Cornell University Library 
 JX 1387.B52 
 Four lectures on subjects ^ n .™^ Hl ]!|! th 
 
 3 1924 007 463 445 * 
 
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 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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FOUR LECTURES 
 
 ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH 
 
 DIPLOMACY 
 
 BY 
 
 MOUNTAGUE BERNARD, M.A. 
 
 CHICHELE PROFESSOR OP INTERNATIONAL LAW 
 
 AND DIPLOMACY, 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 Sfatttron 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO 
 
 1868 
 
J+fr&rhr&f- 
 
 OXFORD: 
 
 BV T, flOMBK, M.A., R. B. GARDNER, B. r. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A. 
 
 PMNTEES TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
The first of these Lectures was delivered in 1860, 
 the other three respectively in 1865, 1866, and 1867. 
 They are printed in substance as they were de- 
 livered, with some occasional alterations. Important 
 changes in the state of Europe have occurred during 
 the past eight years. I have not however thought 
 it necessary to cancel or alter references to current 
 events, or expressions of opinion suggested by cir- 
 cumstances existing at the time ; nor could this 
 have been done without inconvenient disturbance 
 of the context. 
 
 All Souls College, Oxford, 
 January, 1868. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 THE CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Congresses of Westphalia and Vienna compared : Their resem- 
 blances and differences : Treaties of Westphalia related almost 
 exclusively to Germany: Importance of these Treaties as 
 forming an era of diplomatic history : Their value to the 
 student : Plan on which they should be studied, i-i i. 
 
 Powers represented at the Congress : Play of interests : Procras- 
 tination on both sides : Arrival of Plenipotentiaries : Full 
 Powers : Commencement of Negotiations : Peace concluded : 
 Comparative promptness of modern diplomacy : Causes of 
 dilatoriness in the negotiations of Westphalia, n-21. 
 
 Miinster during the Congress : Social features of the Congress : 
 Pamphleteering : Bribery : Despatches stolen : Ceremonial. 
 21-27. 
 
 What a Congress is : It is bound to no uniform mode of proceed- 
 ing : It has no coercive authority : Disposition to ascribe 
 authority to a Congress, and reasons for this : Advantages 
 and disadvantages of this mode of negotiating. 27-37. 
 
 General plan of a Treaty of Peace : Framework of the Treaties of 
 Westphalia. 37-39. 
 
 The ' Satisfaction of the Crowns ' ; 
 
 a. Cessions to France. 39-41- 
 
 b. Cessions to Sweden. 42. 
 The ' Removal of Grievances ' ; 
 
 a. Settlement of questions relating to Religion in Germany : 
 
 Observations on it : Its effects. 42-50. 
 
 b. Political constitution of the Empire : Its subsequent 
 
 condition : Condition of Germany since 1 8 1 5. 50-60. 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 What a ' System 'is. 61. 
 
 Views current among political writers of the Eighteenth Century : 
 How a System should be framed — Natural enmities and 
 alliances : Examples : Tendency of Systems to become ag- 
 gressive : Current rules of policy. 62-73. 
 
 Systems obsolete, and why ; 
 
 a. Territorial aggrandisement less coveted. 73-77. 
 
 b. Permanent alliances proved to be insecure : Causes which 
 
 have made the policy of nations uncertain : The real 
 guarantee for co-operation is a common interest : 
 France and her alliances : Comparative isolation of 
 Great Britain. 77-92. 
 
 Evils attendant on the policy of permanent alliances : Foregoing 
 remarks, how far they need qualification. 92-95. 
 
 Europe since 1815; America. 95, 96. 
 
 Concluding remarks ; 
 
 a. The ' Balance of Power.' 97-100. 
 
 b. Present tendencies of society: Effects of the spread of 
 
 commerce ; of the absorption of small States ; of popu- 
 lar government : Conclusion. 1 01-106. 
 Note A on Lectwre II. 107-109. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Meanings of ' Diplomacy.' 1 1 1 . 
 
 Vices ascribed to earlier diplomacy, and its comparative importance : 
 Personal influences in politics — Greater use for them in former 
 times : Scantiness of the means of information — Effect of this 
 on an ambassador's position : Difficulty of communication, 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 and its consequences : Insincerity attributed to Diplomacy — 
 Causes which tended to promote it — Importance of sincerity : 
 Bribery, and other practices — Use of cipher : Diplomatic 
 etiquette — Use and abuse of forms. 1 12-139. 
 The foregoing observations summarised : Classes from which diplo- 
 matic agents were formerly drawn : Growth of the diplomatic 
 profession : Objections to permanent missions, and to profes- 
 sional diplomacy : Advantages of them : Qualifications for this 
 service : Special knowledge : French as the common language 
 of diplomacy : Diplomacy as a career. 1 39-161. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Current opinions on this subject. 163, 164. 
 
 Meaning of the words ' Treaty ' and ' Obligation.' 1 64-166. 
 
 Moral obligation as applied to Nations or Governments : Character 
 and province of International Ethics : Moral obligation of 
 Treaties. 166-169. 
 
 Nations are not subject to Legal Obligations strictly so called — 
 Nature and character of International Law : Eules of Inter- 
 national Law respecting Treaties : Their inadequacy to deter- 
 mine the question what Treaties are binding : Effect of this on 
 International Morality : Assistance which private law affords 
 to private morality : Such assistance wanting to international 
 morality. 1 69- 1 7 7 . 
 
 Special difficulties which belong to International Contracts : Cir- 
 cumstances by which the ordinary presumption that a contract 
 imports advantage is weakened when applied to Treaties : 
 They specially need, therefore, a controlling and discriminating 
 authority — which is wanting : In its absence, the rule ' Pacta 
 sunt servanda ' is inevitably applied with rigour : This rigour 
 cannot be maintained in practice : Yet the laxity of practice 
 has been exaggerated : Reasons for this. 178-186. 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 Objects to be desired : Influences which may be expected to affect 
 the conduct of Governments in this matter ; 
 
 a. Slow development of the conception of a binding con- 
 
 tract : Artificial Securities : Disuse of them : Their 
 effects. 187-192. 
 
 b. Dynastic policy, its effect on Treaties, and its decline. 
 
 193, 194- 
 
 e. Tendency of International Contracts to diminish rather 
 than increase in number and importance— Beneficial 
 effect of this. 194-197. 
 
 d. International engagements should be definite and clear : 
 What is meant by the substance of a Treaty : Im- 
 portance of attending to it. 197-203. 
 Recapitulation. 203-205. 
 
 Ebratum. — P. 40, note 1, for iii. 59 read Hi. 509. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA". 
 
 "DETWEEN the two greatest Congresses recorded Lect - t - 
 in history, those of Westphalia and Vienna, %$%£" 
 there are some striking resemblances coupled with$?^ a and 
 broad differences. Each ranks among those cardinal ™ m P ared - 
 epochs which seem to close a long chapter of history blances - 
 and begin another ; each marks the end of a period 
 black with the calamities of almost incessant war- 
 fare ; each did substantial work, wrought extensive 
 and important changes, and was accounted in its day 
 —the first during several generations — the basis of 
 what statesmen called the political system of Europe. 
 In each we have the imposing spectacle of a grand 
 assembly or General Council of States met to de- 
 liberate on matters concerning the general welfare. 
 And within each, if we penetrate to the heart of 
 the conclave, we find ourselves surrounded by a 
 throng of obscure agencies and selfish interests. 
 
 1 This Lecture was intended as an Introduction to a Course, 
 informally delivered, in which the subject was treated in detail. 
 
2 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. These points of likeness, which it would be easy 
 Differ- to multiply, are accompanied by marked differences. 
 The two Congresses differed in their character, scope, 
 functions, and method of proceeding, and in the 
 solidity of the edifices they respectively left behind. 
 What was done at Vienna was done by common 
 consent. A board or council of great Powers, 
 assisted by sub-committees, disposed of the vast 
 territories which had been left masterless by the 
 fortune of war, ratified a multitude of bargains and 
 exchanges, drew the boundaries of kingdoms, created 
 and extinguished sovereignties, erected confederacies, 
 opened the navigation of rivers. No such concert 
 existed, no such consent was attainable, at the earlier 
 Congress : two allied Crowns, the French and 
 Swedish, there virtually dictated conditions of peace. 
 The arrangements made at Vienna extended through- 
 Treaties of out Europe, and beyond Europe. But the Treaties 
 
 Westphalia . , . , 1 • i 
 
 related ai- of Westphalia were in their scope almost exclusively 
 
 mostexclu- . . 
 
 siveiy to German. They related to the affairs of the Empire ; 
 
 Germany. 
 
 and the Empire, long before the seventeenth century, 
 had become merely German '. There was a person- 
 age in Europe who styled himself ' Electus Romano- 
 rum Imperator, semper Augustus ;' his ambassadors 
 
 1 When I speak in this Lecture of the ' Treaties of Westphalia, 
 I mean the two Treaties signed respectively at Milnster and 
 at Osnabriick on the 24th of October, 1648. I do not refer to 
 the Treaty concluded on the 30th of January, 1648, between the 
 United Provinces and Spain. 
 
CHARACTER OF THE TREATIES. 3 
 
 were ' Legati Caesaris ;' the ' Status Imperii Eomani' lbct. i. 
 met at his summons, as the States General of the 
 Dutch United Provinces or the Trench monarchy, 
 or the local States of Utrecht or Brittany, Lower 
 Austria or Brandenburg, assembled or might assemble 
 for the affairs of their respective countries 1 . But these 
 superb designations, though they were uncontested 2 , 
 though they could be traced bach to the time when 
 a real and not wholly unsuccessful effort had been 
 made to revive the extinct Empire of the West, and 
 though they did not, like that of King of Germany, 
 denote a mere titular dignity, were as inappro- 
 priate as any which the imagination could frame. 
 The prince who called himself Roman Emperor, 
 King of Germany and Bohemia, and Count of Tyrol, 
 
 with twenty other titles, had, as King of Bohemia 
 
 — v 
 
 1 To avoid misapprehension, it is necessary to bear in mind 
 that in Germany not only did ' the States ' mean the assembly itself, 
 as men spoke of 'Messieurs les Etats' in France, or ' de Heeren 
 Staten's Lands van Utrecht' in the Netherlands, but a State 
 (' Stand' or ' Status') meant an individual person such as a Bishop 
 or Count, or community such as an Imperial city in its corporate 
 character, having a seat and voice in such an assembly. At 
 least, this is the ordinary meaning of ' Eeichsstand ' or ' Status 
 Imperii. ' Thus, the Elector of Brandenburg, apart from his 
 Electorate, and a single Elector, apart from the body of Electors, 
 was spoken of as a State of the Empire. To trace the gradations 
 of meaning through which the word passed, would be out of place 
 here. 
 
 3 The affix ' semper Augustus ' was contested by Servien at 
 Mtinster, but merely for form's sake, and on no better ground than 
 that it had not been used in the last Treaty between France and 
 the Emperor, that of Querasque. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 lect.i. and as Count of Tyrol, distinct sets of powers 
 and prerogatives. As Roman Emperor, he had other 
 powers and prerogatives, but they were not those of 
 a Roman Emperor : there was really a political body 
 answering to the name of the Roman Empire, but it 
 was not the Roman Empire, nor anything in the least 
 like it : it was only an organized group of countries 
 either inhabited by Germans or in which Germans 
 were the ruling race, under an elective head ; and its 
 limits had gradually contracted themselves nearly to 
 those of the present German Confederation, receding 
 even from some lands which remained thoroughly 
 Teutonic — from Switzerland, the cradle of the great 
 German river, and the Low Countries, through 
 which its divided waters steal to the sea 1 . The 
 mongrel phrase ' Roman Empire of the German 
 Nation,' afterwards shortened into ' German Empire' 
 by current speech, expressed both what it pretended 
 to be and what it was. To the Empire, thus 
 
 1 The Emperors, however, in 1648, and long afterwards, claimed 
 a superiority over large portions of Northern Italy, as outlying 
 ' fiefs ' or dependencies of the Empire, and the Treaty of Minister 
 contains articles relating to these dependencies. -Schoell suggests 
 the question whether this claim, not having been expressly re- 
 nounced by the Treaty of Luneville or any subsequent Treaty, was 
 not liable to be revived as to the territories not included in the 
 cessions of Luneville. Histoire des Trait&s de Paix, ii. 103. 
 (ed. 1837.) 
 
 For a general view of the history of the Empire, at once accu- 
 rate, vivid, and comprehensive, it is enough to refer to Mr. Bryce's 
 work on the subject. 
 
ITS IMPORTANCE TO GERMANY. 5 
 
 shrunken and nationalised, these Treaties were in- Lbct. i, 
 struments of capital importance. They formed, as 
 long as it lasted, the principal charters of its con- 
 stitution, and the title-deeds by which many of its 
 members held large portions of their possessions. 
 Partly, no doubt, from this cause, but still more 
 from the indelible recollections burnt into the hearts 
 of men by the war to which it put an end, — a war 
 so unspeakably cruel and calamitous that the like 
 has never been known in Europe, — the Westphalian 
 Congress has retained in Germany a local celebrity 
 and regard such as no other like assembly ever 
 acquired, there or elsewhere. No one cares to know 
 where the Congress of Vienna transacted its busi- 
 ness : among the villas and gardens of the hamlet 
 of Byswyk you look in vain for the site of the 
 house where the plenipotentiaries met in 1697 : the 
 building in which the Treaty of Utrecht was signed 
 remains, but no traditions linger round it. But at 
 Osnabruck, as well as at Minister, the Friedenssaal — 
 the ' Hall of the Peace' — is preserved with religious 
 care ; you are shewn, at Minister at least, the seats 
 in which the envoys sat ; and their portraits hang 
 in long lines upon the wall. 
 
 Of the diplomatic history of modern Europe the Their im- 
 
 portance as 
 
 Peace of Westphalia has commonly been regarded as an era of 
 
 diplomatic 
 
 the first great era. It has thus been chosen as history. 
 a point of departure by Koch in his Histoire des 
 
6 CONGRESS OF WEST PH All A. 
 
 Lect. i. Traites de Paix, by Wheaton in his Histoire des 
 Progres du Droit des Gens, and by those whose 
 business it has been, in this country and elsewhere, 
 to frame a preparatory course of reading for mem- 
 bers of the diplomatic profession. From that time 
 at least Europe may be said, though in a vague 
 and imperfect sense, to have formed a kind of com- 
 monwealth ; the family of States, divided amongst 
 themselves, have yet acknowledged themselves bound 
 by common ties, and have learnt to watch with 
 a vigilant anxiety over the preservation of the 
 general peace. Systems of policy have sprung up> 
 have been methodised, taught and practised : per- 
 manent alliances have been formed ; an artificial 
 balance has been protected by extensive and in- 
 tricate combinations, and a chain of great Treaties, 
 each recalling and confirming, from the Peace of 
 Westphalia downwards, those which had gone before, 
 runs down unbroken to the wars of the Eevolution. 
 It was not indeed in the seventeenth century that 
 these things had their beginning. An exact study 
 of any period of history, however short, teaches 
 us better than anything else how close is the se- 
 quence of events through successive periods, and 
 how unbroken the flow of that majestic stream 
 which seems, as we look back on it, to turn and 
 wind, to narrow and expand, to hurry on at inter- 
 vals with a sudden rush and animation, and then 
 to glide monotonously through long tracts of time. 
 
AN EPOCH IN HISTORY. <j 
 
 The policy of Mazarin towards Germany had been lect. i. 
 bequeathed to him by Eichelieu, and indeed differed 
 hardly at all from that which had been pursued 
 more or less steadily by several French sovereigns in 
 succession. It had been expressed in 1610 in the 
 address delivered by Boissise to the assembled 
 delegates at Hall, and more plainly in the confidential 
 paper submitted in 1631 to the Council of Louis 
 the Thirteenth by Kichelieu's Capuchin agent, the 
 famous Pere Joseph \ Without a clear apprehension 
 of the chain of causes which made that country what 
 it was at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, it is 
 impossible to understand the Peace of Westphalia ; 
 nor can you appreciate what it effected if you are 
 unacquainted with the earlier attempts at a per- 
 manent pacification and the reasons why they failed. 
 It was during the negotiations of this Congress 
 that the friendship between France and the United 
 Provinces gradually gave place to an estrangement 
 which was afterwards to become deadly hostility, 
 the Dutch perceiving that a useful ally was likely 
 to prove a very dangerous neighbour; and in the 
 same negotiations we may trace, though obscurely, 
 the leisurely march of that persevering ambition 
 which has transformed the Electorate of Branden- 
 burg into the Kingdom of Prussia 2 . Nevertheless it 
 
 1 Flassan, Histovre de la, Dvplomatie Frcmgcrise, ii. 273, 443. 
 
 2 The Great Elector had begun to reign in 1640. It was of 
 Brandenburg that a member of the French mission -wrote as 
 
8 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 lbct. i. is true that for practical purposes history does and 
 must arrange itself into sections or periods, and a 
 general acquaintance, accurate as far as it goes, 
 with earlier divisions is groundwork enough for an 
 exact knowledge of a later. 
 
 Their value Beside their importance in this respect, the Trea- 
 
 to the stu- x 
 
 dent - ties of Miinster and Osnabrtick have special claims 
 of their own on the attention of the class of students 
 to whom I have referred. They were the result, 
 in the first place, of a very long and intricate nego- 
 tiation in which many jarring interests were involved, 
 and all the artifices of a shifty and astute diplomacy 
 were employed on both sides. Of that diplomacy 
 they present to us a most lively and curious picture, 
 with which there is nothing else in history to com- 
 pare. They are drawn up, for the most part, with 
 a fulness and precision of language rarely to be 
 found in later documents of the same kind — a fact 
 due perhaps to the presence among the plenipoten- 
 tiaries of a large body of trained lawyers ; and they 
 have furnished valuable precedents to the treaty- 
 framers of later times, a class of draughtsmen much 
 
 follows: 'Je vois dans cette Cour tant de vastes desseius de tous 
 c6tes que je crois qu'il sera difficile de fixer ce Mercure, leur 
 fausse prudence allant a ne d6sesperer personne de leur aniitie ; 
 ce qui est un fort mauvais politique, parce que bien souvent qui 
 ne veut point avoir d'ennemis se trouve sans amis.' (Bougeant, 
 Hiatoire du Traits de Westphalie, vi. 164.) Exactly the same 
 reproach was addressed by Napoleon to Haugwitz in 1805, after 
 the battle of Austerlitz. 
 
ITS VALUE TO STUDENTS. 9 
 
 attached to precedents. For the most part, I say, lect. i. 
 because certain clauses (those which relate to the 
 cession of Alsace) have become famous for an ob- 
 scurity of expression that gave occasion to the war 
 of 1688 — an obscurity however which was probably 
 intentional, at least on the French side. Questions 
 of form, which have not wholly ceased to be in- 
 structive, were discussed with extraordinary keen- 
 ness and pertinacity, as long as both parties hoped 
 to gain better terms by protracting at once the negoti- 
 ation and the war. Lastly, our sources of information 
 respecting the Congress are unusually rich and 
 abundant. Several histories of it are extant, one by 
 a member of the Congress, a learned Benedictine, en- 
 voy of the Abbot of Gorvey. Memoirs or diaries, or 
 fragments of memoirs or diaries, of seven or eight 
 other plenipotentiaries exist, or once existed, and 
 have been used by writers who had access to them 1 . 
 Four thick folios, edited by Leclerc and published 
 at the Hague in 1725, are full of the despatches, 
 state-papers, and memoranda of the French mission — 
 a voluminous collection, which needs sifting and ar- 
 rangement, but illustrates well the mingled sagacity 
 and frivolity, the habits of copious exposition and 
 minute narration, which characterized French diplo- 
 matic correspondence in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 
 1 An account of these is given in Piitter, Geist des Westphdlischen 
 Eriedens, Part. I. Bk. I. c. v. 
 
10 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. centuries. And in Germany a mass of literature has 
 sprung up, belonging exclusively to the subject, and 
 consisting chiefly of dissertations on particular points 
 of the Treaties to which circumstances have given 
 special importance \ 
 
 It is for these reasons, I conceive, that the Treaties 
 of Westphalia have been pronounced by an excellent 
 authority, M. Koch, the best of all studies for those 
 whose attention is turned to subjects of this kind. 
 Let us consider how they may be studied with 
 advantage. 
 
 Plan on a. Treaty of Peace may be regarded in several 
 
 which they J JO 
 
 shonid be lights. It is a historical event — a link in the chain 
 
 studied. ° 
 
 of events, having causes and consequences. To de- 
 termine its position in that chain, to trace those 
 
 1 The books most readily accessible are the following : — 
 
 Bougeant's Histoire des Guerres et des Negotiations qui precederent 
 le Traite de Westphalie. Paris, 1751. 
 
 Piitter's Geist des WestpMliscIien Friedens. Gottingen, 1795 
 (a useful book). 
 
 Woltmann's Geschichte des WestpJialiscIten Friedens. Leipsic, 
 1808. 
 
 Leclerc's collection is entitled Nigociations secretes touchant la 
 Paix de Munster et d'Osnabrug. It is commonly found in the 
 form of a sequel to Dumont's Corps Diploinatique. Lists of 
 works "bearing on the subject are given in Putter and in Schoell. 
 De Garden, in his Histoire Gene'rale des Traitis de Paix, somewhat 
 enlarges Schoell's list. The general reader will find all that he 
 requires in Schoell's excellent revised and enlarged edition of Koch's 
 Histoire Abr&ge'e des Trails de Paix, and in Flassan's Histoire de 
 la Diplomatic Francaise, vol. iii. 
 
ITS VALUE TO STUDENTS. 11 
 
 causes and consequences, is to examine it historically. Lect. i. 
 It is a written instrument of a peculiar kind, creating 
 public rights and solemn engagements. To consider 
 its form and characteristics, its force and inter- 
 pretation, is the province of the jurist. Finally, it 
 remains for the politician and the professional 
 diplomatist to weigh the advantages gained or 
 lost on either side, and to acquaint themselves 
 with the means by which those advantages were 
 secured. 
 
 The thorough study of a great Treaty should 
 comprehend these several things. But this is much 
 more than we can undertake here. I propose in 
 this Lecture to make some general remarks on the 
 Congress, its character, proceedings and consequences, 
 and the light it throws on Congresses and paci- 
 fications in general. Afterwards I propose, with 
 those who may think it useful to them, to go 
 briefly but carefully through the preparatory his- 
 tory, the negotiations, the Treaties themselves, and 
 the more important of the questions to which they 
 subsequently gave rise. 
 
 The Peace of Westphalia closed, as we all know, Powers 
 
 represented 
 
 the great semi-religious war which desolated Ger- at the con- 
 gress. 
 many for thirty years, from 1618 (the date commonly 
 
 adopted) to 1648. It was a war waged in part 
 
 for the free exercise of new forms of religion, in 
 
 part for the privileges and franchises of the States 
 
12 CO.NGEESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. of the Empire against the encroaching power of the 
 House of Austria. Purely German in its origin 
 and objects, it had for many years been carried on 
 by France and Sweden, with very little assistance 
 from the Protestant princes of the Empire, but to 
 a great extent with German troops in French and 
 Swedish pay. France and Sweden therefore on one 
 side, and the Emperor on the other, were the 
 principal parties to the negotiation. But France 
 was likewise at war with Spain ; and in this 
 latter quarrel she had an ally in the Dutch, whose 
 independence was still unacknowledged by their 
 ancient master, though the war between them, re- 
 newed after the Twelve Years' Truce, had subsided 
 into a languid, and on his side a clearly hopeless, 
 struggle. And all the States of the Empire, Ca- 
 tholic as well as Protestant, had been induced by 
 the address or the importunity of the French to 
 send deputies to the spot. The King of Denmark, 
 the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua, and the Grand 
 Duke of Tuscany, were represented there. Delegates 
 from Portugal, which had newly asserted its inde^ 
 pendence, and from the revolted Catalans, came, 
 not without some personal risk, in the suite and 
 under the protection of the French. Through the 
 good offices also of the French, the Thirteen Swiss 
 Cantons, though not directly represented, were in- 
 cluded in the pacification, and their independence \ 
 of the Empire received a hesitating and reluctant 
 
STATES REPRESENTED. 13 
 
 recognition \ Johann Budolf Wetstein, Burgomaster Lect.i, 
 of Basle, whose influence over his countrymen won 
 him the nickname of 'King of the Swiss,' attended 
 the Congress to watch the interests of the Confede- 
 ration. The Pope and the Republic of Venice were 
 mediators; Fabio Chigi, afterwards known as Alex- 
 ander the Seventh, acting for the former, and one of 
 the Contarini family, who had been ambassador at 
 the chief European Courts and became Doge in 
 1676, for the latter. In short, no European Power 
 was absent, except England, Poland, Muscovy, 
 and the Ottoman Porte 2 . England, under the first 
 two Stuart sovereigns, had been prodigal of her 
 counsels and exhortations, which had been received 
 as advice usually is from those who have nothing 
 else to give ; and she was now dead to everything 
 
 1 ' Civitatem Basileam ceterosque Helvetiorum cantones in pos- 
 sessione vel quasi plenae libertatis et exemtionis ab imperio 
 esse, ac nullatenus ejusdem imperii dicasteriis et judiciis sub- 
 jectos.' Art. vi. of Treaty of Osnabriick ; cl. 61 of Treaty of 
 Minister. 
 
 2 The Kings of England and Poland were however expressly 
 included in the Treaty of Osnabriick as allies both of the Emperor 
 and of Sweden, and the Grand Duke of Muscovy as an ally of 
 Sweden. The Porte was the only Power unrepresented at Vienna 
 in 1815. Portraits of almost all the plenipotentiaries are pre- 
 served at Minister and at Osnabriick, and in a folio volume of 
 coarse but spirited Dutch engravings after Van Hiille, published 
 at Amsterdam in 1717. This is the date of my copy, but the 
 same work appears to have been published under a different 
 title at Antwerp in 1691. 
 
14 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect - i- but her own domestic dissensions. Within a few 
 
 months after the signing of the preliminaries, Charles 
 
 the First had raised his standard at Nottingham, 
 
 and the civil war had begun. 
 
 Play of if we mentally people the scene with this crowd 
 
 Interest". J A L 
 
 of actors, each animated by his own hopes and 
 apprehensions arid bent upon his own ends, if we 
 observe into what groups they naturally break and 
 into what attitudes they fall, we shall see that, 
 whilst the game they were engaged in was nice and 
 difficult, it was played upon simple principles. The 
 interests of the Emperor — of the Catholic States of 
 the Empire — of the Protestant States of the Empire 
 — of the States as a body — of particular classes of 
 them, such as the Electors or the Free Towns, 
 whose pretensions clashed with those of other classes 
 — of individual German princes who had their own 
 grievances or quarrels — of France — of Sweden — of 
 Spain — of the Dutch — of the Duke of Lorraine, were 
 all distinct from one another. Each wanted some* 
 thing which no other wanted, but which others 
 could help him to obtain ; and this intricate play 
 of great and petty forces, sometimes assisting, some- 
 times thwarting one another, called for careful study, 
 and gave room for adroit management on the part 
 of those who held the main threads of the nego- 
 tiation. But the forces which could really influence 
 the course of it were gathered in few hands, 
 France and Sweden united, with such assistance as 
 
INTRICATE PLAY OF INTERESTS. 15 
 
 they could get from the Protestant States of the lect. i. 
 Empire, were more than a match for the Emperor 
 and the Elector of Bavaria, his restless, false, and 
 able ally. France and the United Provinces, united, 
 were more than a match for Spain. The whole aim 
 therefore of the Imperialists was to detach the 
 Swedes and their allies, of Spain to detach the 
 Dutch from France — to cajole, and, if necessary, 
 buy off at any price, the less formidable of the 
 confederates, and thus isolate the ambitious Power 
 which to both branches of the House of Austria 
 was the grand object of hatred and fear. France, 
 on her part, bent her whole energies to frus- 
 trate these schemes and keep shoulder to shoulder 
 with her two chief allies. By subsidies, large 
 but jealously doled out, by all the arts of per- 
 suasion, by renewed and stringent treaties bind- 
 ing each in negotiating to keep step with the rest, 
 she laboured to interlace and knit together the 
 interests which her adversaries strove to separate. 
 The Swedes were to be watched, coaxed, and up- 
 braided on one side, and, on the other, the eight 
 wary phlegmatic Dutchmen who represented the 
 United Provinces. The German princes were like- 
 wise to be humoured by their affairs being taken into 
 consideration first ; but they were not to be allowed 
 to feel themselves secure. The interests therefore of 
 the States of the Empire and the Elector of Bavaria 
 were to be first considered and last disposed of. 
 
16 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 **qt- i- The engines employed on the other hand by the 
 Emperor and the King of Spain, were intrigue, 
 corruption, and obstinate perseverance in a system 
 of wearisome and frivolous delay. Here, in few 
 words, is the whole plot of the drama from its 
 opening to its close. It ends with a half success. 
 The Imperialists failed; the Spaniards achieved 
 their aim, concluded in January 1648 a separate 
 peace with the Dutch, and eleven years after- 
 wards obtained, at the Peace of the Pyrenees, 
 better terms than they had almost accepted at 
 Minister. 
 
 Procrasti- How these and other causes, which I will mentioii 
 
 nation on 
 
 both sides, presently, contributed to protract the negotiations, 
 a few dates will shew. As early as 1636 the soli- 
 citations of Pope Urban the Sixth, who saw in the 
 humiliation of Austria the ruin of Catholicism in 
 Germany, had extorted from the belligerents an un- 
 willing consent to treat ; and Cardinal Grinetti, as 
 mediator, had repaired to Cologne, where he was 
 joined by envoys from the Courts of Vienna and 
 
 isafe-con- Madrid. A discussion on the form of the safe-con- 
 ducts. 
 
 ducts to be granted by the Emperor began in 1637, 
 and lasted nearly five years. It was not till the 
 Preiimin- 25th December, 1641, that preliminaries fixing time 
 and place for the opening of the Congress were 
 signed — not however at Cologne, but under the 
 mediation of Denmark at Hamburg. And these were 
 not ratified, nor the safe-conducts actually exchanged, 
 
 anes 
 
DILATORINESS OF THE NEGOTIATIONS. 17 
 
 until the 28th April, 1643, six years having been Lect.i. 
 thus spent in frivolous controversies on points of 
 form. I may observe that the preliminaries were 
 simply pacta de contrahendo 1 , and were therefore 
 unlike the conventions so called in the present day, 
 which usually relate less to the form than to the 
 substantial basis of the subsequent proceedings. To 
 avoid questions of precedence and for other reasons, 
 two centres were chosen, Minister and Osnabriick, 
 cities in the Circle of Westphalia, about eighteen 
 miles apart. The French treated at Munster, the 
 Swedes at Osnabriick ; but the two Treaties were to 
 be considered as one. The plenipotentiaries of the 
 Emperor arrived at Munster in July 1643, the first 
 French envoy eight months later, on the 19th March, 
 1644. The Congress being at last constituted, public Arrival of 
 
 n n Plenipoten- 
 
 prayers tor the success of its deliberations were, by Varies. 
 the direction of the Nuncio, offered in all the 
 churches of Munster, and lasted three days, very 
 numerously and devoutly attended. A solemn and 
 touching ceremony; yet all that is solemn and 
 touching in it disappears in the narrative which 
 the French envoys, Avaux and Servien, both ac- 
 counted religious men, sent a few days after to 
 
 1 That is, they related to the time, place, and form of the nego- 
 tiations which were to follow. Formal conventions of this kind 
 have been commonly dispensed with in later times. With respect 
 to preliminaries in the present sense of the word, Lord Chatham's 
 rule is sound, that they should in substance approach as closely 
 as possible to a definitive Treaty. 
 
 C 
 
18 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 lect. i. Mazarin, and which dwells almost exclusively on 
 petty points of precedence, that the Nuncio had 
 worked till twelve o'clock at night to settle — on 
 imaginary advantages gained in the order of the pro- 
 cession and the arrangement of the chairs in church 1 . 
 But fresh difficulties arose on the production by the 
 Full plenipotentiaries of their full powers, and seven 
 
 Powers. 1 
 
 months more elapsed before these were removed. 
 Then more chicane on the part of the French ; and 
 it was not till the 11th June, 1645, three years and 
 a half after the signing of the preliminaries, that the 
 Commence- negotiation commenced by the delivery of the pro- 
 Negotia- positions of Sweden and France. On the preceding 
 
 tions. 
 
 Whitsunday, say the Acta Pads Westphalicce 2 ,Iaaa.c 
 Volmar, one of the Imperial envoys (who, by the way, 
 like both his colleagues, Nassau and Trautmannsdorf, 
 was a convert from Lutheranism), attending early 
 mass in the church of the Capuchins, found him- 
 self kneeling side by side with Avaux. The latter, 
 on rising from his knees^ courteously greeted his 
 antagonist, and wished him in French a happy 
 Whitsuntide. Volmar answered in Latin ; for Latin, 
 French, Spanish, and Italian seem to have been 
 indiscriminately used at Miinster, often in the same 
 conversation. ' Since on this day,' he said, ' a day 
 sacred to the Spirit of Peace, we have met in this 
 
 1 Nigoc. Seer. ii. 21. 
 
 2 I take the anecdote from Woltmann, i. 130. 
 
DILATORINESS OF THE NEGOTIATIONS. 19 
 
 place, it behoves us surely to turn our thoughts to Lect. i. 
 eounsels of peace.' ' I call God to witness/ exclaimed 
 Avaux, stretching out his hand towards the high 
 altar, 'that I hold nothing more dear than the 
 making of peace between us. This very week you 
 shall have our propositions.' ' Good news,' replied 
 the other, ' peace be between us ; God will be our 
 witness.' And so they parted with mutual expres- 
 sions of goodwill. 
 
 The propositions were accordingly delivered in 
 a few days, but they were frivolous and illusory. 
 They were left unanswered for upwards of two 
 months ; more than a year passed before France 
 actually stated her demands, and three years and 
 five months before the conclusion of peace. It was 
 the same to the very last. When the day came 
 on which Volmar was to announce his final accept- 
 ance of the Treaty, he had received a despatch in 
 cipher from Vienna and had lost the key. 'Let 
 him go to the Nuncio,' said the Savoyard minister, 
 ' and borrow the keys of St. Peter !' Finally, at nine 
 o'clock on the 24th October, 1648, the German 
 deputies assembled, full of joyful impatience, at the 
 palace of the Bishop of Minister, but waited three 
 hours in vain, and separated ruefully at noon. A 
 last question of etiquette was undergoing solution. 
 They were doomed however to no more disappoint- 
 ments. A fresh summons soon re-convoked them to 
 add their signatures to the momentous instrument ; 
 
 c 2 
 
20 CONGBESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. an^ in a few minutes, shouts of joy and the roar 
 Peace con- of cannon from the ramparts announced the con- 
 
 eluded. . 
 
 elusion oi peace. 
 Compara- We have witnessed during the last four years 
 promptness ^wo wars and two pacifications 1 . In December, 
 
 of modern ± . . 
 
 Diplomacy. 1355^ Great Britain, France, and Sardinia were at 
 war with Russia. About the middle of that month 
 the basis of an arrangement was proposed to the 
 Court of St. Petersburg by Austria, a neutral Power. 
 On the 19th January, 1856, it was accepted. On 
 the 26th February the plenipotentiaries of the 
 belligerents met at Paris ; on the 30th March 
 the Treaty of Peace was signed ; and the ratifica- 
 tions were exchanged on the 27th April following. 
 I need not recall the dates of Villafranca and Zurich. 
 The verification of the full powers, which took seven 
 months two centuries ago, was completed in one 
 sitting at Paris. A great contrast, certainly, in 
 favour of modern diplomacy, which has learnt at 
 least to discard frivolous questions of form and go 
 straight to business. Such delays as were resorted 
 to at Minister would be impossible now. But the 
 
 Causes of negotiations of Westphalia lingered, not merely be- 
 
 dilatoriness. , , 111 ; • • 1 
 
 cause they were conducted by a captious, peevish, 
 punctilious diplomacy, but because on neither side 
 was there any real desire for peace. The French 
 and Swedes, wearied and impoverished, but superior 
 
 1 This Lecture was delivered in the summer of 1860. 
 
CAUSES OF DILATORINESS. 21 
 
 in the field, could not renounce the hope of further l E ct. i. 
 conquests : the Emperor could not reconcile himself ~~ 
 to inevitable humiliation and loss ; and, supported 
 by the resolute obstinacy which for good and for 
 evil has always characterized his House, kept hoping 
 against hope for a favourable turn of fortune. At 
 Paris, in 1856, the first thing done was the conclusion 
 of an armistice. This clearly ought, in all such cases, 
 to be the first thing done. But at Minister the 
 mediators could induce neither side to consent to 
 a suspension of arms; the negotiation therefore 
 fluctuated from day to day with the vicissitudes of 
 the war. 'Ainsi,' says Bougeant 1 , 'rhabilete - des 
 Negociateurs dans ce traite" devoit consister, non 
 pas a conclure un traite avantageux, mais a en 
 eloigner adroitement la conclusion, en faisant tomber 
 sur leurs adversaires tout Todieux des retardemens. 
 II falloit trouver des raisons pour rejetter toutes les 
 propositions, et imaginer des ofires specieuses qui 
 ne pussent pas etre acceptees ; faire paroltre beau- 
 coup d'empressement de conclure en retardant en 
 effet la conclusion, et rendre ses adversaires seuls 
 coupables d'une faute qu'il falloit partager avec eux.' 
 
 The old cathedral city of Minister, born (as itsMunster 
 
 during the 
 
 name denotes) of one of the earliest monastic settle- Congress, 
 ments planted in Westphalia, and the seat of a line 
 
 1 ii. 198. 
 
