-3-

by rationality, tradition, charisma, etc. It does not exclude the identity
of the individual with the social code, but it does not require it.
"Right or wrong my country" — this is the language of loyalty. "So act
that your actions could become by your will universal laws of nature" —
this is the language of duty. Loyalty is a preference; duty a necessity.

In this manner the conservative, when he organizes himself politically,
becomes, in spite of himself, the symbol of a revolutionary period. His
fundamental position is denial of the validity of the question regarding
the nature of authority; but the question, by exacting a reply, has demon-
strated a kind of validity. To the revolutionary, the conservative's
position therefore becomes an answer, a victory even should the immediate
battle end adversely. For what does it profit a conservative to emerge
victorious in a battle of wills? His battle is not personal but social,
his justification not individual but historical. It is no accident that
in revolutionary contests the conservative position comes to be dominated
by its reactionary — that is, counterrevolutionary — wing, the group which
fights in terms of will and with an ethic of loyalty. For the true
conservative is not at home in social struggle. He will attempt to avoid
unbridgeable schism, because he knows that a stable social structure thrives
not on triumphs but on reconciliations.

How then can the conservative rescue his position from the contingency
of conflicting claims? How can that which *is*, persuade when its self-evidence
has disintegrated? By fighting as anonymously as possible, has been the
classic conservative reply, so that if the answer must be given it will
transcend the will, so that the contest occurs at least on a plane beyond
the individual, so that obligation can become *duty* and not *loyalty*. To

fight for conservatism in the name of historical forces, to reject the validity of the revolutionary question because of its denial of the temporal aspect of society and the social contract, this was the answer of Burke. To fight the revolution in the name of ethical principles, to deny the validity of the question on epistemological grounds, as contrary to the structure of the universe — this was the answer of Metternich.

The difference between these two conservative positions is fundamental. To Burke the ultimate standard of social obligation was history; to Metternich it was reason. To Burke history was the expression of the ethos of a people; to Metternich it was a "force" to be dealt with, more important than most social forces, but of no greater validity. Burke fought the Revolution under the banners of Romanticism and his challenge was therefore destined to have no immediate effect. Metternich fought his battles in the name of the very Enlightenment that had produced his antagonists and his was therefore a mortal challenge. To Burke a revolution was a juristic offense, the violation of the sacred contract of a nation's historical constitution. To Metternich, who denied the existence of *any* social contract, it was a violation of the universal law governing the life of societies, to be combatted not because it was immoral but because it was disastrous. Historical conservatism abhors revolution as undermining the individual expression of a nation's tradition; ethical conservatism fights it as preventing the implementation of *universal* social maxims.

It was this ethical conception of conservatism which imparted the rigidity to Metternich's policy. For the answer conservatism must supply, once it has become a political movement and not a way of life, depends on

-5-

[N]

its interpretation of the complementary issues of the nature of freedom
and the meaning of authority. The West has produced two basic replies:
freedom as the absence of restraint or freedom as the voluntary acceptance
of authority. The former position considers freedom to reside outside of
the sphere of authority; the latter conceives freedom as a *quality* of
authority. The negative version of freedom is the expression of a society
transcending its political structure, a society which, as in Locke, exists
prior to the state and whose political organization becomes like a company
of limited liability organized for the achievement of determinate goals.
In such a society the issue of conservatism against reform tends to appear
as a question of emphasis, of greater or lesser change on problems of
determinate form and content. Since the significant field of activity
occurs outside the governmental sphere, politics has a utilitarian, but not
an ethical function; it is useful, not moral. A society implementing Locks's
concept of freedom is always conservative, whatever form its political
contests take. Were it not, it could not operate a system whose strength
resides in its social cohesiveness, in the things "which are taken for
granted." Burke's defense of conservatism had for this reason no applica-
bility to the British domestic scene, but was directed against its
misapprehension by foreigners.

