectés tant que dure la lassitude de la guerre, et que rompt l'ambition, dès que les circonstances offrent une chance favorable à son avidité.'—iii. 373. 'Les affaires sont conduites par les hommes; les hommes sont plus souvent égarés par les passions qu'éclairés par la justice. La politique ne peut être fixe, puisque sa direction varie suivant les caractères des hommes placés par le sort à la tête des gouvernements. Il faut donc établir le systéme fédératif sur des bases morales, et non sur des bases géographiques.' iii. 377–8.
* ↑ Editor of the Diaries and Correspondence of the first Earl. In his own Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, under date March 11, 1852, he alludes to the staff of the Foreign Office being surprised at his knowing the routine work when he was appointed Foreign Secretary. This equipment he attributes to his preparation of his grandfather's Diaries and Correspondence for publication. During two years he had gone through more than two thousand dispatches to ministers at home, and to brother-diplomatists abroad, just as if he had been an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office for the forty years—1768–1809—which they covered, 'arranging and collating them, and investigating their contemporary history'.
* ↑ Letter, April 11, 1813, to Lord Camden, who had sought advice in the interest of his nephew 'destined for the foreign line', Diaries and Correspondence, iv. 414. This letter is given in full in the Appendix below, pp. 234–6.
* ↑ The Emperor Charles V, according to the picture of him drawn by Sir Richard Moryson, October 7, 1552, had little need to adopt this device: 'And yet hath he a face, that is as unwont to disclose any hid affection of his heart, as any face that ever I met withal in my life; for there all white colours which, in changing themselves, are wont in others to bring a man certain word, how his errand is liked or misliked, have no place in his countenance; his eyes only do bewray as much as can be picked out of him. He maketh me oft think of Solomon's saying: Heaven is high, the earth is deep, a king's heart is unsearchable; there is in him almost nothing that speaketh, besides his tongue.'—Sir Richard Moryson to the Lords of Council, Hardwicke, Miscellaneous State Papers (1778), i. 51. William I, King of Prussia, who became German Emperor, did not satisfy this canon of kingcraft. 'The King told me an untruth to-day', said Bismarck on November 29, 1870: 'I asked him if the bombardment' of Paris 'was not to commence, and he replied that he had ordered it. But I knew immediately that that was not true. I know him. He cannot lie, or at least not in such a way that it cannot be detected. He at once changes colour, and it was particularly noticeable when he replied to my question to-day. When I looked at him straight into his eyes he could not stand it.'—Busch, Bismarck (1898), i. 337.
* ↑ Kolle, Betrachtungen über Diplomatie, 278, quoted by Bernard, 149.
* ↑ For a short statement of the use of the word by Halifax see his Preface to The Character of a Trimmer: '… there is a third Opinion of those, who conceive it would do as well, if the Boat went even, without endangering the Passengers.'
* ↑ Ibid. (ed. 1699), 95.
* ↑ Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, under date March 11, 1852. An 'officious' conversation is 'the free interchange of opinions between the two Ministers, and compromises neither'; an 'official' correspondence would do so, and would bind their Governments. Lord Malmesbury tells us that when he was at the Foreign Office he always prefaced a conversation by saying on which footing it was to be understood. Memoirs, under date February 13, 1852, foot-note.
* ↑ Tocqueville had written two or three years before: 'The American starts from Boston to go to purchase tea in China: he arrives at Canton, stays there a few days, and then returns. In less than two years he has sailed as far as the entire circumference of the globe, and he has seen land but once. It is true that during a voyage of eight or ten months he has drunk brackish water, and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest.with the sea, with disease, and with a tedious existence; but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of his tea for a halfpenny less than the English merchant, and his purpose is accomplished.'—De la Démocratie en Amérique, translated by Reeve, with Preface and Notes by Spence, 1838 (New York), 404. Tocqueville concluded the chapter with a forecast of the maritime supremacy of the Anglo-Americans. 'When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the globe.'—Ibid., 408.