22 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 lect. i. of prelates who were generally offshoots of the house 
 of Bavaria, became during the Congress a scene of 
 lavish display, and swarmed with men of all con- 
 ditions and almost every tongue. The principal 
 streets have undergone at this day little alteration. 
 Tall gabled houses, dating from the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries, project over the footways, which are 
 carried through a succession of low heavy arcades *. 
 The noble Rathhaus, in which the plenipotentiaries 
 met, is a conspicuous object, and commands the course 
 of the main street to the point where it is closed 
 by the huge mass of the cathedral tower. That not 
 Social fewer than a hundred coaches-and-six might be 
 
 features of 
 
 the Con- counted in the town, was one of the arguments by 
 which the French endeavoured to induce the Swedes 
 to remove thither from Osnabriick. A train of 
 
 1 The accommodation failed however to satisfy the suite of the 
 French mission. There are letters in the N&gociaticms Secretes 
 which complain that the houses, though lofty and handsome ex- 
 ternally, were mere rat-holes (rvids de rats) within; the streets 
 were filthy, ill-paved, and full of hogs day and night. They must 
 also have been in some places narrow, since a gentleman belonging 
 to the Spanish mission, in executing an elaborate bow from his 
 coach-window, struck with his large Spanish hat an earthen jar 
 standing in a shop for sale, and dashed it into pieces ; whereat, 
 says the malicious French narrator, he reddened and drew back 
 hastily to escape the owner's eye. The servants of the second 
 French envoy had a bloody affray with a personage who united 
 the offices of executioner and scavenger of the town, because, 
 while employed in the latter capacity, he persisted in passing 
 by night, with his unsavoury load, through the street in which- 
 they resided. 
 
MUNSTER DURING THE CONGRESS. 23 
 
 twelve coaches-and-six conveyed the French envoys l EC t. i. 
 themselves when they paid visits of ceremony \ But 
 this splendour was confined to a few. The great 
 majority of the deputies were German lawyers, 
 whose masters, ruined by the war, could ill afford 
 parade. Avaux, in his letters, speaks with slight 
 respect of these worthy people — 'ces docteurs,' as he. 
 sometimes calls them — as deficient in tact and 
 knowledge of the world. Himself a zealous and in- 
 dustrious public servant 2 , and sprung from a family 
 distinguished among the noblesse de la robe, he was 
 at the same time a man of wit and taste, accustomed 
 to Courts and to the best French society: the 
 portraits of him which exist express cleverness and 
 vivacity, and his correspondence proves him an ac- 
 complished letter-writer. Of Volmar, who had been, 
 slack in paying him some petty civility, he writes 
 to the Queen, ' They tell me that the Doctor has 
 only one shabby coach and pair and no attendants 
 
 1 ' I was not so ill provided,' writes Avaux to the Queen, ' but- 
 that I took a good hour to make my entry, though I had been 
 disappointed of thirty horses which are coming to me from 
 Groningen, and of some other things I wanted to show what the 
 humblest servants of your majesty are, and that the war has 
 not impoverished us.' (Negoc. Seer. ii. 6.) 
 
 2 De Ketz, who knew and respected him as that acute, profligate, 
 and candid personage did respect better men than himself, speaks 
 of him as ' tres homme de bien,' and as one who would willingly 
 have given his life to serve his country by negotiating an ad- 
 vantageous peace. He was recalled from Miinster before the. 
 conclusion of peace, and died in 1650. 
 
24 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lbct.i. for visits of ceremony 1 .' Doctor Vulteius of Hesse 
 Cassel occasioned much amusement by recommend- 
 ing Madame de Longueville to entertain herself 
 with learning German; and Paris laughed at 
 the idea of the lovely lady discoursing in this bar- 
 barous tongue with the Doctor in his violet gown. 
 She in fact beguiled her time by travelling in Ger- 
 many, but it has been thought that she imbibed at 
 Minister that taste for the excitements of politics 
 which made her, on her return home, the heroine — 
 or, as De Retz in his Memoirs prefers to call her, 
 the adventuress— of the Fronde. The Congress 
 dances, said Prince de Ligne of the diplomatists at 
 Vienna, ' mais il ne marche pas.' The Congress of 
 Westphalia danced also. A letter in the NSgo- 
 ciations SecrMes describes one of the ballets, which 
 seems to have been as tedious an affair as transactions 
 of greater moment. Nor did they abstain from 
 grosser pleasures. Intemperance had for a long time 
 been a German vice. We hear sometimes of a 
 'ziemlich starker Trunk'— a pretty hard drinking 
 bout. Count Wittgenstein, calling one morning on 
 Oxenstiern to transact business, was told that he had 
 not recovered the effect of his last night's debauch 2 . 
 Pamphlet- Pamphleteering abounded. There were frequent 
 
 eering. 
 
 1 Negoc. Seer. ii. 4. 
 
 2 The reader may recollect Temple's lively account of what he 
 had to undergo during his secret visit to the Bishop of Munster 
 in 1666. 
 
MUNSTER DURING THE CONGRESS. 25 
 
 appeals to the public opinion of Europe, and more Lect. i. 
 than one literary squib was attributed to a Bur- 
 gundian member of the Spanish mission, Antoine 
 Brum, who, in spite of his contempt for appearances,, 
 his torn coat and shabby- equipage, played an im- 
 portant part in the Congress, and was a chief agent 
 in negotiating the Spanish Treaty with Holland. 
 Presents of money 1 appear to have been offered and Bribery, 
 accepted, even in the highest places, with rather less 
 of disguise than was usual in later times. Couriers 
 were stopped and plundered of their despatches ; the Despatches 
 thick woods and wide heaths of the country, in which 
 high roads were few, afforded facilities for this irre- 
 gular way of gaining information, and there was a 
 time when the Archbishop of Bremen's roving horse 
 made travelling unsafe up to the very gates of 
 Minister. More than once a French courier had the 
 misfortune to be robbed in passing through Flanders, 
 but the Spaniards were obliging enough to forward 
 the letters, open, to their destination. Frequent dis- 
 putes about precedence and controversies of etiquette Ceremonial, 
 might be expected from an assemblage of the re- 
 presentatives of a multitude of States, many of them 
 of doubtful rank, in a proud and ceremonious age. 
 An infinite number of shifts and artifices were made 
 use of, in order to obtain, or to avoid bestowing, 
 small distinctions of place or address, to which the 
 
 1 ' Muneribus demulcere ' is Pufendorf 's phrase. 
 
26 GONGMESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 I/ect. i. current codes of ceremonial attached a certain value.- 
 The most pertinacious sticklers for precedence were 
 the Dutch, who, introduced for the first time into 
 such dignified society, had a position to establish, 
 and insisted on being treated on an equality with 
 the old and not less jealous Kepublic of Venice. 
 Savoy claimed the same honours as Holland. The 
 Electors of the Empire, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, 
 Genoa (little foreseeing the position to which within 
 two centuries she was destined to descend), would 
 not give place to Savoy. Thus the title of ' Ex- 
 cellency/ Italian in its origin, unknown before the 
 end of the fifteenth century, and at first assumed 
 only by the ambassadors of France and Spain, became 
 by degrees common to all ministers plenipotentiary l . 
 But it was only after a voluminous correspondence, 
 and from a sense of the importance of securing his 
 good graces, that the Venetian envoy obtained (to 
 his * extreme joy,' says the historian) the honour of 
 being conducted, when he visited the French, to the 
 door of his coach, instead of the foot of the staircase 8 . 
 There was much correspondence on the point whether 
 
 1 ' We might possibly do something with one another,' com- 
 plained in his vexation the envoy from Brandenburg, ' if there 
 were no such thing as this accursed Excellencyship (wenn 
 nur der gottlose Excellenz nicht ware).' Putter, Geist des West. 
 Fr. p. 61. 
 
 2 Avaux's version of the matter is given in one of his letters 
 to the Queen, Nigot. Seer. ii. 6. 
 
CONGRESSES IN GENERAL. 27 
 
 the Emperor should allow the title of ' Majesty' to Lect. i. 
 the King of France. Trifles of this kind long retained 
 their importance among diplomatists, particularly in 
 Germany. They are now practically got rid of, by 
 the more unceremonious habits of society, by a more 
 rational sense of the value of etiquette — in fine, by 
 a variety of compromises and contrivances, the first 
 beginnings of which are to be found among the 
 records of the Congress of Westphalia. 
 
 Paullo rnajora canamus. Has this great Con- 
 gress, the first of a line which has stretched through 
 two centuries, no higher lessons for us than these ? 
 What is a Congress 1 what are its powers % what are 
 its forms of proceeding 1 
 
 A Congress is an assemblage of representatives what a 
 
 Congress is. 
 
 of several independent States^ met to treat or to 
 consult on matters of common interest. It may be 
 attended by sovereigns, or by envoys, who are not, 
 strictly speaking, ambassadors but ministers pleni- 
 potentiary — a distinction not clearly understood at 
 the time of the Congress of Westphalia. A sovereign 
 has of course no business at a Congress unless he 
 is really such — unless the power and interests of 
 the State he assumes to represent are substan- 
 tially as well as nominally lodged in his hands and 
 subject to his control. Coercive authority a Congress 
 can have none over States which are not parties 
 to it, nor over a minority of those which are so. 
 
28 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. And in the regulation of its proceedings it has no 
 other guide than convenience 1 . 
 it is bound The forms of proceeding adopted at Congresses 
 
 to no uni- x 7 rrn • i 
 
 form mode have in fact been infinitely various. They varied 
 
 of proceed- 
 ing- even at Munster and Osnabruck. At Munster the 
 
 Nuncio and the Venetian envoy were mediators. 
 Articles in writing and under seal were delivered on 
 each side to the mediators, who, having read them, 
 communicated them to the other side. At a later 
 stage Mazarin sent instructions to proceed vivd voce, 
 commenting sharply on the dilatory and unsatis- 
 factory character of a negotiation by notes, which 
 he affirmed to be entirely new, and adding another; 
 and, to his mind, a stronger, objection. Liter a scripta 
 manet : in oral discussion you may be as unreason- 
 able as you please, and can always withdraw from 
 an untenable position without loss of credit ; but 
 you commit yourself by resorting to pen and ink 2 . 
 
 1 The word ' Conference,' which is applicable to any meeting for 
 discussion, has during the last thirty or forty years been used, pro- 
 bably as more flexible and unostentatious, to designate meetings 
 which would formerly have been called Congresses. The latter 
 term will probably be reserved in future, if employed at all, for 
 assemblages extraordinarily numerous, or of extraordinary im- 
 portance. 
 
 2 ' La plus forte raison qui a toujours oblige d'en user comme 
 Ton marque c'est que les declarations que Ton fait par e"crit en- 
 gagent trop, ce qui n'arrive pas lorsque les instances se font de vive 
 voix, parce qu'eneore qu'on demande ou refuse des choses extrava- 
 gahtes l'adresse des Me"diateurs fait enfin joindre les Parties, et Ton 
 peut se relacher sans de"chet de reputation.' (Nggoc. Seer. ii. 46.) 
 
CONGRESSES IN GENERAL. 29 
 
 A "Consideration which would be less important at the Lect. i. 
 present day than it was at Minister and Osnabriick, 
 where the whole negotiation was carried on as people 
 drive a bargain in Italy or Spain, and the terms 
 on which the parties really meant to insist were 
 approached by degrees under cover of a series of 
 feints and artifices. At Osnabriick there were no 
 mediators (the Swedes having got rid of the King 
 
 At Nymegen, where the French plenipotentiaries refused to 
 negotiate in writing, they gaye another reason. ' They were posi- 
 tive to give no answer in writing nor to receive any, alleging both 
 reason and example for their opinion ; this from the practice of the 
 Munster-treaty, that from the danger of the invective style or lan- 
 guage that are apt to enter into the writings of each party upon 
 such occasions. The allies were for some time as peremptory in 
 their resolution of delivering their answers in writing; but both 
 at last agreed upon the expedient we proposed of dictating to us 
 what they intended Bhould be said to the other party, of our 
 setting the substance down in writing, and reading it over to them 
 first who dictated to us, so as they might be judges whether we had 
 rightly apprehended and expressed their meaning, and yet the 
 thing might go in our style and not in theirs, by which all sharp- 
 ness and provocation would be avoided.' (Temple's Memoirs from, 
 1672 to 1679. Works, i. 323.) 
 
 Bacon had written, in his 47th Essay, 'It is generally better 
 to deal by speech than by letter ; and by the mediation of a third 
 than by a man's self. Letters are good when a man would draw 
 an answer by. letter back again ; or when it may serve for a man's 
 justification afterwards to produce his own letter ; or where it may 
 be danger to be interrupted or heard by pieces. To deal in person 
 is good, when a man's face breedeth regard, as commonly . with 
 inferiors ; or in tender cases, where a man's eye upon the coun- 
 tenance of him with whom he speaketh may give him a direction 
 how far to go ; and generally, where a man will reserve to himself 
 liberty either to disavow or to expound.' 
 
30 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 lect. i. of Denmark, who was unfriendly to them, by de- 
 
 claring war against him) ; the propositions, still in 
 writing, were exchanged directly, a secretary of lega- 
 tion, attended by two cavaliers d'ambassade, carrying 
 them to and fro. At Nymegen, in 1676, the King 
 of England and the Pope undertook to mediate ; at 
 Byswyk, the King of Sweden. Sometimes there 
 have been general conferences (short minutes of each 
 being drawn up at or after the end of the sitting, 
 and called a protocol) ; sometimes partial ones ; some- 
 times none at all, the whole negotiation being con- 
 ducted by the interchange of written notes. It is, and 
 must always be, a simple question of convenience, 
 and in each case that method will be best which 
 best provides at once for deliberation and despatch, 
 for precision of statement and free and temperate 
 discussion. 
 
 it has no That a Congress, however numerous, has no pro- 
 coercive . . /•mi 
 authority, per coercive authority, needs no proot. Ine power 
 
 of a majority to bind a minority exists only where 
 it has been created by law or by voluntary agree- 
 ment. But no independent State ever did, and it 
 is unlikely that any such State ever will, submit 
 its rights and interests to the vote of an assemblage 
 of its fellows. On the contrary, the rule has become 
 firmly established that even engagements deliberately 
 made by a plenipotentiary who has neither exceeded 
 his powers nor disobeyed his instructions are not 
 absolutely binding till ratified by the sovereign 
 
CONGRESSES IN GENERAL. 31 
 
 whom he represents ; and this rule, which sets or- Lkot. i. 
 dinary legal analogies at defiance, has been dictated 
 by the imperious sense that the interests confided 
 to the sovereign's keeping cannot be too jealously 
 guarded. No power, therefore of collective decision 
 is lodged in a Congress, for such a power cannot 
 be exercised otherwise than by a majority : a dis<- 
 sentient cannot be overruled ; the rights of an absent 
 party cannot be overridden ; such determinations as 
 may be arrived at are the determinations only of 
 those who accept them, and they are neither more 
 nor less valid than they would have been if the 
 assembled ministers had stayed at home. The fact 
 of their having emanated from a Congress clothes 
 them, in the view of International Law, with no 
 peculiar sanctity, and arms them with no tran- 
 scendent force. 
 
 There has been a reluctance, it is true, to beP is P os ^ ion 
 
 to ascribe 
 
 content with this plain view of the subject. The authority to 
 
 1 "a Congress. 
 
 show of power which surrounds a Congress suggests 
 the idea of authority — that is, of a right to exercise 
 power. The want of authority, where it does not 
 exist, is often felt by those who would themselves 
 be extremely unwilling to submit to it, and this 
 is eminently the case among civilized nations. For 
 there is a constant tendency among them towards 
 the formation of an organized society ; and this 
 tendency, springing from their various intercourse 
 with one another, and from the substantial interests 
 
32 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. -which are really common to them all, and increasing 
 with their advance in civilization, is as constantly 
 arrested by the want of those things which are 
 necessary to the social condition — Law, in the ordi- 
 nary sense of that word, and the means of making, 
 interpreting, and enforcing Law. These notions, so 
 familiar and so thoroughly established in the interior 
 of each separate community, we are unable to apply 
 to that larger commonwealth of which States are 
 the immediate units, but to which in truth we all 
 belong ; and their place has to be supplied by lame 
 and imperfect substitutes. And thus the absence of 
 an authority to make rules, to arbitrate, to stamp 
 as valid transfers of territory and changes of pos- 
 session, is from time to time keenly felt, now by 
 one Power, now by another, and a semblance at least 
 of the thing desired is sought in a Congress. A 
 medley of claims and grievances, some of a public, 
 some of a merely private character, were carried — 
 vainly indeed, for the most part — in the seventeenth 
 century to Minister, in the eighteenth to Utrecht, 
 and in the nineteenth to Vienna, as to great tri- 
 bunals competent to entertain all complaints and 
 redress all wrongs. And there have been causes 
 since 1815 which have helped to foster this lofty 
 estimate of the powers of a Congress, such as the 
 tendency, observable everywhere, towards the cen- 
 tralisation of force, false inferences drawn from the 
 history of the Congress of Vienna, and the position 
 
CONGBESSES IN GENERAL. 33 
 
 of general superintendence which the great Powers lect. i. 
 assumed after the fall of Napoleon and continued 
 to assert as long as they could agree. Nevertheless 
 it cannot be too clearly understood that the use 
 of a Congress lies, not in the superior weight or 
 authority with which its acts are invested, but 
 in the facilities which it affords for coming to an 
 agreement : it is only one out of many modes 
 of negotiating, and its functions are to remove dif- 
 ficulties, settle details, and bring about the accession 
 of parties having various interests to one set of 
 terms. 
 
 As a mode of negotiating, it has some obvious Advantages 
 
 and disad- 
 
 advantages, which the invention of the electric vantages of 
 
 ° this mode 
 
 telegraph has diminished but not destroyed. Dif- of negoti- 
 ficulties which are found insurmountable in a cor- 
 respondence often disappear in an interview, and 
 in every negotiation, public or private, more than 
 half the work is done when the parties have been 
 brought to the point and forced to understand one 
 another, and it has been ascertained what each really 
 wants and with what terms he is prepared to close. 
 But the advantages are probably less than we might 
 suppose them to be, and they are coupled with some 
 quite as obvious inconveniences. A meeting of 
 twenty or a dozen persons is not an interview ; oral 
 discussion loses in so large a circle its quick and 
 flexible movement; and, in bringing face to face 
 
 D 
 
34 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. the representatives of a crowd of separate interests, 
 in offering to every slumbering grievance and obscure 
 pretension an opportunity of making itself heard, 
 there are other risks beside that liability to be smv 
 prised or tired into ill-advised concessions against 
 which very able men find it sometimes difficult to 
 be completely on their guard. The two temptations 
 which almost inevitably beset a knot of considerable 
 Powers assembled by representation in one place— 
 the temptations to interfere where they have no 
 right, and to contract engagements in enforcing 
 which they have no substantial interest — are the 
 more insidious because the cases in which a moral 
 right to interfere exists, and the quantity of interest 
 sufficient to support a Treaty, can never be defined 
 by general rules. Such questions, like most other 
 questions of conduct, must be settled, as they arise, 
 by an . exercise of judgment, assisted by current 
 opinion and past experience. The constitution of 
 Germany has been twice settled at a European 
 Congress; the first time, with the assistance and 
 under the predominant influence of France — the 
 second, with the assistance and subject to the ap- 
 proval of France, Eussia, and Great Britain. France, 
 in the seventeenth century, was pursuing her fixed 
 and avowed purpose of keeping Germany disunited ; 
 the three great Powers, in the nineteenth, were 
 thinking only of what they called the equilibrium 
 of Europe. And not only has foreign influence had 
 
CONGRESSES IN GENERAL. 35 
 
 a share in framing successive constitutions for Ger- lect. i. 
 
 many ; foreign Powers have been parties to the in- 
 struments in which those constitutions have been 
 embodied. France, by becoming a party to the 
 Treaty of Minister, acquired a perpetual claim to 
 interfere in German affairs ; the Federal Act of 
 1815, a transaction purely and exclusively German, 
 was stripped of that character by being thrust into 
 the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna. What 
 was really best, as I conceive, for France in the 
 seventeenth century — what was certainly best for 
 Europe in the nineteenth — was, that Germany should 
 be constituted in the manner most advantageous to 
 herself, and of that the best judges were the Ger- 
 mans ; Treaties which may be construed as giving 
 a voice in that matter to Great Britain, Russia, or 
 France, are delusive, and, because they are delusive, 
 mischievous. For of this we may be sure, that men 
 will always insist, when they are strong enough to 
 do it, on the right to manage their own affairs. 
 But I am sliding into a digression which would 
 carry me far beyond the limits of my subject : let 
 me only add, before returning to the Treaties them- 
 selves, one or two remarks which the history of past 
 Congresses suggests to the reader. The determin- 
 ations of a Congress, whatever its numbers or com- 
 position, are practically those of the strongest among 
 its members, strength being understood to mean, 
 not mere bulk, but foree capable of being readily 
 
 D 2 
 
36 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. exerted coupled with resolution to use it. Questions 
 in which they are keenly interested are settled, if 
 they can agree, and settled according to their in- 
 terests. Questions which interest them feebly or 
 not at all are apt to be set aside, or receive languid 
 attention. And thus a great Congress, with its im- 
 posing array of envoys, most of them fruitlessly 
 busy or waiting for opportunities which never arrive, 
 and its parade of public conferences at which nothing 
 is done except by previous arrangement, commonly 
 leaves much dissatisfaction behind; and the history 
 of Congresses is on the whole eminently unsatis- 
 factory. They have seldom done great or lasting 
 good; sometimes they have done serious evil; again 
 and again they have done nothing at all. The 
 questions they were called to solve have been dis- 
 posed of in other ways, as by direct communications, 
 exchanged in writing or through confidential agents, 
 between the Governments chiefly concerned : the 
 plenipotentiaries have been employed in chaffering 
 about details, while the true centre of negotiation 
 was elsewhere. The ability of such a body to do 
 either good or harm is in fact less than it at first 
 sight appears. The giant strength which, if united, 
 it would really wield, is chained down, broken, and 
 paralyzed by mutual distrust and jealousy, by par- 
 ticular engagements and conflicting interests ; and 
 these causes, while they incapacitate it on the one 
 hand for the assumption of a tyranny, and on the 
 
TREATIES OF PEACE. 37 
 
 other for those beneficent oflices which might belong lect. i. 
 to a great international Court of Appeal, throw open 
 the door to meaner agencies, to intrigue, finesse, and 
 the profitable exercise of mere personal adroitness, 
 to selfish coalitions, to bargains and jobs on a great 
 scale. These considerations, far as I admit them 
 to be from exhausting the subject, point to a prac- 
 tical conclusion. A clear previous understanding 
 as to the nature of the questions to be discussed, 
 and a reasonable prospect of their being discussed 
 with advantage, are conditions ordinarily essential 
 to every meeting for the transaction of business. A 
 Congress is distinguished from other meetings chiefly 
 by the magnitude of the issues it has to deal with ; 
 for all things that concern nations are great, and 
 of these only the more important would commonly 
 be held to justify a recourse to this mode of 
 settlement. The risks which wait on failure are 
 always serious, often very formidable, and they de- 
 mand that the probability of success should be high, 
 the common interest in coming to an agreement 
 strong, and the limits within which conflicting in- 
 terests may be pressed pretty well ascertained. 
 
 The work of the Westphalian Congress was a General 
 Treaty of Peace. A Treaty of Peace, if you dissect Treaty of 
 it, commonly divides itself into several distinct parts. Framework 
 First, there are what diplomatists have called the Treaties of 
 ' general articles' — a declaration that peace is restored, 
 
38 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 lbct. i. and a clause or clauses of 'amnesty;' the latter 
 phrase, when used in this connection, embracing, 
 beside what we commonly understand by it, the 
 restitution of such conquests as are not intended to 
 be retained and of rights which the war has sus- 
 pended or interrupted, and the release of prisoners on 
 both sides. Secondly, there are the provisions judged 
 necessary to remove the causes out of which the 
 war arose, redress the grievances complained of, and 
 prevent the recurrence of them. This is the one 
 essential thing which the negotiators have to do, 
 and the pacification is hollow and imperfect if they 
 fail to do it cleanly and effectually. Thirdly, there 
 is the indemnity or satisfaction exacted by the 
 stronger belligerent for the injury sustained and for 
 the cost of the war. Lastly, provision is made for 
 the due execution of the foregoing stipulations. 
 Every Treaty of Peace does not contain all of these, 
 much less do they uniformly occur in the same 
 order ; but of one which is complete in all its parts 
 this is the general scheme. Indemnity or satisfaction 
 there may be none, if the conqueror's moderation, 
 or his prudence, dissuade him from demanding any, 
 or if the balance of strength has been too nearly 
 even to render such a demand practicable. There 
 is none, for instance, in our latest example of a 
 pacification, the Treaty of Paris 1856, the body of 
 which is wholly composed of articles framed with 
 care to annihilate those assumed causes of quarrel 
 
CESSIONS TO FRANCE. a9 
 
 between Russia and the Western Powers which had i^ct. i. 
 been previously summed up in the famous 'Four 
 Points/ The two Treaties of Westphalia, which for 
 our present purpose may be regarded as one, have 
 all the parts which I have enumerated arranged in 
 regular sequence, digested into articles which are 
 broken up into subordinate clauses, and thus worked 
 -out in minute detail \ The article of amnesty and 
 •restitutions has fifty-seven distinct clauses, and that 
 which relates to religious grievances fifty-eight, and 
 all these are identical in both Treaties. I shall at 
 present refer only, and that very generally, to the 
 two groups of articles which embraced, in the lan- 
 guage of the Congress, ' the removal of grievances,' 
 and ' the satisfaction of the Crowns.' 
 
 The satisfaction of the two Crowns of France ' The 
 
 Satisfaction 
 
 and oweden, though it does not come first in the °f the 
 
 . Crowns.' 
 
 Treaty, had filled the most important place in the a. Cessions 
 previous negotiations. When that was settled, and 
 not before, peace was virtually made. For the States 
 of the Empire, the clients and reluctant allies of 
 France, speedily discovered that, though their great 
 patroness had generously waged war for an idea — 
 though she had lavished blood and treasure to abate 
 the power of the House of Austria and to secure 
 
 1 The arrangement is less distinct in the Treaty of Miinster 
 than in that of Osnabriick. 
 
40 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 leot. i. a federal constitution to Germany — she was not the 
 less determined to exact payment for her services 
 in hard tangible coin. 'Bien/ says the Jesuit his- 
 torian Bougeant, in whom the Jesuit is often mas- 
 tered by the Frenchman — ' rien n'6toit plus glorieux 
 a la France que d'avoir pris les armes pour r^tablir les 
 Princes opprim^s, deTendre ses Allies, et rendre au 
 Corps Germanique son ancienne liberty ; elle y trou- 
 voit meme un assez grand int^ret, qui e'toit d'affoiblir 
 par-la la puissance de la Maison d'Autriche ; mais il 
 n'est point d'usage parmi les Princes de rendre de si 
 grands services a des Etats voisins sans en tirer 
 quelque avantage personnel, et le parfait d6sinteresse- 
 ment est une vertu que le Cardinal Mazarin ne connois- 
 soit pas V Her first appearance in the same character 
 ninety years before had been signalised by the seizure 
 of the Three Bishoprics, scattered patches of valuable 
 territory within the Duchy of Lorraine, on the upper 
 waters of the Meuse and Moselle, held by the sees 
 of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and including the old free 
 city of Metz. The reward she now bargained for 
 consisted in the recognition of those conquests and 
 the cession of all the rich plain between the Vosges 
 and the Rhine 2 , of Brisach on its farther bank, 
 
 1 iii. 59. 
 
 2 The ambiguities in which the cession of Alsace is enveloped 
 are well discussed in Schoell. I agree with him that it is im- 
 possible to assign to the article and act of cession any clear and 
 consistent meaning. They are evidently the joint handiwork of 
 
CESSIONS TO SWEDEN. 41 
 
 (with the right of keeping a garrison in Philipps- Lect. i. 
 burg), and of Pignerol, far down on the southern 
 slopes of the Alps. Antwerp, Mentz 1 , and Aless- 
 andria were regarded by the first Napoleon as the 
 three keys of his empire. Brisach was the Mentz 
 of the seventeenth century ; it had for many years 
 been coveted as the fortress which opened or closed 
 the way to central and southern Germany 2 , and 
 Pignerol as commanding in like manner the apr 
 proach to Italy. It was of Pignerol that Henry 
 the Fourth had used to say, it was a good thing 
 to have a door of access to your neighbour's house. 
 Mazarin, at the time when he got Brisach and 
 Pignerol, had not yet abandoned the project of wrest- 
 ing Antwerp with the whole Spanish Netherlands 
 from Spain. That project was not surrendered till the 
 conclusion of the Peace of the Pyrenees, and then only 
 to be revived at the first favourable opportunity. 
 
 persons who had opposite aims and did all they respectively could 
 to bend the same instrument to opposite constructions. Servien's 
 dictum, 'que Ton aurait toujours assez de droits pour les faire 
 valoir avec l'epee,' was, no doubt, a just expression of the French 
 view of the matter. The previous state of possession in the dis- 
 puted district is well described by Putter, Geist des Westphdlischen 
 Friedens, Part II. Bk. I. c. vi. 
 
 1 On the military importance of Mentz, see Knesebeck's paper 
 in the Appendix to vol. iv. of Stein's. Lebm by Pertz. This paper 
 was prepared with reference to the possible separation of Germany 
 into a northern half and a southern. 
 
 2 The cession of Brisach became eventually the ' noeud de la 
 paix.' (Bougdant, iv. 253, where the artifices by which it was 
 extorted are described.) 
 
42 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect.i. Sweden, for her share, acquired large German ter r 
 
 h. Cessions ritories and a place among the States of the Empire, 
 
 to Sweden. r ° L 
 
 and took among the great Powers of Europe a rank 
 to which these new possessions, added to her recent 
 conquests from Poland, Muscovy, Denmark, and Nor- 
 way, amply entitled her, but which, in little more 
 than half a century, she was destined to lose. Long 
 ago she has retired to her natural position, that of 
 a peninsular and purely Scandinavian Power. The 
 subsequent history, however, of both the French and 
 the Swedish conquests you may read in Schoell, 
 and it will enable you to form your opinion of 
 the policy which made those conquests objects of 
 ambition. 
 
 • The Re- At this heavy price Germany bought the objects 
 
 moval of _ . . 
 
 Grievances/ for which during thirty years she had given herself 
 ment of up to the unbridled brutality of mercenary armies 
 connected and to devastation by sword and fire. She obtained 
 gion in the removal of her ' gravamina/ political and reli- 
 gious ; and, whatever may be thought of the trans- 
 action as a whole, there can be no doubt that the 
 pacification, so far as it dealt with the original causes 
 of the war, was effectual and complete. For Ger- 
 many it did two things. It fixed and petrified in 
 a remarkable manner the relations, till then fluid 
 and unsettled, of .Catholicism and Protestantism to- 
 wards each other. The rude expedient of picking 
 out a particular year (1624)— nay, where this was 
 
SETTLEMENT OF RELIGIOUS GRIEVANCES. 43 
 
 practicable, a particular day in that year (the 1st of Lect. i. 
 January) — and restoring and perpetuating the state 
 of possession which had existed at that point of time, 
 was applied to ecclesiastical foundations and church 
 property of every kind, and, so far as it could be done, 
 to all the various objects of contention for which 
 Catholics and Protestants had been struggling. 
 Bishoprics and chapters (not included in the mass 
 of church property confiscated to indemnify Bran- 
 denburg, Mecklenburg, and Brunswick for what 
 they had to resign to Sweden), parish-churches, hos- 
 pitals, schools, were to remain for ever in Catholic 
 or in Protestant hands, or partly Catholic and partly 
 Protestant 1 , as they had chanced to be in the 'defini- 
 tive year.' What at that epoch, selected arbitrarily 
 though after long dispute, had been written in sand, 
 was cut in stone by the Peace of Westphalia. In 
 the Diet of the Empire the equality of the two 
 creeds was secured by the 'jus eundi in partes/ or 
 Itionsrecht, which, in all matters concerning reli- 
 gion directly or indirectly, superseded the power 
 of the majority, resolved the whole Diet into two 
 ' corpora/ as they were called, Catholic and Pro- 
 testant, and left the matter in dispute to be settled 
 by arrangement or not at all 2 / For individual free- 
 
 1 Thus to the close of the last century there were six Catholic 
 Canons out of the sixteen at Halherstadt, and eleven out of eighteen 
 at Minden. 
 
 2 The clause extended this right still further, viz. to all matters 
 
44 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 liner, i. dom of opinion very imperfect provision was made. 
 Where in the normal year there had been Pro- 
 testants in a Catholic territory, or Catholics in a 
 Protestant, enjoying either the public or the private 
 exercise of their religion, they were to retain the 
 same privileges in future. Where this had not been 
 the case, toleration was to be the rule in future ; 
 dissidents were to be deprived of no civil rights, 
 and permitted to say their prayers at home — 'con- 
 scientia libera domi devotioni suae privatim vacare.' 
 But even these provisions did not extend to the 
 hereditary dominions of the House of Austria. Nor 
 did the Treaty prohibit — indeed it implicitly sanc- 
 tioned — those enforced emigrations which have more 
 than once excited in other European countries such 
 lively feelings of compassion and indignation. When 
 in 1685 the inhabitants of the Tefereggenthal, of all 
 the upland valleys of the Tyrol the most primitive 
 and secluded, were driven from their homes — when 
 in 1731 thirty thousand peasants from the vale of 
 the Salza were expelled at once to seek new homes 
 in Prussia, Holland, and America, no appeal could be 
 made to the German charter of religious freedom. 
 
 'ubi Status tanquam unum corpus considerari nequeunt' — for 
 instance, as Zacharia suggests, wherever ' jura singulorum ' were 
 in question. The Protestant States had recourse to the Itionsrecht 
 at the beginning of the Seven Years' War, when it was proposed by 
 Austria to put Frederick the Great, as Elector of Brandenburg, 
 under the ban of the Empire. 
 
SETTLEMENT OF RELIGIOUS GRIEVANCES. 45 
 
 Nor, although the ' Reformed ' or Calvinist sect was leot. t 
 admitted for the first time to a place beside ' those 
 of the Confession of Augsburg/ was any protection 
 accorded to such Protestants as might not con- 
 form to either of these two recognized forms of 
 Protestantism. 
 
 To understand this part of the Treaties of West- observa- 
 tions on 
 
 phalia it is necessary to take into account the state tnis - 
 of feeling which existed at the close of the Thirty 
 Years' War, and the causes which had produced it. 
 Time had transformed and weakened the great 
 religious movement out of which the war arose, 
 and it had given way to a passionate desire for rest 
 and peace. Settled ideas, common to both Catholics 
 and Protestants, about the rights and duties of the 
 temporal ruler in matters of church government, had 
 been undermined and shaken, but not overthrown, 
 by the active principle of the Reformation, the 
 principle of private judgment. A long struggle, 
 animated at once by very high and very sordid 
 motives, and carried on with the coarsest instruments, 
 had left its effects behind ; whilst in every part 
 of Germany the unchecked operation, from an early 
 period, of causes which were by no means confined 
 to Germany had entangled, in a manner unknown 
 elsewhere, ecclesiastical powers with temporal, and, 
 by aggrandizing Churchmen, had injured and de- 
 based religion. The chief sees and many of the 
 lesser ones had become temporal principalities; 
 
46 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lbct.i. the chapters were closed except to men of noble 
 birth ; the bishops were younger sons of the greatest 
 houses 1 . From 1562 to 1760 an unbroken succession 
 of Bavarian princes held the Archbishopric of Cologne, 
 often uniting with it other sees. For a long time 
 before the Peace of Westphalia the ducal house 
 of Schleswig-Holstein had given bishops to Liibeck, 
 that of Mecklenburg to Schwerin, that of Brunswick 
 Liineburg to Halberstadt, those of Schwerin and 
 Brunswick alternately to Batzeburg. A Brandenburg 
 prince had occupied the Archbishopric of Magdeburg; 
 a prince (afterwards king) of Denmark that of Bremen, 
 till it was conquered by the Swedes ; and a kinsman 
 of the Elector of Bavaria, sprung from an unequal 
 marriage, was driven from Osnabriick to make room 
 for a bastard son of Gustavus Adolphus 2 . The records 
 
 1 According to iEneas Sylvius (quoted by Kanke in the Intro- 
 duction to his History of the Reformation), the Popes encouraged 
 this practice, as a means of keeping the chapters under control. 
 
 2 He in turn was deprived by the Peace and consoled with a sum 
 of money, and it was settled that the see should in future be 
 held by a Catholic and a Protestant by turns, the Protestant being 
 always a younger son of the family of Brunswick -Liineburg and hav- 
 ing no ecclesiastical character or functions. This was all that the 
 industry of the Bavarian bishop, Franz Wilhelm von Wartenburg, 
 could secure, and the reward of the eighty-five visits which he 
 reckoned himself to have paid to the French plenipotentiaries. 
 Under this singular arrangement, which endured for a century 
 and a half, the town and territory of Osnabriick, with the titular 
 dignity of Bishop, were held by several princes of the Liineburg or 
 Hanoverian line. The father of George the First of England was 
 a younger son and Bishop of Osnabriick during the earlier part 
 
SETTLEMENT OF RELIGIOUS GRIEVANCES. 47 
 
 of English episcopacy and the rolls of our great mo- lect. i. 
 nasteries are full of homely village surnames, names 
 of small gentry, yeomen, and even peasants. How 
 different a tale is told by the walls of a German ca- 
 thedral like Wiirzburg or Mentz 1 ! The ecclesiastical 
 duties of these personages were commonly performed 
 by deputy ; and the canons, when resident, were 
 employed in administering the civil government, in 
 which they had generally a much larger share than 
 the bishop himself. The bargainings for this bishopric 
 or that abbey, the hagghngs about one stall more or 
 less at Strasburg or Halberstadt, which occur in the 
 negotiations for the Peace, were defended on the ex^ 
 press ground that these endowments had been founded 
 
 of his married life; he eventually became head of his house 
 and Elector of Hanover. George the First himself died in his 
 carriage on his road to Osnabruck, then the residence of his 
 younger brother. The Duke of York, second son of George the 
 Third, was the last reigning Bishop. By the Kecess of 1803 the 
 territory was assigned to Brunswick-Liineburg absolutely : it was 
 subsequently included in the short-lived kingdom of Westphalia, 
 and after 1815 formed part of the kingdom of Hanover. 
 