But the Continent has never been able to accept the Anglo-Saxon version
of freedom. Before the French Revolution, this was because Locks's was
the philosophy of an *accomplished* revolution, a doctrine of reconciliation
which lacked the logical rigor of a call to action. Afterwards it was
because the French Revolution, unlike the British, had produced a fundamental
social schism. Cohesive societies can regulate themselves through custom

-6-

which reveals that disputes are peripheral. Societies which contain
fundamental schisms must rely on law, the definition of a compulsory
relationship. Thus Kant and Rousseau, not Locke, were the representatives
of the Continental version of liberty which sought freedom in the identification
of the will with the general interest and considered government freest not
when it governed least, but when it governed justly. To the British
conservative, the social problem was one of adjustment, to protect the social
sphere by timely political concession. But to his Continental counterpart,
the problem was one of conservation in the literal sense, because to him
political concession was equivalent to social surrender. For one can make
concessions only to something. When state and society are two different
entities, this is no problem. But when they are identical, a concession is
a confession of failure, an avowal of the end of the conservative structure,
a recognition of an unbridgeable social schism. Thus even at the end of
his life, after his era had long ended, Metternich could still object to a
speech by a British Peelite, Sir James Graham, that the statesman's wisdom
consisted of recognizing the proper moment for making concessions: "My
conception of statesmanship differs completely. The true merit of a states-
man...consists of governing so as to avoid a situation in which concessions
become necessary."

This did not mean that the conservative statesman had to oppose all
change. To be a conservative, wrote Metternich, did not mean to return to

1. Metternich, *Aud Metternich's Nachgelassenen Papieren* (Vienna, Wilhelm Burmueller, 1881), Vol. VIII, p. 562. Coded as N.P.

-8-

the pose of the doctor treating "ill" social organisms, of revolution
as a malady, of conservatism as truth. At the end of thirty-nine years
of power Metternich could still observe a collapsing world with a bitter-
sweet resignation, mixed with pity for his opponents whose ignorance of the
**real** social forces would unleash a terrible holocaust: "For thirty-nine
years I played the role of rock," Metternich wrote, "from which the waves
recoil...until finally they succeed in engulfing it. They did not become
calm however, afterwards, for what caused their turmoil was not the rock
but their inherent unrest. The removal of the obstacle did not alter the
situation, nor could it have...I would like to call out to the representatives
of social upheaval: 'Citizen of a world, that exists but in your dreams,
nothing is altered. On March 14 nothing happened save the elimination
of a single man.'"

It was thus that the Enlightenment retained its last champion deep
into the nineteenth century, who judged actions by their "truth," not by
their success, an advocate of reason in an age of philosophical materialism,
who never surrendered his belief that morality could be known and that
virtue was teachable. "These maxims have been proved true," he wrote in
1822. "Policy is based not on novels, but on history; not on faith, but
on knowledge." When another Napoleon appeared on the scene, thirty-five
years after the defeat of his great predecessor, Metternich did not consider
this as a personal failure but as the illustration of a philosophical insight:
"The millions of votes for Louis Napoleon are only the expression of an
instinctive feeling, that without order there can exist no social life, and
without authority no order. Today this truth calls itself Napoleon; so old

5. N.P. VIII, p. 235.

6. 14 March, 1848, the day of Metternich's resignation as Staatskanaler.

7. N. P. VIII, p. 232.

8. N.P. III, p. 542.

-10-

feelings reign, cool, composed, superior. Statesmanship was the science of
11
the interests of states, subject to laws entirely analagous to the laws of
the physical world. The statesman was a philosopher who understood these
maxims, who performed his tasks but reluctantly for they deflected him from
12
the source of the only real enjoyment, the contemplation of truth, who was
responsible only to his conscience and to history -- to the former because
it contained his vision of truth, to the latter because it provided the only
test of its validity.

What then were the insights which Metternich's maxims revealed to him?
They showed a universe governed by law, not in the modern sense of an *inter-
pretation* of events but as their *attribute*. To disregard this law was not so
much morally wrong as physically disastrous. The expression of law was order
and its mechanism an equilibrium: "Isolated states exist only as the abstractions
of so-called philosophers. In the society of states each state has interests...
which connect it with the others. The great axioms of political science derive
from the recognition of the true interests of *all* states; it is in the general
interests that the guarantee of existence is to be found, while particular
interests — the cultivation of which is considered political wisdom by
restless and short-sighted men — have only a secondary importance. Modern
history demonstrates the application of the principle of solidarity and
equilibrium, and of the united efforts of states to force a return to the
13
common law." And just as in the political world the equilibrium
reflected a balance between the forces of aggression and the forces of
resistance, so the social order revealed an uneasy tension between the
conserving and the destructive tendencies inherent in any body social.