* ↑ Bismarck would, however, advise for a general rule: 'Be polite but without irony. Write diplomatically. Even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.'—Busch, Bismarck, i. 246. 'Be civil to the very last step of the gallows, but hang all the same.'—Ibid., i. 321. Such expressions of opinion are, at least, of interest as coming from the 'editor' of the Ems telegram and the appraiser of his own handiwork at that crisis—probably beyond its due weight.
* ↑ Histoire de mon Temps, ch. xiv, towards the end; see also Tuttle, History of Prussia under Frederick the Great, 2 vols. (1888), ii. 50, for the slight variation between the version as given by Frederick and the letter as preserved in the French archives.
* ↑ Loftus, Diplomatic Reminiscences, i. ch, xvi.
* ↑ Morley, Oliver Cromwell (1900), 469. See, however, for qualification, p. 434 in the chapter on Foreign Policy: 'Like every other great ruler in critical times and in a situation without a precedent, he was compelled to change alliances, weave fresh combinations, abandon to-day the ardent conception of yesterday.' Lord Morley in his Recollections (1917) has made additional reservations in deference to the tyranny of circumstance.
* ↑ e.g. Frederic Harrison, Oliver Cromwell (1895), 221: 'The history of England offers no such picture to national pride as when the kings and rulers of Europe courted, belauded, fawned on the farmer of Huntingdon.' For a judicious estimate see Firth, Oliver Cromwell (1905)—the chapter on 'Cromwell's Foreign Policy', and 'The Epilogue'. 'Looked at from one point of view, he seemed as practical as a commercial traveller; from another, a Puritan Don Quixote,' 389. 'Political inconsistency is generally attributed to dishonesty, and Cromwell's dishonesty was open and palpable.'
* ↑ Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, ii. (1897), 477.
* ↑ Baas spoke in French.
* ↑ Gardiner, op. cit., 437–8.
* ↑ See, e.g. vii. (ed. 1736), 20–1, 24–6, 37.
* ↑ Contemporary English writers, it has been said, were not adequately equipped for an appreciation of Henry VII, even in his home policy: they could not 'penetrate the veil of subtle statesmanship by which a politic and peaceful, but watchful and suspicious king, was putting an end to the long reign of violence. It required the brain of an Italian'—a Polydore Vergil.—Gairdner, Early Chroniclers, 306. For diplomacy during the reign, see Calendar of State Papers: Venice, i, and Spain, i. Useful extracts from original authorities are given in Pollard, The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources (1913, 1914), i. and iii. 'No English statesman', it is claimed for Henry in his foreign policy, 'achieved so much at so small a cost'.—Ibid., i. li. See also Wilhelm Busch, England under the Tudors, i. (transl. 1895), chh. i and iv.
* ↑ Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (1902), ii. 92–3. See also the letter of Cromwell to Wyatt, March 1, 1538, ibid. 122–5.
* ↑ Ibid., ii. 87.
* ↑ See a letter to Thomas Cromwell from Stephen Vaughan—an agent of Cromwell at Antwerp, in London at the time of writing: an abject appeal for forgiveness for 'one onely fawte, the first and laste that ever I comytted against youe … not the unassurest or untrustiest of your frends. Yowe have sore abasshed and astonyed me.'—Ellis, Original Letters, third series, ii, 215–16.
* ↑ 'Publié sous les auspices de la Commission des Archives diplomatiques au Ministère des Affaires Étrangères', 1884 and subsequent years.
* ↑ Essays by the late Marquess of Salisbury: Foreign Politics (1905), 210. The essay entitled 'Foreign Policy' appeared first in 1864.
* ↑ In this and the two preceding paragraphs I have made use of part of a pamphlet entitled International Relations, which I wrote in February 1916 for The Historical Association of Scotland, and which was reprinted for The Historical Association (of England).