 It has been common in other countries for church-preferments 
 of certain kinds to be conferred as payment for service rendered in 
 secular employments, or to be obtained by family or court interest, 
 or bestowed as gratifications to political adherents, the practice 
 varying with the habits and the current morality of the time. 
 The great see of Paris was held, as a bishopric and afterwards 
 as an archbishopric, by cadets of the Gondy family in succession 
 for nearly a hundred years. But there is a difference between the 
 injury which these practices do to religion, and the injury done to it 
 by institutions such as grew up in Germany, and would have grown 
 up, but for counteracting circumstances, in England and France. 
 
48 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect.i. by the German princes and nobles for the support 
 of their posterity in their own rank. ' A family/ says 
 a cautious and dispassionate writer in the eighteenth 
 century 1 , ' which after many generations has once the 
 good fortune to see an ecclesiastic of their house raised 
 to the dignity of a Prince, is very often relieved from 
 the incumbrance of debts, which have been accumu- 
 lating perhaps for more than a century, or else raised 
 to such easy circumstances that they may promise 
 themselves a flourishing state for centuries to come ; 
 and even if they do not succeed to the mitre, yet 
 canons in many foundations may possess at the 
 same time such profitable benefices that, if they 
 are only moderate economists and on friendly terms 
 with their relations, they may always leave them 
 considerable legacies and procure them other advan- 
 tages.' Secularisation — the word is of French inven- 
 tion, and appears to have been first uttered by the 
 French plenipotentiaries in 1646 — was the inevitable 
 destiny of these anomalous institutions, in which the 
 world had certainly a far larger part than the 
 Church. Of those which survived 1648 all perished 
 in 1803, at which period they were computed (ab- 
 beys and lesser foundations included) to exercise 
 dominion over more than 2,000,000 souls. Generally 
 speaking, though there were exceptions of all kinds, 
 
 1 Putter, Historical Development of the present Political Con- 
 stitution qftlie Germanic Empire (translated by Dornford), ii. 187, 
 
SETTLEMENT OF RELIGIOUS GRIEVANCES. 49 
 
 it was the lax and not illiberal rule of men unstained L =c T - 1- 
 by gross vices, with some care for education and 
 some taste for literature and art, but fond of ease 
 and of money, absorbed in family interests, and with 
 no adequate inducements to govern well. 
 
 The importance of this settlement, and the in- 1*9 effects. 
 fluence it has since exercised upon the religious 
 condition of Germany, were undoubtedly very great. 
 The main struggle of the war — the struggle whether 
 Protestantism, in those German countries where it had 
 not been already trampled out, should live or die — 
 had been decided by the early triumphs of Gustavus 
 Adolphus and the final exhaustion of the Impe- 
 rialists. The Peace ratified that victory ; and it 
 assigned to each of the rival Confessions the posses- 
 sion of a mass of endowments, rights, and authorities, 
 ecclesiastical and civil, and made that possession 
 secure. The contest between them, so far as it 
 was a contest for these things or was animated by 
 the hope of obtaining them, ceased with the Peace 
 of Westphalia. We shall not be disposed to under- 
 estimate the effects of such a settlement if we 
 observe how small in different European countries, 
 during the last three hundred years, has been the 
 ability of either Protestantism or Catholicism to win 
 ground from the other — how inconsiderable are the 
 conquests actually made by either of them — how 
 little power, under ordinary circumstances, each has 
 shewn to make head, I do not say against resolute 
 
50 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. unflinching oppression, but against such forces as 
 habit and education, the influence of property, and 
 mere aversion to change. The surge of a great 
 religious movement overwhelms such forces, and 
 sweeps away whatever rests merely on the support 
 they lend. Protestantism, in 1648, was still the ad^- 
 vancing wave, but its strength was almost spent. It 
 has often been said that the Peace gave a great ad- 
 vantage to the Catholic body by the disproportionate 
 quantity of wealthy foundations which it secured 
 to them ; and it has been observed that, whilst 
 conversions to Protestantism among members of 
 reigning Houses have been almost unknown since 
 1648, there have been many such conversions to 
 Catholicism. The general effect, however, of these 
 appears to have been slight; if we except the no- 
 torious case of the Calvinists of the Palatinate — those 
 ■ poor Palatines/ who were reproached with bringing 
 wretchedness and disease to London in the reign of 
 Queen Anne. The settlement itself, precarious as it 
 might appear to us at the present day, proved per- 
 manent, and the imprint which it left on the face 
 of Germany has not been obliterated even now. 
 
 6. Political The second thing which the Peace did for Ger- 
 
 constitu- 
 
 tionofthe many was to fix for many generations to come her 
 political constitution. The oauses which in that 
 country had successfully combated the growth of the 
 kingly power, causes which lie on the surface of 
 
CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE. 51 
 
 history, had wellnigh passed away before the begin- Lect.i. 
 ning of the Thirty Years' War. The Imperial Crown, 
 though still nominally elective, had become virtually 
 hereditary in one family : the title of Caesar, though 
 it was retained, had long ceased to allure the wearers 
 of it to remote enterprises south of the Alps : the 
 Spanish and Flemish dominions which had engaged 
 so much of the attention of Charles the Fifth had 
 passed to another branch of the house ; while the 
 Emperor, from being one of the weakest of the 
 German princes, had become the greatest and most 
 powerful. But centuries of feeble precarious rule, 
 growing feebler and more precarious while royal 
 authority elsewhere was making its greatest strides, 
 had done their work. The grasp which the im- 
 mediate lords of the soil, great and small, had 
 gradually laid on all the substantial attributes 
 of sovereignty had become a firm and solid pos- 
 session, fortified by long usage and by solemn 
 and multiplied compacts. The Eeformation, by 
 dividing Germany into two adverse camps, had 
 created a new bar to consolidation, which the 
 Emperors themselves had strengthened to the utmost 
 by their zealous and intolerant espousal of the 
 Catholic side. The addition also of Hungary and 
 Croatia to the large mixed populations which the 
 princes of the ' East-mark' had collected under their 
 loose but arbitrary sway, and which now composed 
 the Austrian hereditary states, had begun to draw 
 
 E 2 
 
52 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect.i. away the Austrian Emperors from Germany and 
 ~ its interests, and seemed to trace for them, a different 
 career from that of German sovereigns. We need not 
 therefore dispute the justice of the opinion, commonly 
 maintained by Prussian writers, that the success of 
 the Imperialist arms would not, even if it had been 
 unchecked, have led to a real consolidation of 
 Germany. Consolidation indeed, as we now under- 
 stand the word, the Hapsburg Emperors, if we may 
 judge from their history, would probably not have 
 attempted at all. But, be this as it may, the facts 
 remain that the tide of success was turned, and 
 the last great effort to make the Imperial authority 
 a reality was defeated, not by the Germans them- 
 selves, but by Sweden and France in the Thirty 
 Years' War, and that the Treaties of 1648 have 
 ever since been regarded as having permanently 
 settled the relation between the States of the Empire 
 and their head. 
 
 Subsequent The political body which those Treaties left stand- 
 condition 
 of the jjxg was still, in form, a monarchy attenuated to a 
 
 shadow ; in substance, it was a federal organization, 
 
 though united by no regular federal tie 1 ; and it 
 
 1 ' Nihil ergo,' said Pufendorf, in his treatise De Statu Imperii 
 Germanici, published in 1660 under the pseudonym of Severin 
 de Monzambano — ' nihil ergo aliud restat quam ut dicamus Germa- 
 niam esse irregulare aliquod corpus et monstro simile, siquidem 
 ad regulas scientise civilis exigatur, quod lapsu temporum, per 
 socordem facilitatem Csesarum, ambitionem Principum, turbulen- 
 tiam Sacerdotum, ex regno regulari in tam male concinnatam 
 
CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE. 53 
 
 had the infirmities to which federations, as such, are Lect. i. 
 liable without their proper virtues. It provided no 
 solid security for the maintenance of separate rights, 
 
 formam est provolutum ut neque regnum etiam limitatum amplius 
 sit, licet exteriora simulacra tale quid prae se ferant, neque exacts 
 corpus aliquod aut systema plurium civitatum foedere nexarum 
 sed potius aliquid inter hsec duo fluctuans. . . Ergo commo- 
 dissime Statum Germanise possimus designare quod proximS ac- 
 cedat ad systema aliquod plurium civitatum in quo unus velut 
 Princeps aut Dux foederis emineat simulacris Kegiis vestitus, quod 
 tamen corpus atrocibus morbis agitetur.' (cap. vi.) Among German 
 historical writers of the present day it is common to refer to the 
 Empire as a federal body or system. So Haiisser, who, in the 
 first Book of his Deutsche Geschichte vom Tode JFriedrichs der 
 Grossen bis zur Grundung des Deutschen Bundes, has given a 
 full and careful description of the state of the Empire after 1648 ; 
 and Stern, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Frcmzosischen 
 Revolution, Lect. i. For the distinctions drawn by publicists 
 the reader may conveniently refer to Schoell, c. xxxii. sect. 1, and 
 to the concise and accurate account, from a jurist's point of view, 
 given in the first volume of Zachari'a's Deutsche Staats-und 
 Bwndesrecht (Gottingen, 1865). The real working however of the old 
 institutions is best gathered from contemporary descriptions, such 
 as those in Putter's Geschichtliche Entwickelung, of which Haiisser 
 has made good use ; and it is not uninstructive to compare, for 
 example, the proceedings of the Imperial Diet of 1757 with that 
 of the Federal Diet in 1866, the two occasions on which, by the 
 influence of one of the great German Powers, a 'decree of 
 execution' was obtained, and attempted to be enforced, against the 
 other, with results, in the first case, ignominious to the Empire, 
 in the second, fatal t.o the Confederation. This is not the place 
 to enter into the distinctions between a national organization, a 
 federal organization, and one which partakes of both characters at 
 the same time. But it may be observed that the general legislative 
 authority lodged in the Emperor and Diet, and the judicial power 
 (limited, but not inconsiderable) vested in the Imperial Chamber 
 and Aulic Council, were paralyzed, not only by the defective con- 
 
54 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. no effective machinery for the transaction of common 
 affairs and the protection of common interests. Of 
 its constituent members the great majority were too 
 diminutive to secure those objects for which political 
 
 stitution of those bodies, but by the want of a common and efficient 
 executive. Sovereignty is the supreme power of making laws 
 and issuing temporary commands, and enforcing such laws or 
 commands, within a political society. Doubtless, in the con- 
 templation of a jurist, an inhabitant of Brandenburg, Bohemia, 
 or Hesse was subject, not only to the Lcmdeshoheit of his own 
 Elector, King, or Landgrave, which he felt continually, but to 
 a paramount sovereignty, which he never felt at all, vested in 
 the Emperor and Empire. Decrees of the Diet might be binding 
 on him directly; sentences of the Imperial tribunals might directly 
 affect his legal rights. But there were no adequate means of enforcing 
 such decrees, and therefore the Diet rarely attempted to make 
 them, and, when it did, they generally turned on trivial matters. 
 Thus it made repeated and fruitless endeavours in the eighteenth 
 century to put down the journeymen's custom of keeping 'Saint 
 Monday' (blatter Montag). After 1663, its ordinary action, when it 
 acted at all, was that of an anomalous kind of standing Congress 
 composed of delegates from a crowd of independent potentates. 
 The ' reservata,' or reserved rights, of the Emperor were practically 
 null for a like reason, beside being insignificant in themselves. The 
 Emperor therefore was not actually sovereign, nor were the Emperor 
 and Diet sovereign. Germany contained a number of Govern- 
 ments, which, for all practical purposes, were severally sovereign 
 within their respective territories, though a jurist might dispute 
 the accuracy of calling them such — bound together by an organic 
 connection which was historically and theoretically important, but 
 really ineffective and frail, and acknowledging a common superior, 
 who, with a splendid title, had a merely nominal authority. The 
 action of the Emperor and Diet was practically confined to matters 
 of common interest, and in dealing with these it was crippled by 
 want of power. This is what is meant by saying that the or- 
 ganization of the Empire was in substance federal, and that as 
 a federal organization it was inefficient. 
 
CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE. 55 
 
 societies exist and Governments are armed -with lect. i. 
 power. The pacific policy, the freedom from heavy 
 taxation, the personal and local attachments, which 
 are often to be found in very small communities, 
 even that absence of movement which makes them 
 the home of whatever is quiet and old-fashioned, 
 has caused them to be regarded with a certain 
 tenderness whilst it has made them a mark for 
 ridicule, and these characteristics belonged to many 
 of the little principalities of Germany. But even 
 the larger among them were generally too confined 
 for the growth of a healthy public opinion and 
 an enlarged public spirit, too small to contain that 
 variety of resources which is found necessary, as 
 civilization advances, for industrial and commercial 
 progress. Scattered over a wide tract of country, 
 among decaying towns, to which accident had given 
 like privileges, and the territories of greater poten- 
 tates, were some fifteen hundred gentry, needy for 
 the most part, because without means of providing 
 for their children, and often overwhelmed with debt, 
 whose tenants were their subjects, and over whose 
 estates no higher authority had power. All those 
 things which we now know to require a large area 
 of superintendence because they demand uniformity 
 of administration, such as currency, posts, customs, 
 the regulation of trade, the means of external de- 
 fence, the very right of contracting alliances with 
 foreign Powers, were left to the caprice of Govern- 
 
56 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 lect. i. ments whose territories might even then be traversed 
 at the rate of half-a-dozen in a day. These astonish- 
 ing obstacles to good government and the healthy 
 development of national life were the 'Deutsche 
 Freiheiten,' the German liberties, which it was the 
 fashion to hold sacred in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and to treat with traditional respect in the 
 eighteenth. The independence of the States was 
 the ruling principle, and it overbore altogether that 
 sense of a common interest in which the life of a 
 Confederation resides. But such independence is 
 self-destructive. Weakness and disunion are fatal 
 to independence, and the constant condition of 
 Germany was one of weakness and disunion. The 
 free towns and 'immediate' nobility looked to the 
 Emperor for protection against neighbours a little 
 stronger than themselves, and these again looked to 
 a foreign Power for protection against the Emperor. 
 By practising on their cupidity or their fears, by 
 humouring their petty ambitions and fomenting their 
 jealousies, it was always in the power of France to 
 secure clients and allies in Germany, especially among 
 the principalities, ecclesiastical and secular, bordering 
 on the Rhine. The results of this settlement, after 
 it had endured for a century and a half, are recorded 
 in the disasters of the first Coalition War against 
 the French Bepublic, in the shameful Peace of Basle, 
 the defection of Saxony and the South German 
 States in the war of 1796, the cessions of Campo 
 
LATER CONDITION OF GERMANY. 57 
 
 Formio and Luneville, the negotiations of Eastadt, irccr. i. 
 the great Partition of 1803, the formal acceptance 
 of a French protectorate by the Confederation of 
 the Ehine. During that period the growth of the 
 Electorate of Brandenburg into the Kingdom of 
 Prussia, a State of the first order, had made good, 
 as some thought, the great defect of the Treaties 
 of Westphalia ; it had supplied within Germany 
 itself that counterpoise to Austria which had for- 
 merly to be sought for beyond the Rhine — a 
 counterpoise indeed which was more than effectual, 
 since it threw back Austria herself into the arms of 
 her ancient foe. Two great military monarchies thus 
 divided, or disputed, the mastery of what was still 
 called the Empire ; whilst eastward, where in 1648 
 the eye of a politician discerned only the Kingdom 
 of Poland, wide, ungoverned, warlike, but never 
 formidable except as a theatre of discord and a source 
 of strife, there had arisen a vast dominion, whose 
 rulers, Germans themselves in their connections, 
 Germans after 1762 by origin, and generally served 
 by Germans, soon sought and exercised a weighty 
 influence in the country through which their access 
 to Western Europe lav. The federal organization Condition 
 
 x J of Germany 
 
 which crumbled to dust in 1806 was in substance since 1815. 
 revived, under a new name and with new machinery, 
 nine years later under the auspices of another Con- 
 gress, that of Vienna. But the separatist influences 
 which had been so strong in 1648 were doubly strong 
 
58 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. i n 1815. The old traditions of an august monarchy, 
 a common Sovereign, common laws and obligations, 
 had been broken ; even the old homely titles, such 
 as * duke,' ' landreve/ ' mark-reve/ and the like, which 
 German princes had been content to bear since the 
 remote period when their predecessors were really but 
 captains-general or chief magistrates in their several 
 districts, had been thrown aside ; and the Kings and 
 Grand Dukes who met at Vienna, jealous of their 
 gaudy dignities and new acquisitions, had nothing so 
 much at heart as to maintain within the ancient 
 boundaries of the Empire a little Europe of their 
 own, with its play of international politics and 
 miniature balance of power. They succeeded ; they 
 could not but succeed, for Germany, as Metternich 
 perceived, was ripe for nothing else 1 . The inde^ 
 pendence of the States was written at the head of 
 the Federal Act ; and Germany has ever since been 
 only a little Europe as to the relations held by its 
 Governments towards each other, whilst as a whole 
 it has been the lifeless and immovable mass which 
 foreign politicians were always willing that it should 
 be. To say that these aims have succeeded is to 
 say that the true objects for which federations exist 
 have not been attained, or rather that they were 
 deliberately thrown away. The absorptions, which 
 have taken place at different periods, of the lesser 
 
 1 The various projects and counter-projects may be read in 
 the Eighth Book of Pertz's Life of Stein. 
 
LATER CONDITION OF GERMANY. 59 
 
 sovereignties by the larger have done much good ; leot. i. 
 but one thing they have not done — they have not 
 made the political structure of Germany stable and* 
 secure. On the contrary, by uprooting old landmarks 
 and enlarging everywhere the sphere of political 
 life, they have sensibly stimulated the growth of 
 a true national spirit — a spirit quick, as we have 
 lately seen, to resent any interference from abroad, 
 yet impatient of all remaining restraints on its free 
 development at home. It is natural that the sons 
 of men whose allegiance was due to a Count of Sayn, 
 an Abbot of Gengenbach, or a municipality like that 
 of Dortmund or Worms, should desire, now that 
 those old ties are swept away, to belong to a greater 
 country than Baden, Darmstadt, or Nassau. To 
 the fathers of these men the Empire was their 
 country in a sense in which it never was such to an 
 Austrian, Prussian, or Bavarian ; and it is certain 
 that, if these little independent Governments had 
 not survived so long as they did, the obstacles in 
 the way of union would now be much greater than 
 they are. What at the present moment do we see 
 beyond the Rhine 1 We see a great people, divided 
 by frontiers which have been repeatedly changed, 
 by differences of temperament and manners marked 
 enough, yet to my mind no more than provincial, 
 by many local jealousies and local interests beside 
 the separate interests of their reigning houses, but 
 united by blood, language, literature, by unrestrained 
 
60 CONGRESS OF WESTPHALIA. 
 
 Lect. i. intercourse and the habit of migrating freely from 
 one territory to another, by a general resemblance 
 *of laws, by educational institutions not merely alike 
 but in great measure common, by a sentiment of 
 kinship stronger perhaps than animates any other 
 race, by those historical associations to which they 
 chiefly look back with pride. Such a people opens 
 itself freely, and with the ardour at least of a 
 lively imagination, to the influence of that passion 
 for national greatness which is now working so ener- 
 getically in the Old World and in the New, and 
 to those mixed motives of pride and policy which 
 conspire to make nations emulous of power. The 
 real force of these tendencies, as compared with the 
 obstructions which they have to overcome, we shall 
 probably be better able to estimate ten years hence 
 than we are now 1 . But that a remarkable change 
 has passed over German feeling and opinion must 
 strike any one who turns from the pages of a 
 writer like Putter in the last century to writers 
 like Haiisser, or even Ranke, in the present; and 
 such changes are instructive to the student of 
 political history. 
 
 1 It need hardly be said, that these words were written with no 
 foreboding at all of what has since happened. A war in earnest 
 between Austria and Prussia — the only event which could pre- 
 cipitate the slowly advancing change — was then, at most, a some- 
 what remote probability. That it has been suddenly realized, and 
 the German Confederation cut asunder by the sword, is due to an 
 unexpected occasion and the personal character of a single man. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 rTIHE word ' System,' in the language of politicians, lect. ii. 
 sometimes stands for a system of States, and Wk ' 11 
 
 ' system' is. 
 
 sometimes for a system of policy. 
 
 In the first case it signifies a group of States 
 haying relations more or less permanent with one 
 another. Thus the North of Europe was said before 
 the time of Richelieu, and less positively afterwards, 
 to form one 'system/ and the central, western, and 
 southern States to constitute another system. So, 
 again, all the European Powers are often spoken of 
 as composing one great system. 
 
 In the second case it means either any course of 
 policy whatever — any tolerably uniform mode of 
 acting in political affairs — or such a course of policy 
 as involves combinations, more or less permanent, 
 with foreign Powers. A statesman who habitually 
 avoids engaging his country in foreign alliances has 
 a consistent principle of action, but not a ' system ' 
 in this latter sense of the word. His principle is to 
 
62 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 lbct. ii. have no system. It is in this acceptation that the 
 word is commonly used by older publicists ; and I 
 shall use it so, for the sake of clearness, in this 
 Lecture. 
 
 To give an account of the systems which have 
 been adopted by various Powers at various times, 
 and to discuss fully the reasons for and against 
 systems in general, would require a treatise, and such 
 a treatise would not be worth writing. But I pro- 
 pose to make a few remarks on these points; because, 
 without some clear notions about them, we are apt 
 to be misled by the study of political history, and to 
 overlook the chasm which lies between the politics 
 of a past age and those of the present. 
 
 views cur- L e t U s place ourselves at the point of view 
 
 rent among *■ A 
 
 political common to political writers of the last century. 
 
 writers - 1 ^ 
 
 Ei'ht th Nations, they said, are governed partly by their 
 century. own interests, partly by the private interests, the 
 prejudices and passions, of those who have the chief 
 hand in managing their affairs. Influences of the 
 latter class are too shifting and capricious to ge- 
 neralise about ; address, penetration, knowledge of 
 the world, may enable a minister to deal with them 
 successfully, but they escape the grasp of general 
 rules. Not so the public interests of nations. These 
 are ascertainable by means of information open to all 
 the world ; they have somewhat of uniformity and 
 permanence ; they form therefore the constant, as 
 
VIEWS FORMERLY CURRENT. 63 
 
 personal agencies are the variable, element in politics, Lec t- it- 
 and supply a basis for calculation, a solid ground- 
 work, on wbich plans may be laid and combinations 
 built. Guided by them, every considerable State 
 naturally gravitates towards one combination or 
 another, and the bias thus impressed upon it may 
 be called its natural policy. 
 
 Ostensibly at least, the main purpose contemplated 
 by a ' system ' is mutual defence. Commercial in- 
 terests may help to cement the union, but security is 
 the paramount object, for security is at once more 
 important than wealth, and more dependent on 
 political combinations. Offensive alliances are of 
 necessity shortlived. Formed to achieve a particular 
 object, an offensive alliance dissolves when that object 
 is either attained or abandoned. But a character of 
 permanence belongs, or should belong, to a ' system.' 
 All the most famous systems, therefore, have been 
 constructed avowedly to maintain the state of pos- 
 session existing at the time. 
 
 With this end in view, it was the system-framer's How a 
 
 system 
 
 first business to satisfy himself as to the quarters should be 
 
 J ^ framed. 
 
 from which he had reason to apprehend danger or 
 expect support ; his next, to establish such con- 
 nections as would secure him the support and fortify 
 him against the danger. With the map of Europe 
 spread before, him, he worked, for the most part, 
 by rough and simple rules. Simplest of all was the 
 old Venetian maxim — ' Stand well with your neigh- 
 
64 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lf-ct. ii. bour, but better with your neighbour's neighbour/ 
 'Des Etats voisins/ writes Mably, ' sont naturelle- 
 ment ennemis les uns des autres '/ ' Nations which 
 border on each other never can agree/ said Sir Philip 
 Francis in the House of Commons in 1787, arguing 
 against Pitt's Commercial Treaty with France, ' for 
 this single reason, that they are neighbours. All 
 history and experience assure us of the fact V ' We 
 have been brought to acknowledge,' declares a living 
 
 1 Prmcipes des Negotiations. QSrwres de VMb& de Mahly, v. 93. 
 . 2 Stanhope's Life of Pitt, i. 324. Fox adopted the same argu- 
 ment. 'The right honourable gentleman [Mr. Pitt] had used 
 arguments not less extraordinary in favour of establishing peace 
 between this country and France. He had asked, in his zeal and 
 sanguinary [sanguine?] wishes for the event, were not the two 
 countries nearly situated, were they not nearly connected in their 
 mutual intercourse, were they not pursuing the same means of 
 increasing their prosperity, and was not this the only means of 
 uniting a people in the bonds of peace, amity, and prosperity? 
 Such arguments might be used with regard to Spain and Portugal. 
 
 . . And yet the answer which would naturally be given to 
 Portugal, as well as to Great Britain, was that vicinity of situation, 
 instead of being the means to connect, was what should excite our 
 fear and jealousy.' (Speech of Mr. Fox against the Treaty of Com- 
 merce with France, Fox's Speeches, iii. 282.) Pitt answered simply 
 that a Treaty of Commerce would not make France either more 
 powerful or more hostile to England than she was ; on the contrary, 
 by promoting intercourse between the two nations, it might pos- 
 sibly tend to make them better friends. 
 
 There is an echo of the same sentiment in the Lime Jamie 
 of 1864. 'Nous sommes trop les amis de la Porte,' writes 
 M. Drouyn de l'Huys, 'pour vouloir devenir ses voisins.' The 
 circumstances, however, of the Turkish Empire afford, no doubt, 
 special reasons why those who would be its friends should not wish 
 to be its neighbours. 
 
NATURAL ENMITIES AND ALLIANCES. 65 
 
 writer, himself a diplomatist by profession, ' that no Lect. ii. 
 State has or can have in its foreign relations other 
 maxims than these — Whoever, by superior strength 
 and by geographical position, has power to do us 
 harm,, is our natural enemy ; whoever has not that 
 power, but is by his strength or his position enabled 
 to hurt our enemy, is our natural friend 1 .' It would 
 be easy to multiply quotations in a similar strain. 
 In cautious hands the principle perished under a 
 mass of qualifications and exceptions ; uncompromis- 
 ingly applied, it yielded great apparent results — 
 results repulsive indeed to humanity, but attractive, 
 just because they were so sweeping, to the theorist. 
 
 That France was the natural and irreconcilable Examples, 
 enemy of this country, was a proposition against 
 which Pitt could protest as 'weak and childish, 
 monstrous and impossible 2 ;' but there were few 
 who agreed with him. ' I say again, ' insisted 
 his great rival, 'that France is the natural foe to 
 Great Britain :' and to Lord Malmesbury, the ablest 
 diplomatist of his day, this eternal and unalterable 
 . hostility was a ' truth/ which eighteen years of 
 personal experience had forced him to acknowledge 3 . 
 The history of the two nations was deemed to es- 
 tablish it beyond the possibility of cavil. Gentz, 
 writing between sixty and seventy years ago, observes 
 
 1 De Garden, Hiatovre Ginerdle des Trodtes de Paix, Introd. p. v. 
 
 2 Stanhope's Life of Pitt, i. 323. 
 
 3 Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Mabnesbwy, ii. 259. 
 
 F 
 
66 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 lect. ii. that all the wars in which England had been engaged 
 had for a century been either exclusively with France 
 or occasioned by events in which France was princi- 
 pally concerned; France was always the object, and 
 the only object, she had in view in all her alliances, 
 her subsidies, her efforts by land and sea; and he 
 pronounces that France is the only Power with 
 which at any time, or under any conceivable cir- 
 cumstances, it can be useful to England to be at 
 war l - France being the natural enemy of England, 
 England was the natural enemy of France : Austria 
 was therefore England's natural and perpetual ally, 
 for the simple reason that Austria was the Power 
 most formidable to France 2 . Friendship with Aus- 
 tria, however, was hardly compatible with friendship 
 with Prussia, since it never could subsist between 
 those two Powers. 'The antipathy between them,' 
 observed a distinguished publicist, who afterwards 
 passed from the service of one to that of the other, 
 'is not founded on a blind sentiment of aversion, 
 
 1 Gentz, On the State of Europe before and after the French 
 Revolution, p. 155. 
 
 2 ' My own manner of thinking,' wrote Lord Malmesbury, ' with 
 respect to Austria and Prussia remains, and probably ever will 
 remain, unshaken : the first ought to be the perpetual, as it is 
 the natural, ally of England ; the second can, I apprehend, be 
 but at best an occasional one . . Could any doubt be entertained 
 upon this situation, let any one ask his own judgment which of 
 those Powers can ever prove most formidable to France, and the 
 doubt will instantly be removed.' (Diaries, &c. ii. 211.) 
 
NATURAL ENMITIES AND ALLIANCES. 67 
 
 jealousy, or mistrust ; it is not merely the effect Lect. ii. 
 of long habit, or the bitter remembrance of mutual 
 injuries. It is connected with more deep and es- 
 sential causes. It has hitherto been a fundamental 
 principle of European politics, and under certain 
 limitations must always continue so.' That a 'sys- 
 tematic enmity' should subsist between them was 'in 
 unison with the principles of legitimate politics : ' as 
 for an alliance, it was unnatural, and, except at some 
 extraordinary crisis, impracticable. An extraordinary 
 crisis had in 1801, when Gentz wrote, united Aus- 
 tria with both Prussia and Russia, but such a union 
 would not, he believed, recur for many centuries, 
 and it could never last ; its permanence would be 
 ' in contradiction to the nature of things, and to the 
 necessary order of political relations.' PrusSia was 
 a natural enemy to Hanover, and to all her smaller 
 neighbours, for by a geographical necessity Prussia 
 was an aggressive Power. Progressive aggrandise- 
 ment had become her constant policy, as the only 
 means of maintaining her influence, and as a rule 
 of self-preservation *. Sweden was the natural enemy 
 of Denmark, and Denmark was therefore the humble 
 adherent of that giant Empire which had torn from 
 Sweden vast tracts of wilderness, and threatened to 
 devour her altogether. The relations between the 
 Swedish monarchy on the north-west frontier of 
 
 1 For the substance of the foregoing sentences, see Gentz, State 
 ofEwrope, pp. 130, 149, 241. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect - u - Eussia, and Turkey on her southern frontier, presented, 
 a perfect example of a natural alliance ; both had 
 reason to be afraid of the same Power, whilst neither 
 of them could be afraid of the other. A like ob- 
 servation applied to the Porte and Prance, for the 
 straggling possessions of the House of Austria brought 
 her into contact with the former in Hungary, and 
 with the latter in the Low Countries and on the 
 Rhine 1 . To all the maritime and colonial Powers 
 Great Britain was a natural foe, for she was stronger 
 at sea than all of them, and their marine, their 
 trade and outlying possessions, held out a perpetual 
 temptation to her cupidity and lust of dominion. 
 Where then was Holland to find a friend — at sea 
 a prey to England, whilst Prance never ceased to 
 cast a longing eye on the little delta of sand, covered 
 with green meadows and populous towns, which was 
 all that the Republic owned on the continent of 
 Europe % During the eighteenth century she was 
 in fact French and English by turns, as the French 
 or English party gained ascendancy in her councils; 
 and the contemptuous words of a secret agent of 
 the government of Louis the Fifteenth, ' Elle a peur 
 de tout, se plaint de tout, soufFre tout, et se garantit 
 de rien 2 ,' really described with little exaggeration the 
 
 1 Mably, v. 94. 
 
 2 Favart, in S6gur, Politique de tons les CaMnets de V Europe, 
 p. 291. 
 
NATURAL ENMITIES AND ALLIANCES. 69 
 
 situation of a country which a few generations back Lect - h- 
 had been courted on all sides, and regarded as the chief 
 centre of the political activity of Europe. We may 
 understand how, among these struggles and these 
 fears, the spirit of independence had become enfeebled, 
 when the great province of Zealand seriously con- 
 ceived the design of divorcing itself from the rest 
 of the commonwealth and soliciting the protection 
 of the British Crown, and communicated this strange 
 project to a British envoy 1 . Far different was the 
 case of another small State, likewise placed between 
 two great Powers, the Duchy of Savoy. It was the 
 interest of France that the upper valley of the Po, 
 and the roads which thread the huge fastnesses of 
 the Graian and Cottian Alps, should not become 
 Austrian, and the interest of Austria that they 
 should not become French ; and a long line of sa- 
 gacious and ambitious princes turned this rivalry to 
 their own account, leagued themselves with each by 
 turns, broke without scruple every engagement which 
 it had ceased to be their interest to keep, profited 
 by every war in which they were involved, and 
 rode on the crest of every wave that threatened 
 to overwhelm them. The command of that valley 
 and of the whole plain of Turin are now in the hands 
 of France, and the Duchy of Savoy has disappeared 
 from the map for ever ; but the Dukes of Savoy 
 
 1 Lord Malmesbury. . Diaries, &c. ii. 197. 
 
70 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 lect. ii. are Kings of Italy, and sit as equals among the 
 
 great Sovereigns of Europe \ 
 Tendency I have said that so far as a 'system' had an 
 
 of ' sys- 
 tems 'to avowed object, that object was commonly self-de- 
 
 aggressive, fence. But it is obvious that, when the value of 
 your ally consists in his ability to hurt your enemy, 
 the alliance is not a mere defensive weapon ; it is 
 not a shield, but a sword, which may be used to 
 parry, but may also be used to strike. It is for- 
 midable, and it challenges those against whom it is 
 aimed to make themselves formidable in the same 
 way. Thus, in Lord Auckland's Correspondence, we 
 find Lord Carmarthen instructing Mr. Eden to 
 represent to M. de Montmorin that the influence of 
 France in Holland could only be useful to her as 
 a means of annoying Great Britain, and M. de 
 Montmorin, less roughly but with as much reason, 
 retorting the charge upon Great Britain herself 2 . 
 In fact, where defence has been the first, it soon 
 ceases to be the chief, aim ; connections which may 
 have been formed originally for that object are main- 
 tained, strengthened, and extended for the sake of 
 influence ; from scheming with a view to security 
 there is an easy and almost inevitable transition to 
 scheming with a view to power. 
 
 current To form the closest union with his country's na- 
 
 rules of » 
 
 policy. tural allies was the first and most imperative duty 
 
 1 See Note A, infra, p. 107. 
 
 a Jov/rnals and Correspondence of Lord Auckland, i. 298. 
 
OLD MAXIMS. 71 
 
 of a statesman. Old allies, like old friends, are better lect. ii. 
 than new ; co-operation becomes easier and surer, 
 and petty differences vanish, under the force of as- 
 sociation and habit. Care should be taken never- 
 theless not to make even your natural ally so secure 
 that he can do without you, for his attachment will 
 diminish with his necessities, and as his strength 
 increases his affection will cool. Beware also of mis- 
 taking one whom your enemy can hurt for one who 
 can hurt your enemy ; and never, in your transactions 
 with your ally, overlook the point at which your in- 
 terest in the co-operation stops. Never attempt to 
 form permanent connections, except with natural 
 allies: never forget that all efforts must be vain to 
 establish a lasting friendship with a natural enemy. 
 Against the natural allies of your natural enemy be 
 always on your guard, and oppose everything that 
 might make them stronger than they are. But it is 
 a general, perhaps a universal, rule, that no Power 
 should cherish an enmity towards a State weaker than 
 itself; for every State incapable of being your rival 
 may in some contingency be of service to you. With 
 such Powers multiply alliances as much as possible, 
 but never trust in them, since it is the natural 
 policy of States of the second order to sell their 
 friendship as often, and as dear, as they can. A 
 hundred such alliances will be useless, but you may 
 find profit in the hundred-and-first. Finally, let every 
 Power of the first rank follow the advice of Richelieu, 
 
72 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 lect. ii. and negotiate everywhere — negotiate day and night. 
 By some this precept was carried further. Mix, they 
 said, in every quarrel that arises among your neigh- 
 bours ; a stander-by'runs the risk of becoming the 
 conqueror's prey. Let the combatants, rejoined others, 
 exhaust their strength, whilst you reserve your own ; 
 you will then be more than a match for them both \ 
 
 1 ' Les Etats recoivent tant d'Avantage des Ne'gociations con- 
 tinuelles, lorsqu'elles sont conduites avec prudence, qu'il n'est pas 
 possible de le croire, si on ne le scait par Experience. J'avoue 
 - que je n'ai connu cette Verity que cinq ou six ans apres que j'ai 
 6t6 employe" dans le maniement des affaires ; mais j'en ai main- 
 tenant tant de certitude que j'ose dire hardiment, que negocier 
 sans cesse, ouvertement ou secrettement, en tous Lieux, encore 
 m§me qu'en ne recoive pas un Fruit present et que celui qu'on 
 en peut attendre a 1'avenir ne soit pas apparent, est chose tout 
 a fait necessaire pour le bien des Etats. Je puis dire avec verite 
 avoir vu de mon temps changer tout a, fait le face des affaires de 
 la France et de la Chre'tiente^ pour avoir, sous l'Autorite du Roi, 
 fait pratiquer ce principe, jusqu'alors absolument neglige 1 en ce 
 Royaume.' (Testament Politique du Cardinal de Richelieu, cli. vi.) 
 Compare with this Bolingbroke's strictures on the 'rage for 
 negotiating,' in his Eighth Letter on the Study of History 
 ' Your good sense, my Lord, your virtue, and your love of your 
 country, will always determine you to oppose such vile schemes, 
 and to contribute your utmost towards the cure of both these 
 kinds of rage ; the rage of warring, without any proportionable 
 interest of our own, for the ambition of others, and the rage of 
 negotiating, on every occasion, at any rate, without a sufficient 
 call to it, and without any part of that deciding influence which 
 we ought to have. Our nation inhabits an island, and is one 
 of the principal nations of Europe ; but, to maintain this rank, 
 we must take the advantages of this situation, which have been 
 neglected by us for almost half a century; we must always re- 
 member that we are not part of the continent, but we must 
 never forget that we are neighbours to it.' 
 