11. N.P. I, p. 33.

12. See N.P. III, p. 342, or N.P. III, p. 357.

13. N.P. I, p. 334.

-11-

[N]

It was the task of statesmanship to distinguish the form and the substance of this contest and to create the moral foundation of an order on which only time could confer spontaneity. This led to another distinction, so often considered by the rationalist as the solution and not the definition of a problem: Man can only create Chartes, which have the value of 14 programmatic announcements; it is time which makes constitutions.

Metternich therefore opposed the efforts of his contemporaries to construct ideal constitutions for two reasons: They overlooked the factor of "time," not in Burke's sense of an almost hallowed entity, but as one of the most potent social forces. And they were unrealistic because states are not only products of history but of environment: "That constitution is best which most completely corresponds to the material and moral requirements of the national character...There is no universal recipe for constitutions, any more than for the advancement of health...That constitutions influence national character is undeniable truth, but its counterpart is no less true, that lasting constitutions must be a product of this character, and not of an excited, and therefore fleeting, public opinion." 15

The whole discussion about constitutions was in any case beside the point. Anything that existed was subject to laws and the expression of law in the political world is a constitution: "A state without a constitution is an abstraction just as an individual without a corresponding psyche." 16

It was, for this reason, contradictory to attempt to achieve freedom by means of constitutional guarantees. "Rights" can not be created, they exist. Whether they are affirmed or not is an incidental, essentially technical, question and has nothing to do with freedom. Nobody can transgress

14. N.P. VII, p. 636; VIII, p. 525.

15. N.P. VII, p. 637.

16. N.P. VII, p. 635.

-12-

[Y]

laws, not even kings — reminiscent of the classic Enlightenment phrase that not even God could make 2 plus 2 equal 5. To guarantee rights is therefore a paradox; it is to clothe in the language of power what can only be a statement of fact, to endow with an arbitrary existence what has eternal validity: "Things which ought to be taken for granted lose their force when they emerge in the form of arbitrary pronouncements... The mania of law-making is a symptom of the disease which has ravaged the world for 62 years... Natural, moral or material forces are not fit subjects of human regulation. What would one say of a Charte which side by side with the rights of Man exhibited the laws of gravitation?... If there is no God, he will not be created by pronouncements; if He exists, He will not require human recognition to achieve divinity... Objects mistakenly made subject to legislation result only in the limitation, if not the complete annulment, of that which is attempted to be safeguarded." 17

Here, then, was the conservative assertion of spontaneous social obligation, the rationalist belief in rights as an attribute of the universe, the aristocrat's vision of the inseparability of power and responsibility, the Enlightenment's faith in the connection between order and freedom. While it asserted the existence of "rights" transcending any human construction, indeed from which human construction could only detract, it emphasized a fundamental contradiction of democratic theory. The view of human nature which insisted on man's capacity for self-government was combined in the same theory with another view of human nature which limited the scope of this government. Why if man is conscious of arbitrary oppression should he wish to oppress others? Why should universal rights be guaranteed?

17. N.P. VIII, p. 557f.

-13-

[N]

This has, of course, never been a problem in Anglo-Saxon countries where the relation between state and society have had a juristic, not an ethical foundation. In such cases constitutional guarantees have had the value of the difference between explicit and implicit limitations on a government in any case understood as limited. But in an "ethical state" an explicit limitation on government is meaningless. If the state justifies itself, not by its utility, but by its morality, there exists no tribunal before which to appeal its measures. If the sanction is not juridic but ethical, limitation can come about only by self-restraint. And self-restraint is greatest when alternatives are, not rejected, but inconceivable, whereas the very act of guaranteeing rights exhibits the possibility of an alternative.

This was the challenge of the conservative statesman to his liberal opponents: If the conservative became an unwilling symbol of a revolutionary period by being forced into a definition of the nature of authority, the liberal contradicted himself by answering his own question about the nature of freedom. To be sure, Metternich did not have an answer of his own to the query regarding freedom, because he thought it inseparable from the notion of authority. But, equally, his opponents had not really dealt with the problem of authority which they thought exhausted in the definition of freedom. And yet they were closer than they realized: For had one asked Metternich as to the limits of authority and his opponents as to the limits of freedom, they would have both answered with one word which indicated that to them the question was essentially meaningless: reason, self-evident, and sovereign, which contained its applicability in its very conception, would trace the boundary of freedom as well as of necessity. That the

-14-

categorical imperative was capable of contingent interpretation was inconceivable to Kant. That a sovereign should substitute force for law was not inconceivable to Metternich, but he considered it suicidal and therefore unlikely. It is this which gave the dispute between Metternich and the liberals the bitterness of a civil war, at least on the "democratic" side. For Metternich was an opponent who fought liberalism in the name of the very universality it claimed for itself, whose mode of argument represented as much of a challenge to his opponents, as their existence to him. It is difficult, indeed, for a rationalistic philosophy to survive the demonstration that the same premise can lead to two diametrically opposed conclusions.

