The New York herald., 1871-01-16
Di,lo..ssy PI.ysa o...


downfall Of the old school Of diplomacy, which
for so many ages has been regarded as the
handmade of aristocracy, and In It's difficult
denominations of sovereign power, long
before the other newspapers Of the world saw
the advancing change, the New YORK HERALD
caught 1t in Its prescient gaze. And now that
at all tho courts and the camps Of countries
its ministers confer not alone with the powers
that be, but those who aspire to be-not alone
with Gladstone, but with Disraeli; not alone
with Gambetta, but with Napoleon--and fash
in moment the expression Of their thoughts,
and the New YORK HERALD may be really
said to gather each morning the world In lts
grasp, diplomacy may be honestly pronounced
played out. Look, ye wise worshippers of the
old school, for moment at your light your
stars! Moustier, De Gramont Benedict
and Metternich, who were all more or less
connected with the international complica-
tions which preceded the present war, did all
in their might to make the public distrust the
ability and usefulness Of diplomatic men. The
Marquis de Moustier, Ambassador at Constan-
tinople before he became Minister of Foreign
Affairs, was implicated in the suspicious
transactions of his dragoman at Pera,
died in an agony of shame, and was
succeeded by the Duke de Gramont,
whose chief reputation was that of an elegant
roue, and who. by his long afiliation with the
enemies of Prussia at Vienna, did all the evil
he could in envenoming the relations between
France and Germany. He absolutely connived
withthe Austrian Ambassador, the Prince de
Metternich, in paving the way for rupture
made wider by the preposterous proceedings
of Count Benedetti. Moustler, the peculator;
Gramont, the rake; Metternich, the dandy,
and Benedetti, the intriguer, shine forth as the
bungling diplomats Of the period and as the
gravediggsrs Of the old school of diplomacy,
which drew its Sciat from Talleyrand and
Pozzo di Borgo, and now perlshss by the hui
miliations inflicted on it by Gramont and
Benedict. While diplomacy has been thus
clearly play u out in France, 1t has not been
one jot more successful in England. Lord
Bloomfield at Vienna, Lord LOTUS at Berlin,
MIR. Elliott at Constantinople, Sir A. Buchanan
at st. Petersburg and Mr.. Thornton at WASH
jngton have precisely as much to do with the
shaping Of international relations as so many
lovely beings in the moon. In truth, all they
have to do is to repeat accomplished facts
which have been flashed to the New YORK
weeks before they announced them in their
dispatches. They have all and every one
ceased to be vital factors Of historical events.
They have become. posthumous repeaters
of past events, and whatever ability they
may possess In commenting on those events is,
we may, we think, fairly say. completely over
shadowed by such great organs of public
opinion as the New YORK HERALD and the
London Times. The intrinsic effeteness Of
the old diplomatic school has thus received its
death blow through the rapidity of interna-
tional communications and the intellectual
activity of the press. Henceforth they are
doomed as essential participants in intsrna-
tional affairs. They are simply dead trees,
which but wait the axe Of the woodman to
strike them to the gr-.lnd. In the small
capitals of Italy and Germany, where, as with
us in Washington, small diplomats have been
made to loom up in colossal proportions, their
occupation, like Othello's, is gone since the
grand consolidation Of those two nations
Those pet sineeures, those fuss and feather
legations at Dresden, Munich and Stuttgart
have come to sudden death through the supre-
macy of Berlin, and unless new missions be
established in yet undiscovered countries
many Of these dethroned Chesterfelds may
have to visit the Blackwelrs Island of their
respective countries, and infuse into the
pauper mind the rudiments of diplomatic
wisdom.
How this country ever came to copy the
European system Of diplomacy can only be
accounted for by the want of originality and
in American craftsmanship and
thought. Previous to the civil war our lega-
tions here, with but few exceptions, were hot
beds of treason, and since that time most of
our diplomats seem positively to vie with each
other in the noble conflict as to who shall
crouch most abjectly before the court to which
they are accredited Messrs. Bancroft and
Jay are mere weak reflections of Bismarck and
Beust and Mr.. Motley has been ''all things to
all lords" Who can for q moment doubt
that the American republic would be infinitely
more respected in the Old World if it had no
diplomatic representation there, and if Euro
pean courts derived their knowledge of our
civilization from the activities of our toiling
masses rather than from the social vanities
and puerility OF our would-be aristocrats ?
The abolition Of our legations in Europe
would, of course, lead to the blessed result of
the withdrawal of the diplomatic agents Of
foreign Powers here, who do as much to warp
the public. mind in Europe as to the real con-
dition Of America as our own misrepresenta-
tives at the various courts. If at the outbreak
of our civil war European aristocracy was