OLD MAXIMS OBSOLETE. 73 
 
 Such are the golden lessons of the masters of the lect. ii, 
 
 art and professors of the science of politics ; and 
 they have largely influenced the conduct of nations. 
 Maxims which have been in vogue during long 
 periods of time among acute and experienced men 
 contain, we may safely conclude (as these certainly 
 do), no small share of truth. But that they are 
 right on the whole would not be a safe conclusion. 
 Mistakes, which all the world now knows to be 
 mistakes, have again and again been cherished by 
 men of acknowledged acuteness and experience from 
 one generation to another. 
 
 The policy of natural and perpetual alliances is Systems 
 in our own day practically obsolete. And why is and why. 
 it obsolete 1 For two reasons, chiefly : because the 
 dangers which threaten the tranquillity of Europe 
 are not the same as formerly ; and because states- 
 men know that they cannot reckon on any com- 
 bination which is not cemented by a forcible motive 
 and a present definite object. 
 
 I . When this policy reigned, aggrandisement was, Territorial 
 or was assumed to be, the constant aim of every ment less 
 
 n -i t coveted. 
 
 Power of the first order — 4 do not stop to repeat 
 the loose and not always uniform definition by 
 which publicists interpret this phrase — as security 
 was the chief, though not the sole, object of 
 their smaller neighbours. And the shortest way 
 to aggrandisement was successful war. Assuming 
 
74 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect - 1I - that nations were governed, as in fact they com- 
 monly are, by their real or imagined interests, it was 
 thus a perfectly just supposition that Europe was 
 always, as more than one of these writers expresses 
 it, in a state of war, either overt or latent ; and that 
 every great Power would attach, whenever it had 
 a fair chance of success, any other Power from 
 whom it had anything to gain. 
 
 We have but to carry back our minds to the 
 wars of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth 
 centuries, and the views and habits of thought 
 formerly current not only among princes and states- 
 men, but in all classes of people and all countries, 
 in order to feel that these assumptions were once 
 true in a degree and a sense in which they would 
 not be true now. What contrast can be more striking 
 than between the pacific decorous diplomacy of our 
 own times — busier perhaps and more nervous than 
 need be, but harmlessly nervous for the most part 
 and innocently busy — and the restless rapacious 
 activity with which ambitious projects were formed 
 and cast aside, aggressive leagues, which rather de- 
 served the name of conspiracies, made and aban- 
 doned, and webs of intrigue spun, broken, and spun 
 again, in the age of Ferdinand of Arragon and Louis 
 the Twelfth, of Julius the Second and Wolsey. When 
 the growth of regular armies, settled revenues, cen- 
 tralised Governments, had reached the stage at 
 which a foreign policy (in the sense which we now 
 
TERRITORIAL AGGRANDISEMENT LESS GO VETED. 75 
 
 attach to that phrase) became possible, the first Lect. ii. 
 thought of princes and their councillors was to 
 employ those armies, those revenues, and the lever- 
 age which that centralisation, loose and imperfect 
 as it still was, placed in their hands, in foreign con- 
 quest. The long struggle between the House of 
 Austria and the Kings of France, which closed with 
 the Peace of Westphalia, and that of France against 
 the allied Powers, which ended at the Peace of 
 Utrecht, sprang from, and were sustained by, this 
 vulgar ambition, whilst they served ultimately to 
 build up that general system of mutual jealousy 
 and precaution which has gone by the name of the 
 'Balance of Power;' and between 1713 and the 
 wars of the French Revolution the whole interval was 
 an armed truce, fortified by all kinds of alliances and 
 counter-alliances, yet broken whenever a promising 
 opportunity seemed to present itself for winning 
 a province or crippling a rival. The successive 
 schemes of partition which, after Italy had been finally 
 parcelled out at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, floated 
 before the minds of the chief Continental Powers — 
 schemes for partitioning the Austrian hereditary 
 States, partitioning Prussia, partitioning Bavaria, 
 partitioning Poland, partitioning European Turkey — 
 though they mostly proved abortive, mark the temper 
 of the times. It is certain that the temptations 
 which were so powerful then, have not wholly ceased 
 to be temptations now ; but it is at least as certain 
 
76 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Le ct - Ir - that foreign conquest is not now thought so profitable 
 a thing, or so well worth fighting for, as it then 
 was — that the whole cast of men's ideas on this 
 point has undergone a sensible change — and that, 
 whilst new sources of discord have been opened, 
 unknown and unthought of till the close of the last 
 century, the old ones do not flow so freely as before. 
 Is there a square yard of soil on the whole surface 
 of the globe that any sensible Englishman wishes 
 to see annexed to the British Empire % I will not 
 say that there is not, but I do not know of one. 
 So much as this cannot indeed be said of Russia, of 
 Prussia, of France. Over Russia the distant Mediter- 
 ranean and the ancient capital of Eastern Christendom 
 continue to exert a steady attraction, which she 
 may resist but cannot „ entirely subdue. Prussia, 
 stronger and more compact than in Aranda's time, is 
 still too like what she then was for the repose of 
 her less powerful neighbours 1 . France has her tra- 
 ditional objects of desire, and we cannot forget that 
 she acquired but yesterday as much as she had gained 
 during the eighty years which elapsed between the 
 Peace of Utrecht and the Revolution. Yet it is but 
 just to her to add that for half a century, under 
 many different Governments, she has neither re- 
 sumed, nor attempted to resume, the part of an 
 aggressive Power. In a word, the inducements to 
 
 1 Note A, infra, p. 107. This Lecture was delivered in 1865. 
 
PERMANENT ALLIANCES INSECURE. 77 
 
 form standing leagues for purposes of either aggression lect. ii. 
 or defence are not, nor are they likely to be, what 
 they have been, though they may possibly revive 
 with unexpected vigour from time to time. 
 
 2. Be these inducements however what they may, Permanent 
 we now know that there is nothing in which states- proved to 
 men have oftener deceived themselves than in the 
 importance they attached to alliances and the cal- 
 culations they constructed on what they deemed to 
 be the obvious interests of nations. Modern political 
 history is far from exhibiting that uniform "course, 
 that regular play of adverse interests, those distinct 
 groups steadily opposed to one another, which would 
 have corresponded with the assumptions of the 
 system-framer. Take the eighteenth century, emi- 
 nently an age of 'systems.' What a shifting, what 
 a perplexing, scene it presents to the historian ! 
 During the twenty years which immediately followed 
 the Peace of Utrecht, France and England, which 
 had been at war, with short intermissions, since the 
 accession of William the Third, are found closely 
 united in defence of the provisions of that settlement. 
 The Emperor accedes to the Quadruple Alliance in 
 1719 ; then withdraws from it in 1725 to form a 
 hostile camp with Spain. Spain, at first the deadly 
 enemy of Austria, soon courts her alliance, coalesces 
 with her at Vienna in 1725, deserts her at Seville 
 in 1729. Prussia in 1725 joins France and England, 
 but goes over in 1727 to Spain and Austria. The 
 
78 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 lect. ii. league and counter-league of Vienna and Hanover 
 array one half of Europe against the other half, but 
 crumble to pieces before a blow is struck. The 
 Polish Crown falls vacant in 1733, and the com- 
 petition for this piece of patronage arms Austria, 
 Russia, and Prussia against France and Spain, hence- 
 forth the satellite of France. Scarcely has this dis- 
 pute been composed in 1738 by the Second Treaty 
 of Vienna, when the death of the Emperor- Charles 
 the Sixth leaves his dominions a prey/ to a crowd 
 of greedy claimants ; and France, unable to resist 
 the temptation, conspires (Spain following at her 
 heels) with Prussia and Bavaria in the work of 
 plunder. Once more England is the ally of Austria, 
 and the enemy of France. The Seven Years' War 
 brings a fresh exchange of parts. France has be- 
 come the assailant of Prussia and the fast friend 
 of Austria. Great Britain, estranged from Austria, 
 makes common cause with Prussia. 
 
 Causes We need not go further, nor is it worth while to 
 
 which have 
 
 made the unravel the various threads of this tangled skein : 
 
 policy of i ■ i 
 
 nations un- it is enough to glance at a few of the causes which 
 have made the policy of nations so changeable and 
 seemingly so capricious. The force of purely per- 
 sonal influences we have noticed already, without 
 attempting to estimate it. The policy of the 
 eighteenth century was pre-eminently a policy of 
 ' Courts,' and of dynastic interests. The desire of a 
 clever ambitious woman to procure princely estab- 
 
 certain. 
 
UNCERTAINTY OF POLITICAL CALCULATIONS. 79 
 
 lishments for her sons — the anxiety of an old man Lect. ii. 
 to secure an imperial inheritance for his daughter — 
 the wish of a great king, who had married below 
 his rank, to get a throne for his father-in-law — 
 resentment at a petty affront — gratification at a 
 trifling civility, — motives such as these actually ruled 
 the policy of Spain, Austria, and France, during long 
 and critical periods. A daring genius,, again, will 
 disconcert and trample under foot — sheer imbecillity 
 will baffle and disappoint — calculations framed on 
 common experience by common men. ' La faiblesse 
 trompe tous les calculs de la politique V But further, 
 national interests are by no means so simple and 
 enduring, so plain and easy to apprehend and 
 pursue, as it' was formerly the fashion to assume. 
 There are cross interests, competing interests, occa- 
 sional and ephemeral interests — there are apparent 
 interests which are not really such, but are purely 
 speculative and imaginary. Even if we could be 
 sure we knew the true interests of a particular State, 
 we can by no means be sure that it will act on them. 
 In different lights, to different eyes, they put on 
 different colours : men of one country do not readily • 
 place themselves at the point of view natural to 
 those of another ; an Englishman has a real difficulty 
 in estimating, and even in understanding, the force 
 of the ideas and impulses which are powerful in 
 
 1 Politique de tous les Cabinets de VEurope, p. 253. (S^gur's 
 Note.) 
 
80 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect. ii. France, and Frenchmen often honestly attribute to 
 us motives which we as honestly disclaim. We see 
 this, not only in histories and in state-papers com- 
 posed for the public eye, but in private letters, in 
 secret instructions, in memoranda never intended to 
 see the light 1 . Finally, as the points of contact 
 among different communities multiply, their interests 
 become more chequered ; and every change in their 
 relative importance disturbs, in its degree, old cal- 
 culations, and calls for new ones. 
 
 1 I will give an example of what I mean. Hume, in common 
 with other Englishmen of his day, believed that France was aiming 
 at universal dominion. 'For above a century,' he, wrote in 1742, 
 ' Europe has remained on the defensive against the greatest force 
 that ever perhaps was formed by the civil or political combination 
 of mankind.' (Essay VII.) There was hope however, he thought, 
 that, by the help of unforeseen turns of fortune, the danger 
 might be averted if the resistance were continued for some 
 time longer. Turn to Flassan (vi. 15), and read the Memo- 
 randum composed a few years later for Louis the Fifteenth by 
 his then Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. de St. Contest. It 
 starts with the assumption that England had acquired the prin- 
 cipal influence in Europe, and discusses the question whether her 
 power could not be reduced by the formation of a 'system,' and 
 by turning against her that principle of combination which, 'by 
 the chimerical charge of aspiring to universal empire,' she had 
 successfully employed against France. Insincerities, especially 
 such as have become traditional, penetrate, no doubt, into 
 confidential memoranda and even into men's habits of think- 
 ing on political affairs; but Englishmen are not good judges of 
 the political sincerity of Frenchmen, nor Frenchmen of ours, and 
 the question is not whether an opinion is just, nor even whether 
 it is untainted by self-deceit, but whether it is acted on as true. 
 
UNCERTAINTY OF POLITICAL CALCULATIONS. 81 
 
 Was it for the true interest of France to discard, Lbct. ii. 
 as she did in 1756, the Prussian alliance for the 
 Austrian % Each policy had its partisans, the secret 
 diplomatic agents of the French Court pleading and 
 intriguing long and perseveringly, abroad and at 
 home, against the course pursued by its public 
 ministers. Was Fox's opinion right — 'Alliances with 
 the Northern Powers have been, and ever will be, 
 the system of every enlightened Englishman 1 ' — or 
 was Lord Malmesbmy justified in his preference of 
 Austria? In the first Partition of Poland Lord 
 Suffolk saw only a 'curious transaction;' and the 
 French Government of the day remained a passive 
 spectator of that event, which indeed many sagacious 
 men deemed likely to conduce to the repose of 
 Europe. Was the indifference of AiguUlon on that 
 occasion a betrayal of the true interests of France, 
 and ought Suffolk to have foreseen that the repose 
 of Europe would be troubled a hundred years later 
 by the throes of a restless national life which op- 
 pression has been unable to destroy % The old policy 
 of Russia was based on friendship with England, 
 with whom she had no occasions of dispute and a 
 profitable trade. Now she stretches from sea to sea, 
 covets the empire of the Baltic, threatens Constan- 
 
 1 ' You will readily believe me that my system of foreign politics 
 was too deeply rooted to make it likely that I should have changed 
 it. Alliances, &c.' (Mr. Fox to Sir J. Harris, Diaries, &c. df Lord 
 y, ii. 40. See also ii. 51.) 
 G 
 
82 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 lect. ii. tinopJe and the Levant ; and these new interests, 
 this vastly extended dominion, had, in the judgment 
 of the first Napoleon, made her, before his time, the 
 natural ally of France. What are likely to be the 
 future relations of those two Powers % How just 
 and convincing seemed the reasonings by which 
 Metternich advocated in 1814 his project of a 
 German Confederation x ! Should he have antici- 
 pated the events which made him in later life 
 confess that the Confederation, for the purposes 
 contemplated by him, was a failure 1 What indeed 
 can be a keener satire on the art of politics than 
 the chimeras nourished to the very last by that 
 shrewd, cool, subtle brain, which always refused 
 to take into account something destined to prove 
 fatal to his plans % The union, in 1815, of the 
 Dutch and Austrian Netherlands was expected to 
 do the work of the old Barrier Treaties in a more 
 effectual way : it fell to pieces, and left two little 
 kingdoms, of which French politicians foretold (was 
 the prediction right V) that one or other must always 
 be virtually dependent on France. Which, on the 
 whole, or at any given time, ought to be the 
 strongest of the multiplied fears and anxieties that 
 determine — if anything can be said to determine 
 her wavering course at all — the foreign policy of 
 
 1 These reasons are well stated in Hardenberg's despatch of 
 Oct. 12th, 1813. Letters amd Despatches of Lord Castlereagh, 
 Third Series, i. 60. 
 
UNCERTAINTY OF POLITICAL CALCULATIONS. 83 
 
 Austria 1 It has been the traditional policy of France ^ ECT - n - 
 to divide Germany and to divide Italy, to balance 
 Prussia against Austria and keep the Italian States 
 in a condition of weakness and dependence : a brilliant 
 orator of the old school has lately raised a warning 
 voice against the abandonment of one half at least 
 of that policy by one of the ablest sovereigns who 
 ever sat on the French throne \ Which is the wiser 
 of the two % France herself has always oscillated 
 between two policies — a policy of acquisition and 
 a policy of peace. There have never been wanting 
 prudent and moderate men ready to say with Segur, 
 ' Le veritable interet de la France est de se servir 
 de son influence et de sa force pour que chacun 
 garde ce qu'il a et reste comme il est 2 ' — and the 
 classes among whom these views prevail exert at 
 present a sensible influence on the Government. 
 But there is also, diffused through the whole people, 
 the old restless ambition of being first in Europe ; 
 there is a powerful mass of opinion which is purely 
 military ; there are the recollections of the earlier 
 Empire : and these things have made, and continue 
 to make, it a matter of almost incessant speculation 
 whether the controlling or the disturbing forces will 
 get the upper hand. 
 
 1 Speech of M. Thiers in the French Chamber, April 15th, 
 1865. 
 
 2 Politique de tous les Cdbmets de V Europe, p. 142. (Segur's 
 note.) 
 
 G 2 
 
84 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect. ii. It would be absurd, to insist that sagacity is 
 always at fault in such matters, and that calcula- 
 tions about them are mere guess-work. But it is 
 reasonable to say that sagacity has deceived itself too 
 often, and that the materials for calculation are too 
 vague and thin, to warrant us in building much on 
 them. The older writers admitted the uncertainty of 
 politics ; but, having made the admission, they went 
 on to scheme and theorise with as much confidence as 
 if the uncertainty had been removed. That men 
 should refrain from looking forward as far as they can, 
 is not to be expected or desired. But a statesman's 
 business is really of a humbler sort than some sup- 
 pose, more concerned with daily expedients, less with 
 far-extending plans ; and in practice, I conceive, he 
 is seldom called on to take any important step 
 without a footing narrower, perhaps, but firmer than 
 these speculations yield. How thick a cloud rests 
 on the path along which Providence leads the march 
 of nations, none know so well as those who have 
 spent their lives in trying to pierce that obscure 
 future which constantly recedes before them. 
 
 The real 3. More direct and trenchant objections are not 
 
 guarantee , . , 
 
 for co- wanting. Writers on politics have often observed 
 
 operation is ' 
 
 a common that every solid alliance must rest on a community 
 
 interest. 
 
 of interest, and that in proportion to the strength 
 of the common interest is the strength of the alliance. 
 Why then, it may be asked, should not the attracting 
 and cementing force be left to work its natural 
 
PERMANENT ALLIANCES INSECURE. 85 
 
 effect, where it exists and" so long as it exists, Lect - H- 
 without help from diplomacy ? Just so much, and 
 just so long, as it is advantageous to two nations 
 to act together, they will act together : their paths 
 will diverge as soon as their interests separate. To 
 erect on this basis what is called a ' system ' is, it 
 may be urged, useless at best : the superstructure 
 can add nothing to the strength of the foundation. 
 
 History is full of broken guarantees and alliances 
 and of disputes about the casus foederis, which have 
 not arisen from bad faith, nor from the common un- 
 certainties of language, but are peculiar to this class 
 of compacts, and against which no precision of phrase 
 can ever completely guard. Multiply engagements 
 as you will ; clinch them as firmly as you may ; 
 but never count on them to make a nation draw 
 sword in a quarrel it deems unjust, and for objects 
 in which it is to have no share. The successive 
 coalitions against the first Napoleon showed how 
 hard a task it is to induce several Powers to act 
 steadily together even in presence of a general, 
 instant, formidable danger. There subsists at this 
 moment 1 between Austria and Prussia a somewhat 
 indefinite connection, based principally on the vague 
 uneasiness which France inspires in both of them. 
 So long as this, motive, coupled with the sense of 
 a common nationality, is stronger than the jarring 
 
 1 May, 1865. 
 
86 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 lect. ii. interests that incessantly counterwork it, so long 
 and no longer the two Courts will act together. 
 Prussia will fight for Austria whenever she is quite 
 Satisfied that to fight for Austria will promote her 
 own safety or advantage. But what is the connection 
 itself worth as a security % Nothing. 
 
 France From tne time of Richelieu to that of the Kevo- 
 
 and her 
 
 aUiancea. ] u tion, no Power was so attentive to the formation 
 and maintenance of alliances as France. With a 
 territory the most compact for its size, and a geo- 
 graphical position by far the most commanding, in 
 Europe — with a people distinguished by strong mili- 
 tary instincts, singular cleverness, the most vivacious 
 energy, the most inflammable vanity-^and with a 
 hereditary object of ambition, the extension of their 
 frontier to the Rhine, the sovereigns of France 
 had temptations to seek and means to acquire in- 
 fluence, such as none of their neighbours could share. 
 During the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
 when she had ceased to aim at territorial aggrandise- 
 ment, her political system spread over every part 
 of the Continent. The Family Compact fastened 
 Spain to her chariot Wheels, as well as the Spanish 
 Bourbons who reigned in Parma and Naples. The 
 Pope and the King of Sardinia were in her interests. 
 Ancient ties, often renewed, bound to her Genoa and 
 Venice, the Porte, the Swiss Cantons, and Sweden. 
 Since 1756 she had been allied with Austria; and 
 this connection, though shaken, was not destroyed 
 
FRANCE AND HER ALLIANCES. 87 
 
 by the disputes about the Bavarian Succession and Lect. ii. 
 the opening of the Scheldt. Over Prussia she ex- 
 erted a strong and pretty constant attraction ; and 
 for generations she had been the powerful friend 
 of most of the lesser German princes. She was 
 patroness of the dominant party in the Dutch United 
 Provinces. After 1778, she had the gratitude and 
 the close alliance of the United States. Such was 
 the imposing train of clients and supporters that 
 surrounded the French monarchy during the early 
 years of the reign of Louis the Sixteenth, and dazzled 
 the minds of statesmen like Fox 1 by a show of 
 irresistible power. Yet it was in 1787, four years 
 after she had reaped the fruits of the American 
 war by the Peace of Versailles* that she suffered 
 that bloodless defeat in Holland, which French 
 writers have always regarded as among the most 
 humiliating passages of her history. ' She will not 
 fight,' said a keen-sighted and audacious English 
 diplomatist — ' she has neither army, revenue, nor 
 ministry ' — ' I am certain that, if we begin to roar, 
 she will shrink before us 2 ;' and by the sheer force 
 
 1 See Fox' 8 Speeeh.es, iii. 252 (Speech on the Address). He 
 argued that, although the French army had been reduced below 
 those of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, her alliances and her ' influ- 
 ence ' made her far more powerful than she had been under Louis 
 the Fourteenth, and that ' this great superiority would in all 
 probability be considerably heightened very shortly.' This was 
 in 1787. 
 
 2 Diaries, <Sj-c. of Lord Mcdmesbury, ii. 299, 305. 
 
88 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 leot. ii. of his own convictions he drove Mr. Pitt's Govern-- 
 ment to throw down the gauntlet in support of the 
 Stadtholder's power, which the Republicans, backed 
 by France, had nearly succeeded in destroying. She 
 did shrink, and her influence, in the language of 
 the politicians of the day, fell at once before that 
 of England, though the substantial strength of the 
 two countries remained just the same as before. 
 
 The French monarchy was struggling in 1787 
 with those embarrassments from which it never 
 extricated itself till it was struck down by the 
 Revolution. But the whole history of France tends, 
 I think, to show that her great intrinsic force has in 
 reality derived little support from her numerous 
 foreign connections, and that the ' systems ' which, 
 from Richelieu downwards, have succeeded one 
 another in the Department of Foreign Affairs, have 
 served more for show than for use. 
 
 It has been a moot point with French politicians 
 whether she ever drew any advantage from her 
 alliance with Sweden. The better opinion probably 
 is, that it was of no real service to her at all ; whilst 
 that Sweden herself suffered from it there is no 
 doubt. Of the connection with the Porte, formed 
 originally by Francis the First on the basis of a 
 common hostility against Austria, the chief effect in 
 later times has been to involve his successors in 
 differences with Russia, from whom they had them- 
 selves nothing to fear. The Family Compact, though 
 
FRANCE AND HER ALLIANCES. 89 
 
 more formidable in appearance than in reality, was Lbct. n. 
 undoubtedly of some use to France, by largely re- 
 inforcing her maritime strength in the war of 1778 ; 
 and it was not till Spain in her turn asked the help 
 of her ally in a quarrel of her own — the dispute 
 with Great Britain in 1790 about the ships seized 
 at Nootka Sound — that the French Government had 
 to choose between repaying its obligations and facing 
 (as it preferred to do) the discredit of a refusal. The 
 motive of the Austrian alliance was sound ; for, by 
 relieving France from any fear of attack on the part 
 of her old but no longer formidable foe, it should 
 have left her free to throw her whole force into a 
 struggle with her actual rival, England. But its 
 practical effect was the reverse of this. It was the 
 Austrian alliance that, in the Seven Years' War, en- 
 gaged her in strife with Prussia, while England was 
 conquering her colonies and destroying her marine. 
 She steered clear of that rock in the War of American 
 Independence. But how % By refusing to support 
 the claims of her ally on the Bavarian Succession. 
 ' Vous nous abandonnez,' said Kaunitz to Breteuil, 
 ' dans une occasion bien interessante. Le temps en 
 amenera, peut-6tre, ou ce souvenir nous sera sen- 
 sible K' 
 
 The situation of England at the close of the Ame- Com- 
 
 . .-. . -li p parative 
 
 ncan War was m striking contrast with that of her isolation 
 
 of Great 
 — Britain. 
 
 1 Flassan, Hist, de la Dvplomatie Frangaise, vii. 222. 
 
90 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 leot. ii. great rival. During long periods she had stood 
 wholly aloof from the affairs of the Continent; and 
 her relations with foreign Powers had rarely been of 
 an intimate or permanent character. She had had a 
 chain of alliances with Portugal, and an intermittent 
 friendship of some duration with Denmark ; she had 
 been by turns the enemy and the ally of both Austria 
 and Prussia ; and, without gaining the former, she 
 had managed to excite bitter and implacable resent- 
 ment in the heart of Frederic the Second. She had 
 a customer, but not an ally, in Russia. It was per- 
 fectly natural that to English statesmen of that day 
 the formation of an antagonist system should have 
 seemed, as it did, an object of the first importance. 
 Chatham, who in 1756 had talked of conquering 
 America in Germany, had, on returning to office ten 
 years later, vainly endeavoured to conclude defensive 
 alliances with the Courts of Vienna, Berlin, Peters- 
 burg, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. ' Chi sta bene 
 non se muove,' said Frederic to Sir A. Mitchell ; and 
 the Minister's ready answer, ' Chi sta solo non sta bene,' 
 had only the barren success of a repartee \ ' In the 
 article of a Continental alliance as a balance to the 
 House of Bourbon consists,' wrote Fox in 1783, ' the 
 whole of my foreign policy 2 ; ' and in his letters, and 
 in those of Lord Suffolk and Lord Stormont, the 
 
 1 Lord Stanhope's History of England, v. 250. 
 
 2 Fox to the Duke of Manchester, Sept. 12, 1783. Lord Russell's 
 Memoirs and Correspondence of C. J. Fox, ii. 157. 
 
GOMPARATIVE ISOLATION OF ENGLAND. 91 
 
 writers harp continually on the same string. Whether leqt. ii. 
 court should be paid to Prussia or to Austria was the 
 only question. In fact both were solicited in vain. 
 Frederic remained cold and impracticable to the last, 
 and an English alliance did. not enter into the policy 
 of Kaunitz. Lord Malmesbury himself wasted six 
 years in fruitless efforts to gain the Empress Catherine 
 the Second — the purpose for which he had been 
 despatched to St. Petersburg ; and, when afterwards 
 sent to combat French influence in Holland, his 
 cry was still the same. ' The Republic comes round 
 the moment a system is formed 1 .' Accident at last 
 achieved his object. An affront offered to the wife 
 of the Stadtholder, a Prussian princess, provoked 
 Frederic William the Second to interfere ; and the 
 personal influence which Lord Malmesbury 's singular 
 address had gained over the mind of the Prussian 
 sovereign, a man very unlike his predecessor, in- 
 duced him to sign the Triple Alliance of 1788. The 
 conclusion of this Treaty was Lord Malmesbury's 
 masterpiece, and raised his reputation to the highest 
 point. Here was the system so long desired, and for 
 a few years it encouraged the Court of London to 
 intervene more freely in Continental affairs and use 
 a higher tone 2 . But how long did it last 1 It lasted 
 
 1 Diaries, &c. of Lord Malmesbwry, ii. 240. 
 
 4 The formation of a counter-combination, a Quadruple Alliance 
 between Kussia, Austria, France, and Spain, was only prevented, 
 according to Segur's Memoirs, by the weakness of France. 
 
92 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect. ii. till the first strain was put upon it by the earliest 
 reverses sustained in the war of the Revolution. 
 Then it snapped, and its author had himself the 
 task of struggling to persuade Prussia to fulfil the 
 engagements she had contracted, and the morti- 
 fication of struggling in vain. 
 
 Evils at- On the whole, standing alliances have generally, 
 
 tendant on . 
 
 the policy 1 conceive, been unprofitable. But it is further to 
 
 of perma- 
 nent am- be remarked that the policy which sought them, even 
 
 3QC65. 
 
 when not barren of advantage, had positively mis- 
 chievous tendencies. It has, in fact, not seldom 
 prolonged connections after they had ceased to be 
 useful, or has turned them to the prosecution of 
 ends which were not useful. More commonly, it 
 has offered an apparent security which was worse 
 than none, has raised expectations destined to be 
 disappointed at the critical moment, and has en- 
 couraged nations to embark in enterprises beyond 
 their strength. It has tended to shackle their free 
 agency and impair their self-reliance — to breed 
 gratuitous causes of complaint, vague and ill- 
 defined claims, unnecessary conflicts between the 
 obligations of prudence and those of honour — to 
 hamper the minds and narrow the views of states- 
 men — to turn politics into a game of speculation-*- 
 to keep alive worn-out traditions and obsolete prin- 
 ciples of action — to perpetuate animosities, and, by 
 forming separate camps, to provoke quarrels — to 
 
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 93 
 
 beget undue cravings for what is called influence, Lem. ii. 
 and a fidgety impatience or a nervous dread of what 
 is called isolation. In some of these respects it had 
 consequences which long survived, and are by no 
 means extinct at the present day. 
 
 It is true of course that the foregoing consider- Foregoing 
 
 views, how 
 
 ations, like all political considerations whatever, may &r they 
 
 need qnali- 
 
 be insisted on too absolutely and pushed too far. fication. 
 No one will dispute that, beside the general interest 
 which all nations commonly have in the maintenance 
 of order and peace, particular nations may have 
 special interests, more or less permanent, and de- 
 termined more or less by geographical position. 
 We, as an insular and trading people, have a special 
 interest, which France has not to the same extent, in 
 preserving the peace of Europe. France has special 
 interests, which we have not, in keeping Belgium 
 apart from Holland, and sustaining the neutrality, 
 if she cannot have the control, of Switzerland. 
 Austria, Prussia, Russia, have their special interests. 
 No one, again, will dispute that concurrent views of 
 policy, and a prospect of common advantage, may, 
 while they last, produce a close approximation be- 
 tween two or more States, and lead, not without 
 benefit, to that habitual interchange of opinions, that 
 frequent concert, and those mutual concessions in lesser 
 matters, which make up what is called a cordial un- 
 derstanding. Still less of course do I mean to argue 
 against specific engagements made with a view to a 
 
94 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 leqt. ii. particular object and regulating the manner and pro- 
 portions in which the contracting parties shall co- 
 operate for the attainment of that object. Treaties of 
 alliance in contemplation of an actual or impending 
 war fall under this head. Such arrangements will 
 always be necessary, and there is but one main rule 
 in framing them — the clearer they are, the better. I 
 say only that the special interests of nations have 
 been often thought to conflict where they only differ — 
 the latent sense of antagonism between France and 
 England, for example, does not spring from a real 
 conflict of interests, but from the fact that for a 
 couple of centuries they have been the two greatest 
 Powers in the world, and from the habit of rivalry 
 which has grown out of that fact ; that the ability 
 of a State to exert influence depends on its intrinsic 
 strength, far more than on its foreign connections; 
 that it is seldom or never wise to erect large schemes 
 and permanent combinations on the basis of a sup- 
 posed community of interest or sentiment; that 
 intimacies between Governments should commonly 
 be restrained within somewhat cautious limits ; that 
 a cordial understanding, with its hot and cold fits, 
 its half-confidences, the little heart-burnings and mis- 
 constructions to which it is exposed, and the sus- 
 picions of undue compliance which it seldom fails 
 to excite 1 , needs the greatest circumspection to 
 
 1 A striking picture of these is furnished by M. Guizot's Memoirs. 
 
EUROPE DURING THE PEACE. 95 
 
 prevent it from defeating its own object ; lastly, Lect. it. 
 that engagements for joint action are generally vicious 
 which are indefinite in their scope or without limit 
 of time. 
 
 Since 1815 we have heard little about defensive Europe 
 
 since 1815. 
 
 leagues, much about co-operation. ' I had hoped,' 
 wrote Lord Castlereagh from Vienna, at a moment 
 when the excessive demands of Russia and Prussia 
 had driven the three other great Powers to a hurried 
 and shortlived coalition, 'that we had done with 
 systems.' Systems in the old sense have in fact been 
 well-nigh forgotten for fifty years. The general aim 
 has been to secure general concert in all matters of 
 importance ; and the separate groups which have 
 formed themselves have been such as ought to have 
 been impossible according to the old principle of 
 geographical and natural enmities. France has been 
 associated with England — Austria with Prussia and 
 Russia. The plan of general concert, which took its 
 rise at Vienna and owed its first development to the 
 solicitude of Metternich, has sometimes succeeded, and 
 sometimes failed ; of late years its failures have been 
 more conspicuous than, its successes : forces too strong 
 to be overcome have fought — and happily, as I be- 
 lieve, will always fight — against any system tending 
 to control artificially the action of those causes by 
 which Europe is gradually transformed, and to 
 stereotype either existing forms of government or 
 
96 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect. ii. existing territorial arrangements. The particular 
 intimacies which, subsist between different Powers 
 are due to agencies on the permanence of which we 
 cannot count, and it is therefore unsafe to lean on 
 them. ' I should be glad,' wrote Canning to Lord 
 Granville in 1824, 'to make a beginning. of a close 
 and separate good understanding with France, on 
 which, more than on any other political combination, 
 the permanency of peace depends/ The year before, 
 he had written to Sir Charles Bagot, 'Things are 
 getting back to a wholesome state again. Every 
 nation for itself, and God for us all 1 ! ' It is possible 
 to agree with both sentiments at the same time. 
 
 To use the advantages of a situation which makes 
 this country, though a neighbour to the Continent, 
 not a part of it, was in Bolingbroke's opinion the 
 true wisdom of an English statesman. To avoid 
 all foreign alliances whatever was the advice of 
 Washington to his countrymen, seated on a continent 
 of their own and parted, not by a little strait but by 
 three thousand miles of sea, from the traditional 
 friendships and enmities and the restless politics of 
 Europe. They have had no difficulty in adhering 
 to it, nor need we be at any loss to understand 
 the anxiety early shewn by their statesmen lest the 
 nations of the Old World should try to extend their 
 political system to the New. 
 
 1 Stapleton's Political Life of Canning, pp. 370, 404. 
 
BALANCE OF POWER. 97 
 
 Let me add, in conclusion, some short remarks on lect. n. 
 two points which are germane to the subject of this J^^ 11 * 
 Lecture. And, first, on the doctrine or theory of 
 a Balance of Power, and the importance attached 
 to it by its friends and foes. 
 
 i. The constant use of this phrase in public Treaties The 
 
 . , 'Balance 
 
 and manifestoes has led some writers of eminence to of Power.' 
 speak of it as embodying a rule or principle of posi- 
 tive International Law. This is an inaccuracy, as any 
 one may satisfy himself who will try to reduce the 
 substance of the phrase to the shape of a legal pro- 
 position. At the utmost, it is no more than a practical 
 security, of recognized importance, for the observance 
 of International Law — which is a very different thing. 
 The phrase itself is, according to its best interpreters, 
 a short expression of the political maxim that no 
 single State ought to be suffered to become strong 
 enough to overbear the aggregate strength of the 
 rest, or some considerable but undefinable proportion 1 
 of their aggregate strength. But since it is im- 
 possible to fix with anything like precision the point 
 
 1 Gentz talks sometimes of all, sometimes of 'the majority,' 
 or ' several.' The thing really meant is, so many as might probably 
 be expected to combine in order to repel an aggression dangerous 
 to the whole. He is equally obscure about the means by which 
 a preponderance which is becoming excessive is to be restrained. 
 ' Unlawful ' enterprises are to be resisted, of course. But suppose 
 the obnoxious State abstains from all violence, and yet grows 
 continually stronger. What then 1 Why then, ' no means which 
 political wisdom can devise for the purpose of diminishing its 
 power should be neglected or untried.' 
 
 H 
 
98 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lbct. ii. at which this excessive preponderance is reached, or 
 to make sure how many of the lesser Powers will 
 actually throw their weight into the opposite scale, 
 it has come to mean more than this : every aggran- 
 disement likely to jeopardise the actual state of pos- 
 session has been treated as a displacement pro tanto 
 of the equilibrium ; and the equilibrium itself meant 
 such a distribution of force among the different 
 countries of Europe as offered a security for the 
 existing state of possession. In an age of ' systems,' 
 when every one had his eyes fixed on the movements 
 of his neighbour, and mutual suspicion and jealousy 
 constantly harassed all the Cabinets of Europe, these 
 notions would rapidly acquire consistence and de- 
 velopment. Europe was regarded as one great 
 system, kept poised, as it were, by the distribution 
 of force among its members — a system of systems, 
 for it was composed of several clusters, each 
 balanced internally and serving to support the 
 general balance of the whole. Rousseau pronounced 
 the entire machine a self-acting one, which might 
 be safely trusted to take care of itself, and had 
 never been the better for the pains bestowed on it. 
 To protect the balance, however, or to redress it, has 
 been among the nominal objects of almost every 
 political Treaty concluded and Declaration of War 
 issued during the eighteenth century, and indeed 
 during the present ; and there is no doubt that it 
 has sometimes served as the pretext for a quarrel, 
 
BALANCE OF POWER. 99 
 
 and repeatedly made hostilities general which would lect. h. 
 otherwise have been shut up within a comparatively 
 small area. 
 