IF Metternich considered the quest for formal constitutions chimerical, he saw in revolutions a physical disaster. In a universe characterized by the balance between the forces of conservation and those of destruction, revolution was due to a disturbance of the equilibrium in favor of the latter. But since the equilibrium was the "natural" condition, a revolution could achieve no more than a dislocation straining towards a new integration. The disorders attendant on revolutions were therefore symptoms of a transitional period and their violence a reflection of the ignorance of their advocates: "Revolutions are temporary disturbances in the life of states... Order always ends up by reclaiming its own; states do not die like individuals, they transform themselves. It is the task of statesmanship... to guide this transformation and to supervise its direction." The difference between a conservative and a revolutionary order was not the fact of change, but its mode: "A consideration the liberal spirit usually

18. N.P. VIII, p. 468.

-15-

[Y]

ignores...is the difference in the life of states, as of individuals, between progress by measured steps or by leaps. In the first case, conditions develop with the consequence of natural law; while the latter disrupts this connection...Nature is development, the ordered succession of appearances; only such a course can eliminate the evil and foster the good. But leaping transitions wind up by requiring entirely new creations -- and it is not given to man to create out of nothingness." 19 Civilization, then, was the degree to which change could come about "naturally," to which the tension between the forces of destruction and of conservation was submerged in a spontaneous pattern of obligation. Thus true civilization had come only with the advent of Christianity which made authority 20 inviolable, obedience sacrosanct and self-abnegation divine -- the rationalist's functional interpretation of religion.

It is expressive of the conservative dilemma that Metternich's pronouncement on the nature of authority is truistic — because a conservative takes it for granted, and those on the meaning of freedom are skimpy, because he considered the question meaningless. But his analysis of the nature of revolutions is lucid and powerful. In 1820 while arranging the series of congresses designed to defeat the revolutionary outbreaks, Metternich wrote a "profession of faith" which coupled an analysis of the nature of revolution with a philosophy of history. Up to the sixteenth century, Metternich maintained, the forces of conservation and of destruction had been in an increasingly spontaneous balance. But then

19. N.P. VII, p. 638.

20. N.P. VIII, p. 242.

21. N.P. III, p. 400f.

-16-

there occurred three events which, in time, caused civilization to be supplanted by violence and order by chaos: the invention of printing and of gun powder and the discovery of America. Printing facilitated the exchange of ideas which thereby became vulgarized; the invention of gun powder changed the balance between offensive and defensive weapons; and the discovery of America transformed the situation both materially and psychologically. By the influx of precious metals, it produced a sudden change in the value of landed property which is the foundation of a conservative order, and by the prospect of rapid fortunes, it brought about a spirit of adventure and a dissatisfaction with existing conditions. And then the Reformation completed the process by overturning the moral world and exiling man above the forces of history.

All this gave rise to a type of individual who symbolized the revolutionary era: the presumptuous man, the natural product of a too-rapid march of the human spirit towards seeming perfection: "Religion, morality, legislation, economics, politics, administration, all seem to have become a common good and accessible to everyone. Science appears intuitive, experience has no value for the presumptuous; faith means nothing to him and he substitutes for it the pretense of a personal conviction, to arrive at which, however, he dispenses with analysis or study, for these seem too subordinate activities to a mind which believes itself capable of embracing at one blow the whole ensemble of issues. Laws have no value for him because he did not contribute to their preparation and it is below the dignity of a man of his quality to recognize limits traced by ignorant and brute generations. Power resides in himself; why submit to what can

-19-

British mind that the last stable-boy would laugh in the face of the reformers if they appeared by preaching his freedom...This is because the English are only concerned with the substance, never with the form."

