The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1893-02-17

DE EssEP'S CAREER.
Viscomte Ferdinand de Lesseps, G. @.
S. l., is simply paying the penalty which
is exacted of those who pretend to be
what they are not. He posed for years
as a man of science, a great engineer, and
all France, which delights in the p0seur,
believed in him as implicitly as he got to
believe in himself Fatal self credencel
If be had been an engineer, if he had
even had the moderate engineering train
ing that enabled General Grant to see the
futility of the Panama Canal, he never
would have sought to accomplish the i'm
possible-for with the time and money
of his estimates the Panama Canal was
impossible-he would have remained LIE
Grand Francois, occupying until his llfe's
end something such pinnacle of public
esteem as the late Cyrus W. Field occu-
pied in this country Immediately after
the conclusion Of his infinitely greater
work, the Atlantic cable.
De Lesseps, by tempeTamenta and train.
ing, was diplomat, and almost for a
lifetime before he took, up his Suez
scheme had been wheedling and bully
ing in the service of his country on both
sides of the Mediterranean the putentates
who are best described to us in the Bey
who occupies so large background of
Daudet's Nadab, and the King of Illyria
in the same authors "ROis en- Exile"
He was first appointed at the age of 20
to a post with the French Legation at
Lisbon in 1925. Th ee years later he be-
gan his African experience at the Tun-
isian Mission, and shortly after received
the submission of the Bey OF Constan-
tine to the French Government. He
probably first conceived his idea of pierre
ing the lsthmus while Consul General at
Alexandria in the thirties, but at that
time had 20 notion of abandoning his
chosen profession of diplomacy for that
of canal digging in the manner of the
Kiraltian Spectacular"
In 1872 he achieved the principal tri-
umph of his diplomatic career in pro-
tectlng the rights OF foreigners in Bar
celona when the town where was Consul
was being bombarded by Espartero.
HIS bust stands in the town hall in Bar
celona in honor of this performance, and
among the decorations that he might
have donned when the officers came to
arrest him were orders given him by Sar
DINA, the Two Scilies, Sweden, the
Netherlands and Spain.
He was then 81 years old, and proba-
bly, was thought by his colleagues to have
pretty much "arlived" as tar as lay in
him. 1t is,not only remarkable, but per
haps the most remarkable thing in his
career, that a man with his talent for
managing bis countrymen by appealing
to their foible of spectacular progress"
should never have cut a figure in the po-
litical field, to which entrance was so
easy from the diplomatic one. But he
jog trotted in the service through the
reigns of two kings-Charle, X and Louis
Philippe. Although his prominence
was not sufficient in 1913 and 1851 to
leave record of how he took the sue
cessive upcomings of Lamartine and Ma
poleon, it is probable that he adapted
himself to surroundings with all the ease
with which he accustomed himself to the
third Republican regime, under which
life closes. The first ended in the EN-
pire as his life began and the second was
a midway episode of his long existence.
Always at home with Oriental mon
archs 1.-THE warmest supporter of Arab
Bey), he was, in the year 1854, then 40
years old, the guest atAlexandria of Said
Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt. The oriental
lied Frenchman fred the semi barbar-
ians' imagination with picture of the
revival of the Egypt of the Ptolemies, an
Egypt whose empire had been strength
ened by the artificial waterway which
made her the gateway of the >eas, as the
isthmus through which it was cut made
her the gateway of the continents. He
got the concession and was for five years
persuading France of its value. Thus it
vas, in 1859, De Lesseps then being "a
years old, that a company was formed to
execute his plans.