There is nothing so remarkable in his notes as clearness and good sense. Each party began with pretensions it was obliged to abandon. Lord Liverpool managed his concessions without discredit. The great fault lay in the definitive treaty, which in truth was not definitive, and ought to be a warning to all negociators. It was eminently a case for a first and second treaty, because there were many arrangements to be made with other powers. The second and definitive treaty ought not to have been signed, and the conquests restored, until all these arrangements (chiefly concerning Malta) had been complete.

In the negociations which preceded the rupture, there were some notes which obtained great applause. One* in particular, answering M. Otto's complaints of the English newspapers, and the hospitality exercised towards the Bourbon princes, was generally and deservedly praised.

Lord Whitworth's reports of his conversations with Bonaparte, in whose behaviour there was 66 a total want of dignity as well as of decency," are very curious and amusing.

Mr. Pitt never having been officially engaged in diplomacy, we have not much of his writing upon foreign affairs. His paper upon the terms of peace, in 1805, has been formerly noticed;+ it has the perspicuity which belongs to a clear understanding. The part which he took in the Foreign Office, during the incumbency of Lord Mulgrave, has been the subject of an amusing anecdote.§ It is not improbable that he was the author of the note in which Bonaparte's overture was rejected in 1805.|| It is clear and simple.

Mr. Fox was more accustomed to diplomacy. We cannot enter into a criticism of his negociation of 1806; but we would observe that, except in the commencement, which was somewhat theatrical, his despatches assumed the character of those which he had been accustomed to condemn. His style, however, was much more familiar and easy** than Lord Grenville's; though not at all more successful in inducing France to abandon her extravagant pretensions. One cause of the familiarity of Mr. Fox's despatches is probably the almost constant omission of the king's

* 28 August, 1802. Parl. Hist. vol. xxxvi. p. 1271.

+ P. 1310.

Vol. viii. p. 42.

SA foreigner attached to the Foreign Office is said to have described with some humour, Lord Mulgrave's writing, scratching, re-writing, and re-scratching his brouillons; and finally exclaiming, "I must go to Mr. Pitt."

|| Ann. Reg. 1805, p. 616.

Parl. Deb. vol. viii. p. 92.

** See particularly Nos. 7 & 9.

name. One of his letters is a good specimen of an official rebuke. Lord Grey, we presume, was the author of the manifesto which followed the rupture of there negociations. But we say nothing of living statesmen.

Of Lord Castlereagh's character as a diplomatist we have already given our opinion. His style assuredly cannot be commended; but we repeat that his diplomatic communications were in substance such as became an English minister, and that their occasional inelegance never interfered with the clearness and the manliness of their purport.

If his papers have neither the stateliness of Lord Grenville's, the simplicity of Mr. Fox's, nor the vigorous acuteness and precision of Mr. Canning's, they answered their purpose well; more especially where it was, to deprecate objection, and reconcile various interests.

The declaration against America,§ is a good specimen of a paper losing force through its length, and occasional awkwardness of construction, yet efficient through the truth of its recitals, and the correctness of its arguments. In the unsuccessful communications which preceded it, as well as his other negociations with the United States, Lord Castlereagh preserved his character for moderation and firmness.

We now come to Mr. Canning, and certainly the diplomatic papers of which he was the undoubted author leave it indifferent whether he had much share in the Declaration of 1796. It is impossible to read any one of these without recognizing a vigorous understanding, and a mind of acute perception. He to whom the instruction is addressed knows at once what he is to say, and do, and why; the hostile critic, or the opposing party, must encounter facts and arguments with contradiction, having no pretence for evading them. His manifestoes, his instructions, and his communications with the ministers of other powers, are equally eminent. The Declaration against Russia in 1807 is a masterly specimen; and has the more merit because the manifesto on the part of Russia was a paper of much ability. Nothing can be better than the instructions addressed during his first administration to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, after the conclusion of the treaty of Tilsit;** and those which he issued

No. 26, addressed to Lord Yarmouth, on the premature production of his powers. Lord Yarmouth's answer shows that he had not acted heedlessly.

† Oct. 21, 1806, p. 209. In the Annual Register of this year (p. 800) is a most interesting picture of wrongs sustained from France, in a manifesto issued by Prussia, at Erfurt, October 9th.

Vol. viii. p. 40.

Parl. Deb. vol. x. p. 118.

Jan. 9, 1813.

** Papers relative to Russia, Parl. Deb. x. 110.

VOL. XIII. NO. XXV.

Parl. Deb, vol. xxiv. p. 365,
Page 218.

See particularly Nos. 9 & 10.

D

on the invasion of Spain in 1823* are excellent, Sagacity and firmness are both conspicuous in his correspondence with Austria and Russia, when those powers, really bound to France, were affecting the character of mediators.

During his second administration, a period of peace, his communications were personal, or through British ministers abroad; but the papers which have been published, and his speeches in parliament upon foreign affairs, leave no room to doubt, that the same excellencies pervaded his diplomacy; a masterly exposure of mystification in others, and a clear assertion of his own policy. He sometimes brought into use his habitual playfulness. In a negociation of minor importance, some Dutch ministers had sent him on unreasonable projet. He began the next conference by thanking them for their amusing joke, successfully refused to treat the proposition seriously, and thus got rid of it.‡

Englishmen have always been in the habit of depreciating the representatives of their nation abroad. They are always said to be outwitted by the clever Frenchman, the wily Italian, or the politic German. It would be difficult to establish, by facts, the justice of this depreciation. It will not be established in any instance, unless it be shown that a continental diplomatist has by dexterity, deceit, or persuasion, obtained some concession hurtful to the interests of England. It is not established simply by showing that an English minister has yielded a point, which by perseverance he might have maintained. The question is, whether reasonably, and with a view to the permanent interests of his country, he ought to have maintained it. We do not believe that English diplomatists, either of these or of former days, would suffer in comparison with those of other nations.