The wars of the French Revolution had spread these principles across Europe and only the hatred of Bonaparte delayed, for a little while, their baneful impact, largely through a misunderstanding. For the war, fought by the kings against Napoleon, was fought by the people in part against their own masters in the hope of obtaining from them the realization of the promises of the French Revolution. The wise peace concluded in 1814 might have inaugurated a period of tranquillity, but Napoleon's return from Elba undid in one hundred days his work of fourteen years of power. By unleashing the revolution in France, he exposed Europe to unending social strife.

This was a powerful analysis of the cause of the unrest sweeping across Europe. But its power was at the same time its bane. For if the revolutionary spirit was so widespread how could it be combatted? If the causes of the revolution were so fundamental, dating so far back in history, what possible remedy could exist? If the middle-class was so potent how could it be dealt with? By gradual integration a Burke, a representative of historical conservatism, might have answered, by learning moderation and the need for adaptation. Even Castlereagh could still advise Louis XVIII that revolutions "are nowhere so little to be dreaded as in office, mixed up with other material. Tyrants may poison an obnoxious character but the only means a constitutional monarch has to restrain him is to employ him." But to Metternich, the ethical conservative, this solution was a dangerous evasion. To the product of the Enlightenment, political problems had to assume the

22. N.P. VIII, p. 218.

23. N.P. III, p. 409.

24. Webster I, p. 547 (Appendix).

-20-

precision of logical antinomies and he therefore sharpened the differences
instead of smoothing them over. If the forces of destruction were rampant,
it was the task of the conservative to strengthen those of order. If the
cry for reform was universal, it was all the more imperative to resist in
the name of authority.

In this manner the equation, freedom = voluntary submission to order,
became in practice a definition of sterility and unexceptional maxims,
justifications for inaction. So it happened that Metternich never tired of
comparing concessions to popular clamor to squandering capital; therefore the
basic maxim "that in the middle of agitated passions one can not think of
reforming; wisdom in such situations confines itself to maintaining."
Therefore, the increasingly rigid opposition to any change, for change
symbolized the possibility of yielding to pressure: "Where everything is
tottering, it is above all necessary that something, no matter what, remain
steadfast, so that the lost can find a connection and the strayed a refuge."
This accounted for the preference of Napoleon over the Bourbons, despite the
"legitimacy" of the latter, because to Metternich legitimacy was not an end
but a tool and, when it conflicted with the requirements of stability, it
had to yield. Therefore, paradoxically, Metternich became a defender of
existing institutions, however much he might deplore them, because their
overthrow would be an even more dangerous symbol. When in the panic of 1820
the Grand-Duke of Baden offered to abolish his constitution Metternich
replied: "Every order lawfully established bears within itself the principle
of a better system...A Charte, in any case, is not a constitution. It is
up to the government to separate good and evil, to strengthen public authority

25. N.P. III, p. 415.

26. SRBIK, Metternich (2 vols.) I, p. 354.

-22-

accurately, bent all his energies to making the electron hold still, if
only a fraction of a second, because this would enable him to chart its
course for eternity. Or like the driver of a car heading out of control
in an unknown direction down a precipitate mountain road, too narrow for
turning around; if he could but capture the wheel, he would still have to
descend the mountain, but it would represent order and not chaos. So
it happened, that Metternich's insights, however powerful, became increasingly
dogmatic. While he might have been right in asserting that those who have
never had a past can not own the future, those who _have_ had a past may doom
themselves by seeking it in the future.

And still in all this obtuseness there was an element of grandeur. For-
Metternich had no illusions about the probable developments, but he saw his
task in ameliorating their inevitable consequences: "The existing society
is on the decline. Nothing ever stands still...and society has reached its
zenith. Under such conditions to advance means to descend...Such periods
appear interminable to contemporaries, but what are two to three hundred
years in the annals of history?...My life has fallen into a terrible period.
I was born either too soon or too late...Formerly I would have enjoyed life,
later I could have helped in the reconstruction. Now I spend my time
shoring up decaying buildings." He did not fight the revolution because
it was impossible but because it was "unnatural." And he combatted democracy
because "authority is an expression of the power of permanence; while in
Parliamentary government power appears under the aspect of transitoriness...
I understand that little minds like to think of themselves as the expression
of power, but it is equally without doubt, that the opponents of all

28. N. P. III, p. 347f.

-26-

of the Empire is therefore the maintenance of the different legal codes of the various components of the Empire; this is our only protection against the levelling of all concepts which is characteristic of our period."