* ↑ Busch, i. 559–60, under February 22, 1871. Bismarck, speaking of his Frankfort experiences, said of Count Rechberg—Austrian Minister and President of the Diet at Frankfort—that he was at least honourable from a personal standpoint, although, as an Austrian diplomat of that time, he was not able to pay too strict a regard to truth. Rechberg once received a dispatch in which he was instructed to maintain cordial relations with Prussia, and a second dispatch, sent to him at the same time, in which an exactly opposite course was enjoined. Bismarck, calling on him, was inadvertently handed the second dispatch to read; begging Rechberg's pardon for having been given the wrong one, he consoled him with an assurance that he would take no advantage of the mistake, but would use it merely for his personal information. Ibid. i. 373.
* ↑ 'Called to power, not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially: by the free choice of the nation; confirmed every fifth year by the stern moral judgement of the worthiest men; holding office for life, and so not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying opinion of the people; having its ranks closed and united even after the equalization of its orders; embracing in it all the political intelligence and practical statesmanship that the people possessed; absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the control of foreign policy; having complete power over the executive by virtue of its brief duration and of the tribunitian veto which was at the service of the Senate after the termination of the quarrels between the orders—the Roman Senate was the noblest organ of the nation, and in consistency and political sagacity, in unanimity and patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost political corporation of all times … which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican self-devotion.'—History of Rome.
* ↑ See Appendix, pp. 259–60.
* ↑ See Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, Part ii, ch. ii on the character of the Prussian State, and Part i, ch. v for judicious observations on the relation of the internal economy of a State to its foreign policy.
* ↑ For an excellent list of authorities on this revolutionary year, see Recueil des Instructions …: Russie, ii. 195, foot-note.
* ↑ 'Des mouvements convulsifs, une politique changeante rendent ses forces presque toujours inutiles à ses alliés. Il faut, par conséquent, se borner à étudier les facilités que le pays a toujours fournies pour le maintenir dans un état d'inquiétude, de crise et de faction. Cette cour a elle-même pour principe d'entretenir les divisions entre ses différents conseils et ses ministres, précaution à la vérité nécessaire dans un pays despotique.'–Instructions secrètes pour le sieur Rossignol, Consul de France à Pétersbourg, 20 juin 1765, ibid. ii. 249. Cf.: 'La cour de Russie est remplie d'intrigues, de brigues, de cabales. Le baron de Breteuil, sans entrer dans aucune, s'étudiera à les démêler et à connoître ceux qui ont le plus crédit près de la souveraine ou dans la nation.'–Instruction secrète et particulière pour le baron de Breteuil … à Pétersbourg, 1 avril 1760, ibid. ii. 152. See Rulhière (Secretary to the Embassy under Breteuil), Histoire et anecdotes sur la révolution de Russie en 1762. On February 8, 1757, Mitchell, at Brunswick, had written to Holdernesse, Secretary of State for the Northern Department: '… I must … put your Lordship in Mind how fickle the Court of Russia has been, and how changeable their resolutions are. Your Lordship will remember that within these few months, Sir Charles Williams [British representative at Petersburg] has been upon the Point of succeeding in His Negotiations, which was defeated by a remittance of Money from Vienna, and that the late fiery Declarations of the Czarina are the Effect of Passion, and Resentment, and grounded upon false Facts and suggestions made by Count Bruhl and His Associates, to mislead that weak and corrupted Court, which is not even now in a condition to fulfill what it has promised, without being supplied with larger Sums of Money than the Court of Vienna can afford; nor can I persuade myself that France will pay for the march and subsistance of a Russian Army to serve Purposes purely Austrian.'–P.R.O., Prussia, 68. On October 15 of the same year Mitchell wrote to Holdernesse: '… If the Empress of Russia should die, I hope not a moment will be lost to improve an event that may still save the whole. How melancholy it is to think, that the Fate of Europe should depend upon such accidents.'–P.R.O., Prussia, 70.
