Mr. Fox offers to join the Armed Neutrality.

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Lord MALMESBURY relates that Mr. Fox one day paid a visit to his grandfather, Sir JAMES HARRIS, who had been Ambassador at the Court of St. Petersburg, to request information from him as to what had passed between himself and the Empress CATHERINE on the subject of the Right of Search, and also to ask him for a copy of a private letter, if he could give it to him, which he, Mr. Fox, had

written to the Ambassador.

The following is what had happened. Mr. Fox, being desirous of inducing the Empress CATHERINE not to recognise the independence of England's revolted colonies, offered to purchase this condescension by the abandonment of the Right of Search, and by the adhesion of England to the principles of "The Armed Neutrality." This proposition was made by Mr. Fox without the knowledge of his colleagues, and in a private letter of which he did not keep a copy!

The result of this negotiation was the rejection by the Empress CATHERINE of the proposition. No trace has been left of it in the official archives, at least in those England.

Either Mr. Fox was ignorant of the sentiments of England on a branch of affairs to which he was a stranger, or, having his attention preoccupied with the war against the American Colonies, he believed that he should be able later on to evade the conditions of the bargain he proposed to Russia.

Mr. Fox's letter could not have been written except on the one or the other of these hypotheses; the first of which shows his ignorance, as regards the English side of the question. Then comes the Russian, in which Mr. Fox was equally in the dark.

The Armed Neutrality was a weapon which the Empress forged in order to strike at England. The adherence of the latter would have broken it.* To believe that the Empress would range herself on the side of England against the revolted colonies was the height of the ridiculous; and so was it again to believe that this aid could be purchased by an adhesion to the Armed Neutrality! If England had adhered to it, the words of the Empress to Sir JAMES HARRIS would have been in part justified. She said to him: "You alarm yourself without any reason; say armed nullity, not armed neutrality.'

In like manner, after the Declaration of Paris, it was Russia who prevented the United States from acceding to it. The very words of Prince GORTCHAKOFF are contained in the official volume of the United States :

"It (the American Union) was the only commercial counterpoise "in the world to Great Britain, and Russia would do nothing, therefore, to diminish its just power and influence."

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And again:

"Russia had in a friendly spirit in 1856, asked that America

*I do not mean to say that England would have acted well in yielding to the maritime league called the Armed Neutrality. I speak here from a Russian point of view. The adhesion of the English Government would not then have drawn after it that of the nation, and so Mr. Fox's proposition was not accepted at St. Petersburg, where they understood England better than he did. But her adhesion would have broken up the league, and so have trammelled Russia's plan, which was to destroy maritime power by causing it to be believed that that power in the hands of England constituted a real danger for the world.

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How England and France choose Diplomatists.

"should be exempt from its force, i. e. (the Declaration of Paris); "for he desired to see the United States flourish as a naval Power."*

The ignorance, therefore, of the Minister is all powerful when it coincides with the ignorance of the nation; but it is totally powerless when it is not shared by the nation. In the events of which we are treating, this ignorance embraced all the points of the circle of judicial and political affairs with only one exception. This exception has in our day disappeared.

CHARACTER OF ENGLISH STATESMEN.

Let us now cast a glance at the two principal English negotiators at this period, Lord WHITWORTH and Lord LAUDERDALE, and afterwards at the four ministers who ruled over England from the commencement to the end of the struggle; Mr. PITT, Mr. Fox, Lord LIVERPOOL, and Lord CASTLEREAGH.

A negotiator is, or ought to be, a man instructed in public affairs and law, who has the qualifications necessary to justify his appointment, and an experience acquired in small affairs before great ones are intrusted to his talents and ability. In short, the word negotiator presupposes a diplomatic science and career.

But this state of things does not exist. We speak of it, it is true, but every time that it is spoken of it is denied; for it is a denial of it to repeat that, "General So-and-so has been sent to St. Petersburg, "and General So-and-so to Constantinople." If a man could be taken from the Paris clubs, or from the army, to make him an Ambassador, it is evident that an ambassadorship is a post and not a profession.

It is true that when you in France take military or political men to make them ambassadors, you select them from amongst those who occupy an elevated rank, or from amongst members of the Assembly who have made themselves feared. Thus the appointment in no way takes account of the foreign nation to whom the person is to be sent.