But what was a dynastic state to do in an era of centralization and nationalism, of rationalized administration and codified legislation? It would have occurred to no one in the eighteenth century that a Hapsburg Emperor was a "foreigner," merely because he represented a German dynasty. Because this was a truism of the nineteenth century and because the defensive makes adaptation difficult, Austrian policy was destined to become increasingly inflexible. The impact of modernity was dissolving for so complex, indeed so subtle, a structure. What did rationalization of the organic institutions mean, where relationships were so intricate that the very attempt of definition would merely serve to accentuate differences? What was the applicability of the French lesson of the efficacy of a highly centralized government, in a state where the effort to centralize was only too likely to consume all energies in internal strife? Austria had had the experience of, the effort of the great Emperor Joseph II to apply the lessons of the Enlightenment and it nearly had torn the Empire apart. And if the Austrian Empire was slow to learn, it never forgot a lesson and its memory proved as much its undoing as its inflexibility.

Metternich therefore fought the revolution not only on theoretical, but also on eminently practical grounds. He considered the quest of the Austrian liberals for a modern, centralized state as chimerical because

33. N.P. VIII, p. 474.

-29-

nineteenth century progressed the anachronistic Empire increasingly looked for determinacy of calculation and this can be found more easily in the application of bureaucratic norms than in the adjustment to changing conditions. Administration creates the illusion of "running by itself"; the routine which is its mode of assimilating mediocrity appears to the outsider as the condition of its success. The motivation of a bureaucracy is its quest for safety; it measures success by errors avoided rather than by goals achieved; it prides itself on objectivity which is a denial of the necessity of great conception — all qualities which to a disintegrating structure may symbolize a means to rescue certainty from impending chaos. It is understandable, even if it proved disastrous, that Austria increasingly applied purely administrative considerations to the solution of its complex domestic problems. But while it was true that Austria could not make the transition from a dynastic to a centralized state without disintegrating, it did not follow that it had to import the mode of government of the eighteenth and earlier centuries into the modern period. It was the measure of the sterility of Austrian statesmanship that it confused the nature of its domestic legitimization with the structure of its bureaucracy and that an outmoded administration therefore confronted the rapidly multiplying problems of industrialization, nationalism and liberalism. In this manner, the Austrian monarchy lost the opportunity to justify itself through performance and the opposition was enabled to add to the doctrinal differences the charge of inefficiency.

The system of administration was nothing less than a continuation of the patriarchal pattern of obligations of the feudal period. The Emperor

-30-

was not only the sole source of authority juridically but the actual
center of both policy and administration. The government was conducted
not by means of ministries, but through departments of the Imperial Court.
Their heads were not ministers but "Nofrate," permanent chiefs of depart-
ments. For almost a decade, Metternich was the only official with the
title of minister and he paid for his eminence by being jealously deprived
of all domestic influence. Beside the Emperor, no less than three organs
were charged with coordinating the different departments; but they were
in the nature of inter-departmental committees, composed of officials of
the departments concerned, and their structure and function were so
indeterminate than an eminent Austrian historian in 1884 was unable to
account for them precisely. 36 At any rate, they met but at the pleasure
of the Emperor and considered only the matters he chose to bring before them.
The Austrian administration has been described as a contraption whose
wheels revolved with an infernal noise without advancing one inch. Well
might Metternich say in later life that he had sometimes governed Europe,
but never Austria.

This did not mean that Metternich approved of the Austrian mode of
government, however. On the contrary, one of his first acts on assuming
the foreign ministry was to propose its reorganisation and soon after he
submitted a plan to introduce a Reichsrat, an imperial council, to coordinate
and develop basic policy. 37 But these efforts, as so many others, ran afoul
of the obstinacy of the Emperor. Emperor Franz was one of the mediocrities
who believe that the lesson of experience resides in mechanical remembrance.
His notion of success was the opposite of failure, his notion of causality

36. Springer I, p. 120.

37. N.P. II, p. 315, p. 444f.

-31-

was succession in time. Because the centralizing tendencies of his predecessor, Joseph II, had led to civil strife, all reform was to be avoided. Because the attempt to rally the people had not succeeded in achieving victory in 1809, no reliance whatever was to be placed on popular support. Dour and suspicious, unimaginative and pedantic, he had seen so many convulsions that he regarded mere persistence an ethical value. His most characteristic quality was a pretentious stoicism which reflected an absence of sensibility. "He hates reflection," his uncle the great Joseph II said of him. "He does not communicate his thoughts because he is afraid of learning the truth...Because he has seen that obstinacy...makes his environment pliable, he uses it so that he can persist in his comfort...One threat affects him, the most unpleasant of all because it reveals an insensitive character, namely fear of vexation. This makes him small, pliable, free with promises without however changing his opinions in which he persists because of a falsely understood pride in his birth. Noble... motives such as patriotism...do not make the slightest impression on him."

