happened. To a certain extent Prince Bismarck-who, at the present day discussed in his domineering aggressiveness and unscrupulous methods of policy, presents a close resemblance to the great Emperor has also adopted the practice of making curious confidences, not indeed to the world at large, but to the eading personages with whom he has to deal. M. Klackzo, who has had good opportunities of studying this statesman, gives the following account of his impression of his character:"No one can doubt his prodigious talent in dissimulation, and the supreme art with which he dresses up the truth. He has the genius to know how to give his frankness all the political virtues of fourberie. Very cunning and astute as to means, he has also shown extraordinary impulsiveness and indiscretion." In some instances, however, his indiscretions were no doubt calculated and intentional. The wild way, for instance, in which he used to talk of the designs of Prussia for the future, and the proposals he made, or at least insinuated, as to a division of spoils between Prussia and France, drew from the Emperor frequent "asides" to Mérimée, who accompanied them in their walks up and down the terrace of the Chateau and the sands, "What a mad fellow it is!" It is said that Bismarck had also his private opinion that the Emperor was "the embodiment of misunderstood incapacity." However that may have been, there was certainly a method in his madness which afterwards bore fruit, for the temptation gradually worked on Napoleon, and led him to think that, after all, a re-arrangement of Europe by France and Prussia to the advantage of each was a more feasible scheme than it had at first seemed.

This indeed has been the course of Bismarck's tactics throughout his whole career. In the preliminary Schleswig-Holstein negotiation he deluded both Lord John Russell and the Danish minister at Berlin with the idea that he himself was a true friend No. 213.-VOL. XXXVI.

of Denmark, and was using his influence to preserve its integrity, while all the while treacherously undermining it. His policy was much the same with regard to Austrir, whose reasonable suspicions of Prussia he lulled by representing himself as anxious to bring the troublesome Bund under the joint control of the two great German states, who would rule Germany in concert. Yet during this period he was secretly plotting against Austria, and bent on annexing the Elbe provinces, together with the valuable port of Kiel, for his own country; and finally excluding Austria from Germany. The King of Hanover is believed to have been similarly betrayed by delusive communications from Prussia. It may also be noted as a curious circumstance illustrative of the Prince's ways, that Lord Salisbury's account of his interview with the Prince at Berlin, in November last, when on his way to the Conference, has never been published, although Lord Odo Russell mentions in a despatch that "his Lordship has reported to Her Majesty's Government the impressions received from his visit;" and that it was his own "pleasing duty" to state that the reception of the plenipotentiary was most cordial; that his visit gave pleasure; and Prince Bismarck recognised its "value and importance; and, in conversation with leading men, had paid the highest tribute to his Lordship's great qualities as a statesman and as a negotiator." It is possibly only Lord Salisbury's modesty which prevents this flattering certificate from being given to the world; but it may also be suspected, from the Prince's confidential outbursts on other occasions, that he took the opportunity of overwhelming the Plenipotentiary by his effusive candour as to his own schemes for the settlement of all European difficulties, so that he might bind him over not to divulge anything which passed. M. Boucher, in his Récits de l'Invasion, gives some amusing particulars which he received

R

from M. Thiers, after that gentleman's visit to the Prince at Versailles, which throws some light on his affable terms with visitors. Leaning with both arms on the table, Bismarck suddenly interrupting the business discussion which was going on, asked permission to smoke a cigar, which was of course granted; and he then relaxed into a gossiping conversation, full of anecdotes and reminiscences upon all sorts of subjects, and beguiled M. Thiers into a similar strain of lively talk. When, after a time, M. Thiers wished to resume the question on which he had come, Bismarck seized him by the hand, and exclaimed pathetically, "No, let me continue yet a little while; it is so delightful to find oneself once more with a civilised being." In Lord Salisbury's case it was about ten o'clock at night that the interview took place, and it may be imagined that he also was received as a civilised being, with whom it was the Prince's delight to commune heart to heart, and that the results of the talk were somewhat more discursive and intimate than would be suitable for record in a Blue Book. Anyhow, the fact remains that Lord Derby resolutely refuses to let it come to light.

Perhaps, on the whole, the personage who has most cast discredit on modern diplomacy, and diverted it to evil uses, is the Emperor Napoleon III. In the Journal d'un Diplomat en Italie, M. Henri d'Ideville, who was at a critical time attached to the French embassy at Turin, gives a graphic picture of his august master's habits with regard to foreign affairs. He says that Napoleon,

though full of good intentions, was a rêveur borné, and always mysterious and reserved as to his plans, as to which indeed he was fluctuating and uncertain up to the last moment, when his ideas might take an unexpected direction. "Do you see," said Cavour one day to D'Ideville, "your Emperor will never change; his fault is always to con