It was not so at the commencement of the present century. The English Government had then more elevated views. It chose men for the service for which it destined them, not to get rid of competitors or to gain parliamentary support. It was thus that the first of the negotiators with France, who was selected to transact the greatest business that England had ever to settle, was a man taken from the lower grades of the army in consequence of his tall and handsome figure, and sent as envoy to St. Petersburg, where he was expected to charm the eyes, to captivate the heart, and to lull to sleep the policy of the Empress CATHERINE.*

From being a lieutenant-colonel he became a diplomatist, and began his career in that capacity at Warsaw, where he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary. He was thence transferred to St. Petersburg, where he remained eleven years, in which interval he received the title of Baron. During these years, which were filled with events

*The diplomatic documents published during the Civil War were reproduced in England. These words will be found in the Blue Book, entitled "North America," No. II. pp. 251-257. † He had also the merit of advising George III. to use a pillow stuffed with hops.

Pitt and Fox ignorant of both Peace and War.

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of the highest importance, all that can be told of his career at St. Petersburg is, that he had a scandalous connexion with a very rich lady at the Court, with whose money he defrayed his personal expenses and establishment; money which he obtained under a promise of marriage which was to have been solemnised so soon as the lady obtained a divorce from her husband, Count GERBETSOW. Having returned to England before this event took place, Lord WHITWORTH found another lady still more rich, whose husband, the Duke of DORSET, was no longer an obstacle, for he had just died. This lady was so speedily captivated by Lord WHITWORTH, that the marriage took place before the arrival of the Russian Countess, who followed him to London, having at last succeeded in getting rid of her husband. The Duchess of DORSET payed the sum of 10,000l. to her rival in order to stop the legal proceedings against Lord WHITWORTH for the reimbursement of the money she had lent him at St. Petersburg.* Such was the man who was considered worthy to be nominated as the Ambassador of Great Britain, at Paris, after the peace of Amiens in

1802.

The second negotiator was a man of family, but nothing more, except that he was a rabid Jacobin who had made a spectacle of himself in the House of Lords, such as that House has never seen either before or since, where he had presented himself accoutred in revolutionary uniform. He had at Paris DUGALD STUART for his private secretary, which caused TALLEYRAND to say: "They have sent us a Jacobin "Ambassador, and a philosopher as his secretary." This was the Earl of LAUDERDALE, the man who made the war of 1806.

During the first period of the struggle PITT and Fox were the men in power; by turns ministers and always antagonists, it was to be hoped that the errors or faults of the one would be exposed and prevented by the critical foresight of the other. It was not here a question of the great qualifications of these statesmen, but of their aptitude for the conduct of enterprises entirely outside the normal policy in which they had obtained a superiority over their rivals It was in the first place a question of knowing how to preserve peace, and in the second of knowing how to make war. The cheers of a popular assembly would never be regarded as qualifications for a seat at a tribunal, the command of a fleet or an army, the execution of scientific works, the cure of a disease, or the management of a bank or a commercial house.

It is the same with peace and war, which embrace two branches of human knowledge requiring long and painful labour. Both ministers being equally ignorant, England possessed only an illusionary protection in their antagonism. They were both absolutely unfitted for the operations in question; operations which would have been easy to a man who understood what he was about. For the first, the preservation of peace, it was only necessary not to be compromised by the coalition formed, according to the proclamation of the Duke of BRUNSWICK "to maintain the cause of Kings," or to retire from it after that revelation.

*See Sir N. Wraxall's Posthumous Memoirs, vol. i., p. 189.

The second, the mode of conducting the war, was not to risk the forces of England in land expeditions, but to employ her naval strength in such a manner as to paralyse the enemy. The first of these things was done; the other was left undone.

ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND RUSSIA.

If it be possible to lay down a basis for English policy, Sir JAMES HARRIS did so in the words since reproduced by his grandson, Lord MALMESBURY; it would be to reverse the principle which he announced regarding the policy of Russia, which, according to him, was, "to engage England and France in a hot war while she pursued her "designs in the East."