 The idea of a Balance of Power is said to have 
 been first worked out by the scheming Italian poli- 
 ticians of the Middle Ages ; but something like it has 
 probably existed wherever men felt insecure in the 
 presence of superior strength, and the only feasible 
 substitute for a police lay in voluntary combinations 
 for self-defence. ' Whoever,' says Hume, ' will read 
 Demosthenes' oration for the Megalopolitans may see 
 the utmost refinements on this principle which ever 
 entered the head of a Venetian or English specu- 
 latist;' and he quotes a passage from Polybius 1 , 
 which expresses the idea itself with sufficient pre- 
 cision. I do not suppose that the instinct of self- 
 preservation which suggested it will ever wear out ; 
 that nations will ever be content, if they can help 
 it, to feel that they exist upon sufferance ; or that 
 statesmen, European or American, will learn to see 
 with indifference conquests and annexations which 
 may affect the interests under their charge. Nor is 
 it possible to frame general rules which shall define 
 beforehand what circumstances will justify anxiety, 
 or to what weapons it may resort when roused in 
 earnest. Yet recent experience seems to shew that 
 time has much allayed that uneasy sensitiveness 
 which trembled at every slight disturbance of sub- 
 
 1 Lib. i. c. 83. 
 H 2 
 
100 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect. ii. sisting arrangements, took umbrage at every accession 
 of power which might fall to the lot of a neighbour, 
 weighed out in nice scales souls by the thousand 
 and territories by the square mile, and attached 
 extravagant importance to remote possibilities of 
 loss or gain. Declamations for and against the 
 doctrine are, in my view, alike unprofitable. Our 
 precautions will diminish, and will only diminish, 
 as we grow less afraid of one another, and cease 
 to mistake imaginary interests for real ones 1 . 
 
 1 Those who are inclined to pursue this subject may consult 
 Fenelon's Examen de la Conscience sur les Devoirs de la Roycmti ; 
 Hume's Essays (Essay VII) ; the opening chapters of Gentz's 
 Fragmente a/us der neuesten Geschichte des politischen Gleich- 
 geivichts ; Phillimore's Commentaries on International Law, Part 
 IV. ch. i. (where the foregoing authorities are cited, amongst many 
 others) ; Twiss, Law of Nations, .ch. vi. There are some sensible 
 remarks on this topic, mixed with much that is visionary, in Rous- 
 seau's Extrait d'wn Prqjet de Faix PerpitueUe par M. VAbbi de 
 S. Pierre. That the phrase itself has had a mischievous influence is 
 a just observation of Kliiber, Ewropaisches Volkerrecht, s. 42, note. 
 
 Fox spoke with his usual warmth, in the debate on the Address 
 (Nov. 27th, 1787), in defence of 'the sound and solid political 
 maxim, that Great Britain ought to look to the situation of affaire 
 upon the Continent, and to take such measures upon every change 
 of circumstances abroad as should tend best to preserve the balance 
 of power in Europe.' ' It was now confessed by the Government, 
 that it was necessary to come to the lower orders of the people, 
 those who were labouring under the heaviest burthens, those who 
 paid for their candles, their windows, and all the various necessaries 
 of life, and say, " Severely taxed as we know you are, you must never- 
 theless contribute something towards the expense of keeping poli- 
 tical power upon a balance in Europe." This was open and manly, 
 it was dictated by sound policy.' (Fox's Speeches, iii. 331.) 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES. . 101 
 
 2. Are the tendencies of modern society such as Lect. ii. 
 to diminish the necessity for these precautions \ This Present 
 
 J x tendencies 
 
 is the second and last point which I wish briefly to of surety, 
 consider. 
 
 Whether men are more sensible than they were of 
 the restraints of justice, and whether more generous 
 conceptions of what they owe to their race, with 
 a long customary acquiescence in rules begotten by 
 necessity and established by opinion and usage, 
 are not working beneficially in the same direc- 
 tion, I shall not now inquire. I am among those 
 who think that the world has improved and is im- 
 proving in these respects. The practice of referring 
 to arbitration disputes of secondary importance — 
 and a great number of wars have been wholly caused 
 by such quarrels — has made just so much progress 
 as to warrant the hope that it will make more. But 
 if history has any lesson for us on this subject, it is 
 this, that less is to be hoped from any direct en- 
 deavours to abolish wars or diminish their frequency 
 than from the silent growth of interests, habits of life, 
 modes of government, and a public opinion, favour- 
 able to peace. I shall only advert here to three 
 things, which have a bearing on the question. These 
 are the spread of commerce, the multiplication of 
 considerable States, the advance of free institutions 
 and popular government. 
 
 To particular classes, and even to particular nations, Effects of 
 
 war has often brought large commercial profits. But of com- 
 merce. 
 
102 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect.ii. to every nation, without exception, war is, and always 
 must be, on the whole less profitable commercially 
 than peace. General prosperity is the life of trade. 
 It is the interest of every trader and every trading 
 nation that all the world should be rich, for to be 
 rich is to have many wants as well as ample means 
 of satisfying them; and this interest comes closer' 
 home to us in proportion as our connections extend 
 and our capital travels farther abroad in search of an 
 advantageous return. English commerce especially 
 is so busy and expansive that there is hardly a people 
 worthy of the name whose productive power could 
 be materially injured without loss to Great Britain. 
 Industry all over the world toils not for itself 
 alone ; a large portion of its earnings passes always 
 into the common stock in which all who live and 
 labour have a share. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, 
 and eighteenth centuries traffic was a thing to be 
 fought for, and to get a monopoly was the way to 
 thrive ; and it will be long before we can quite 
 convince foreigners (especially the Germans) either 
 that England is sincere in asking only for open 
 markets, or that what she gains there will not be so 
 much lost to themselves. But if these truths are 
 still but imperfectly understood, they are better un- 
 derstood than formerly ; if they penetrate slowly and 
 meet many rebuffs, they may be trusted to make 
 their way in the long run. 
 
 The vision which rose before the minds of Henry 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES. 103 
 
 the Fourth of France and Elizabeth of England, at a i#w- n. 
 time when the continent of Europe contained bu t ^o^tion 
 two great Powers, France and the House of Austria, ^ a 8 ™* 1 1 
 towering above a crowd of inferiors and matched by 
 their very pre-eminence against each other — the 
 vision of a compact group of considerable States, not 
 far removed from one level, has been substantially 
 realised in later times, though in a form very unlike 
 that old Carte de I 'Europe which is sketched in the 
 pages of Sully. In place of the two thousand sove- 
 reignties which writers have been able to number as 
 existing at the close of the fifteenth century, there 
 are now about fifty *, and the process of absorption 
 and consolidation is evidently destined to go further. 
 This change has contributed to swell the number and 
 bulk of those gigantic armies which drain the pro- 
 ductive industry of Europe and incessantly menace 
 her repose. Yet it has at the same time made the 
 rivalry of the great Powers less keen, and their am- 
 bition has lost some of its old temptations. This 
 check at least, such as it is, exists everywhere— the 
 sense of being surrounded by a circle of neighbours 
 having various interests and a more than nominal 
 independence. 
 
 The influence of popular government— by which Of popular 
 
 govern- 
 
 I mean not representative institutions only, but the ment - 
 
 1 The number has since been further diminished by the German 
 Warpf 1866. 
 
104 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 leoi. ii. substantial power of the popular will — on the foreign 
 policy of nations, is a subject, not for a paragraph, 
 but for an essay. It is very mixed, and is for several 
 reasons a difficult thing to generalise about. 
 
 On the one hand may be set the liability, under 
 which all large bodies of people labour, to contagious 
 heats and unreflecting impulses, and their tendency to 
 be led away by national pride or vanity and to form 
 opinions on imperfect information ; the temptation 
 which may beset a prince or statesman to engage 
 in foreign wars for the sake of diverting public 
 attention and assuaging discontent ; the tempta- 
 tion — common however to both free and monarchical 
 Governments, though operating in different ways — 
 to interfere in the domestic affairs of other coun- 
 tries ; the temptation to draw questions of foreign 
 policy into the arena of party strife. On the 
 other hand, we daily observe how, when for every- 
 thing that is done some reason must be produced 
 which Will bear the light, and some semblance at 
 least of public advantage shewn, personal motives 
 are forced into the background and made to give 
 way to public interests. We see how free discussion 
 does its work, slowly and roughly perhaps but 
 enough for a practical judgment, in eliciting the 
 real merits of every disputed question. Again, how 
 mixed and composite a thing, in a country such as 
 ours, is this public opinion that surrounds us like 
 the air we breathe ; what various classes are really 
 
MODERN TENDENCIES. 105 
 
 represented in it, what diverse views, interests, lect. ii. 
 habits of thought and feeling have helped to form 
 it or to moderate it by impalpable restraints ! Such 
 an influence, while it keeps its mixed character, will 
 be almost always cautious, and generally reasonable. 
 Once, and probably twice, within a short space of 
 time, we have ourselves been saved from embarking 
 in a war, after the Government had advanced almost 
 too far to recede, by public opinion, and by the sense 
 that no satisfactory account of it could be given to 
 the House of Commons. Less openly, and in a less 
 degree, a like cause has produced like effects in 
 France. Public opinion, on the other hand, under 
 different conditions, was a chief agent in driving the 
 German Courts into war with Denmark, and public 
 opinion it was which forced the Danish Government 
 to brave a war with Germany. 
 
 The question, what institutions are best suited 
 for a steady foreign policy, has been often asked 
 and variously answered. A French writer of the 
 last century goes so far as to assert that the only 
 European States capable of a systematic and ex- 
 tended plan were the Venetian Kepublic and the 
 Swiss Confederation. Despotic Governments, he 
 thought, were ruled by caprice ; Parliamentary 
 Governments, by faction. The truth probably is, 
 that forms of government are not in this matter 
 quite so material as they have been thought to be. 
 Few traditions are more tenacious than those of a 
 
106 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect - H- Foreign Office ; public opinion on such subjects runs, 
 during long periods, pretty constantly in the same 
 groove ; and considerable power will always belong 
 to any able man, be he the servant of a despot or of 
 a democracy, who holds in his hands the strings of 
 diplomacy and has the actual conduct of business. 
 The minister of a free country is doubtless in great 
 measure debarred from those subtle combinations 
 in which politicians used to delight : an English 
 statesman could hardly have planned and executed 
 the transactions which gave Lombardy to Sardinia, 
 and Savoy and Nice to France. But such a country is 
 quite capable of a steady policy, and will, I believe, 
 on the whole, more steadily than a pure monarchy 
 prefer a policy of peace. 
 
 Conclusion. 'Qui etes vous, M. l'Abbe\ pour ecrire sur les 
 interets des nations? Etes vous ministre, ou am- 
 bassadeur V Such was the answer received by Mably 
 from the official to whom he had applied for leave 
 to print the book to which some references have 
 been made in this Lecture. There is now no in- 
 congruity or impertinence in treating subjects such 
 as this, even within the walls of a college; but 
 I have expressed myself ill, if, in stating opinions, 
 I have seemed to forget the tone proper to one who 
 has never enjoyed the opportunities of knowledge, 
 or felt the imperious responsibilities, which belong 
 to action. 
 
Leot. IT. 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 The following extract from Segur's Memoires et Souvenirs 
 is tolerably well known. It is however so lively and so much 
 to the point that it may well be quoted here. Segur, then 
 a young man, was on the eve of departure to represent 
 the Government of Louis XVI at Petersburg, and he was 
 ambitious of receiving a lesson in politics from the Count 
 d'Aranda, a shrewd and firm but eccentric diplomatist, who 
 had for several years been Spanish Minister at Paris : — 
 
 ' Le comte d'Aranda portait sur sa physionomie, dans son 
 maintien, dans son langage et dans toutes ses manieres, une 
 grande empreinte d'originalite. Sa vivacite etait grave, sa 
 gravite ironique et presque satirique. II avait une habitude 
 ou un tic etrange et m£me un peu ridicule; car, presque k 
 chaque phrase, il ajoutait ces mots : Entendez-vous ? comprenez- 
 vous ? 
 
 - J'allai le voir; j'invoquai les bontes qu'il m'avait tou- 
 jours temoignees ; je lui montrai mon inquietude relativement 
 a la nouvelle carriere oii j'entrais, mon vif desir d'y reussir, et 
 l'esperance que je coneevrais s'il consentait a m'eclairer par 
 ses conseils, et a me faire ainsi recueillir par d'utiles legons 
 une partie des fruits de sa longue experience. 
 
 ' Ah ! me dit-il en souriant, vous #tes effraye des etudes 
 qu'exige la diplomatie ? Entendez-vous ? eomprenez-vous ? Vous 
 croyez devoir longtemps secher sur des cartes, des dipl6mes 
 et de vieux livres ? vous voulez que je vous donne des lecons 
 sur la politique ? Eh bien, j'y consens : nous commencerons 
 quand vous voudrez. Entendez-vous ? comprenez-vous ? Tenez, 
 venez ehez moi demain a midi, et je vous promets qu'en peu 
 de temps vous saurez toute la politique de l'Europe. En- 
 tendez-vous? comprenez-vous? 
 
 ' Je le remerciai, et le lendemain je fus ponctuel au rendez- 
 vous; je le trouvai assis dans un fauteuil, devant un grand 
 bureau sur lequel etait etendue la carte de FEurope. 
 
 ' Asseyez-vbus, me dit-il, et commencons. Le but de la 
 
108 SYSTEMS OF POLICY. 
 
 Lect. II. politique est, comme vous le savez, de connaitre la force, les 
 moyens, les interets, les droits, les craintes et les esperances 
 des differentes puissances, afin de nous raettre en garde contre 
 elles, et de pouvoir a propos les concilier, les desunir, les 
 combattre, ou nous lier avec elles, suivant ce qu'exigent nos 
 propres avantages et notre surete. Entendez-vous ? comprenez- 
 vous? 
 
 ' — A merveille ! repondis-je, mais c'est la precisement ce 
 qui presente a mes yeux de grandes etudes a faire et de 
 grandes difficultes a vaincre. 
 
 ' — Point du tout, dit-il, vous vous trompez; et, en peu de 
 moments, vous allez etre au fait de tout : regardez cette 
 carte ; vous y voyez tous les Etats europeens, grands ou 
 petits, n'importe, leur etendue, leurs limites. Examinez bien; 
 vous verrez qu'aucun de ces pays ne nous presente une en- 
 ceinte bien reguliere, un carre complet, un parallelogramme 
 regulier, un cercle parfait. On y remarque toujours quelques 
 saillies, quelques renfoncements, quelques brSches, quelques 
 echancrures. Entendez-vous? comprenez-vous ? 
 
 'Voyez ce colosse de Russie : au midi, la Crimee est une 
 presqu'ile qui s'avance dans la mer Noire et qui appartenait 
 aux Turcs ; la Moldavie et la Valachie sont des saillies, et 
 ont des cotes sur la mer Noire, qui conviendraient assez au 
 cadre moscovite, surtout si, en tirant vers le nord, on y 
 joignait la Pologne: regardez encore vers le nor-dj la est la 
 Finlande, herissee de rochersj elle appartient a la SuSde, et 
 cependant elle est bien pres de Petersbourg. Vous entendez ? 
 
 ' Passons a present en SuMe : voyez-vous la Norwege ? 
 c'est une large bande tenant naturellement au territoire sue- 
 dois. Eh bien, elle est dans la dependance du Danemark. 
 Comprenez-vous ? 
 
 'Voyageons en Prusse : remarquez comme ce royaume est 
 long, fr^le, etroit ; que d'&hancrures il faudrait remplir pour 
 l'elargir du c6te" de la Saxe, de la Silesie, et puis sur les rives 
 du Rhin ! Entendez-vous ? Et l'Autriche, qu'en dirons-nous ? 
 Elle posseMe les Pays-Bas, qui sont pourtant separes d'elle 
 par l'Allemagne, tandis qu'elle est tout pres de la Baviere, 
 
NOTE A. 109 
 
 qui ne lui appartient pas. Entendez-vous ? comprenez-vous ? I.bct. II. 
 Vous retrouvez cette Autriche au milieu de l'ltalie; mais 
 comme e'est loin de son cadre ? comme Venise et le Piemont 
 le rempliraient bien ! 
 
 'Allons, je erois pour une fois en avoir dit assez. Entendez- 
 vous ? comprenez-vous ? Vous sentez bien a present que toutes 
 ces puissances veulent conserver leurs saillies, remplir leurs 
 echancrures, et s'arrondir enfin suivant l'occasion. Eh bien, 
 mon cher, une lecon suffit; car voila toute la politique. 
 Entendez-vous ? comprenez-vous ? 
 
 ' — Ah ! iej>liquai-je,y'entends etje comprends d'autant mieux 
 que je jette a present mes regards sur l'Espagne, et que je 
 vois a sa partie occidentale une longue et belle lisiere ou 
 echancrure, nominee le Portugal, et qui conviendrait, je crois, 
 parfaitement au cadre espagnol. 
 
 ' — Je vois que vous entendez, que vous comprenez, me re- 
 pliqua le comte d'Aranda. Vous voila tout aussi savant que 
 nous dans la diplomatic. Adieu; marchez gaiement, hardi- 
 ment, et vous prospererez. Vous entendez ? vous comprenez ? 
 Ainsi se termina ce bref et bizarre cours de politique. J 
 (Segur, Memoires ou Souvenirs, i. 97-) 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 DIPLOMACY, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 1" SPOKE in my last public Lecture of the arti- l^ot. hi. 
 
 ficial systems of policy formerly current in 
 Europe, and of the changes which opinion and 
 practice have undergone in reference to this subject. 
 Between the principles on which the affairs of 
 nations are conducted and the agencies employed 
 in carrying them on there is a close connection, 
 and a natural transition leads from the one to the 
 other. 
 
 Diplomacy — a word of modern growth (its French Meanings 
 equivalent is said to be of no earlier date than the macy.' 
 ministry of Vergennes,) — means, in its wider sense, 
 the art or science, real or imaginary, of foreign politics; 
 in its narrower acceptation it stands for the art, or 
 imaginary art, of negotiating, or for negotiation itself 
 considered as a business or employment. I use the 
 word for -the present, as in England we commonly 
 do, in its more restricted meaning ; and I am going 
 to make some remarks, such as may be fairly made 
 
112 DIPLOMACY, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect - In - by one who has no practical knowledge of it and 
 views it merely from the outside, on the character, 
 past and present, of that business and the persons 
 engaged in it. 
 
 Vic ^f . t The diplomacy of modern Europe in the earlier 
 
 ascribed to - 1 •> J - 
 
 DMomac sta § es °^ ^ ts history had features with which we 
 compara- are tolerably well acquainted. At least we know 
 tan e ceT° r " ^ em under their worst lights and in their most 
 unfavourable aspects. It has had the reputation of 
 being false, crafty, meddlesome, unscrupulous in the 
 choice of means, frivolous and punctilious to an ex- 
 travagant degree. It enjoyed at the same time a 
 larger share of consequence, and played a more 
 showy and conspicuous part in the theatre of the 
 world, than it does now, or is likely to do hereafter. 
 We shall better understand the causes from which 
 it derived its importance and to which its traditional 
 character is due, if we observe the conditions under 
 which it worked and the purposes for which it was 
 employed. 
 
 A French writer on diplomacy who lived in the 
 seventeenth century, himself a diplomatist and a 
 worthy and estimable man, thus extols his calling. 
 ' It causes,' says he, ' sudden revolutions in great 
 States. It excites hatreds, jealousies, and seditions. 
 It arms Princes and whole nations against their 
 own interests : it forms leagues and other treaties 
 among Sovereigns and peoples whose interests are 
 quite opposed to one another ; it destroys those 
 
ITS TRADITIONAL CHARACTER. 113 
 
 leagues, and snaps the closest ties asunder 1 .' Cal- Lect.iii. 
 lieres, when he contemplated, with a certain air of 
 complacency, the quantity of mischief which might 
 be wrought by this powerful and insinuating agency 
 as it had been developed in the two preceding 
 generations by Richelieu and Mazarin, regarded it 
 from a point of view common to the statesmen of 
 his time, but which, to do him justice, was not his 
 own. To induce people to serve your interests by 
 acting against their own, was then thought a highly 
 desirable object, which might be effected by in- 
 genious combinations. The policy of those times 
 was restless and speculative, not here and there 
 and at intervals, but in general ; and a restless and 
 speculative policy begets a meddling and intriguing 
 diplomacy. The tools we work with are produced 
 and fashioned by the work we have to do. Again, 
 when in the interior of Courts plotting and corruption 
 abounded, and excessive importance was attached to 
 ceremonial and etiquette, it was natural that the 
 same vices and follies should reproduce themselves 
 among those who represented their respective Courts 
 abroad. In these respects the morals and manners 
 of the diplomatic body would probably reflect those 
 of its employers, and of the world in which it moved. 
 Further, it is to be noticed that in the politics of 
 
 1 CalliSres, De la Manure de Mgocier avec les Sowoerams, 
 i. 19, ed. 1750. 
 
 I 
 
li4 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lect. hi. those times the personal element, the force of per- 
 sonal will and character, predominated more abso- 
 lutely than it can in the most despotically governed 
 countries of the present day, that the means of ob- 
 taining accurate information about foreign countries 
 were few and scanty, and that communications were 
 difficult and slow. On some of these points I am 
 about to add a few observations. I do not forget 
 that the changes I speak of were gradual, and that 
 the policy as well as the habits and manners of 
 the sixteenth century differed from those of the 
 eighteenth. But for so slight a sketch as this, and 
 for the purpose of bringing out broad general cha- 
 racteristics, large periods of time may be taken 
 without risk of material inaccuracy. And this is 
 especially true, I think, of diplomatic history. There 
 is a sort of family likeness — a likeness with dif- 
 ferences — in Instructions and State-papers composed 
 in countries and at times very remote from one 
 another, and still more in the despatches and familiar 
 letters of shrewd men of the world, employed in 
 similar work, though with every variety of circum- 
 stances and aim. 
 
 influent ^ e fr amers °^ political systems, as I observed in 
 abater cs ' m y last lecture, na( * no foundation to build on beyond 
 themhT tneir conceptions of the interest of each State, and of 
 t°™r sucn continuing influences as were likely to impress a 
 permanent bias on its policy. Personal, individual, 
 
PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 115 
 
 temporary influences they were obliged to set aside, Lect - m. 
 But there were always those who contended that the 
 personal influences were really the stronger of the 
 two. ' I have long observed,' says Sir William 
 Temple, ' from all that I have seen, or heard, or read 
 in story, that nothing is so fallacious as to reason 
 upon the counsels or conduct of princes or States 
 from what one conceives to be the true interest of 
 their countries ; for there is in all places an interest 
 of those that govern, and another of those that are 
 governed — nay, among these there is an interest of 
 quiet men, that desire only to keep what they have, 
 and another of unquiet men, who desire to acquire 
 what they have not, and by violent, if they cannot 
 by lawful, means. Therefore I never could find a 
 better way of judging the resolutions of a State 
 than by the personal temper and understanding, or 
 passions and humours, of the princes or chief minis- 
 ters that were for the time at the head of affairs. 
 But the Spaniards reasoned only from what they 
 thought the interests of each country 1 .' And he goes 
 on to show that the Spaniards were in fact misled. 
 ' En politique,' says S^gur, ' il faut, pour voir juste, 
 calculer d'apres les passions des hommes peut-etre 
 plus que d'apres leurs interets reels V ' A great 
 
 1 Memoirs from 1662 to 1669; Temple's Works, i. 286, ed. 
 1764. 
 
 2 Politique de tous les Cabinets de VEwope, p. 270. (S^gur's 
 note.) 
 
 T 2 
 
116 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lect. hi. man,' observes Callieres, ' has said that nations are 
 ruled by princes, and princes by their interests. But 
 it should be added that the interests of princes and 
 their ministers are often overruled by their passions V 
 Hereditary monarchy lias this advantage among 
 others, that the prosperity of the reigning family is 
 permanently bound up with that of the nation. But 
 even in a hereditary monarchy this coincidence of 
 interests is far from absolute, and it affords at best 
 an insufficient support to the judgment of a weak, 
 short-sighted, or ambitious man. Wherever there- 
 fore a country is really swayed by a single person, or 
 by a number of persons small enough to be manage- 
 able, the temptation to acquire influence must exist, 
 and skill in negotiation will have a tendency to 
 reduce itself to skill in getting and using influence. 
 
 In the despatches, published by Mr. Froude, of 
 the Flemish and Spanish envoys at the English 
 court during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth — in 
 Sully's narrative of his interviews with James the 
 First — in Lord Malmesbury's reports of his long 
 endeavours to fix the wavering inclinations of Cathe- 
 rine the Second of Russia, we have several pictures 
 of this kind of diplomacy, painted by men as unlike 
 one another, and representing scenes and circum- 
 stances as unlike, as can well be imagined. Lord 
 Malmesbury had as little scruple in telling the 
 
 i. 73. 
 
PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 117 
 
 Empress that her minister Panin was sold to France Leci. hi. 
 and was more the King of Prussia's servant than 
 hers, as Sully had in urging James not to trust in 
 Cecil, as Renard in practising on the sickly and 
 clouded mind of Mary, or De Quadra and De Sylva 
 in their persevering efforts to worm themselves into 
 the confidence of Elizabeth and obtain the secret 
 direction of her conduct. Careful observation of the 
 changing humours of a mind which was masculine 
 and feminine by turns, vigorous in capacity, but 
 spoiled by flattery and unbridled sensual indul- 
 gence ; the art to please and persuade ; the qualities 
 necessary to win over dishonest ministers and brutal 
 favourites, or else to countermine their influence, — 
 these were the things wanted in a British minister 
 sent to the Court of St. Petersburgh towards the 
 close of the last century ; and in this ungrateful task 
 a man of singular ability wasted some of the best 
 years of his life. They were doubly wasted ; for Lord 
 Malmesbury failed in winning Russia to the side of 
 Great Britain, as Sully failed in imprinting his 
 master's plans on the mind of James the First, and 
 the agents of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second 
 in permanently re-conquering England for the Holy 
 See. In fact, what is called influence commonly has 
 failed, and does fail, to achieve what is expected from 
 it. It awakes suspicion ; it sets counter-influences at 
 work : strong characters resist or elude it, and dull or 
 weak ones are often protected from it by their own 
 
118 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lbqt.hi. dulness or instability, by an instinct, natural to 
 them, of jealousy and mistrust, or by a keener 
 and more obstinate sense of their own interests 
 than the world gives them credit for. What, how- 
 ever, we now have to observe is, that the predomi- 
 nance of the strictly personal element in the govern- 
 ment of nations must have tended not only to throw, 
 as it constantly did, the main weight and stress of 
 negotiations on the personal qualities and knowledge 
 of the negotiator, and thus to augment his personal 
 importance, but to throw that stress on qualities of a 
 lower grade, such as address, pliancy, the charm of a 
 polished manner, and a sagacity not far removed from 
 cunning, and on an inferior sort of knowledge — the 
 knowledge of men 1 , 
 
 scantiness The importance of diplomacy was further increased 
 means of by the absence or scantiness of common means of 
 
 informa- J 
 
 tbn l Effect information about foreign countries and the acts and 
 
 or this on ° 
 
 an ambas- characters of people at a distance. It was a chief 
 
 sador s -T r 
 
 position. p ar j. 0; f an ambassador's business to send home detailed 
 accounts of all he saw and heard, omitting neither per- 
 sons nor things. The best specimens, probably, of this 
 work are to be found in the reports and despatches 
 
 —. i i.i i. — ■ i i i i — i ii i ,, i , i m 
 
 1 ' Again, it is one thing to understand persons, and another 
 thing to understand matters : for many are perfect in men's 
 humours that are not greatly capable of the real part of business, 
 which is the constitution of one that hath studied meu more than 
 books.' Bacon, Essay on Cvm/nmg. 
 
INFORMATION FORMERLY SCANTY. 119 
 
 of the Venetian envoys, written, in discharge of a lect. hi. 
 duty strictly exacted from them, by observers who 
 were among the most acute and experienced in 
 Europe, and whose diplomatic business was seldom 
 very onerous. It is obsersred by Reumont x that 
 the quantity of writing expected from an Italian 
 diplomatic agent was what we should now con- 
 sider enormous, and the same thing may be said of 
 the French envoys of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. Bacon says of Henry the Seventh that 
 ' he was careful and liberal to obtain good intelligence 
 from foreign parts, wherein he did not only use his 
 interest in the liegers here, and the pensioners which 
 he had both in the Court of Rome and other the 
 Courts of Christendom, but the industry and vigilancy 
 of his own ambassadors in foreign parts. For which 
 purpose his instructions were ever extreme curious 
 and articulate ; and in them more articles touching 
 inquisition than negotiation, requiring likewise from 
 his ambassadors an answer in particular distinct 
 articles respectively to his questions.' ' Perpetuse 
 legationes/ wrote Bynkershoek early in the eighteenth 
 century, ' fere explorandi causa habentur.' Resi- 
 dent missions are kept mostly as posts of obser- 
 vation. When travellers were comparatively few 
 and newspapers did not exist, and later, when a 
 chance letter from abroad was all that the journalist 
 
 1 Bella Diplomaida ItaUcma dal Secolo XIII al XVI. Florence, 
 1857. 
 
120 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect. hi had to supply, whatever an envoy could glean was 
 worth sending home ; and in times when the political 
 activity of Europe was far greater than now, and 
 projects and intrigues far more numerous, there was 
 much more of that kind of information which can be 
 gained only through special channels and by means 
 of personal vigilance and ingenuity. A discreet in- 
 quisitiveness, a habit of observing closely and report- 
 ing faithfully, is still insisted on as one of the chief 
 duties of the members of a mission ; and with a view 
 to the practice of it they are expected to mix much in 
 society. In critical times and places it is doubtless 
 useful to have on the spot a man of character and 
 position, whose duty it is to know what is passing, 
 to sift what he learns, and transmit it punctually 
 and clearly to his chief. It is always convenient for 
 that chief to be well informed as to the state of parties 
 in foreign countries, the characters of statesmen, and 
 the true complexion of current events. A mass of 
 such information is stored in every Foreign-Office, 
 especially in those Continental countries where, as in 
 Russia, the practice of accumulating and registering 
 petty personal details has been methodised and per- 
 fected under a rigid passport system. Possibly the 
 value of such information may not be overrated. 
 Yet we cannot fail to see that the ambassador's 
 function in this particular has to a great extent 
 been superseded. There are comparatively few 
 political secrets now to be picked up in society, 
 
COMMUNICATIONS FORMERLY SLOW. 121 
 
 or out of it ; and the collection of such intelligence Lect - iil 
 as is public property has become the business of 
 professional newsmongers, who have agents in all 
 great capitals, whose profits depend much on their 
 accuracy and still more on their despatch, and whose 
 reports, being published as widely as possible, are 
 quickly either contradicted or confirmed 1 . 
 
 Communications, formerly slow and precarious, Difficulty 
 
 ' of com- 
 
 have become easy and regular, and within the memory munication. 
 of this generation literally as quick as lightning. 
 When despatches had to be sent by mounted couriers, 
 travelling often in disguise and by circuitous tracks 
 to avoid being stopped, or else to be transmitted 
 through bankers and money-changers — when even 
 an ambassador might have to undergo such a jour- 
 ney as Badoer describes in a letter published by 
 Mr. Rawdon Browne 2 , setting off from Venice with 
 two shirts one over the other, riding twenty-six 
 days to London, nearly breaking his neck on the 
 Alps, almost drowned in the Rhine, and reaching his 
 
 1 It appears however that the demands of the Foreign-Office for 
 independent information are in fact rather increased than dimin- 
 ished by the quantity that cirpulates through ordinary channels. 'The 
 papers have correspondents everywhere : our Government cannot 
 be less well informed than the public, but must be supplied with 
 authentic information upon everything that occurs.' Minutes of 
 Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Diplomatic Ser- 
 vice. (Hon. H. Eliot.) 
 
 2 Fowr Years at the Court of Henry VIII, i. 63. 
 
122 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect. hi. destination half dead with fatigue and hardship- 
 resident envoys must often, for long periods, have 
 been quite cut off from home, and the safe arrival 
 of despatches must have been very uncertain. With 
 relays of horses, or by means of the royal posts when 
 they were established, despatch was attainable ; but 
 it required extraordinary urgency. ' Per postas, cito, 
 cito, volantissime, noctu dieque sine mora,' represents, 
 in the superscription of a despatch from a Milanese 
 envoy in 1475 what we express by the word 'im- 
 mediate V To come to recent times, a courier took 
 a month, a hundred years ago, to travel from London 
 to St. Petersburg. Now, by the multiplication and 
 improvement of roads, by the application of steam to 
 locomotion, and lastly by the electric telegraph, days 
 have been gradually shortened into hours, and hours 
 compressed into minutes. The effect is twofold. 
 On the one hand, a minister is more of a mere sub- 
 ordinate agent than he was: instead of waiting 
 several weeks for instructions, he can obtain them 
 in a few hours, or even less ; and the inevitable 
 consequence is a large transfer of responsibility from 
 him to his superior. Negotiations are carried on, 
 as was the case at the London Conference of 1864> 
 
 1 D6p8ches des Ambassadeitrs Milanctis, edited by Baron F. de 
 Gingins La Sarra (Paris and Geneva, 1858), i. 21. Commoner 
 superscriptions are — ' Per postas, cito ; ' ' Portentur die noctu- 
 que ; ' ' Mittantur per cabalarios, cito, cito, cito, quia important pro 
 re ducali.' On this subject, see the Editor's Preface, p. iv. 
 
EFFECTS OF SPEEDIER COMMUNICATION. 123 
 
 not so much by the persons on the spot, who are Lect. hi . 
 ostensibly conducting the discussion, as by other 
 persons at a distance. On the other hand, the vo- 
 luminous instructions and carefully-composed des- 
 patches, of which French diplomacy, through many 
 successive reigns, has furnished the most flowing and 
 elaborate, and that of England perhaps the tersest, 
 models \ must go out of fashion ; and the judgment 
 of an envoy, his readiness, presence of mind, and 
 quickness of apprehension, are taxed in a new way, 
 not only by the general acceleration of movement, 
 and the fact that every Court in Europe is within 
 whispering distance of every other Court, but by the 
 necessity of acting on short naked orders, not always 
 consistent, and the ciphering of which may have 
 been made obscurer in the transmission. Beasons, 
 
 1 The selections from the diplomatic correspondence of Louis the 
 Fourteenth, in Grimblot's Letters of William III and Louis 
 XIV, and their Ministers; the Instructions furnished to the 
 Marquis d'Harcourt on his mission to Spain in 1697 (De Garden, 
 Histoire Generate des Traitis de Paix, ii. 184) ; those given by 
 Choiseul to the Baron de Breteuil in 1760 (Flassan, vi. 193 ; 
 they appear also in De Garden's Traite de Diplomatic, iii. 253, and 
 in Meisel's Cours de Style Diplomatique, ii. 5) ; and Talleyrand's 
 Instructions for his mission to the Congress of Vienna, published 
 in the Comte d'Angeberg's Congris de Vienne, i. 215, — are good ex- 
 amples of the French style subsequent to the time of Mazarin. There 
 are some later models, French, German, and English, in Geffcken's 
 edition (1866) of the Guide Diplomatique by Ch. de Martens. 
 
 Kichelieu's letters and despatches, a great number of which have 
 been printed in the Documents Inedits sur VHistoire de France, 
 are in general short. 
 
124 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lect. hi. explanation, and commentary must lag behind in 
 a despatch, which will arrive when the time for 
 action is over. 
 
 insincerity The playful definition of an ambassador which 
 
 attributed x J 
 
 to Dipio- "Wotton wrote in the album of his friend at Augs- 
 
 macy. ° 
 
 Causes burg has had a celebrity which he did not dream of, 
 
 which tend- ° •* 
 
 mote Ft™" an( ^ w hi c h was very inconvenient , to him at the time. 
 Other callings have not escaped the imputation of 
 mendacity. 'Mentiris ut medicus' — you He like a 
 physician — was a common saying three hundred years 
 ago 1 . But diplomacy has had the reputation of 
 being false and deceitful in an eminent degree. 
 The magnitude of the interests intrusted to an 
 ambassador — the very fact that they were not his 
 own, but a master's, zealous fidelity to whom was his 
 first duty — the atmosphere of conflict and intrigue 
 in which he moved, surrounded by those whom it was 
 his business to outmanoeuvre, and whose business it 
 was to outwit him — might indeed easily tend to lower 
 his sense of the obligation to be perfectly honest and 
 true. It was base, his casuists told him, to lie for 
 yourself, venial to lie for your friend, and a point 
 of duty, under some circumstances, to lie for your 
 king and country. He had to conceal his own secrets 
 and penetrate those of others — to know 'what things 
 should be showed at half-lights,' and what hidden 
 altogether. 'Dissimulation,' says Bacon, 'is, as it 
 
 1 Albericus Gentilis, De Abusu Mendacii, c. viii. 
 
INSINCERITY. 125 
 
 were, but the skirts or train of secresy ;' and unless Lect. in. 
 a man gives himself a little scope for dissembling, 
 the duty of secresy becomes impossible. ' The best 
 composition and habit is to have openness in fame 
 and opinion, secresy in habit, dissimulation in season- 
 able use, and the power to feign if there be no 
 remedy 1 .' Such maxims were traditional especially 
 with the old Spanish diplomatists — slow, impene- 
 trable men, who had the merit of never being in 
 a hurry, and the art (it was commonly thought) of 
 seeming wiser than they were, very punctilious about 
 personal honour, but with a certain genius for plot- 
 ting. The most audacious plots which have been 
 hatched by envoys in foreign Courts have all been 
 Spanish. A story is told of two Spaniards, Juan 
 de Vega and Diego de Mendoza, successively envoys 
 at a certain great Court (the Court of France, I 
 believe, is meant), for the authenticity of which I do 
 not vouch. Vega, on his recal, wishing to leave a use- 
 ful legacy to his successor, warned him that veracity 
 was a thing unknown to the ministers with whom he 
 would have to deal. The other, remembering perhaps 
 the instructions given by Louis the Eleventh to his 
 envoys 2 , answered, 'They will find their match in me; 
 for every lie they tell me, I will tell them two 
 hundred/ '1/ returned Vega, 'have found my ac- 
 count in acting quite otherwise. To all their false - 
 
 1 Essay VI. ' 0/ Simulation and Dissimulation.' 
 
 2 ' S'ils vous mentent, mentez les encore plus.' 
 