spire; yet is he not absolute master, with a powerful country and a great army at his back, and Europe tranquil? What, then, has he to fear? Why should he constantly disguise his thought, and seem to go straight when he means to turn to the left, and vice versû? Ah, what a marvellous conspirator he makes!" Upon which M. d'Ideville remarked, "Yes, and you have been a conspirator too!" "True," said Cavour; "but I could not help it; it was absolutely necessary to keep things secret from Austria. But your Emperor will remain for ever incorrigible. I knew it long ago. At this moment he could march right on, openly fulfilling his end. But no he prefers to throw people off the scent, and to go off on a sudden track-to conspire, in fact to conspire always! This is the turn of his genius; it is the métier he professes; he examines it like an artist, as a dilettante, and in this rôle he will ever be first." Another witness, who knew the Emperor well, said of him-"He is a man of events; confident to folly in his destiny, in his star, he had the conviction that at the right moment fate would take care to deliver him from embarrassment. It was chance alone which made him a great man in the eyes of the vulgar. A bonheur insensé, an unparalleled luck, has saved him up to this day, and he has allowed himself to be led by events."

There can be no doubt that this was Louis Napoleon's character to the core. It was as a conspirator that he snatched his crown, and in all his career he acted in the same spirit. During the Crimean war he was continually hatching diversions from settled arrangements and points of policy; and when peace was arrived at he went round insidiously to the Russian side, and deprived the Allies of some of the conditions which were essential to a permanent settlement, and the want of which have since given rise to complications which might have been prevented if taken at the right

time. His liberation of Italy was accompanied by plots against its unity; his policy as to the Pope, capricious and vacillating, embarrassed the Italian government; and though he afterwards got it Venetia, it was only to serve his own purposes, and to give him importance in Europe. He also felt that his position would be strengthened by a conflict between Prussia and Austria, whichever might win, and for years he did all he could to bring one about. In 1850, while President of the Republic, whose open policy was a professed desire for peace, he sent his friend De Persigny on a private mission to Berlin to sound the King, and suggest that the Prussians should seize an early opportunity of getting up a war with Austria. At the end of 1855 the Emperor sent the Marquis of Pepoli on a similar errand, to point out that "Austria represented the past, Prussia the future; and that, as long as Austria stood in the way, Prussia would be condemned to a state of inaction which could not satisfy her, for a higher destiny awaited her, and Germany expected her to fulfil it." In 1861, during the King of Prussia's visit to France, a grand scheme was started of great agglomerations of territories by the three races, Roman, Slavonic, and Germanic, and there was talk of France extending her frontier in the direction of Belgium and Holland. When the Austro-Prussian war OCcurred, Napoleon expected to be able to interpose as mediator, and that it would be easy to obtain a territorial extension of France. In this, however, he was disappointed, and it was his rankling resentment against Prussia for its curt refusal of his demands in 1866 which led up to the war of 1870.

On the whole, then, it would appear that, though the ideal of diplomacy which is held up as an example of its perfection by Mr. Gladstone and M. Guizot, would no doubt, if it were successfully carried out, be a great

blessing for the world, as a matter of fact, the system which has actually been practised in recent years is of a very different character, and has been associated with very different motives and objects. A rampant spirit of aggression and covetous desire has been at work; and though some of the objects aimed at may have been justifiable enough, the means adopted were in too many cases inconsistent with a sound code of international law. Any one who looks back to the general course of diplomatic policy on the Continent after the establishment of the Second Empire, must see that it led the way in a restless meddlesomeness which has produced a general unsettlement of the conditions on which alone the peace of Europe can be steadily preserved. As it happened, the liberation of Italy has turned out well, but the way in which it was accomplished by foreign intervention, and the price to which the assisting power helped itself, were certainly perilous precedents; and there can be little doubt that the germs of disturbance which were thus sown had their development in the confiscation of the Danish Duchies by Prussia, and the subsequent exclusion of Austria from the German Confederation. Lord Russell, in commenting on the Treaty of Gastein, said very truly, "All rights, old and new, whether based upon a solemn agreement between sovereigns, or on the clear and precise expression of the popular will, have been trodden under foot by the Gastein Convention, and the authority of force is the sole power which has been consulted and recognised. Violence and conquest, such are the chief bases upon which the dividing Powers have established the Convention." Austria had a terrible penalty to pay for her connivance in this outrage, and its effects are by no means exhausted. It is curious now to look back upon the wonderful project of a Congress with which the Emperor Napoleon startled the world in 1863. It was a dream of the first

Buonaparte that Europe ought to be formed into a vast Empire to which he was to give laws dated indifferently from Paris, Rome, Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid; and that henceforth any contention among European States was to be deemed civil war. Napoleon III. was smitten with this conception, but knew of course that it had failed in his uncle's case, and was still more impracticable in these days. But he thought he might make good play for himself and France by getting up the plan of a general Congress to settle offhand all the difficulties of Europe.