It appears to be now the plan of government, to make a regular profession of diplomacy, with promotion, having regard to length of service and seniority: but not to give the higher appointments exclusively to these professional diplomatists. believe this to be a judicious course.

We

There are few diplomatists who may not get some useful hints from the book which we have here reviewed; and we trust that we, too, have done them a useful service in pointing out some documents and passages of history connected with their pursuits. It may be true that neither diplomatist nor statesman can often recur to an occurrence of former days, as a sure rule for his con

43.

Parl. Deb. N. S. vol. viii. p. 904. See particularly, Nos. 2, 6, 11, 13, 17, 20, 25,

+ Papers relative to Russia and Austria, vol. x. p. 100, 110, 195.

+ His poetical dispatch in cypher has been noticed in vol. ix. pp. 272, 273.

duct on a new occasion; but the whole mass of facts belonging to a particular branch-defensive alliances for instance, or guaranties does furnish principles which are almost universally applicable. There are indeed smaller matters in which precedents are almost as operative in diplomacy as in law. And it is at least unseemly, not to be familiar with the illustrations used by the diplomate with whom you treat.

We do not recommend the imitation of any particular diplomatist: we have instanced several, perhaps of equal, but certainly of various qualifications. The man of plain and simple manners cannot hope to fascinate like him who can render everything he does agreeable; but he may obtain equal success through a confidence in his sincerity. Even a lofty and repulsive bearing may be successful, if it be not artificial. The great rule is, in manners, to be natural, in purpose, to be honest. If he follow this rule, we will match the English diplomatist with all the polished craft of the world.

ART. II.—Histoire Pittoresque de la Convention Nationale, et de ses Principaux Membres. Par M. L..... Conventionel. 4 vol. 8vo.

Paris. 1833.

THE French Revolution is a subject on which neither history nor public opinion have been able as yet to pronounce an impartial verdict; nor is it perhaps possible that the opinions of mankind should ever be unanimous, upon the varied events which marked its course. The passions excited were so fierce, the dangers incurred so tremendous, the sacrifices made so great, that the judgment not only of contemporary but of future generations must be warped in forming an opinion concerning it; and as long as men are divided into liberal and conservative parties, so long will they be at variance in the views they entertain in regard to the great strife which they first maintained against each other.

There are some of the great events of this terrible drama, however, concerning which there appears now to be scarcely any discrepancy of opinion. The execution of the king and the royal family-the massacre of the Girondists-the slaughter in the prisons, are generally admitted to have been, using Fouché's words, not only crimes but faults; great errors in policy, as well as outrageous violations of the principles of humanity. These cruel and unprecedented actions, by drawing the sword and throwing away the scabbard, are allowed to have dyed with unnecessary blood the career of the Revolution; to have needlessly exasperated parties against each other; and by placing the leaders of the movement in the terrible alternative of victory or death,

rendered their subsequent career one incessant scene of crime and butchery. With the exception of Levasseur de la Sarthe, the most sturdy and envenomed of the republican writers, there is no author with whom we are acquainted, who now openly defends these atrocities; who pretends, in Barrère's words, that "the tree of liberty cannot flourish unless it is watered by the blood of kings and aristocrats;" or seriously argues that the regeneration of society must be preceded by the massacre of the innocent and the tears of the orphan.

But although the minds of men are nearly agreed on the true character of these sanguinary proceedings, there is a great diversity of opinion as to the necessity under which the revolutionists acted, and the effects with which they were attended on the progress of freedom. The royalists maintain that the measures of the Convention were as unnecessary as they were atrocious; that they plunged the progress of social amelioration into an ocean of blood; devastated France for years with fire and sword; brought to an untimely end above a million of men; and finally riveted about the neck of the nation an iron despotism, as the inevitable result and merited punishment of such criminal excesses. The revolutionists, on the other hand, allege that these severities, however much to be deplored, were unavoidable in the peculiar circumstances in which France was then placed they contend that the obstinate resistance of the privileged classes to all attempts at pacific amelioration, their implacable resentment for the deprivation of their privileges, and their recourse to foreign bayonets to aid in their recovery, left to their antagonists no alternative but their extirpation; that in this "mortal strife" the royalists showed themselves as unscrupulous in their means, and would, had they triumphed, been as unsparing in their vengeance, as their adversaries; and they maintain, that notwithstanding all the disasters with which it has been attended, the triumph of the Revolution has prodigiously increased the productive powers and public happiness of France, and poured a flood of youthful blood into her veins.

The historians of the Revolution, as might have been expected, incline to one or other of these two parties. Of these the latest and most distinguished are Lacretelle on the royalist side, and Mignet and Thiers on that of the Revolution, the reputation of whose works is now too well established to require us to enter here into an appreciation of their merits or defects, or to be affected by our praise or our censure. The work now before us, which is confined to the most stormy and stirring period of the Revolution, does not aspire, by its form, to a rivalry with all or any of those we have just mentioned. It consists of a series of