126 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lbot. hi. hoods I have always answered by the truth ; and, 
 if they did not believe me, I found this a happy 
 method of arriving, without hazard to my honour, 
 at the end which I might have proposed to myself 
 by a lie 1 .' This happy method of making truth 
 do the work of falsehood is like the half-ironical 
 maxim attributed to Torcy, himself an upright man 
 — 'Que le meilleur moyen de tromper les cours 
 c'&tait dy parler toujours vrai.' ' Et ce fut en effet,' 
 adds Flassan, 'son principal artifice 2 .' Others have 
 said the same thing ; and there is an approach to 
 it in the advice which recommends a studied open- 
 ness of manner for the better concealment and pro- 
 tection of a close habitual reserve. 
 
 That diplomacy has been deeply tainted with the 
 vices of dissimulation and falsehood is certain. 
 Secret treaties, and still more secret articles annexed 
 to published treaties, are in the nature of lies ; for 
 a treaty is essentially a public engagement, and to 
 publish a part as the whole, keeping the remainder 
 undisclosed, is to palm off an imposition upon 
 Europe. And yet the arguments for truth and 
 openness in international affairs are plain and 
 irresistible. Without them there can be no con- 
 
 1 'Where they see clearly that a lie would stain their honour, 
 they are wont to speak truth,' says the Venetian Badoer, describing 
 the Spaniards in 1557. Raumer's History of tlie Sixteenth cmd 
 Seventeenth Centimes, i. 97. 
 
 2 Histoire de la Diplomatic Frangaise, iv. 412. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF SINCERITY. 127 
 
 fidenee, and on the confidence which a diplomatist Lect. hi. 
 inspires his whole success depends. Machiavel saw 
 this. In his letter of advice to Baffaello Girolami, 
 Florentine envoy to the Court of Charles V, he 
 insists strongly, from his own observation and ex- 
 perience, on the importance of gaining a character 
 for sincerity 1 — adding however that, where dissimu- 
 lation is necessary, it should be so practised as not 
 to be found out, or that; if it be found out, a defence 
 should be ready. In later times the same thing has 
 been often said, without the qualification. ' In 
 politics/ said Segur, ' and in stormy times, the true 
 dexterity is a courageous good faith. Character saves 
 men from the dangers on which subtlety makes 
 shipwreck, and firm sincerity alone can give solidity 
 to success or dignify misfortune/ ' It is scarcely 
 necessary to say/ wrote Lord Malmesbury, among the 
 suggestions which, late in life, he sent to a young 
 man just entering the profession, 'that no occasion, 
 no provocation, no anxiety to rebut an unjust 
 
 1 ' E sopra tutte si debbe ingegnare un oratore di acquistarsi 
 reputatione, la quale si acquista col dare di se esempli di uomo da 
 bene, ed esser tenuto liberale, intero, e non avaro e doppio, e non 
 esser tenuto uno che creda una cosa, e dicane un' altra. Questa 
 parte importa assai perche io so di quelli che per essere uomini 
 sagaci e doppi hanno in modo perduta la fede col principe, che non 
 hanno mai potuto di poi negoziare seco ; e seppure qualche volta e 
 necessario nascondere con le parole una cosa, bisogna farlo in modo 
 o che non appaja, o apparendo sia parata e presta la difesa. 
 Istruzione fatta per Niccold MachiavelK a Raffaello Girolami 
 quomdo parti per Spagna all' Imperatore. 
 
128 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lbqt hi. 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 
 not only ruin 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 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 as- 
 sertion flatly if it be true, or admit it as true if false 
 and of a dangerous tendency/ Sir Robert Adair, in 
 his Memoir of a Mission to the Court of Vienna in 
 1806, makes some forcible remarks on the same 
 subject. No statesman like Napoleon, he says, could 
 be ignorant of the uses of confidence in great affairs. 
 ' It is in fact their very life and being. It enables 
 the actors in them to reach their point quickly, and 
 when reached to hold it securely. It helps them to 
 escape from the wearisome path of fencing and 
 finessing, in which a negotiator may go on for 
 months together, and after having, with consummate 
 skill as he flatters himself, extorted at length a con- 
 cession from his antagonist, feel himself as little sure 
 of its definitive adoption as he was from the begin- 
 ning. Confidence in such cases is amongst the most 
 valuable of human means. Together with the minis- 
 ters, it brings the two countries face to face, as it 
 
IMPORTANCE OF SINCERITY. 129 
 
 were, and, in the interchange of proposals, adds the LB0T - m - 
 sanction of public truth to the security of private 
 honour V If a living witness be wanted, we have one 
 in Lord Clarendon. To the question whether, in his 
 judgment, any special art is required in diplomacy, he 
 answers, 'No : I think the special art required is this, — 
 to be perfectly honest, truthful and straightforward V 
 What conceivable circumstances may make dis- 
 simulation warrantable or justify an untruth, and 
 what is the proper definition of a lie, are questions, 
 we all know, which have often been considered by 
 writers on practical ethics. A distinguished Pro- 
 fessor of this University, three hundred years ago, 
 discussed them in a harmless little book entitled 
 ' On the Abuse of Lying,' which he dedicated to the 
 then Bishop of Durham 3 . Such questions however 
 
 1 Historical Memoir, p. 64. ' Si la bonne foi est necessaire 
 quelque .part,' said Talleyrand in his panegyric upon Count 
 Reinhard, ' c'est surtout dans les transactions politiques ; car 
 c'est elle qui les rend solides et durables. On a voulu confondre 
 la reserve avec la ruse. La bonne foi n'autorise jamais la ruse, 
 mais elle admet la reserve ; et la reserve a cela de particulier 
 qu'elle ajoute a la confiance.' ' On remarqua,' says the biographer 
 of Reinhard in the Biographie Unwerselle, ' qu'en prononcant les 
 mots de borme foi et v&rtu le vieux diplomate s'animait, qu'il 
 levait la t6te et forgait sa voix, ayant l'air de de'fier l'auditoire.' 
 Yet Talleyrand's profession, so far as it went, was probably not 
 insincere, notwithstanding the ridicule with which it was re- 
 ceived at the time. 
 
 2 Report from the Select Committee on the Diplomatic Service, 
 Minutes of Evidence, Qu. 1088. 
 
 3 Alberici GentiUs, Jims CiviKs Professoris RegU, De Abusu 
 Mendacii Disputatio. 
 
 K 
 
130 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lect. hi. are seldom practically encountered by a man who 
 avoids by-paths, and whose habits of action are 
 sound ; and, if he does fall in with them, they give 
 him little trouble. There is no reason to suppose 
 that the business of negotiating offers any peculiar 
 temptation in this respect. The pursuit of base or 
 secret ends leads men into crooked ways. But the 
 true interests of nations have nothing base in 
 them, and are not promoted by secresy, being 
 indeed, for the most part, open and manifest 
 in their nature. Bacon's admission — ' Certainly 
 the ablest men that ever were have all had an 
 openness and frankness of dealing and a name of 
 certainty and veracity' — applies with all its force 
 to diplomacy. Among the most distinguished names 
 in it are those of men notoriously not only true 
 but frank, 
 other prac The treacherous practices of stealing letters or 
 
 tices. Use 
 
 of cipher, surreptitiously opening them, bribing servants, and 
 hiring spies, did not expire with the age of Wal- 
 singham, nor with that of Mazarin. It is less than a 
 century since an English minister of high character 
 induced a King of Prussia to sign a preliminary 
 treaty of offensive and defensive alliance in the ab- 
 sence of his official advisers, having excluded one who 
 had influence with him from access to his closet by 
 bribing the valet at the door \ When no scruple of 
 
 1 Lord Malmesbwry's Letters and Diaries, ii. 425. The same 
 experienced diplomatist however, towards the close of his life> 
 
ETIQUETTE. 131 
 
 probity or honour forbad the corrupting of a courier Lect. hi. 
 or plundering him on the road, a resource was found 
 in the invention of cipher. As early as 1475 there is 
 a partially ciphered letter among the despatches of a 
 Milanese envoy at the Court of Louis the Eleventh, 
 which have lately been published in France 1 , and from 
 that time to the present there has been an infinite ex- 
 penditure of ingenuity in devising a variety of ciphers 
 simple enough to be easily and clearly decipherable 
 with the key, and hard enough to be practically un- 
 decipherable without it. The electric telegraph has 
 given a new impulse to the art, since telegraphic 
 despatches must constantly be sent in cipher. 
 
 Those who know little else about diplomacy have Diplomatic 
 
 A J etiquette. 
 
 heard of its reverence for forms, and its punctilious 
 etiquette. These things belonged to a state of so- 
 ciety different from ours. In the love of mere 
 sumptuousness and show there is a touch of bar- 
 barism ; the most profusely magnificent pageants 
 have not been exhibited by the most polished 
 nations : but where splendour has become an estab- 
 lished fashion, an elaborate ceremonial seems na- 
 turally to follow. When it was thought a fine 
 
 declared that he had obtained more information by inducing others 
 to talk and attending to what they said, than by the use of 
 money or spies. 
 
 1 Depiches des Ambassadews Milamms, i. 122. One line is in 
 cipher. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect - n i- thing to sit in a coach and six, and a finer still to 
 appear in public with half a dozen of such coaches, 
 people began to dispute, and finally to compose 
 treatises, on the momentous question, what grade or 
 dignity ought to entitle an envoy to this stately 
 mode of taking the air 1 . In such a world as St. 
 Simon's an ambassador must necessarily be cere- 
 monious, because everybody else was so. The slight 
 which might be conveyed by accompanying an envoy 
 half-way down stairs, instead of seeing him to his 
 carriage-door — the offence which might be given by 
 omitting to pay a formal visit to a prince of the 
 blood royal not yet out of his nurse's arms 2 — were 
 made slights and offences by the puerile rules of 
 Courts, and not by those of diplomacy. There are 
 obvious reasons however why these grave frivolities 
 should have been carried to greater lengths among 
 diplomatists than by any other class. An envoy 
 
 1 See the section in Miruss, Gescmdschafisreckt, ' Vom Kechte 
 mit sechs Pferden zu fahren.' i. § 327. 
 
 " Bynkershoek mentions that, within his remembrance, an envoy 
 from the Emperor Leopold was refused an audience by Louis XIV 
 because he would not ask an audience of the Dauphin's children ; 
 and proceeds to divert himself with considering what would pass 
 at such an interview. ' Sed ejus apud uxores auditorii saltern 
 aliqua ratio constat ; quod autem Legati etiam nunc accedant 
 ad pueros Frincipum, bimulos forte vel trimulos, et ad ejusdem 
 •setatis puellas, ejus ratio me plane fugit. Apud eos tamen easve 
 orationem habent separatam, an de nucibus vel pyris vel qua alia 
 re 1 udicra agant, non satis mihi constat ; hoc satis constat, Legatos 
 ssepe incondito infantium vagitu fuisse exceptos et sic dimissos.' 
 Qucestionea Jwria Publici, II. vi. 
 
ETIQUETTE. 133 
 
 had not merely his own self-importance to consult, Lect.iii. 
 but that of the master or nation whom he served, 
 and by whom he knew that the most trivial and 
 harmless concession was liable to be magnified into 
 a breach of duty. Sir Leoline Jenkins at Nymegen, 
 'in perpetual agonies 1 ' of perplexity and indecision 
 about these petty matters, and at last sharply 
 reprimanded for what at most was a venial and 
 insignificant mistake, was not worse off than many 
 a worthy and able man, who, with his head full 
 of the interests of ' Europe, has found his hands 
 full of petty questions of precedence. And Sir 
 Leoline represented a Court at which, as Sir W. 
 Godolphin testifies, there was less of ceremony than 
 elsewhere 2 , and a Prince who, in Temple's words, 
 was 'without a grain of pride or vanity in his 
 constitution,' and by nature and habit was the 
 easiest and most careless of mankind. The French 
 envoys, themselves at the same Congress showed, 
 Temple says, that they had less vanity than' their 
 
 1 Temple's Memoirs, [Works, i. 333.) 
 
 2 'These Exceptions may seem ridiculous in England, where 
 Forms and Ceremonies are more easily dispensed with, and 
 Ambassadors come to Court every night after a Domestick manner, 
 and enter at Back-doors, have Keys to the Galleries, &c, but 
 these Statesmen will not be guided by other Forms than their 
 own, nor for any consideration introduce a new Practice or cheap 
 way of coming to their Kings.' Sir, W. Godolphin to Mr. Richards, 
 Madrid, Dec. 7, 1672. (Original Letters and Negociations of 
 Sir R. Fanshawe, the Earl of Sandwich, the Earl of Sunderland, 
 and Sir W. Godolphin. London, 1724.) 
 
134 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lect. hi. Court : they served undoubtedly a far more arro- 
 gant and exacting master than Charles the Second ; 
 but even the French have been less troublesome 
 in this particular than the representatives of smaller 
 sovereigns, such as the Kings of Denmark, Sweden, 
 and Poland, whose pertinacity in wrangling for place 
 was in proportion to the unreasonableness of their 
 pretensions. But besides this it must be owned 
 that the multiplication of forms, which went on 
 most rapidly during a period when assemblages 
 called Congresses succeeded one another, has been 
 assisted by two other causes — by the advantage 
 which may be taken of them for mere obstruction 
 and delay, and by the fact that diplomatic personages 
 representing unfriendly Powers, and therefore dis- 
 posed to quarrel, were repeatedly collected together 
 for several months with little or nothing to do 1 . 
 Of all recorded disputes about ceremonial the most 
 ridiculous and obstinate are those which used to 
 occur during the last century in the Imperial Diet 
 at Eatisbon, which did nothing at all 2 . 
 
 The ambassador's pretensions were shared, and 
 sometimes caricatured, by his wife and servants. At 
 
 1 ' They seem to me,' says Temple, speaking of these points of 
 diplomatic etiquette, 'to be but so many impertinences that are 
 grown this last age into the character of ambassadors j having 
 been raised and cultivated by men, who, wanting other talents to 
 value themselves upon in those employments, endeavoured to do 
 it by exactness or niceties in the forms.' Works, i. 287. 
 
 2 See Putter's Germanic Empire, Dornford's translation, iii. 59. 
 
ETIQUETTE. 135 
 
 more than one great Congress of the seventeenth lbot. in. 
 century, a dispute which raged between two ladies 
 about an interchange of visits produced a temporary- 
 disturbance of the negotiations. In 1697 Count 
 Straatman's coachman, driving an empty coach home 
 from Eyswyk to the Hague, refused to give place to 
 the deputies of the States General who were proceed- 
 ing in the opposite direction, and kept them standing 
 in the road till his master was informed of it, and 
 sent him orders to make way 1 . More than thirty 
 pages in the Compleat History of the Treaty of 
 Utrecht are filled by documents relating to that 
 footmen's quarrel which we may remember as the 
 subject of an amusing paper in the Spectator. 
 
 Forms in social intercourse serve as a protection 
 and assistance to good manners, and prevent the 
 jostling of mere personal pretensions. A commoner 
 is not mortified at having to give place to a peer, 
 though he may be wiser, richer, or more powerful 
 than the peer is : somebody must go first, and the 
 arrangement that peers as a class shall go before 
 commoners as a class settles the question. When the 
 first Napoleon, on his way to Russia, received a crowd 
 of German potentates at Dresden, they would all have 
 quarrelled, it was said, had not their places been de- 
 termined by the strict old-fashioned etiquette of the 
 
 1 Bynkershoek, who was an eye-witness, relates the story, and 
 observes that precedence might as well have been claimed for a 
 pair of the count's old shoes. 
 
136 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Leoi. hi. Saxon Court. It was respectful in the last century, 
 as we learn from Lord Chesterfield, to bow to the 
 King of England, and disrespectful to bow to the 
 King of France : what may be the customary modes, 
 in this country or in that, of showing respect towards 
 the sovereign, is a matter of no importance, pro- 
 vided they be not troublesome or degrading ; but 
 it is doubtless convenient, both to sovereigns and to 
 those who have occasion to address them, that there 
 should be some customary modes. In the transac- 
 tion of business, forms are useful for economising 
 time and labour, for regularity, deliberation, and 
 despatch. But forms in general are mere arrange- 
 ments of convenience, and undue subservience to 
 them defeats its object, begets instead of averting 
 disputes, embarrasses and obstructs business instead 
 of expediting it. Then in course of time common 
 sense rebels against the shackles imposed on it, 
 and the forms themselves break down. We see this 
 process going on during the successive Congresses of 
 Nymegen, Kyswyk, and Utrecht. The Conferences 
 of Byswyk were held in a house, long since pulled 
 down, which seemed to have been built for the pur- 
 pose (engravings of it exist), with three separate 
 entrances, and every convenience for preventing col- 
 lisions ; but it was found impossible from first to last 
 to sit at the single table in the rooms assigned to the 
 mediators, because no agreement could be come to 
 about the order of sitting : in. that room they could 
 
ETIQUETTE. 137 
 
 only stand ; they sat in a circle in another room, Leot.iii. 
 where there was no table. A Latin protocol, which 
 had been preserved, of the proceedings at Nymegen 
 eighteen years before, was produced as a precedent, 
 but in vain ; it contained a plan of the room used at 
 Nymegen, showing the arrangement of seats in it, 
 together with the positions of the doors, windows, 
 and fireplace, — for these things may be important in 
 determining which is the top and which the bottom 
 of a table 1 . A round table was used at Utrecht, Cam- 
 bray, Soissons, and Aix la Chapelle (1748) ; but even 
 a round table loses its accommodating quality when 
 it is discovered that the place of honour is that oppo- 
 site the door, and that every place of honour has a 
 right hand and a left 2 . 
 
 When etiquette has advanced to these absurd 
 extremes, we see plainly that it is destined to be 
 swept away by the necessities of business ; and the 
 expedients which have been actually adopted on dif- 
 ferent occasions are in the nature rather of total 
 
 1 See Actes et Mimoires des Negotiations de la Paioc de Rysvtick, 
 vol. ii. Averdssement, and p. 19. 
 
 2 At the Conferences of Paris in 1856 the plenipotentiaries sat at 
 a large round table made expressly for the purpose, and covered 
 with green velvet, and took their places in the same order, counting 
 from right to left, as that in which they signed the protocol — viz. 
 in the alphabetical order of the initial letters of the French names 
 of the States they severally represented. Thus, when the Prussian 
 plenipotentiaries were admitted, chairs were placed for them between 
 those occupied by the ministers of Great Britain and those of Russia. 
 Gourdon, Histoire du Gongres de Paris (1857). 
 
138 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lbot.iii. abolition than of reform. Such are agreements that 
 every place may be regarded as the highest ; that 
 everybody shall sit where he chooses ; that precedence 
 shall be given to the first who arrives, or the first 
 who comes into the room ; or that it shall be treated 
 as a mere accidental thing, and that ceremonial shall 
 be dispensed with altogether. It is not to be expected 
 or wished that nations should cease to be tenacious 
 of their dignity, that all forms should be annihilated, 
 and all traditional usages disappear. These matters 
 belong to the domain of opinion : opinion makes and 
 unmakes them, and furnishes the only standard of 
 their importance. Thus, to an Indian native prince 
 received at the Court of the Governor-General minute 
 gradations of courtesy are of real consequence, because 
 they may affect the rank he holds in the eyes of his 
 neighbours and his subjects ; and it is therefore the 
 duty of the Governor-General to be attentive to them. 
 All marks of honour and respect, all observances of 
 politeness and decorum, are nothing in themselves, 
 but they may be much in their effects and in the 
 estimate which men form of them ; and those who are 
 entrusted with the credit of others are not at liberty 
 to be careless about that estimate. As it changes — 
 and it is always changing— manners change with it ; 
 and the progress already made in this respect is such 
 as to leave, I think, little to desire. Nothing can 
 well be simpler than the accepted rules respecting 
 the rights and duties of international agents : even 
 
GROWTH OF THE PROFESSION. 139 
 
 the application of them is simple, though it has pro- lect. hi. 
 duced a multitude of causes cSUbres ; their credentials 
 and papers are simple ; their modes of transacting 
 business are generally simple ; and their social inter- 
 course with eaeh other is that of private gentlemen. 
 
 In fine, the vices and the follies of diplomacy The fore- 
 going ob- 
 appear to have been in general, as I said at first, sedations 
 
 summa- 
 
 those of the surrounding society and of the time. «sed. 
 This profession, from the nature of its employment, 
 and from the terms on which its members associate 
 with one another, has less power, I think, than most 
 others of forming and maintaining its own standard 
 of morals or propriety. Indeed, until a recent date, 
 it could noti except in a very qualified sense, be 
 called a profession at all. 
 
 Envoys were formerly drawn, with little dis- classes 
 
 from which 
 
 tinction, from all orders of educated men — ecclesias- diplomatic 
 
 agents were 
 
 tics, lawyers, soldiers, persons who had filled with formerly 
 
 selected. 
 
 credit posts in the civil service of the State ; the 
 example of Rubens will hardly warrant us in adding 
 artists. M. Le Glay l , who has examined the annals 
 of French diplomacy during the reigns of Henry the 
 Second and Francis the First, observes that during 
 that period a French mission, whether permanent or 
 extraordinary, usually included, beside a layman of 
 
 ] Negotiations Diplomatiqites entre la France et VAutriche du- 
 rant les trente premieres annSes du XVI e siecle (in the Docwments 
 Inidits swr VHistoire de France), Preface, iv. 
 
T40 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lect. hi. high rank, a bishop and a lawyer. Churchmen were 
 long used for this purpose by the Spanish Court. 
 In England, before the Reformation, the number is 
 considerable of men who, having early taken Holy 
 Orders as a qualification for preferment, passed from 
 the practice of the canon and civil law to the service 
 of the State, as the readiest access to the highest 
 ecclesiastical dignities, and were occasionally em- 
 ployed abroad. Our last clerical negotiator, I be- 
 lieve, was John Robinson, sometime a member and 
 benefactor of Oriel College, whose name is recorded 
 on the buildings of the inner quadrangle of that 
 college. His career was a singular one. He went, 
 whilst a Fellow of Oriel, to Stockholm as chaplain 
 to the British Legation there, was subsequently 
 himself appointed Kesident, and then Envoy Extra- 
 ordinary, at the Swedish Court, and retained that 
 position for twenty-five years. Soon after his return 
 to this country he was made Dean of Windsor and 
 Bishop of Bristol, became Lord Privy Seal, was one 
 of the plenipotentiaries who concluded the Treaty 
 of Utrecht, and died, in 1723, Bishop of London '. 
 The ablest French negotiators have sprung from 
 
 1 From the books of Oriel College it appears that Robinson was 
 admitted probationer in 1675, and that in 1677 he was allowed to 
 go abroad for a year, ' XI being granted him for commons and 
 livery.' In 1786, being then at Stockholm, he resigned his Fellow- 
 ship. Bolingbroke, in a letter to Mesnager, says of Bishop 
 Robinson, ' He is a true Englishman, understands business, is an 
 honest man, and has a great command of temper.' 
 
GROWTH OF THE PROFESSION. 141 
 
 families dedicated to the bar, the magistracy, or Leer, m. 
 administrative functions ; a class to which France 
 has been indebted for a multitude of excellent public 
 servants. The most noted of ours have been gentle- 
 men of the middle rank and moderate fortune, who 
 had spent part of their youth abroad. Such, among 
 others, were Unton, Williamson, Edmonds, Winwood, 
 Carew, Wotton, Fanshawe, Temple, Methuen, Harris. 
 Of the agents employed by, or sent to reside at, the 
 lesser Courts, many have been what we should now 
 call adventurers, whose adroitness and knowledge of 
 the world gained them these petty and ill-paid 
 appointments, whose allegiance sat loosely on them, 
 and who often changed masters. From the stories 
 which garnish Bynkershoek's treatise De Foro Lega- 
 torum we may form an idea how many persons of 
 this sort were collected at the Hague when that city 
 was the chief centre of the diplomatic activity of 
 Europe, and how much trouble they gave to the 
 authorities. Wicquefort was one of these, and wrote 
 in prison the ponderous compilation which has made 
 him famous. In all ranks however and in all coun- 
 tries men who had acquitted themselves well on one 
 mission were chosen for another, and thus diplomatists 
 came to form a class, though not as yet a profession. 
 Further, it was usual for an ambassador to take 
 among his train or * family/ as it was called, young 
 men whose friends wished them to see something of 
 the world and thus fit themselves for any employment 
 
142 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect. hi. which might come in their way. Bacon, when a lad 
 of sixteen, was sent by his father to France, in the 
 suite of Sir Amias Paulet, and remained there 
 eighteen months. From Lady Fanshawe's Letters 
 it appears that her husband took with him to Spain, 
 as members of 'the company of his family/ six or eight 
 young men of birth, whom she calls his ' camaradoes,' 
 and most of whom went home at the end of a year : 
 and Sir W. Godolphin, writing from Madrid in 
 1672, expresses his desire that a nephew of his, 
 'who is at Christ Church, should wait on my Lord 
 Peterborough on his embassy to Vienna and Innspruck, 
 believing that the experience of such a voyage may 
 season his mind with more profitable observations 
 than he can make at Oxford, though my purpose be 
 that he return again to his studies.' Callieres, writing 
 about the same period, commends the Spaniards and 
 Italians for a similar practice, which does not appear 
 in his time to have obtained in France. It is men- 
 tioned as a Venetian custom by Wicquefort. The 
 form which it subsequently assumed in the English 
 service is thus described by Lord Cowley 1 : ' I believe 
 that, at the beginning of the present century, the 
 only assistance afforded by the Government to the 
 chief of an embassy or mission was that of a 
 secretary, but the ambassador or minister was 
 allowed to name a certain number of individuals who 
 
 Appendix to Report from the Select Committee on the Diplomatic 
 Service, p. 359. 
 
OBJECTIONS TO PROFESSIONAL DIPLOMACY. 143 
 
 on his recommendation were officially recognized as Lbct. in. 
 attached to him, and whom he could employ on the 
 public service as he might deem useful. The post 
 of an attachS was constantly filled in those days by 
 young men of family and fortune who desired to 
 pass a few months agreeably abroad, and who could 
 succeed in finding a friendly protector at some 
 foreign Court. The consequence was that attaches 
 were looked upon as the personal friends of the 
 ambassador or minister. They formed part of his 
 family and lived at his table, and sometimes al- 
 together in his house, which in itself was equivalent 
 to a limited salary. But on the other hand they 
 were not considered as forming part of the per- 
 manent diplomatic staff of the country. The services 
 they might render gave them no positive claim to 
 promotion ; and, as a natural corollary, the am- 
 bassador or minister could get rid of them, should 
 their conduct require it, or his caprice dictate it.' 
 
 It was not however to be expected that this field Growth of 
 of employment should remain unmvaded by the matio pro- 
 
 n . i-ii fession. 
 
 general tendency to professionalism which has taken 
 possession of others. The train of gentlemen or 
 cavaliers d'ambassade who formerly attended the 
 person of an ambassador, serving more for show than 
 use (Marshal Belleisle is reported to have taken 
 forty of them to Frankfort), have disappeared ; the 
 attacM has become recognized as a subordinate 
 member of a department of the civil service, standing 
 
144 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lbct. hi. on the lowest rung of the ladder ; and as regards 
 access to it and promotion in it, pay and pensions, 
 this department itself has been undergoing, here and 
 elsewhere, a process of assimilation, gradual and 
 still incomplete, to other branches of that service. 
 
 objections The growth of professionalism in diplomacy, like the 
 
 to perma- 
 nent mis- institution of resident legations, the commencement 
 
 sions, and _ . 
 
 toprofes- of which cannot be placed earlier than the fifteenth 
 
 sional di- 
 plomacy, century, has been the gradual work of various causes. 
 
 There are objections to both. It is an inevitable 
 
 consequence of the organization of a ' service' to limit 
 
 in some degree the liberty of selection. Every 
 
 considerable Power, again, supports a good many 
 
 missions which have not much to do. But an active 
 
 man whose time hangs on his hands is commonly 
 
 troublesome to somebody; and the temptation to 
 
 invent business, to meddle, to make unnecessary 
 
 representations and unprofitable discoveries, may 
 
 sometimes beset a man of this character, who finds 
 
 himself in a small mission. There are temptations 
 
 also, not very unlike these, which must occasionally 
 
 solicit a Minister of Foreign Affairs who has such 
 
 an array of instruments always under his hands. 
 
 There is the risk that native habits of thought and 
 
 feeling may be quite worn away in one whose whole 
 
 life from youth to age is spent in foreign Courts, 
 
 and further that foolish rivalries and jealousies may 
 
 be kept alive (as at certain European capitals they 
 
 have been) by the mere force of tradition and habit 
 
USES OF PROFESSIONAL DIPLOMACY. 145 
 
 between nations whose agents have been used to i^bct. hi. 
 regard themselves as employed to watch and coun- 
 teract each other. 
 
 These objections are not frivolous. Resident Advantages 
 
 of them. 
 
 missions and professional diplomacy have their evils, 
 as other things have. But they have by no means 
 a monopoly of these evils, whilst they possess, great 
 countervailing advantages. It is not commonly the 
 professional diplomatist who is the most impatient 
 of leisure, or the warmest partisan. If he sometimes 
 forgets himself in this way, it is not because of his. 
 professional training, but in spite of it. He does not 
 make violent speeches ; he knows the dicenda tacen~ 
 daque, is familiar at least with the customary re- 
 straints of his situation, and has made little use of 
 his experience if he has not learnt discretion and. 
 self-control. If he has not the special knowledge 
 required for special subjects of negotiation, his 
 employment has been such as to show whether he 
 has the qualities necessary for negotiating well on 
 any subject. As to resident ministers, they have 
 established themselves by a prescription of nearly 
 four hundred years ; Governments have employed 
 them because they wanted them; even the United 
 States, where, from the frequent changes of the 
 whole public service, diplomacy is not yet a pro- 
 fession, found it necessary, very soon after they 
 became independent, to establish representatives in. 
 every country with which they had political or 
 
146 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 leot. hi. commercial relations, though, for the sake of sim- 
 plicity and economy, they were at first desirous of 
 giving them only the rank of charges d'affaires. 
 Of the objects which a Resident was formerly meant 
 to serve, some, it is true, have become obsolete : 
 nSgocier sans cesse is not among modern maxims of 
 policy : he is not wanted to be an agitator, an in- 
 triguer, or a spy ; and of the work he actually per- 
 forms there is much that might be done as well by 
 an officer clothed with no political character. To 
 authenticate legal documents, take affidavits and 
 declarations, and grant passports, there is no occasion 
 for a Minister Plenipotentiary. But, cutting off all 
 that he ought not to do, and all that could be done 
 without him, the advantage would remain of having 
 always on the spot an agent competent to give and 
 obtain explanations promptly, and transact per- 
 sonally and at once business requiring personal 
 and immediate attention. How many misunder- 
 standings have been prevented, how much of cor- 
 diality and mutual esteem has been kept up, how 
 often the sharp edges of a correspondence have been 
 softened and disagreeable communications robbed 
 of their sting, by the mere presence of a man 
 of temper and judgment, who has been careful to live 
 on a friendly footing with the ministers with whom 
 he has to deal ! — of a man, in short, not unfit for 
 his place. 
 
QUALIFICATIONS BEQUIBED. 147 
 
 It is for such reasons, still more than for the ad- lbct.iii. 
 vantages they give in the conduct of negotiation, that Quaiifica- 
 temper and judgment have always held the highest fortius 
 rank among the qualifications for diplomatic service. 
 Who and what an envoy should be, and how he 
 should guide himself in the performance of his duties, 
 are themes on which much has been written, but very 
 little that it is of use to read. In fact there is hardly 
 any literature which is less instructive. The older 
 writers treat them With the rhetorical minuteness 
 which they lavished on such subjects. A perfect 
 ambassador, like a perfect orator, should have all the 
 virtues and all the graces. He should be neither 
 too old nor too young, top short nor too tall — not so 
 short as that Bolognese ambassador whom Pope 
 Boniface VIII. desired to rise from his knees when 
 he was standing upright, nor so tall as that English 
 envoy who, when in walking through a town he 
 stopped to look at something in a shop window, was 
 supposed by the tradesman to be on horseback, and 
 civilly asked to dismount. Count Bentenried, the 
 tallest ambassador of his day, is noticed as having 
 overcome this defect by his sense and breeding. He 
 should be rich, that he may entertain splendidly, 
 and should have Nature's own credentials, a pleasing 
 exterior. He should be a good Christian, and what 
 is more, he should seem such. He should be free from 
 the pragmatical stiffness of the bar, and the disputa- 
 tious humour of the schools. Let him rarely go to 
 
 L 2 
 
148 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect - ni - plays and shows, says an old writer 1 ; when there, let 
 him sit quiet, and on no account suffer himself to 
 betray admiration of anything that he sees. Let 
 him be attentive to ladies, advises a Frenchman, for 
 they have influence — 'mais qu'il n'engage pas le 
 coeur.' Let him accommodate himself, recommends 
 a modern English diplomatist, to the manners of the 
 countries whither he is sent, listen more than he 
 talks, beware of giving his confidence too freely, and 
 keep his papers and cipher under lock and key. 
 
 In truth, diplomatic employment does not so much 
 require special qualifications as make special calls for 
 common qualifications. When we are told that it 
 demands good sense, penetration, patience, a calm 
 judgment, an unruffled temper, application, presence 
 of mind, firmness, a facile address, agreeable manners, 
 we are ready to say that these are things which 
 everybody should have who has occasion to mix with 
 his fellow men. And so they are ; but everybody 
 does not want them in the same degree. Disagreeable 
 manners, for instance, are a graver defect in an am- 
 bassador than in a merchant or attorney. The faculty 
 of listening well is useful to all men, but absolutely 
 necessary to an ambassador. In interviews, says 
 Callieres, most men think more of what they want 
 to say themselves than of what is being said to 
 them. If, he adds, you see a knot of Frenchmen 
 
 1 Octamcmi Magii de Legato Libri duo. Maggi had himself 
 been ambassador at Paris. 
 
QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED. 149 
 
 holding an ordinary conversation, you will generally lbct. hi. 
 observe that they are all talking at once, and that 
 no one is suffered to say a dozen words without in- 
 terruption. An ambassador, no doubt, has not the 
 impatience of a Frenchman in a cabaret; but he is 
 probably liable, like other men, to the temptation of 
 letting his attention wander from what is being said 
 to him to what he is going to say in reply. He is 
 obliged to guard against that temptation, because it is 
 his duty to report what is said to him with the utmost 
 fidelity. What he says himself, as Lord Malmesbury 
 has observed, he is in no danger of forgetting. 
 
 An experienced diplomatist, being asked to give 
 some lessoDS in the art of negotiating to a young 
 beginner, replied, ' 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 1 .' There is, in fact, no art of negotiating. 
 An art implies the special adaptation of means to 
 a special object : diplomacy has a special class of 
 objects, and some special modes of proceeding, which 
 are easily acquired by practice, but there is nothing 
 special in the means by which success in it is attained. 
 Cardinal Janson, who distinguished himself as charge 
 d'affaires at Rome, was asked by Louis the Four- 
 teenth where he had learnt to negotiate so well. ' I 
 learnt it, Sire,' answered he, 'when I was Bishop of 
 
 1 Kcjle, Betrachpimgen ilber DiplomaUe, p. 278, 
 
150 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 lbct. hi. Digne, and had to trot about with a lantern to can- 
 vass for the election of a maire of Aix.' To know 
 exactly what you want ; to see quickly and clearly 
 what is practicable ; to take everything by its right 
 handle ; never to be in a hurry ; not to contradict ; 
 not to irritate ; not to threaten ; not to seek mere 
 triumphs in argument, or assert principles which lead 
 to nothing ; above all, to remember that the person 
 you are dealing with probably knows his own interest 
 as well as you know your own, that the real end 'of 
 negotiating is to find a point at which the interests 
 of both parties can be made to coincide, and that by 
 the dexterity which over-breaches or over-persuades 
 nothing is gained in the long run ; — all this is good 
 advice, but it is almost as good at a parish vestry as 
 at a conference for the pacification of Europe. The 
 difference is rather in the weight and magnitude 
 of the interests concerned than in their special 
 character. 
 Special On the special knowledge required for this career 
 
 knowledge. . . 
 
 our authorities do not say much — partly, perhaps, 
 from despair of securing much of special knowledge 
 in a calling appropriated to men of the world, and 
 to the greatest posts in which ignorance has often 
 been no bar. ' Eruditio quidem,' says Bynkershoek, 
 ' propriam virorum gloriam constituit, sed in Legatis 
 quis hanc exigat 1 TJt olim legationibus functi sunt, 
 sic et hodie funguntur, qui ne quidem linguae Latinse, 
 eruditorum vernaculse, periti sunt, qui rem populi 
 
QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED. 151 
 
 traotarunt nunquam, quin vel nihil quicquam nisi Leot. hi. 
 sola forte arma, vel solas forte res ludicras 1 .' 
 