It is true

that at the close of the Congress of Paris, when everybody was for the time sick of war, there was a feeling in favour of taking means to check it as much as possible; and with that view a protocol was adopted, in which it was recommended that States between whom any serious difference might arise, should seek mediation by a friendly Power before appealing to arms. Lord Clarendon expressed a hope that this "happy innovation might receive a more general application, and thus become a barrier against conflicts which broke forth because it was not always possible to give explanations." This happy innovation remains, however, a mere paper figment. It is impossible to imagine any cases to which it would have been more applicable than in regard to the pretext of the spoliation of Denmark by Prussia, the struggle between Prussia and Austria, and the subsequent war between Germany and France; yet no serious attempt was made by the neutral Powers to apply the rule. If Napoleon had been loyal and sincere in the professed desire for universal peace with which he summoned the abortive Congress, he might, in conjunction with England, have done much to arrest events which have caused great mischief to the principles of good faith and mutual consideration among nations; but it was not to be. The intense folly of the plan for raking up all the latent

troubles of Europe in the vain hope of settling them by "the deliberations of a Congress which would consist of demands and pretensions put forward by some and resisted by others, so that, there being no supreme authority in such an assembly to enforce the decision of the majority, the Congress would probably separate, leaving many

of its members on worse terms with each other than they had been when they met," was clearly expressed in Lord Russell's incisive despatch, which at once exploded the bubble. Unfortunately it left a sting in the Emperor's breast which he had not the magnanimity to forget; and the breach between England and France which ensued was fatal to Danish interests. In the case of the war between France and Germany arising from the question as to a German candidate for the Spanish throne, the point in itself was nothing more than a reproduction of the dialogue of the retainers of the rival houses of Verona-" Do you bite your thumb?" "I do bite my thumb, sir." 66 "Do you bite your thumb at me?" "No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb." And it is a pity that England, Russia, and Italy did not step in like Benvolio, and cry, "Part, fools, put up your swords; you know not what you do." Again, the hollow arrangement, for the neutrality of Luxemburg which was made in 1870, and the recent Eastern protocols, may be taken as other examples of the vapoury character of international intervention for the protection of public interests. The ministerial explanation was that a collective guarantee had rather the character of a moral sanction than a contingent liability to go to war, and that, unless all were agreed, no one party was called upon to do anything.

Lord Derby the other day laid down a sort of programme of diplomacy which deserves attention. He said,

"We have to consider not only one particular point, but what is the state of matters over the whole world; and

we have to consider also the risk of involving ourselves in hostilities in any one part of the world where thereby we might disable ourselves from even necessary defence in some other place where our interests are much more threatened." And then he added: "I say this only in a general and theoretical manner, for my own part, having attended to foreign politics for a great many years. Not many convictions have been so permanently impressed on my mind as that of the utter incapacity of the I do not say average man— but of the wise man, to foresee coming events." As to the latter part of this statement, though Lord Derby no doubt drew it from his own personal experience, the substance of it had already been anticipated by Mr. Nassau Senior, who imagined a plan for training Foreign Office clerks, who were to be periodically required to prophesy the issue of existing political "questions," and upon their success,

as

tested by subsequent events, was to depend their promotion to responsible office; and also by Lord Palmerston, to whom the observation did not apply, for he always looked forward. He said, "There are very few public men in England who follow up foreign affairs sufficiently to foresee the consequence of events which have not happened." A striking confirmation of this was given upon Lord Granville's succeeding Lord Clarendon as Foreign Secretary on the eve of the FrenchGerman war, when he stated on the authority of Mr. Hammond, that there never was a time when the political atmosphere of Europe was so serene and cloudless, and the prospects of peace so well assured. Before another day or two France and Germany were practically at war, and the Protocol of the Treaty of Paris, above referred to, was treated by both with great contempt. The reason was that they had made up their minds to fight, and wanted only an excuse, no matter how trivial or absurd.

The moral of all this business is in fact to be found in the comment of the Bishop of Fréjus on the proposal of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre for a European Diet (the precedent for Louis Napoleon's fantastic congress), to make peace all over the world, to the effect that one thing was wanting, to send a troop of missionaries to dispose the heart and spirit of princes. The truth is, that in the present day diplomacy is passing through a transition stage. The old system of diplomacy was essentially personal, and took account of only a narrow range of persons and interests. It was effective, because it was entirely under the control of those who worked it, and was directed by them to definite and well-understood aims. It was, in fact, a general agreement between some half-a-dozen gentlemen as to their common interests and mutual relations, and was conducted on their behalf by trusty experts, who enjoyed their masters' confidence, and knew exactly what they wanted. The gradual development of popular rights and opinion has now upset the old system

at least in our own country. The nation will not trust itself blindfold to any minister. Lord Palmerston was left pretty much to himself, and what he thought best that he could straightway give effect to. But Lord Derby has to consider not only what is best to be done, but how far the country will go with him. No foreign minister can now safely dispense with taking the country fully into his confidenceif he does, he runs the risk of finding himself left in the lurch. Further, any attempt at a game of brag, with a view to impressing foreign Powers, is attended by the peril of either being repudiated by public opinion at home or of being outrun by it, opinion getting excited in earnest. Hence secret and personal diplomacy is no longer practical for us. Absolute non-intervention is also impossibleand so is the old balance of power, which excluded moral force, took the measure only of physical power, and