It ought to have been the maxim of England not to allow herself to be dragged into a war with France in order that she might not aid in Russian projects. She did the contrary; she did not merely allow herself to be dragged into the war, but she made it.

Let us here for a moment leave commonplace, and take an estimate of the personages who were, or who had to be considered as taking part in this great convulsion. There were only three, and these were pre-eminent; the rest counted only as pawns on a chess-board. These personages were England, France, and Russia; all three to be feared, and each of whom possessed means and strength of their own which the others had not, and did not comprehend.

England held in her hand the sea and all that depended upon that is to say, the continents and the world.

it

;

France was the sword whose victorious blows were only limited by the ocean and the snows.

Russia was human intelligence animated by lust of acquisition, and who disciplined herself to gratify it. This Power equalled and surpassed the other two, for they neither understood themselves nor her. The material force of the sea and of the land passed to the side of intellectual force in order to accomplish the ends of the latter by their mutual exhaustion.

I have here to add with regard to the action of the drama posterior to the then episode, and in view of the future result, that a remarkable difference existed between the two species of material strength. One was susceptible of being paralysed by the substitution of certain phrases (called "opinion") for certain other phrases, and the other was not so. This latter was military strength, and in order to render it powerless, there remained only the simple process of crushing it.

In short, England had to be reduced to a state in which her strength would become that of her antagonist, while France had to be deprived of her own.

These two men, PITT and Fox, are remarkable examples of that modern creation, the "political man;" that is to say, the minister created by the struggle of opinions. Their incompetency to deal with affairs is demonstrated to the last degree, and this ought to be for us a valuable instruction. It would be profitless to say to our contemporaries

Treasonable Act of Mr. Fox.

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"abandon your opinions," because they cannot do so. Their opinions are stronger than they. It would be as if one were to say to a paralytic man, "arise," or to a drunkard "do not drink." But the paralytic man would understand you if you said to him, "change your doctor, the man you have is an idiot," and the drunkard would understand you if you said to him, "throw away that glass of wine, there is arsenic in it."

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In the same way say to the factions, "Keep your dear opinions, "triumph by your majorities, hate each other reciprocally, associate yourselves for the advancement of this cause or the other, but take 66 care not to put trust in your chiefs. Let them arrive at power by making use of your voices, your cries, and your votes, but for "Heaven's sake stop there; be content with the triumph which their "advent to power gives you over your antagonists, but do not allow "them on that account to intrigue with foreigners, to invade and betray "kingdoms, and to do at Alexandria and Teheran that which you "would not allow them to do at home, chiefs of parties though they "be. We ask this of you, because these men have systematically "mismanaged those affairs, and because they have brought misfortune "on the nations which confided in them. The political man, let us "admit, is admirable in internal affairs; but remember that for "foreign affairs he is detestable."

And internal affairs, what are they if not external affairs? Whence come debts? Whence conscription? Whence electoral commotions, convulsions, internal revolutions, changes of dynasties, and the rest?

The invasion of Spain in 1823 revolutionised France internally; the capture of Algiers overthrew the Elder Branch, and the Spanish Marriages the Younger Branch; and the invasion of Prussia overthrew the Empire. The war made with France in 1793, accumulated on the head of England the debt which at this day weighs upon her, and displaced sixty thousand small landholders.

This is what your political man is worth.

But that which renders this experience of the political man doubly instructive is, that Mr. PITT, who began the war, was by no means a partisan of Russia. On the contrary he was her great antagonist. He wished to set in motion the English fleets and to send them to the Black Sea to arrest there the Russian conquests from Turkey.* He was prevented from doing so by Mr. Fox, who conspired with the Empress CATHERINE, and went so far as to despatch an accredited ambassador to her, Mr. ADAIR, for the purpose of thwarting the ambassador accredited by the King. It was a question at the time of putting Mr. Fox on his trial on a charge of High Treason. (See the Memoirs of Sir NATHANIEL WRAXALL); but Mr. PITT was wanting in the courage as also in the integrity and patriotism to retire from power after the rejection of his proposition to arrest Russian ambition by force of arms.

Mr. PITT, on his failure to stop Russia in the East, remained

* The principal object was to avert the capture of Otchakoff.

C