 A sense, nevertheless, of the practical want of some 
 mental training led Torcy, in 1712, to propose the 
 formation in Paris of diplomatic classes, in which a 
 small number of young men, not without means of 
 their own, might receive instruction from teachers 
 appointed and paid by the Crown. Secretaries of 
 legation were to be taken from the pupils attending 
 these classes. The plan was tried for a few years 
 under the direction of M. de St. Parest, but it fell 
 to the ground under the Regency. At Strasburg, 
 however, during a large part of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, there actually existed, under Schopflin and Koch 
 successively, a school of diplomacy which wanted 
 nothing but the name : the reputation of these two 
 able men, to the second of whom we owe the one 
 good political history of modern Europe, drew thither 
 students not only from all parts of France but from 
 other Continental countries, especially Russia, many 
 of whom afterwards became famous as diplomatists 
 or statesmen. Among them were Metternich and 
 Segur, Cobentzel, RazoumofFski, Stackelberg, Mont- 
 gelas, Otto, Oubril, 
 
 But here again it must be admitted that the 
 qualifications required are only to a very limited 
 extent special. Intelligence is wanted, and minds 
 which have lain idle are not intelligent ; information 
 
 1 Quastiones Jwris PvbMei, II. v. 
 
152 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect. hi. is wanted, rising at least to the common level of 
 cultivated society ; the power of speaking and 
 writing easily and correctly is wanted, a power 
 which to some is natural, by others is not acquired 
 without trouble. In a word, an ambassador should 
 be an educated man — but this is not peculiar to 
 ambassadors, Albericus Gentilis, writing at Oxford 
 in Elizabeth's reign, asks only a good knowledge 
 of history, a moderate acquaintance with moral and 
 political philosophy and with the principles of law 
 so far as they are applicable to public questions, and 
 familiarity with Latin and one or two living lan- 
 guages. ' Legalem itaque, Ethicum, et Politicum (at 
 e Peripato) philosophum, Legatum volo ; at etiam 
 sobrie. Volo non ex umbra eum scholarum deduci, 
 sed educatum in consiliis rerum, atque in imperiorum 
 administratione versatum.' ' Fori,' he adds, ' aliud 
 jus est, aliud regni. Jus civile, quod vestigia 
 etiamnum multa juris hujus publici tenet, et rationes 
 ubique optimas ad utrumque habet jus, in his scilicet 
 legato inserviet. Hsec novisse satis ; csetera inutilia 1 .' 
 The views of Gentilis need little substantial 
 modification to fit them to the nineteenth century. 
 The special acquirements now demanded by this 
 country and by most others in their diplomatic 
 servants are a fair general knowledge of the political 
 history of modern Europe and America, and of the 
 elements of international law, and a certain fami- 
 
 1 De Legationibus, III. x. 
 
FRENCH, THE COMMON LANGUAGE. 153 
 
 liarity with languages. Some Governments also Lect. hi. 
 require a greater or less amount of private and 
 constitutional law ; some, political economy and 
 statistics. An ambassador is not expected to be able 
 to deal' unassisted with nice and difficult questions 
 of law or of trade ; on such points he has to be fur- 
 nished with particular instructions, or acts merely as a 
 vehicle of communication. But he is expected (or he 
 justly may be) to be fairly at home in such subjects, 
 to know a difficult question from an easy one, to be 
 able to execute the instructions which he receives, and 
 meet other diplomatists on equal terms. A really 
 well-read and- able man, who can do more than this, 
 will probably in the course of his career find oppor- 
 tunities of turning his knowledge to account. 
 
 A mastery of the common diplomatic language French as 
 of Europe is to a diplomatic agent among the barest mon lan - 
 
 r r ° ° guage of 
 
 necessaries of his outfit. It is a necessity which he di pi°macy. 
 shares with his courier, but it is even less indis- 
 pensable to his courier than to him. French seems 
 to have established itself as a common language for 
 politics and society during the later half of the 
 seventeenth century. At the Congress of Nymegen, 
 says St. Didier, 'Ton s'apperceut du progres que la 
 Langue Franchise avoit faite dans les pais Strangers ; 
 car il n'y avoit point de maison dAmbassadeurs ou 
 elle ne fust presque aussi commune que leur langue 
 naturelle. Bien d'avantage, elle devint si n^cessaire 
 que les Ambassadeurs, Anglois, Allemans, Danois, et 
 
154 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect. hi. ceux des autreB Nations, tenoient toutes leurs Con- 
 ferences en Francis. Les deux Ambassadeurs de 
 Dannemarck convinrent mesrae de faire leur de- 
 pesches communes en cette Langue, parce que le Comte 
 Antoine d'Oldembourg parloit bon AHemand et n'en- 
 tendoit point le Danois comme son Collegue. De 
 sorte que pendant tout le cours des Negociations de 
 la Paix il ne parut presque que des Ecritures Fran- 
 coises, les Etrangers aimant mieux s'expliquer en 
 Francis dans leurs M^moires publics que d'ecrire dans 
 une langue moins usitee que la FrancoiseV Long 
 
 1 Histovre des Negotiations de Nimegue, i. 125. The Venetian 
 envoy Giustinian, at the audience granted to him by Francis the 
 First, addressed that monarch in Latin, and was answered in the 
 same tongue by the Chancellor. At his first public audience of 
 Henry the Eighth, he did the same thing : his oration lasted 
 half an hour, and a Doctor of Laws delivered the reply. Henry 
 himself conversed with the envoy in Latin, French, and Italian. 
 Pasqualigo, Giustinian's colleague, spoke to Queen Catherine 
 'in good Spanish, which pleased her more than I can tell you.' 
 (Eawdon Browne's Four Tears at the Court of Henry VIII.) 
 Guzman de Sylva, at his introduction to Queen Elizabeth, spoke 
 Latin, and they conversed for a while in that language, but she 
 soon fell back into Italian. (Froude's History of England, 
 Reign of Elizabeth, ii. 84.) The Spanish embassy sent to conclude 
 a Treaty of peace with James the First in 1603 used sometimes 
 Latin, and sometimes French, as appears from the account in 
 Ellis's Original Letters, Second Series, iii. 207. Sir Eichard 
 Fanshawe at his first audience at Madrid 'delivered his message 
 in English, having first procured his Catholic Majesty to be 
 prepared to accept it,' and then interpreted it into Spanish, and 
 spoke Spanish only in paying his respects to the Queen. In this 
 he' would have been approved by an earlier Spanish writer of some 
 reputation, who lays down the rule that an ambassador at his first 
 
FRENCH, THE COMMON LANGUAGE. 155 
 
 afterwards the Imperial Court continued to assert Ijbct. hi. 
 its old pretension, due to the historical dignity of the 
 Holy Roman Empire, of having all negotiations with 
 
 audience should always use his native tongue, for two reasons— to 
 maintain the dignity of his sovereign, and also because there are 
 ambassadors who understand no language so well as their own. 
 (Antonio de Vera, El Embaxador, Discurso Tercero). Fanshawe's 
 credentials were in Latin. Those with which Sir Henry Unton had 
 been furnished when sent by Elizabeth to the Court of France were 
 in French. From a protocol of the first Conference at Nymegen, 
 drawn up by the Emperor's ministers, which was cited at Ryswyk 
 in 1697, it appears that Temple, as representing the mediating 
 Power, opened the proceedings of that Conference in French, for 
 Which he afterwards apologised on finding himself answered in Latin 
 by the Bishop of Gurk. The two French envoys, Estrades and 
 Colbert, excused themselves for speaking French on the plea that 
 they had forgotten their Latin. 'Nos obstitimus,' adds the 
 protocollist, f ut quilibet in hoc colloquio sensus suos qua" vellet 
 lingua explicaret.'. (Actes et Mimoiv.es des Negotiations de la 
 Paix de Ryswick, ii. 19.) No such difficulty had arisen at 
 Minister : Avaux, on the contrary, prided himself on his skill in 
 writing Latin ; and the pleasure he took in displaying that accom- 
 plishment was thought to have had something to do with the 
 composition of his famous circular to the States of the Empire. 
 Temple himself mentions a dispute that happened at Nymegen, 
 and that illustrates the way in which the French dealt with the 
 question. 'The Danish ambassador stood positively upon the 
 common use of the Latin tongue between France and them in 
 their powers, or else to give his in Danish if they gave theirs in 
 French. These said that it was a novelty and an impertinence ; 
 and that, if in all intercourse that had ever been between those 
 Crowns the language had not been French on their side and 
 Latin on the Danes', even in any one instrument, they were content 
 they should give their powers not only in Danish but in Hebrew 
 if they pleased .... The Dane's pretence about the language, being 
 neither countenanced nor approved by any of his allies, was at 
 last yielded hy him.' {Works, i. 310.) 
 
156 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lgbr - In - it conducted in Latin, and other Governments 
 delivered their written public documents either in 
 Latin or in their own respective languages. It has 
 become within the present century a rule of the 
 English Foreign- Office that all written communir 
 cations to foreign Courts should be made, both here 
 and abroad, in English ; and Spain and Portugal, 
 Austria, Prussia, and other German States, adhere 
 to a similar practice. But the language of oral 
 communication is French. 
 
 How far this is due to the circumstance that 
 
 French ministers would speak no tongue but their 
 
 own, and how far to other causes, is a question not 
 
 to be pursued here. The liveliness and elegance of 
 
 -the language, its fine strokes and sparkling turns of 
 
 expression, make it, in spite of its defects, singularly 
 
 apt for conversation ; it is, as Lord Chesterfield 
 
 called it, ' a language of phrases,' and has been made 
 
 the polished instrument it is for conversational use 
 
 by the attention bestowed in France, more than 
 
 elsewhere, on the pleasant art of talking well. At 
 
 the same time the facility which seems natural to 
 
 a Frenchman for swift and showy generalisations, 
 
 his love for ' ideas' of large application yet easy to 
 
 apprehend, and a certain dexterity in using them, 
 
 have helped to diffuse the literature, and with it 
 
 the speech, of France, especially in countries ill 
 
 provided with a literature of their own. But the 
 
 fact, however produced, that it is the language most 
 
FJRENCH, THE COMMON LANGUAGE. 157 
 
 generally understood by educated persons in different lect. \u. 
 countries, furnishes the simple and sufficient reason 
 why diplomacy has adopted it; and by this more 
 or less precarious" tenure its position is held. The 
 advantage thus accidentally secured to Frenchmen, 
 and the disadvantage to everybody else, are not incon- 
 siderable. 'I would rather,' Sir Hamilton Seymour 
 has well said, * fight with my own sword, and con- 
 verse in my own language.' French political phrase- 
 ology at the present day is highly artificial ; not 
 unfrequently it is vague in meaning and stilted in 
 expression ; it has the impress of French ideas ; and 
 few Englishmen or Germans would willingly cast 
 their own sentiments into such a mould. French, 
 however, has possession ; it is, as matter of fact, the 
 common language ; and a common language, though 
 not necessary for despatches, which can be translated 
 and read at leisure, is necessary for discussion. Yet it 
 is hardly less true now than it was formerly that 
 the more languages a man knows the more likely he 
 is to make a useful diplomatic servant. I will venture 
 to quote again the old writer to whom I lately 
 referred. 'Nunc quidem,' says Gentilis, 'si legatus 
 linguam Latinam teneret, bene prospectum ei opinor, 
 quoniam longe hsec est hodie in universi Europ& 
 notior quam fuerit Grseca. Si tamen et teas cognos- 
 ceret quae nunc vivunt ubi futurus legatus est, magis 
 atque magis probarem 1 / French, which since the 
 
 1 De Legationibug, III. viii. 
 
158 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lect - iu - time of Gentilis has more than taken the place of 
 Latin, will enable a man to transact affairs with 
 diplomatists all over the world; but, where it is 
 a foreign tongue, the envoy who has no other must 
 often find himself embarrassed and at a disadvantage 
 in conversing with native ministers as well as in 
 society, and be obliged to rely on translations, the 
 accuracy of which he is unable to test. 
 
 us a career. 
 
 Diplomacy * The diplomatic life,' said a very clever man, then 
 a minister but now in a different career, 'is rather 
 enervating 1 .' It is a life without keen stimulants 
 to exertion, with a large share of leisure (taking 
 the whole profession together), liable to sudden 
 inroads of heavy work and anxious responsibility, 
 but generally free from hardships and not un- 
 sweetened by pleasures. It offers at the same time, 
 more perhaps than any other branch of the public 
 service, to those who pursue it, the satisfaction 
 of consciously taking part in the transaction of 
 great affairs — a healthy feeling, and worthy to 
 be cherished. It has risen in importance, to 
 some degree, since the fall of the Bourbons, but 
 this is due to temporary causes, and it is likely 
 I conceive, hereafter to have still more of routine 
 work than at present, fewer excitements, a more 
 plodding and regular advance in the way of pro- 
 
 1 Lord Napier, Appendix to Report from the Select Committee on 
 the Diplomatic Service, p. 394. 
 
CHARACTER OF ENGLISH DIPLOMACY. 159 
 
 motion. In this there is little to regret. We do Lect. hi. 
 not want a stirring or a brilliant diplomacy : better 
 that it should err, if at all, on the side of inaction. 
 It will adapt itself, no doubt, to its work, as it has 
 done hitherto ; and we may trust to the nature of 
 the employment to bring into the service its fan- 
 share of ability, and prevent the principle of pro- 
 motion by seniority from tyrannising over it abso- 
 lutely. English envoys have generally been useful 
 public servants rather than astute negotiators. 
 Philippe de Commines remarked long ago that the 
 English had less of subtlety than the French : they 
 go to work, says he, somewhat grossly, but one 
 must have a little patience with them 1 . Lord 
 
 1 'Us yont assez grossement en besogne, mais il faut avoir un 
 peu de patience et ne dlbattre coleriquement avec eux.' I am 
 tempted to quote Lord Chesterfield, though neither as an exact 
 representation of facts nor as an illustration of what it is de- 
 sirable that an ambassador should be : ' Cseteris paribus, a French 
 minister will get the better of an English one in any third court in 
 Europe. The French have something more licmt, more insinu- 
 ating and engaging in their manner, than we have. An English 
 minister shall have resided seven years at a court, without having 
 made any one personal connection there, or without being inti- 
 mate and domestic in any one house. He is always the English 
 minister, and never naturalized. He receives his orders, demands 
 an audience, writes an account of it to his court, and his business 
 is done. A French minister, on the contrary, has not been six 
 weeks at a court without having, by a thousand little attentions, 
 insinuated himself into some degree of familiarity with the Prince, 
 his wife, his mistress, his favourite, and his minister. He has 
 established himself upon a familiar and domestic foot in a dozen 
 of the best houses of the place, where he has accustomed the people 
 
160 DIPLOMACY PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 ^ect. in. Malmesburv, one of the adroitest men that ever 
 served this country, was accustomed to say that 
 we fight better than we negotiate. Lord Strat- 
 ford de KedclifFe has expressed a like opinion 
 Our diplomatic agents, nevertheless, stand well, I 
 think, on the whole in the estimation of the Con- 
 tinent. More than others they have worked, and 
 are likely to work, in the daylight. The publication 
 of despatches has its inconveniences : it closes many 
 channels of information ; it may often embarrass 
 an envoy in his dealings with foreign ministers 1 ; 
 it tends to encourage the bad practice of writing 
 despatches, not for the persons to whom they are 
 
 to be not only easy but unguarded before him : he makes himself 
 at home there, and they think him so. By these means he knows 
 the interior of those courts, and can almost write prophecies to 
 his own from the knowledge he has of the characters, the humours, 
 the abilities, or the weaknesses of the actors. The Cardinal 
 D'Ossat was looked upon at Rome as an Italian and not as a 
 French Cardinal : and Monsieur D'Avaux, wherever he went, 
 was never considered as a foreign minister, but as a native and 
 a personal friend.' (Letters to his Son, Letter XX VIII.) 
 
 1 The circumstance stated by Sir Robert Adair to have caused 
 the resignation of Sir Arthur Paget, who was minister at Vienna 
 before him, is one which might easily recur. ' He thought himself 
 bound to offer his resignation in consequence of the publication 
 of one of his despatches, in which he had given an account, as 
 it was his duty to do, of the causes which led to the capitulation 
 of Ulm and the failure of the last campaign. In this narrative, 
 necessarily most confidential, it was not possible to avoid mention- 
 ing names and proceedings of distinguished persons in a manner 
 that, if divulged, must obviously lessen his efficiency with them in 
 treating of other concerns.' (Adair's Mission to the Ccrwrt of Vienna, 
 p. 10.) 
 
CHARACTER OF ENGLISH DIPLOMACY. 161 
 
 addressed, but for the public by which they will lect. in. 
 be read. Rigidly enforced, it would prohibit all 
 confidential reports and close the door to all con- 
 fidential intercourse. Yet, with all its inconveniences, 
 broad daylight is, I am persuaded, the most effectual 
 check on those faults to which in the field of foreign 
 policy Governments and their agents have been 
 prone. Base motives and crooked designs shrink 
 from it ; falsehood and dissimulation spin their webs 
 in dark corners ; that political wisdom which so often 
 overshoots its mark loves to scheme and calculate 
 in the shade. But the great interests of nations 
 thrive best in it. It animates public spirit, and 
 invigorates the sense of duty. 
 
 M 
 
LECTURE IY. 
 
 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 TN some previous Lectures in this place I have Leot. iv. 
 
 spoken cursorily — an ampler treatment being 
 foreign to my purpose — of that famous Congress of 
 the seventeenth century in which modern diplomacy 
 has its first conspicuous landmark, of the systems of 
 policy which have since been current in Europe, and 
 of the art and business of negotiation as since prac- 
 tised. I wish now to make some observations on 
 the nature and force of the obligation of Treaties 
 in general. The notion which our minds attach to 
 this stereotyped phrase, so constantly recurring in 
 state-papers, and so familiar to readers of history, 
 is apt, I think, to be misty and obscure. To place it, 
 if I can, in a somewhat clearer light, is the object 
 of this Lecture. 
 
 It is at least a common opinion that Treaties, Current 
 
 • t it- opinion as 
 
 though sacred m theory, are little regarded in prac- to regard 
 tice when either party has an interest in breaking Treaties, 
 them ; in short, that the obligation gives way as soon 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 lbct. iv. as a strain is put on it, and is thus, in effect, no obli- 
 gation at all. This opinion seems to assume that the 
 measure of truth and honesty which we expect and 
 meet with in private affairs is not to be found in 
 the affairs of nations. The prevalence of it is likely 
 to be poisonous to those qualities where they actually 
 exist ; and the more indiscriminate it is, the more 
 poisonous it is likely to be. It is further to be ob- 
 served that a wide and settled divergence between 
 a theory or rule of conduct and current practice 
 generally casts some suspicion — though not of 
 necessity a just suspicion — on the soundness of the 
 theory or rule. If there be such a divergence here, 
 it is worth while to consider what it indicates, and 
 to what it is attributable. 
 
 Meaning Let us begin at the beginning. What is a Treaty, 
 wds and what is an Obligation 1 A Treaty is a contract 
 and'Obii- between independent political societies. An Obliga- 
 
 gation.' ° 
 
 tion is a force determining human conduct — a force, 
 however, not of any kind indiscriminately, but assign- 
 able to one or other of certain kinds or classes to 
 which the name has appropriated itself. The force 
 exerted by the penalty attached to the breach of 
 a law, and thus by the law itself, is the thing cor- 
 responding to the phrase, 'Legal Obligation' The 
 force exerted by the sentiment of moral disapproval, 
 and thus by any rule of conduct to the infraction 
 of which it is attached, is the thing answering 
 
MEANING OF OBLIGATION. 165 
 
 to the phrase, 'Moral Obligation.' But this is not leot. iV. 
 precisely what we mean when we use these phrases. 
 We do not mean the force actually exerted in either 
 case — a force which varies infinitely according to the 
 circumstances of individuals. We should not say of 
 one who felt himself, or really happened to be, 
 perfectly secure from detection, that he was under 
 no legal obligation to abstain from theft ; nor should 
 we say that a man was relieved from moral obli- 
 gations by becoming a hardened sinner. And yet 
 the operation of the restraining motive would in 
 each case be nil. We mean rather the force which 
 the law is calculated to exert, and which the rule 
 ought to exert — without any conscious analysis of the 
 notion expressed by ' ought/ which indeed seems to 
 elude analysis. The obligation of a law thus denotes 
 to us, not the actual force of the law, but a force 
 which our minds ascribe to it; and the obligation 
 of a moral rule denotes a force which our minds 
 ascribe to the moral rule. This is a very brief, but 
 for my purpose, I think, a sufficiently accurate, 
 statement of a matter about which it is not easy 
 to be at once brief and accurate. 
 
 How the sentiment of moral disapproval comes to 
 exist in the mind — into what elements a nice scrutiny 
 may succeed in resolving it — what logical basis, if 
 any, can be found for it — how our principles and 
 habits of moral judgment are formed, and by what 
 criteria they are most properly tested, are questions 
 
166 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 leot. iv. of psychology and moral science. Practically, the 
 tendency of actions to produce good or to produce 
 evil is the only test that can be made a basis for 
 moral reasoning, and therefore the only ground on 
 which we can by reasoning construct general rules. 
 In practical ethics, therefore, the question whether 
 we are under a moral obligation to refrain from a 
 particular act becomes, as soon as we begin to reason, 
 the question whether the tendency of such acts as a 
 class justifies, to our understandings, the disapproval 
 of them, and thus supplies warrant for a general rule. 
 Our minds are furnished with rougher and readier 
 tests for every-day use. 
 
 Moral Of which of these two meanings is the word Obli- 
 
 Obligation . 
 
 as applied nation susceptible when applied to nations s It may, 
 
 to Nations 6 l ix , 
 
 or Govern- anc l ft commonly does, mean moral obligation. We 
 
 ments. 
 
 habitually judge the acts of nations by moral stand- 
 ards ; we approve or disapprove them, and apply 
 to them such as we think suitable of the moral 
 conceptions which we are in the habit of applying 
 to the acts of individuals. And there is no reason 
 why we should not. The acts of nations are the 
 acts of those persons, be they few or many, who 
 really govern the nation, done in its name and sup- 
 ported by its collective strength : to apportion the 
 true responsibility for them, determine its incidence, 
 and pronounce exactly how far it extends and where 
 its fainter shades disappear, is a task impossible to 
 human discernment — an impossibility which we mask 
 
INTERNATIONAL ETHICS. 167 
 
 by phrases such as a ' collective personality ' or a lect. iv. 
 'national conscience/ which are formulae employed 
 for brevity and convenience in reasoning. But this 
 does not prevent the acts themselves from being fit 
 objects for moral judgment. 
 
 It is clear at the same time that, in the affairs of character 
 
 and 
 
 nations, the province of morality is comparatively province 
 small, and further that there are causes which tend national 
 
 Ethics. 
 
 to weaken the actual force of the sense of moral 
 duty. Its province is small, because it takes notice 
 of external acts only, and of these no farther than as 
 they affect other nations, and because such acts he 
 within a narrow range, the relations which can exist 
 among nations being, as compared with those which 
 can exist among individuals, simple and few. It 
 speaks in more hesitating accents, not only because 
 the actual responsibility is so hard to seize and define, 
 but for other reasons : because the acts themselves 
 are foreign to the experience on which our ordinary 
 moral code is framed ; and because their very magni- 
 tude, the large and complex interests involved, the 
 apparent conflicts of duty which they frequently 
 present to the statesman himself, with the absence 
 of those supports which private morality receives 
 from law, habit, and settled opinion, seem to remove 
 them into a region apart, and do in fact make it 
 often a more difficult matter to distinguish between 
 right and wrong. Take for example any one of the 
 many cessions of territory which have been made 
 
168 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 I/bct. iv. with a view to general European interests, in dis- 
 regard of the wishes and the particular interests of 
 the inhabitants. Or take such a case as the annexa- 
 tion of Hanover by Prussia. To pronounce a cursory 
 opinion about it is easy, and probably we have all 
 done so. But let any man reflect for a moment, and 
 he will feel how much that is unknown to him he 
 ought to know, how much that no scales of his, can 
 weigh should be taken into account, before his cursory 
 opinion could be turned into a deliberate verdict. 
 There are special reasons, then, why such questions 
 should be difficult, why popular judgments on them 
 should be unsatisfactory, and why the current morality 
 of nations — that is, their general opinion and practice 
 in such matters — should be comparatively lax and 
 wavering. 
 Moral A Treaty, as I have said, is an international con- 
 
 Obhga- J 
 
 tion of tract. A contract is an accepted promise. The moral 
 
 lreaties. r r 
 
 obligation of a contract is the duty of not disappoint- 
 ing the expectation which the promise is calculated 
 to create; and the strength of the duty depends on 
 the strength and the reasonableness of that expecta- 
 tion. Why it is a duty — or, in other words, why it is 
 and ought to be a general rule that men should keep 
 their promises — no one will need to be told who 
 considers how great and useful a part such expecta- 
 tions play in human affairs. The reason of the rule, 
 and therefore the rule itself, apply to nations as they 
 apply to private men. It is not incorrect, then, to 
 
INTERNATIONAL LAW. 169 
 
 say that the performance of Treaties is a matter of Lect - iv - 
 moral obligation. 
 
 To learal obligations, in the strict sense of the Nations 
 
 . . . . ^ not 
 
 phrase, independent societies are not subject : if , they subject to 
 were, they would not be independent. Subjection to ligations 
 a law implies subjection to some person or persons callet '- , 
 
 . , Natureand 
 
 by whom the law is enforced. A rule of action en- character 
 
 •> of Inter- 
 
 forced by nobody in particular may in a wider sense ? ational 
 
 J * L *■ Law. 
 
 be called a law, but not in the sense which adheres to 
 that word when it enters into the phrase, '.'. Legal Obli- 
 gation.' But just because laws and legal obligations 
 are wanting here, the rules of conduct which use and 
 opinion are sure to beget by degrees among civilised 
 communities in constant and various association with 
 each other have acquired not only the name but 
 somewhat of the strength of laws : they perform for 
 nations, though imperfectly, the precious service 
 which laws perform for private men — that of furnish- 
 ing fixed positive standards for conduct and for the 
 adjustment of disputes ; the classes of acts which 
 they regulate are analogous to those which, among 
 private men, are controlled by law, and not to those 
 which are controlled by opinion ; the reasonings they 
 proceed on are analogous, and rightly so, to legal rea- 
 sonings ; the force which they draw from their general 
 acceptance, and from the grave inconvenience likely 
 to be incurred by repudiating them, is analogous to a 
 legal obligation. Originating as opinions, they have 
 gained a force distinct from that which a reasonable 
 
170 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lbct. iv. opinion exercises merely as such ; and, as being sub- 
 stitutes for laws, they have been systematised as 
 laws are systematised, and as mere opinions are not. 
 Wanting, as they do, the imperative precision of 
 direct enactments — wanting a recognised authority 
 to mould or amend, to interpret or enforce them, 
 and lagging, as they needs must, far behind the 
 necessities from which they arise, their imperfections 
 are perhaps more obvious than their utility. And 
 yet it is true that, like good municipal laws, they 
 prevent far more disputes than they compose, and 
 compose more than they fail to settle — though of the 
 third class of cases we hear much, of the second 
 comparatively little, and of the first nothing at all. 
 An imaginary line, which all nations respect, runs at 
 a fixed distance through the waters which wash these 
 shores; our ambassadors are clothed with definite 
 immunities ; our ships, when we are neutrals, carry 
 with them definite rights, forfeitable by definite acts 
 and subject to definite kinds of interference to which 
 they are not subject in peace ; the effect of maritime 
 capture in war, as transferring not only the possession, 
 but, under certain conditions, the proprietary right, is 
 recognised and upheld by every tribunal in Christen- 
 dom. This line, these immunities and rights, were 
 once unsettled and are now settled, and we can trace 
 historically each step of their progress ; they are 
 conceded to us by others because we ourselves make 
 the same concessions ; they are submitted to by all 
 
INTERNA TIONA L LAW. 171 
 
 because all feel it to be good that as many questions leot. tv. 
 as possible sball be raised by common consent out 
 of the region of opinion, where disputes are inter- 
 minable, to that of positive rule and settled practice, 
 where every dispute has its bounds. These rules 
 are what we call International Law. Whether we 
 call them law or morality signifies little, provided it 
 be understood how they differ from common accep- 
 tations of the words Law and Morality. But the 
 fallacy suggested by the phrase 'International Mo- 
 rality' is a more practically mischievous one than the 
 fallacy suggested by the phrase ' International Law ;' 
 because the temptation to overstrain legal analogies 
 and clothe mere opinions indiscriminately in the robe 
 of Law is less dangerous than the contrary tendency 
 to degrade fixed rules into mere opinions. 
 
 If the observance of Treaties is among the classes 
 of acts to which these rules relate, it is to that extent 
 a matter of quasi-legal obligation : in other words, na- 
 tions are bound to it, not only by moral considerations, 
 but also by positive rules which operate like laws. 
 
 There are, in fact, acknowledged rules of Inter- Rules of 
 national Law about Treaties, some logically de- tionafLw 
 ducible from the definition of a Treaty, some not Treaties" 8 
 so deducible, but founded on reasons of convenience. 
 Thus, a transaction is no Treaty if the society which"^/ 
 it purports to bind be not independent ; or if it be 
 not made, directly or through an agent, by the person 
 or persons actually sovereign in the society; or if, 
 
172 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. where an agent is employed, he be not duly author- 
 ised ; or if it be no completed agreement, but a mere 
 negotiation or 'pollicitation;' or if, when completed, 
 it have not the ratification of the sovereign; or if 
 there be any material error or misconception on 
 either side, such that the promise made by the one 
 -party was not in fact the promise accepted by the 
 tother. If any of the above conditions be wanting, 
 there can be no Treaty, for there is no agreement ; 
 there has been only a supposed, or pretended, or 
 inchoate agreement. In applying such rules as these, 
 few difficulties occur. It is an ascertainable question 
 of fact whether the kingdom of Hungary or of Nor- 
 way, the Canton of Lucerne, the Principality of 
 Servia, the State of Honduras or of Paraguay, satis- 
 fies certain recognised conditions, and is thus capable, 
 as a sovereign state, of entering into public engage- 
 ments; whether authority to conclude Treaties is 
 vested in the President of the United States or the 
 Governor-General of India ; whether a plenipoten- 
 tiary is armed with adequate powers ; whether an 
 instrument has received the necessary signatures ; 
 whether ratifications have been exchanged. In such 
 cases as that of a cession of territory by a dethroned 
 monarch — by a merely provisional Government — by 
 a revolted community still struggling for indepen- 
 dence — by a conqueror whose title has not yet ripened 
 into a firm possession, the principle is clear, and there 
 is rarely difficulty in applying it. A latent ambiguity 
 
INTERNATIONAL LAW. 173 
 
 such as that of the two Bolgrads, which was di&- Lect - IV - 
 covered after the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris 
 1856, is a mere question of evidence. If it can be 
 proved that there are two places bearing the same 
 name, each of which will satisfy the words of the 
 Treaty, and if it cannot be shown that both parties 
 meant one and the same, there has been no agreement 
 on the point. 
 
 The rule that a Treaty is vitiated by a material 
 error is logically deducible from the notion of a 
 contract. The rule, on the other hand, that a Treaty 
 concluded by an authorised agent who has not 
 exceeded. his instructions, has nevertheless no force 
 till it is ratified, cannot be so proved; it appears at 
 first sight to be at variance with ordinary legal 
 analogies, and with morality; and jurists, trespassing 
 beyond their proper province, have commonly laid 
 down that ratification under such circumstances is 
 a moral duty. It is however a settled rule, with 
 the advantage, which a settled rule possesses, of 
 being a thing ascertained and indisputable. It is 
 an extra precaution, an artificial safeguard, against 
 improvident or ill-considered engagements, exactly 
 analogous to those rules of private law which require 
 for certain private contracts a specified form of 
 words, a notarial act, a payment of earnest, or a 
 signature. That it is salutary and convenient, is 
 an opinion — sound, I have no doubt, but which may 
 be ^disputed like any other opinion ; that it is a 
 
174 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. settled rule is a fact, which may be proved by evi- 
 dence like any other fact. 
 Their in- On the question then, whether an alleged contract 
 
 adequacy to . 
 
 determine is or is not a Treaty, International Law can and 
 
 the ques- 
 tion what usually does speak pretty plainly, and it assumes 
 
 binding, the general rule that Treaties are binding. The 
 practice of making Treaties is necessarily based on 
 that assumption. But there may be exceptions to 
 [that rule, and particular difficulties in applying it ; 
 ^and hence arise classes of questions on which Inter- 
 national Law does not, and cannot, speak plainly. 
 Is the Treaty itself unjust to third parties, or to 
 any of the contracting parties themselves 1 Was 
 it extorted by unjust violence, or procured by 
 duplicity ? Has the obligation been dissolved by 
 the act of either party, or extinguished by change 
 of circumstances \ What stipulations are to be 
 deemed interdependent, so that a breach of one will 
 discharge the others 1 In disputes about the casus 
 foederis — where, for example, your ally demands your 
 aid, and you believe him to be in the wrong — what 
 is to be done 1 
 
 Here is a handful of questions of different sorts, 
 which have this in common, that general rules can 
 go but a little way in disposing of them. What 
 they demand is an arbiter. There are under every 
 system of private law, beside the general mass of 
 ordinary questions of fact, questions such as these — 
 what constitutes reasonable care, reasonable time, 
 
 ai 
 
INADEQUACY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. 175 
 
 a bond fide belief, ordinary prudence or firmness, leot.iv. 
 undue influence, gross hardship, and the like — which 
 law is obliged to surrender practically to unassisted 
 common sense. The chief service it performs in such 
 cases is to provide a disinterested arbiter whose 
 decision is final. Here that service is wanting. 
 Whether a war was unjust, whether a change of 
 circumstances is material, whether there has been 
 an iniquitous sacrifice of public to private interests, 
 are questions on which there are no means of 
 getting an impartial decision. All such questions 
 therefore — and they form a large proportion of those 
 which arise about the binding force of particular 
 Treaties — are banished from the empire of positive 
 rules and fixed standards, to the region of floating 
 opinions — of morality in the common sense — where 
 they have to be settled by applying to each set of 
 facts as it arises such general considerations of justice 
 and expediency as can be brought to bear on it, and 
 such analogies as can be borrowed from private 
 ethics and private law. 
 
 The assistance then which law, or that imperfect Effect of 
 
 this on in- 
 
 substitute for law which the society of nations temationai 
 
 morality. 
 
 possesses, can afford to international morality in this 
 matter is scanty, and it is worth. while to notice how 
 international morality is affected by the want of 
 this assistance. 
 
 The municipal law of every civilised country at 
 
176 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 lect. iv. once supports contracts and controls them. The 
 Assistance legal obligation is purely the creature of the law — 
 vat* law made, moulded, and circumscribed by it : within the 
 
 affords to ' ' • <? j 
 
 private mo- boundaries drawn by the law the contract is enforced 
 
 rality. * 
 
 and an obligation exists ; outside of them the con- 
 tract is not enforced and the obligation does not exist. 
 The law rejects, so far as it can consistently with 
 the maintenance of general rules and the protection 
 of innocent persons, contracts clearly unjust to others 
 or to the contracting parties themselves, and such 
 as are plainly injurious to the public or militate 
 against settled maxims of general expediency. It 
 imposes conditions, it exacts securities for care and 
 deliberation, and, in certain cases, for the preservation 
 of the means of proof. Transactions in which men do 
 not act for themselves, or cannot be trusted to look 
 after their own interests, or might be tempted to 
 abuse situations of confidence or power, are fenced, 
 as far as may be, by appropriate checks and re- 
 straints. The reasonings on which these rules have 
 been constructed by judges and jurisconsults are for 
 the most part pure casuistry in the true sense of the 
 word : to direct legislation they owe little ; and, in 
 this country as in France and Germany, they form 
 a branch of law less technical, less coloured by local 
 circumstances, more directly (I may add) of Roman 
 parentage, than any other 1 . The questions, what 
 
 1 The French law of contractual obligations is almost purely Eo- 
 man throughout ; so is the German : of ours, the basis is Roman. 
 
CHARACTER OF INTERNATIONAL CONTRACTS. 177 
 
 a man ought to do, and what the law ought to lbct. iv. 
 compel him to do, are indeed quite distinct ; for 
 every law is an interference with liberty, and has to 
 be justified by showing, not merely that the thing 
 commanded is right, but that the interference is 
 necessary or useful. But it is generally true that 
 the private law of modern Europe aims at enforcing 
 all contracts which are morally binding and can be 
 proved by proper evidence. Hence it arises that 
 the received standards of morality respecting agree- 
 ments have in fact been chiefly framed by courts of 
 law, reasoning as moralists would reason, but forced, 
 as judges constantly are, to grapple with cases which 
 would never have occurred to a speculative thinker, 
 and to determine, somehow, questions which he 
 would probably decline to decide at all. 
 
 The support and the control which Law affords Such assist- 
 ance want- 
 are both almost wholly wanting among nations, fog to in- 
 ternational 
 In consequence, the whole stress of the work, so to morality. 
 
 speak, is thrown upon the moral rule. Nations 
 observe Treaties, apart from any , special interest 
 they have in doing so, because they are satisfied 
 they ought to do it, rather than because it is com- 
 manded by International Law. The sense of moral 
 obligation however, as has been before remarked, 
 operates, and always must operate, with less force 
 on men acting as political societies than on men 
 acting 1 as individuals. But further, the moral rule Special 
 
 o # difficulties 
 
 which commands the observance of international which be- 
 
 N 
 
178 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. contracts has some difficulties of its own, which do 
 long to in- no t belong to the rule that commands the observance 
 
 ternational o 
 
 contracts. f p r i va t e contracts. These difficulties consist in the 
 greater breadth and rigour with which it asserts 
 itself — the greater liability of international contracts 
 to be unjust in their substance or origin, immoral, 
 pernicious, or of at least doubtful utility — the want 
 of precision in framing and of certainty in inter- 
 preting them — and the obscurity that often hangs 
 over the obligation they purport to create. 
 
 circum- The presumption that every contract is beneficial 
 which the to society is a strong one, and it is on the strength 
 
 ordinary 
 
 presump- of that presumption that Law enforces contracts. 
 
 tion that a 
 
 contract Why ? Because it is generally to be presumed that 
 
 imports 
 
 advantage men know their own interests, and pursue them. 
 
 is weaken- 
 ed when But when we proceed to apply it to Treaties, con- 
 
 applied to r . . 
 