38

This was the man who ruled Austria for over a generation and in perhaps the most crucial period of its history. A trivial mind, he thought himself capable of resolving all problems personally, because to the uninspired all problems are equally difficult -- and equally easy. A succession of disasters had taught him only that change was the cause, not the expression, of transformations. He therefore attempted to avoid it at all costs and by any means. His system of police supervision was notorious and he delighted in reading even its most unimportant reports. Jealous of his prerogatives, he was careful to divide the power among his subordinates to avoid any

38. Springer I, p. 110.

-32-

preponderant influence. Even Metternich, despite all his successes in foreign affairs, felt impelled to introduce any discussion of domestic problems with a subservient disclaimer which indicated their relation to foreign policy. It was not surprising that such a man sought refuge in the determinacy of bureaucratic norms, that he interfered in every detail of administration, that not even the most trivial decision could be taken without his concurrence. His industry was stupendous, but industry is the stop to the conscience of mediocrity. "He deals with affairs like a drill," Metternich said of him once in a rare moment of exasperation, which penetrates ever deeper, until suddenly and to his surprise, he emerges somewhere without having done more than make a hole in a memorandum."

In these circumstances, Metternich's careful manipulations become understandable. For unless the Emperor was brought to a decision so imperceptibly that change could be accomplished with the illusion of stability, he was certain to resist. Metternich was not too far from the truth when he said whimsically: "We have had a saint who went to heaven because he stood for years on a pillar on one foot...His merit was the uncomfortable position; my position is no better." But the impact of the personality of the Emperor was even more baneful domestically and again it is Metternich who has left us the best capsule description: "I wanted the government to govern, my colleagues sought to administer according to existing norms...In this situation measures only came to my attention after they had run the gamut of all subordinate departments, where their final formulation was prepared and whence they reached me only if an urgent decision

39. See f. e., N.P. II, p. 432.

40. SRBIK I, p. 447.

41. N.P. III, p. 333.

-33-

was required, which in turn made it impossible to do anything except to concur with the administrative proposal...The greatest mistake in the Austrian Empire...was the concern of the government with matters which should have been dealt with administratively and vice versa. This paralyzed the machinery of government, overwhelmed the highest level with trivia and absolved the lowest of responsibility. Should I have forced the administration into a different direction? For this I did not have sufficient power. Should I have smashed the machinery? This would only have led to paralysis. My task was not to govern nor to administer, but to represent the Empire towards foreign countries."

This then was the task of the conservative statesman as he contemplated the international order in 1815: to represent his country abroad, to cover its weaknesses, to delay the inevitable as long as possible. In this task he was aided by a marvelous diplomatic skill which for a time transformed weakness into a diplomatic asset, and which enabled him to emerge as the conservative conscience of Europe. Its attempt to identify the domestic legitimisation of Austria with that of the international order was not so much a symptom of rigidity, as the perhaps only possible policy in a domestic structure which Metternich had no choice but to take as given. It was thus diplomacy par excellence, a pure manipulation, and that it lacked ultimate stature was due as much to the force of circumstances as to the lack of creativity of Metternich. "In what times have I lived?" wrote Metternich in his political testament. "Let anyone look at the situations which Austria and all of Europe confronted between 1809 and 1848 and let him ask himself whether one man's insight could have transformed

42. N.P. VII, p. 619.

-34-

these crises into health. I claim to have recognized the situation, but also the impossibility to erect a new structure in our Empire...and for this reason all my care was directed to conserving that which existed."

This is the epitaph of the conservative statesman: History is greater than the individual, but although it teaches its lessons surely, it does not do so in a single life-time. And the statement also marks the limits of Metternich's abilities. For statesmen must be judged not only by their actions but also by their conception of alternatives. Those statesmen who have achieved final greatness did not do so through resignation, however well-founded. It was given to them not only to maintain the perfection of order, but to have the strength to contemplate chaos, there to find material for fresh creation.

43. N.P. VII, p. 640.