* ↑ 'L'amour de la gloire et le désir de réparer aux yeux de l'univers le vice de son élévation ont fait de Catherine II une princesse dont le règne fera époque dans l'histoire du monde.'–Instruction, May 6, 1780, to the Marquis de Vérac, Minister Plenipotentiary to the Empress: Instructions …: Russie, ii. 353.
* ↑ Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury, i, (2nd ed.), 281–2. The dispatch, July 21/August 1, 1780, dealt with conversations with Potemkin during a visit of five days to his country house in Finland. Of Potemkin Harris wrote: 'His way of life is as singular as his character; his hours for eating.and sleeping are uncertain, and we were frequently airing in the rain in an open carriage at midnight.'
* ↑ Ibid. 266, May 15/26, 1780.
* ↑ Instructions …: Russie, ii. 367, May 6, 1780.
* ↑ Heeren (A. H. L.), who was Knight of the Guelphic Order, Councillor, and Professor of History in the University of Göttingen, born 1760, died 1842. See especially his 'Historical Development of the Rise and Growth of the Continental Interests of Great Britain'.—Historical Treatises, translated (1836) from the German (1821), 351–2; cf. 314–15.
* ↑ Historical Teatises, 352.
* ↑ In 1748.
* ↑ Heeren, op. cit., 316–17.
* ↑ '… the heroic constancy of spirit and unexampled activity of mind of that truly great King.'—Pitt to Andrew Mitchell, September 9, 1760, Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1838), ii. 58. Cf. his letter to Mitchell, March 31, 1757: 'The most grateful sentiments of veneration and zeal for a Prince, who stands the unshaken bulwark of Europe, against the most powerful and malignant confederacy that ever yet has threatened the independence of mankind.'—Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd series, iv. 404.
* ↑ Contained in Œuvres posthumes de Frédéric II, Roi de Prusse, 12 tomes, Berlin (1788), published when Heeren was twenty-eight years of age.
* ↑ Historical Treatises, 420–2.
* ↑ See Miss H. C. Foxcroft, Life and Letters of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1898), ii. 137, for William's plea of urgency of supplies and for unity, in the King's Speech, October 1690, and Halifax's inquiry, in his Notes for a Speech, 'Of what use are Parliaments if, when there is war, everything that is asked is to be given?'
* ↑ 'Connoissant le peu de solidité des mesures qu'il prendroit avec un gouvernement sujet à des changements si fréquents.'—Instruction, 17 mars 1715, à M. Mandat, allant à Vienne: Instructions …: Autriche, pp. 186–7.
* ↑ See Ward (A. W.), Great Britain and Hanover: some Aspects of the Personal Union (1899).
* ↑ For a concise statement see the Lords' Protests, February 17, 1725; cf. Protest of April 17, 1730.
* ↑ No. 25. Cf. Nos. 37 and 54.
* ↑ Cf. Milton: 'I know not, therefore, what should be peculiar in England, to make successive parliaments thought safest, or convenient here more than in other nations, unless it be the fickleness which is attributed to us as we are islanders.'—The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: English Prose Writings of John Milton, ed. by Henry Morley (1889), 434.
* ↑ Hardwicke, State Papers (1778), ii. 556, January 4, 1717.
* ↑ The removal of Townshend from the Secretaryship of State for the Northern Department. Walpole also retired from office. Both were opposed to the Hanoverian junta.
* ↑ The standard for co-operation and solidarity among ministers is very prudently conceived by Stanhope and in a way that furnishes an instructive comment on the means—some of them drastic—soon to be employed by Walpole for establishing his ascendancy as First Minister. 'And I agree with you, likewise, that in public affairs, when a measure is taken that a man does not approve of in his judgment, if it be only a matter of policy and not against the direct interest of one's country, I think one should support the measure when once it is resolved, as if it was their own, and as if they had advised it …: in taking public measures, I think the wisest and most moderate men's opinions should be asked and followed. For if rash councils are followed, you will not find hands to support them. By attempting things, even right things, which you are not able to carry, you expose yourself, in our popular government, to the having the administration wrested out of your hands, and put into other hands; may be, into the hands of the enemies of our constitution. … But if heat and impatience will make you go out of the entrenchments, and attack a formidable enemy with feeble forces, and troops that follow you unwillingly, you will run a risk to be beat, and you wont get people to go along with you to purpose, by reproaching them that they are of this cabal, or of the other cabal, or by reproaching them that they are afraid.'—Letter, October 5, 1717, to Craggs. Hardwicke, op. cit., ii. 559–60.