 Treaties, siderations instantly arise which seem to impair its 
 force. The contracts of an independent political 
 society are really made, not by the society itself, 
 but by those persons who have sovereign power in 
 it at the time. But they bind, or purport to bind, 
 a multitude of other persons, who had no hand in 
 them and were never consulted about them. In 
 that respect, they are like the contracts of a trustee, 
 a guardian or curator, or the manager of a joint- 
 stock company ; and the considerations which in 
 every system of municipal law cause such contracts, 
 to be scrutinised with peculiar jealousy apply to those 
 
ABUSE OF TREATY-MAKING POWER. 179 
 
 made by Governments on behalf of their subjects, lect. iv. 
 They apply indeed with tenfold force. For a trustee, a 
 guardian, a director of a trading partnership, a syndic 
 or assignee, are persons chosen with special reference 
 to the interests entrusted to them, either by the inter- 
 ested parties themselves, or by others on their account, 
 or by the law. But sovereign power, as it actually 
 exists, whether vested in one man, or in a few, or 
 in many, is not the creature of law, contract, or 
 voluntary delegation ; nor, generally speaking, has 
 any such process or principle of selection determined 
 in what hands this tremendous deposit shall be 
 lodged. It may have sprung from conquest ; from 
 the dictation of foreign Powers ; from the struggles 
 of turbulent factions ; from old gradual encroach- 
 ments on the field of liberty ; from the success which 
 centuries ago attended the efforts of crafty and 
 strong-handed men to accumulate fiefs, crush petty 
 jurisdictions, and root out smaller tyrants than 
 themselves : its tenure may be due to long possession, 
 to the support afforded by a thick growth of private 
 and class interests, to the swords of mercenary troops, 
 and the vast advantage which force concentrated 
 has over force dispersed. Most GTovernments, in 
 one way or another and in a greater or less degree, 
 have been founded, and are supported, by force. 
 But they have been and are supported also by 
 another thing, more powerful on the whole than 
 all the other agencies put together — the sense, 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. obscure and unconscious but general, that any 
 Government, even the worst, is immeasurably better 
 than none at all, and the submission, cheerful, in- 
 different, or sullen as the case may be, yielded on 
 that account to established authority. The worst 
 Government is in its degree beneficent to the great 
 mass of its people, by maintaining in its degree 
 security for life and property and the reign of law, 
 and these benefits outweigh the oppressions and 
 exactions by which the subjects of bad Governments 
 are galled, as well as those sins of legislation and 
 administration of which they feel only the effects. 
 There are, it is true, in all countries some guarantees 
 that the ruler's policy shall not be altogether either 
 arbitrary or selfish. Every Government has its 
 traditions ; every Government is swayed, more or 
 less, by the feelings and opinions prevalent around 
 it ; every Government, however composed, has some 
 interest (generally indeed, a very plain, strong, direct 
 interest) in the prosperity of its subjects. These 
 are guarantees, but they are very imperfect guaran- 
 tees. The traditions and influences which penetrate 
 to the sovereign may be narrow, false, selfish ; the 
 opinions to which he listens may be those of 
 courtiers, officials, soldiers, demagogues ; public and 
 national interests may be driven to the wall by 
 objects of personal or family ambition. The French 
 colonists of Louisiana awoke in April 1764 to find 
 that by a secret Treaty, two years before, they had 
 
ABUSE OF TREATY-MAKING POWER. 181 
 
 been handed over to Spain, as an indemnity to that lect. iv. 
 Power for the cession of Florida to Great Britain. 
 Their passionate grief, their remonstrances and vain 
 resistance are described in Mr. Bancroft's History 
 of the American Revolution. Before forty years 
 had passed, another secret Treaty restored them to 
 France, as part of the price at which the short-lived 
 dignity of King of Etruria was purchased from the 
 First Consul for a Spanish Prince ; and France, 
 without so much as taking possession, re-sold the 
 territory to the United States for a sum of money. 
 France, it is true, disposed of them chiefly be- 
 cause she "could not keep them. But what, to the 
 Courts of Paris and Madrid, were the interests or 
 feelings of the people of a remote dependency, 
 when brought into competition with more glittering 
 objects of ambition nearer home 1 This is an ex- 
 treme instance, but it is hardly worse than many 
 others, in which it is clear, not only that the 
 persons most concerned were least considered, but 
 that the determining motive was in no true sense 
 a public interest at all. Add that there are cases in 
 which even such safeguards as I have referred to 
 are altogether wanting — where for instance there is a 
 mere temporary possession, such as the Great Powers 
 had over the countries distributed in 1815. Add, 
 further, that from the want of an international police 
 the weaker Powers are liable to be forced by the 
 cupidity of their neighbours into unjust bargains; 
 
182 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. and again that, while political institutions and views 
 of public advantage are subject to change, it has 
 been common to make Treaties for periods far exceed- 
 ing the ordinary bounds of human foresight. The 
 Methuen Treaty was by its terms to last for ever ; 
 and it did in fact, for more than a hundred years, 
 almost exclude wholesome French wine from England, 
 in order that the Portuguese might be bribed to buy 
 woollen goods at no shop but ours. Mr. Methuen 
 could as little foresee how contemptuously his great 
 achievement, regarded in his own day as a master- 
 piece of sagacity and address, would be judged by 
 later economists, as the statesmen who from 1713 
 to 1750 bargained and struggled to secure for 
 .England a monopoly of the Spanish slave-trade could 
 anticipate the importunate vehemence with which 
 England was afterwards to fling herself into the 
 cause of .Abolition. The Treaty of Alliance between 
 England and Portugal, negotiated by the same diplo- 
 matist and signed on the same day, was likewise 
 declared ' perpetual and eternal ;' and a copy of it was 
 laid before Parliament eight years ago as one of a 
 series of similar engagements ' now existing and still 
 obligatory,' the earliest of which dates from the 
 lifetime of the Black Prince. When, in 1778, we 
 find the British Government reminding the States 
 General of its right to call for the succours stipulated 
 by the Treaty of Westminster just one hundred 
 years before, and to invoke against the resistance of 
 
ABSENCE OF CONTROLLING AUTHORITY. 183 
 
 its North- American colonists a league designed to Lect. iv. 
 curb the ambition of Louis the Fourteenth, can we 
 avoid being struck with the folly of such protracted 
 engagements, and the impossibility of placing much 
 reliance on them? This feeling it is which lames 
 the force of Lord Liverpool's argument, in itself 
 sound, on the same guarantee, in his Discourse on 
 the Conduct of the Government of Great Britain in 
 respect of Neutral Nations, written in 1757. But 
 it is needless to multiply examples! To the com- 
 parative frequency of them, and to the antecedent 
 probability of their occurring, it is due that the 
 question, what subsequent changes of circumstances 
 will dissolve the obligation of a contract, has a larger 
 place and importance in books on international, than 
 in books on private law. 
 
 Treaties, then, are engagements liable, for special They spe- 
 
 . cially need, 
 
 reasons, to be contracted recklessly and improperly, therefore, 
 
 r-». . . B control- 
 
 AThey are engagements, therefore, which have special ii°g ^ 
 need of a regulating authority — an authority able to »«*jns. 
 discriminate, adjudicate, ratify, control, cancel. But— ^ his 
 no such authority exists or can exist here ; and in its 
 absence the rule asserts itself, as I have said, with a 
 breadth and rigour unknown to private law. It enjoins in the 
 
 ° x absence of 
 
 the performance even of contracts which are unjust in suchautho. 
 
 ± nty the 
 
 "themselves or founded on injustice. It is for the gene- rule- Pacta 
 ral advantage that a treaty extorted at the sword's £^JJ 
 point in an aggressive war should be held binding, »?P| ied 
 not because unjust aggression is other than a had 1 '*™*' 
 
184 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. and pernicious thing, but because, where no means 
 of drawing a line exist, the necessity for mutual 
 confidence and for a, general reliance on solemn en- 
 gagements makes it impossible to admit the plea. It 
 is for the advantage even of the sufferer himself, and 
 that in an eminent degree : the sacredness of a promise 
 — all that he can offer, perhaps, when the sword is at 
 his throat — is to him of the highest value, just as the 
 security of credit is to no one more important than to 
 the man who has no coin but credit to pay his debts 
 in. And, as bad government is better than anarchy, so 
 it is better that Treaties which ought never to have 
 been made should be held binding, than that there 
 should be no Treaties at all. The reason, then, which 
 is the foundation and support of the rule bears with 
 irresistible force against the admission of exceptions 
 which become perfectly right and legitimate wherever 
 there is a police to prevent injustice and a judicial 
 authority to declare that injustice has been done, and 
 shuts them out inexorably and altogether. Hence 
 it is commonly laid down that neither the plea of 
 ' duress ' nor that of ' leesio enormis ' (a degree of 
 hardship, that is, so plain and gross that the sufferer 
 cannot be supposed to have contemplated what he 
 was undertaking) — pleas recognised, directly or cir- 
 cuitously, in one form or another, by municipal law 
 both ancient and modern — can be allowed to justify 
 the non-fulfilment of a Treaty. To cases of personal 
 duress this, of course, does not apply. Any force or 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE. 185 
 
 menace applied to the person of a negotiator is on lect. iv. 
 the face of it unlawful, because a consent wrung from 
 the pain or terror of an individual cannot with any 
 pretence of reason be regarded as the consent of 
 the nation. The cession, therefore, extorted from 
 Ferdinand the Seventh at Bayonne, the engage- 
 ments obtained a few years back from Mr. Eden by 
 the chiefs of Bhootan, were void : they were beyond 
 the reason, and therefore beyond the scope, of the 
 rule. But the intolerable hardships and sufferings 
 inflicted by France on Prussia after the battle of 
 Jena did not invalidate the Peace of Tilsit or the 
 series of subsequent conventions which bound the 
 conquered but unsubdued nation in fetters of steel. 
 
 Yet this unqualified sternness constituted a diffi- a rigour 
 
 which 
 
 culty, because the feelings of mankind revolt against cannot be 
 
 maintained 
 
 it in extreme cases, whilst, from the sort of anarchy in practice. 
 in which nations live, extreme cases are constantly 
 liable to occur. Solid as may be the foundation of 
 the rule, it is practically but an unsafe barrier when 
 it opposes itself to the deep resentment and keen' 
 sense of injustice which an oppressive Treaty plants 
 in the heart of a conquered people. A like observa- 
 tion applies to engagements clearly and grossly 
 injurious to either contracting party. The nicest 
 choice of words, the most careful search for qualifi- 
 cations, will not enable us to pronounce definitely 
 that oppressive or pernicious Treaties are not 
 binding ; and the attempts which some French and 
 
186 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lbct. iv. German jurists have made to frame exceptions which 
 should embrace extreme cases, and extreme cases 
 only, have been as unsuccessful here as such endea- 
 vours commonly are 1 . Yet little reliance can in prac- 
 tice be placed on oppressive or pernicious Treaties, 
 and it is the knowledge of this which is the great 
 check on them. 
 
 Yet laxity I have tried in the foregoing observations to 
 
 of practice , , , . 
 
 has been answer, however imperfectly, the inquiries with 
 
 exagge- 
 rated, which I began, and to show in what ways the laxity 
 
 Reasons. 
 
 for this, of practice which is supposed to exist among nations 
 in this respect may be reasonably accounted for. I 
 venture to say, however, that such laxity as actually 
 exists has, in my view, been greatly exaggerated by 
 common opinion, and from a simple cause. The 
 very absence of an arbitral authority entitled or 
 qualified to decide upon alleged breaches of faith 
 has left all such questions, when they have arisen, 
 open to endless discussion : the consequence is, that 
 to an undiscriminating eye all engagements seem 
 to stand on the same line ; all complaints go for 
 something, and the complaint usually makes more 
 noise in history than the defence. But no one, I 
 think, will deny that the reproach has truth in it; 
 and it is a fair subject of inquiry whether this reproach 
 can be, or is likely to be, diminished. The best hope 
 
 1 This subject is laboriously, but unsatisfactorily, discussed by 
 Dresch, Ueber die Dauer der Volkervertrage. Landshut, 1808. 
 
PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPEMENT. 187 
 
 of diminishing it lies in attacking such of the causes Lect.. iv. 
 which have contributed to create it as admit of being 
 lessened or removed. These things then, at any rate, Objects to 
 
 be desired. 
 
 we see to be desirable — a clearer and stronger sense 
 of the duty itself and of the interests which fortify 
 the duty, and a stricter avoidance of engagements 
 we or others are likely to repent of, and obligations 
 we do not distinctly understand. And for these we 
 must look to the progress of opinion and of political 
 change more than to a completer code of Inter- 
 national Law. 
 
 These are vague phrases. Let us translate them influences 
 
 which may 
 
 into something more definite. The practice of Go- beexpected 
 
 '" to affect 
 
 vernments in this matter has been gradually in- the conduct 
 
 ° J m # ofGovern- 
 
 fluenced, as it appears to me, by changes of opinion m ? nts in 
 
 tins ni3,tt6r. 
 
 and sentiment as to the obligation of national engage- 
 ments, as to the legitimate objects of them, and as to 
 national rights and interests, and also by changes in 
 the relation of sovereign to subject and the current 
 views of that relation. We may expect it to be in- 
 fluenced hereafter by like agencies. 
 
 The notion of a contract or promise as binding Slow deve- 
 
 . . , lopement 
 
 in itself has been slowly developed in private law. of the con- 
 ception of 
 A transaction completed at the time is understood » binding 
 
 contract 
 
 in very early ages to require nothing but deliberation ; n private 
 and publicity. In the hill-country of South Palestine 
 and the days of Abraham — in a Latin village before 
 the dawn of Koman history begins — in an English 
 county-court under the Saxon kings, the sale of a 
 
188 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 lect. iv. piece of land seems to have been effected in modes 
 differing little from one another. Witnesses are 
 present, as many as can be collected ; the money 
 is weighed out (if need be) and paid; there is a 
 public declaration, the possession is handed over, and 
 the thing is done. But an engagement to be per- 
 formed at a future time is felt to require other 
 sanctions ; it is placed under the immediate protection 
 of the Divine power. ' See,' says Laban to Jacob, 
 ' God is witness between me and thee ;' ' God judge 
 between us.' Zev irdrep, runs the Homeric adjura- 
 tion — 
 
 Zev irdrtp, "lfSt]8cv jnebiav, kvSiotc, piyune, 
 'HtXidr ff, or Ttavr i(f>opas Ka't iravr tiranovtis, 
 Kal Trorapol Kai yala, Kai 01 v-rrtvepBe Kapovras 
 'Avdpumovs rlvvaBov, oris k' imopKov o/ioVcn?, 
 'Y/mii fiaprvpoi core, <pv\d<r<TCTc 8' SpKia mora}. 
 
 There are sacrifices ; there is some rude visible 
 record — a heap of stones or an upright slab; there 
 are ceremonies and forms of words, which, as usage 
 hardens into law, come to be regarded as essential 
 parts of the contract, and from which, as law itself 
 matures, the contract has to be disengaged again by 
 Artificial degrees, The resort to extraneous aids was most 
 
 securities. ° 
 
 natural in transactions between nations, because the 
 sense of obligation was fainter than between man 
 and man. A libation poured out to the powers of the 
 unseen world, a victim struck with a flint-stone as 
 
 1 Iliad, iii. 276-280. 
 
ARTIFICIAL SECURITIES. 189 
 
 a symbol of the Divine wrath against perjury — such Lect. iv. 
 are the ideas represented by the words which, in 
 Greek and Latin, stand for a solemn Treaty. In 
 the Elean inscription, a league of unknown antiquity 
 between two petty towns or tribes of the Peloponnese, 
 cut on a plate of copper in the rudest Greek, the 
 Divine sanction is secured by making a pecuniary 
 mulct, payable to Olympian Zeus, the appointed 
 penalty for a breach. What need of hostages, asks 
 Livy, arguing that the sponsio at the Caudine Forks 
 could not have been a Treaty — what need would 
 there have been of hostages, ' ubi precatione res 
 transigitur' 1 The form of an oath is common, 
 though not universal, in mediaeval Treaties, with 
 such differences as we might expect to find between 
 a Christian's appeal in a rude age to the judgment of 
 God and the barbarous curse which made the sub- 
 stance of the Homeric ev^y. ' Of those who are first 
 to break this oath,' prayed the warriors of the Iliad, 
 ' may the brains be spilt on the ground like this wine, 
 theirs and their children's, and may other men enjoy 
 their wives.' ' For the love of God and the Christian 
 people 1 , and for our common safety' — so begins the 
 league concluded between Charles the Bald and 
 Louis the German at Strasburg in 842, of which the 
 Romance and Teudesque versions (for it was publicly 
 
 1 ' Pro deo amur et pro christian poblo ' — ' In godes minna 
 ind in thes christi&nes folches.' The readings in Dumont are 
 somewhat different. 
 
190 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. pronounced in both tongues) are preserved in Nithard's 
 History, and may be read in Pertz and in Dumont. 
 To the earliest extant Treaty of mediaeval Europe, 
 negotiated in the sixth century and recorded by 
 Gregory of Tours, the parties swore ' by the name 
 of God Almighty, by the Indivisible Trinity, by all 
 Divine things, and by the dreadful day of the last 
 judgment 1 .' ' On the Cross, on the Tour Gospels, on 
 the Canon of the Mass, and on my honour,' is the 
 form used in Spanish Treaties of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. It is in Spanish Treaties that 
 an oath is chiefly found after the sixteenth, though 
 the latest known instance occurs in a convention made 
 ninety years ago between France and the Swiss Can- 
 tons in the cathedral of Soleure. But between the 
 thirteenth and sixteenth centuries these artificial 
 securities were prodigiously multiplied. An oath was 
 not enough ; the sovereign must swear (as the old 
 statutes of this and other colleges required the Fel- 
 lows to do) that he would neither obtain, accept, nor 
 profit by, a Papal dispensation from his oath : he 
 must submit himself expressly to the censures of the 
 Church ; to ' excommunication, aggravation, re-aggra- 
 
 1 ' His itaque omnibus definitis jurant partes per Dei oninipo- 
 tentis nomen et inseparabilem Trinitatem vel divina omnia ac 
 tremendum diem judicii se omnia quae superius scripta sunt absque 
 ullo malo vel fraudis ingenio inviolabiliter servaturos. . . . . 
 Lectis igitur pactionibus ait rex Judicio Dei feriar si de his 
 quicquam transcendero quse hie continentur.' (Hist. Her. Gallic: 
 lib. ix.) 
 
DECAY OF ARTIFICIAL SECURITIES. 191 
 
 vation, interdict, anathematisation, and other heavier Lect. iv. 
 censures and fulminations whatsoever ; ' and for this 
 purpose must undertake to appoint within a fixed 
 period proctors authorised to appear and record his 
 submission before the Pope or some other ecclesias- 
 tical judge in due form of law. If, like the French 
 kings, he had the privilege of not being excommuni- 
 cated except after certain formalities, he must re- 
 nounce the privilege. He must release, in case he 
 should perjure himself, his vassals from their alle- 
 giance, must ' pledge and hypothecate ' his lands and 
 goods, and procure a crowd of sureties to do the same. 
 In the ' Perpetual Peace ' concluded between Francis 
 the First and Henry the Eighth in 1527, two arch- 
 bishops, eleven bishops, twenty-eight nobles, and 
 thirteen borough towns, are inserted as such sureties 
 on the English side. Lastly, he must deliver hostages, 
 or promise to deliver them. These are the common 
 forms employed in framing Treaties by the lawyers 
 of the reigns of Louis the Eleventh, Louis the 
 Twelfth, and Francis the First ; and they are re- 
 peated again and again with a patience and pro- 
 lixity which are amazing when we observe how 
 quickly and with what levity the Treaties themselves 
 were broken. 
 
 Of all these multiplied securities none survive. General 
 
 . , disuse of 
 
 Hostages have not been given in Europe since the artificial 
 
 ^^ ^"^ securities 
 
 Earls of Sussex and Cathcart were sent to Paris in 
 1748 as pledges for the restitution of the. conquests 
 
curities. 
 
 192 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. made by Great Britain during the war of the Austrian 
 Succession. The ancient and pious formula, ' In the 
 name of Almighty God/ which stands at the head 
 of the Treaty of Paris 1856, remains a last relic of 
 the natural sentiment that a great public act, such 
 as a Treaty of Peace, is suitably clothed with the 
 solemnities of religion. 
 
 Effects of It is not, of course, to be assumed that, as contracts 
 
 such se- 
 
 are stripped of these artificial adjuncts, there is a pro- 
 portionate increase in the regard paid to the naked 
 obligation. The adjuncts may be discarded because 
 they have proved useless, not because they have 
 become unnecessary. But the multiplication of them, 
 whilst it betrays that they were useless, is a proof 
 also that, in the opinion of that age, they were neces- 
 sary. When prudent princes rode to an interview 
 surrounded by armed men, met on a bridge, and con- 
 versed through a grating, it was no strange thing that 
 Treaties should be broken as fast as they were made. 
 To us, however, it may well seem strange that acute 
 and sagacious men should not have discerned both 
 that these varied and redoubled promises rested on 
 nothing at all but the good faith they were meant to 
 fortify, and that a penalty which is nugatory, or a 
 pledge which can be circumvented, is not only inef- 
 fective but worse, because it lends a treacherous 
 satisfaction to the conscience, suggests the very 
 subtleties that elude it, and assists the easy work 
 of self-deception. 
 
DECLINE OF DYNASTIC POLICY. 193 
 
 The principle that a sovereign is bound to act as Lect. iv. 
 the representative and for the interests of his people, Dynastic 
 
 . policy; 
 
 obvious as it seems to us, was not always obvious, ^effect on 
 It was acknowledged as an abstract truth by school- » nd ,. its 
 
 ° ' decline. 
 
 men and philosophical jurists ; it existed also as a 
 sentiment derived from earlier times when the 
 prince was but chief of a clan, head of an aristo- 
 cracy, or magistrate or captain of a district ; it was 
 affirmed on great occasions; but it had no steady 
 operation. It was counteracted by many causes ; at 
 first by the position of the sovereign himself, de- 
 pendent mainly on his own possessions, revenues, 
 and family connexions, and surrounded by vassals 
 who were nearly his equals and sometimes his 
 superiors in substantial power — by the practice of 
 selling, bequeathing, and partitioning sovereignties 
 which had hardly ceased to be more than great feudal 
 estates, a practice which the feudatories opposed 
 when they were able and thought it hostile to their 
 interests, otherwise conceding to their lord the liberty 
 which they claimed for themselves — later again, by 
 the inordinate power of the Crown, by maxims of 
 despotism borrowed from the Roman law, and by the 
 illusion, to which popular sentiment easily surrenders 
 itself, that the aggrandisement of a reigning house 
 is an advantage to the nation by adding, as the 
 phrase is, splendour to the throne. The distinc- 
 tion which Grotius draws between patrimonial and 
 non-patrimonial kingdoms is a lawyer's attempt to 
 
 o 
 
194 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lbct. iv. compromise with the principle. But during what 
 long periods of history does it vanish altogether, lost 
 in vulgar struggles for the advancement of mere 
 family interests — struggles in which the resources 
 of nations were exhausted and their prosperity sacri- 
 ficed without scruple or remorse— struggles which, 
 carried on by the great Hapsburg and Bourbon 
 houses, made a figure in history, but which, when 
 we descend to the level of the petty German Courts, 
 we despise as the ignoble things they are ! 
 
 I think it safe to say, taking the period covered 
 by the experience of living men, that, in foreign as 
 well as in domestic politics, public interests have 
 been and are steadily gaining ground upon private 
 interests ; that sovereigns, even the most powerful, 
 notwithstanding their vast armies and the fine organ* 
 isation of all the machinery of government, are com- 
 pelled to be more careful as to the Treaties they 
 make ; that difiiculties unknown to the Courts of 
 the last century now embarrass and in a great degree 
 prohibit those classes of engagements which have 
 been oftenest broken, and out of which complaints of 
 national perfidy have chiefly sprung; and that this 
 change is salutary in the highest degree. 
 Tendency Contracts among private men tend to increase con- 
 nationai tinually, not only in variety, but in their relative 
 
 contracts J J J 
 
 rathe ml 'h Sh i m P or tance compared with other facts which are 
 dumber '" sources °f rights and obligations. The progress of 
 and variety, liberty and of intelligence, and those causes which 
 
MANY TREATIES OBSOLETE. 195 
 
 make men, as civilisation advances, more and more lect. iv. 
 
 dependent on each other, all work in this direction. Beneficial 
 
 1 < effect of 
 
 Among nations the tendency is, if I mistake not, the this - 
 other way. Their mutual relations depend less on 
 particular conventions, more on general understand- 
 ings and acknowledged rules of intercourse, than was 
 formerly the case. The Treaties of the Hanseatic 
 League, concluded in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, carry us back to a period when, although 
 every merchant was a traveller, every traveller not 
 provided with some privilege, protection, or safe-con- 
 duct, might almost be said to bear a caput lupinum. 
 To protect its traders against those innumerable and 
 intolerable exactions to which the foreigner was ex- 
 posed, especially when he fell into the hands of the 
 feudal chiefs whose castles overhung trackway and 
 river and guarded the inhospitable shore ; to rescue 
 its vessels from the iniquitous right of wreck, and 
 substitute a moderate salvage ; to obtain the right of 
 setting up, where its factories were planted, courts 
 governed by its own jus mercatorium, and adminis- 
 tering cheap impartial justice ; to secure exemptions 
 from the rude kind of reprisals then in use — these 
 were the objects which such a confederacy had in view 
 in framing its commercial Treaties. The same policy 
 had been pursued somewhat earlier, when it was 
 even more urgently needed, by the great mercantile 
 cities of the Mediterranean and the confederated 
 towns on the Ehine. The commercial Treaties of the 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 lect. iv. present day, framed for the most part on traditional 
 models, retain a great number of particular stipula- 
 tions • but our real and chief reliance is placed on the 
 established reign of law and order, in dealing with 
 civilised and Christian countries, where the reign of 
 law and order prevails. Take, again, those intricate 
 rights of succession which lately existed in various 
 parts of Europe, especially in Germany and Italy, 
 and which still survive here and there, and pursue 
 them to the forgotten transactions out of which they 
 sprang — the sales, mortgages, settlements, renun- 
 ciations, reservations of eventual rights, of which 
 medieval and modern history are full. Or recall 
 the long train of leagues, counter-leagues, guarantees, 
 which succeed one another in the annals of the 
 sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. 
 These things belong to a political condition of 
 Europe which is gone, and, so far as we can see, 
 is not likely to return. The drama of contem- 
 porary history acted before our eyes is apt, I think, 
 to affect us with a natural illusion. Looking back 
 on the thirteen years which have passed since the 
 beginning of the Russian war — years fertile in action, 
 illustrated by grand, memorable, tragic events, 
 exhibiting again in the field of politics men of the 
 old scheming, resolute, unscrupulous type — we are 
 apt to imagine that ambition was never so restless, or 
 the state of Europe so precarious, as now. And yet 
 any one who fairly compares the diplomatic records 
 
lefinite 
 ,nd clear. 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF CLEARNESS. 197 
 
 of the present with those of the past may satisfy lect. iv. 
 himself that the tendency of our times is not towards 
 a busy diplomacy, or towards a multiplication of 
 political engagements, but towards caution and par- 
 simony in that respect. I wish with all my heart 
 to see this tendency gather force. For in this sober 
 virtue of statesmanship, scrupulousness in contracting 
 engagements, resides the best security for the faithful 
 performance of them. 
 
 This leads me to another point of the greatest inter- 
 consequence, on which I can add but a few words, engage- 
 We are not cautious in contracting engagements *iFW>uHbe 
 we do not take an accurate measure of them before 
 hand ; nor, if we promise we know not what, are we; 
 likely to be faithful in performing what we promise^ 
 Precision in Treaties is therefore of the highest value. 
 I do not mean technical precision of language. Trea- 
 ties, indeed, often want precision of language, for they 
 are commonly framed by persons who have not ac- 
 quired the mechanical habit of precise expression, and 
 in phraseology which has not, by being used with 
 precision, gained a precise meaning. No one, however, 
 would wish to see the preparation of such instruments 
 committed to a conveyancer, nor have their ambigui- 
 ties been only or chiefly due to slips of expression. 
 In a few instances, as in the famous clause about 
 Alsace in the Treaty of Minister, to which I have re- 
 ferred in a previous Lecture, a controverted claim has 
 been designedly left in shadow in order that advantage 
 
198 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. might afterwards be taken of that obscurity. But in 
 many others, and especially in general arrangements 
 concerted between several great Powers, it appears to 
 have been thought that a distinct definition of the rights 
 and obligations created might prove inconvenient; and 
 vagueness has had positive recommendations where a 
 Treaty was resorted to merely as an escape from pre- 
 sent difficulty. These uncertainties, whether due to 
 cunning, carelessness, or short-sighted views of ex- 
 pediency, have been prolific sources of mischief; 
 they have produced unwarrantable claims, and disap- 
 pointed reasonable expectations. Questions relating 
 to the interpretation and execution of Treaties, the 
 mutuality of promises, the extent and character of 
 the obligation, all hinge on the inquiry, what is the 
 substance of the contract. Whatever helps the parties 
 to go straight to this point conduces to honesty, and, 
 I believe, to peace. 
 
 what is The substance of a contract is the thing which the 
 
 meant by . 
 
 the sub- contracting party has agreed to do, or not to do ; and 
 
 stance of 
 
 a Treaty, this is to be collected from the transaction itself. What 
 both promiser and promisee understood at the time 
 to be the agreement, that, and that only, is the agree^ 
 ment. Thus, a Treaty of alliance is in substance a 
 contract to furnish military or naval assistance in cer- 
 tain contingencies, the nature of the contingencies, 
 the kind and quantity of assistance, the amount of 
 general co-operation which each party has a right 
 to expect, being either specified or left uncertain. 
 
SUBSTANCE OF THE CONTRACT. 199 
 
 A Treaty of cession, on the other hand, is only a formal lect. iv. 
 expression of consent that rights of dominion actually 
 vested in the ceding Power shall become presently 
 vested in the transferree. A boundary convention is 
 but a declaration of rights, which may or may not be 
 accompanied by a cession or by mutual cessions. In 
 the two latter cases there is no agreement to do or re- 
 frain from anything at a future time : when possession 
 has been delivered, no obligation rests on the ceding 
 Power beyond that which it shares with strangers to 
 the Treaty, the common obligation not to disturb a 
 rightful possession; though that duty, as regards 
 the ceding Power, is strengthened by the sense of 
 good faith which forbids men to undo a deliberate 
 act, or a transaction from which they have received 
 advantage. In the language of jurists, the right 
 conveyed by a cession is not a 'jus in personam,' 
 but a 'jus in rem.' By subscribing or acceding to 
 a Treaty between third parties no right is acquired, 
 and no obligation incurred, beyond the negative 
 obligation which attaches itself to a deliberate assent. 
 Nor, again, by recognising a dynasty, a territorial 
 arrangement, or a state of possession, do you oblige 
 yourself to defend that dynasty, to uphold that 
 arrangement or possession, nor entitle yourself in 
 any way to insist that it shall be maintained or 
 continued. A broad line is therefore to be drawn 
 between such a recognition and a guarantee, which is 
 an undertaking to defend, in case of need, a right of 
 
200 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 lect. iv. some kind vested in another Power, with whom the 
 contract is made. A guarantee of a territory is an 
 undertaking to defend the possession of the territory; 
 a guarantee of a dynasty is an undertaking to sup- 
 port the dynasty ; a guarantee of a Treaty is an 
 undertaking to prevent by force, if need be, the 
 Treaty from being violated by any of the parties 
 whom it binds. 
 
 import- These are examples of what a Roman lawyer would 
 
 ance of 
 
 attending call the ' res/ a Frenchman the ' objet/ and an English- 
 man the substance, of a contract between nation and 
 nation. If it be indistinct, the obligation is doubt- 
 ful ; if it cannot be ascertained at all, the obligation 
 vanishes. The apparatus of a contract is there ; the 
 motives which urge the punctual fulfilment of a pro- 
 mise — honour, good faith, the sense of general expe- 
 diency — are ready to answer any appeal which could 
 be made to them ; but the promise itself is not there, 
 and the expectations built on it will be frustrated 
 when the time arrives for realising them. In plain 
 English, a nation is bound to do that which it has 
 agreed to do, neither less nor more ; and the notion 
 that the absence of a clear engagement can be sup- 
 plied by the sentiment of honour — that is, by the 
 strength of a motive which has nothing to operate 
 upon — is a chimera. Honour — which in its higher 
 sense means self-respect, in its lower sense respect 
 for the opinion of a particular class — may -and does 
 help to supply, among nations as among individuals, 
 
AMBIGUOUS ENGAGEMENTS. 201 
 
 the absence of those sanctions which wait upon muni- i^w- iv- 
 cipal law. But honour affords no key to the mean- 
 ing of an agreement ; honour will not create an 
 agreement where there is none ; and we deal unfairly 
 with that useful monitress when we expect her to 
 contend successfully against the difficulties inherent 
 in an ambiguous promise, as well as against the par- 
 ticular interests which may dissuade from the fulfil- 
 ment of it. We consult neither our character nor 
 our advantage when we contract uncertain engage- 
 ments, the true scope of which will have to be settled 
 by such a conflict when the hour of performance 
 comes. 
 
 Why do I dwell on considerations so plain and 
 indisputable ? I dwell on them because, though it 
 is impossible to deny, it is easy to overlook or 
 neglect them ; and because history shows that there 
 has been in the minds of statesmen a certain care- 
 lessness about grasping the precise import of obliga- 
 tions which they have undertaken or on which they 
 have insisted; a carelessness which has contributed 
 to make Treaties both more precarious in fact than 
 they would otherwise have been, and frailer in the 
 estimation of the world than they really are. If it 
 had been clearly understood that the signataries of 
 the Treaty of London 1856 undertook no engage- 
 ment to support the claims of the present King of 
 Denmark, and merely pledged themselves to recog- 
 nise him when King, as they must have recognised 
 
202 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Leot. iv. any de facto sovereign of that country, would it 
 have been thought worth while to conclude such a 
 Treaty 1 It was not a guarantee, but it looked like 
 one ; and the consequence was that it excited false 
 expectations in the Danish people and probably ex- 
 ercised an unhappy influence on their policy, whilst 
 in the minds of the people of England it raised a con- 
 flict between their judgment of what was both right 
 and expedient and a vague sentiment of honourable 
 obligation, a vague apprehension of half-merited re- 
 proach. Will any one say that the heterogeneous 
 mass of unconnected arrangements, in the nature 
 for the most part of cessions or boundary conven- 
 tions, which are packed into the Final Act of the 
 Congress of Vienna, created any clear and intel- 
 ligible set of rights and obligations among the 
 parties to that Treaty 1 Or can it be affirmed that 
 the uncertainty which hangs over them, over their 
 relation to one another, and the interest which par- 
 ticular States possess in this or that stipulation, 
 has been productive of no inconvenience % It has 
 produced, again and again, barren disputes, and those 
 vain remonstrances which we dignify by the name 
 of protests. The obligations which that famous 
 Treaty really created were far more circumscribed 
 than they have often been supposed to be ; and by 
 the mere changes of possession which have since 
 occurred it has been no more violated than my 
 contract to buy land from Peter to-day will be broken 
 
RECAPITULATION. 203 
 
 by my selling the same land to Paul to-morrow. The lect, iv. 
 policy of 1867 is not the policy of fifty years ago ; 
 the great coalition against France, with its frail ties 
 and transient aims, has melted away; new forces 
 have arisen ; many landmarks have been removed ; 
 and of the arrangements on the adjustment of which 
 the greatest care and pains were spent^ not one sub- 
 sists unaltered ; but the Treaty is so far from being 
 cancelled, that there are few European Powers which 
 do not reckon it among their title-deeds, and there are 
 subsisting engagements which date from it, and are as 
 good now as on the day when first they were made. 
 
 What has been said in this Lecture may be summed Recapitu- 
 lation. 
 up in a few words. The observance of Treaties is a 
 
 matter of moral obligation ; or, to express the same 
 thing otherwise, it is a sound general rule, for reasons 
 analogous to those for which men ought not to he or 
 steal, that nations ought to fulfil engagements de- 
 liberately made. The obligation is recognised and 
 assumed in the system of positive rules called Inter- 
 national Law, but is not materially assisted by it; 
 and international morality is in this respect at a 
 disadvantage, as compared with private morality. 
 This disadvantage is the greater because the sense of 
 moral duty, as applied to the acts of nations, is, from 
 assignable causes, far less clear and strong than it is 
 when applied to individuals ; because the power of 
 making treaties lodged in Governments is extremely 
 
204 THE OBLIGATION OF TREATIES. 
 
 Lect. iv. liable to abuse ; because nations are subject to have 
 unjust and oppressive obligations forced on them ; 
 and because international agreements often embrace 
 vast interests, and are made to extend into a future 
 impenetrable to human foresight. On these accounts 
 they stand peculiarly in need of a controlling and 
 discriminating authority, such as legislators and 
 judges exercise in different ways over private con- 
 tracts. In the absence of such an authority, the 
 general rule asserts itself, as it needs must, with 
 greater breadth and rigour than the corresponding 
 rule applied to the transactions of individuals ; with 
 a breadth and rigour, indeed, which cannot be main- 
 tained in practice. Hence that divergence between 
 practice and theory on which so much stress has been 
 laid. Is there any hope of lessening this divergence \ 
 If so, where does it lie % It lies in a sparing, an 
 almost parsimonious, use of the treaty-making power ; 
 in a steady avoidance of engagements improvident in 
 their nature, uncertain or remote in their execution, 
 ambiguous in their, terms, or not clearly understood 
 at the time when they are made. For this we must 
 in some measure rely on the good sense of statesmen ; 
 but it is not the only thing we have to rely upon. 
 Causes, gradual and insensible in their operation, 
 tend continually to diminish the importance, number, 
 and intricacy of international contracts : public in- 
 terests gain ground everywhere on dynastic and 
 family interests: the progress of opinion is in the 
 
REG A PIT VLA TION. 205 
 
 same direction ; and, vague as an expectation may lbct. iv. 
 appear which is founded on so indefinite a thing as 
 the progress of opinion, it is not more so here than 
 in other departments of human affairs. For higher 
 morality, for wiser, juster, more enlightened govern- 
 ment, for better laws, for an improved condition of 
 society, for the advance of all good and the conquest 
 over all evil, we all look mainly to the progress of 
 opinion, though we are not all agreed as to the course 
 we wish it to take, the means by which it is best 
 elevated and purified, or the forces which arm it with 
 its chief strength. These are commonplaces perhaps, 
 but it is sometimes useful to state commonplaces 
 plainly.