* ↑ In the Newcastle Papers, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., see especially the letters of Richmond (with George II on the Continent) to Newcastle, June 3/14, 1743, and of Newcastle to Carteret (on the Continent), June 24, 1743, and July 5, 1743.
* ↑ 'The King of Prussia, who never loses time.'—Andrew Mitchell (from Leipzig), October 30, 1757, to Holdernesse. P.R.O., Prussia, 70.
* ↑ Sorel, La Question d'Orient au XVIII$^e$ siècle (1880), pp. 83, 84, 85 of the English translation.
* ↑ March 26, 1734.
* ↑ January 28, 1740/1.
* ↑ December 8, 1740.
* ↑ Coxe, Memoirs of the Administration of the Right Honourable Henry Pelbam (1829), ii. 87.
* ↑ Coxe, loc. cit.
* ↑ We are not here engaged upon a comparative study of political delinquency. Cf. the words of Napoleon III when he was expressing to Malmesbury his desire to be inseparable from England: 'The great difficulty is your form of Government, which changes the Queen's Ministers so often and so suddenly. It is such a risk to adopt a line of policy with you, as one may be left in the lurch by a new Administration.'—Memoirs, under date March 20, 1853.
* ↑ Busch, Bismarck, ii. 337.
* ↑ See Newton, Lord Lyons, 2 vols. (1913).
* ↑ Speech in the House of Lords, April 8, 1878.
* ↑ See Appendix, pp. 2100–3.
* ↑ General Smuts on May 15, 1917—about a month before he became a member of the War Cabinet (see p. 283)—spoke of the need for 'a common policy in common matters for the Empire. …' Further, 'they could not settle a common foreign policy for the whole of the British Empire without changing that policy very much from what it had been in the past, because the policy would have to be, for one thing, far simpler. In the other parts of the Empire they did not understand diplomatic finesse. If our foreign policy was going to rest not only on the basis of our Cabinet here, but, finally, on the whole of the British Empire, it would have to be a simpler policy, a more intelligible policy, and a policy which would in the end lead to less friction and greater security. No one would dispute the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. They would always look upon the British Government as the senior partner in the concern. But the Imperial policy would always be subject to the principles laid down from time to time at the meetings of the Imperial Conference. Such a policy would, he thought, in the long run be saner and safer for the Empire as a whole. He also thought it would lead to greater publicity. After the great catastrophe which had overtaken Europe, nations in future would want to know more about that foreign policy. He was sure that the after effects of a change like this, although it looked a simple change, were going to be very important, not only for the Commonwealth of nations, but for the world as a whole. People were inclined to forget that the world was growing more democratic, and that public opinion and the forces finding expression in public opinion, were going to be far more powerful than they had been in the past. Where they built up a common patriotism and a common ideal, the instrument of government would not be a thing that mattered so much as the spirit which actuated the whole of government.'—The Times, May 16, 1917.
* ↑ See Appendix, pp. 278–9, 281.
* ↑ For views expressed on this part of the subject by Palmerston, Clarendon (1866), Salisbury (1885), and Mr. Balfour, see Appendix, pp. 263–9.
* ↑ See Appendix, p. 266: Mr. Balfour, House of Commons, March 19, 1918.
* ↑ Surrey, at Newcastle, to Wolsey, October 8, 1523. Ellis, Original Letters (first series), i. 226–7.
* ↑ See Horatio F. Brown, Venice: An Historical Sketch (1893), e.g. p. 182.
* ↑ See Appendix, pp. 282–4.
Footnotes