MY DEAR FRIEND: As you chiefly employ, or rather wholly engross my
thoughts, I see every day, with increasing pleasure, the fair prospect
which you have before you. I had two views in your education; they draw
nearer and nearer, and I have now very little reason to distrust your
answering them fully. Those two were, parliamentary and foreign affairs.
In consequence of those views, I took care, first, to give you a
sufficient stock of sound learning, and next, an early knowledge of the
world. Without making a figure in parliament, no man can make any in this
country; and eloquence alone enables a man to make a figure in
parliament, unless, it be a very mean and contemptible one, which those
make there who silently vote, and who do ‘pedibus ire in sententiam’.
Foreign affairs, when skillfully managed, and supported by a
parliamentary reputation, lead to whatever is most considerable in this
country. You have the languages necessary for that purpose, with a
sufficient fund of historical and treaty knowledge; that is to say, you
have the matter ready, and only want the manner. Your objects being thus
fixed, I recommend to you to have them constantly in your thoughts, and
to direct your reading, your actions, and your words, to those views.
Most people think only ‘ex re nata’, and few ‘ex professo’: I would have
you do both, but begin with the latter. I explain myself: Lay down
certain principles, and reason and act consequently from them. As, for
example, say to yourself, I will make a figure in parliament, and in
order to do that, I must not only speak, but speak very well. Speaking
mere common sense will by no means do; and I must speak not only
correctly but elegantly; and not only elegantly but eloquently. In order
to do this, I will first take pains to get an habitual, but unaffected,
purity, correctness and elegance of style in my common conversation; I
will seek for the best words, and take care to reject improper,
inexpressive, and vulgar ones. I will read the greatest masters of
oratory, both ancient and modern, and I will read them singly in that
view. I will study Demosthenes and Cicero, not to discover an old
Athenian or Roman custom, nor to puzzle myself with the value of talents,
mines, drachms, and sesterces, like the learned blockheads in us; but to
observe their choice of words, their harmony of diction, their method,
their distribution, their exordia, to engage the favor and attention of
their audience; and their perorations, to enforce what they have said,
and to leave a strong impression upon the passions. Nor will I be pedant
enough to neglect the modern; for I will likewise study Atterbury,
Dryden, Pope, and Bolingbroke; nay, I will read everything that I do read
in that intention, and never cease improving and refining my style upon
the best models, till at last I become a model of eloquence myself,
which, by care, it is in every man’s power to be. If you set out upon
this principle, and keep it constantly in your mind, every company you go
into, and every book you read, will contribute to your improvement,
either by showing you what to imitate, or what to avoid. Are you to give
an account of anything to a mixed company? or are you to endeavor to
persuade either man or woman? This principle, fixed in your mind, will
make you carefully attend to the choice of your words, and to the
clearness and harmony of your diction.
So much for your parliamentary object; now to the foreign one.
Lay down first those principles which are absolutely necessary to form a
skillful and successful negotiator, and form yourself accordingly. What
are they? First, the clear historical knowledge of past transactions of
that kind. That you have pretty well already, and will have daily more
and more; for, in consequence of that principle, you will read history,
memoirs, anecdotes, etc., in that view chiefly. The other necessary
talents for negotiation are: the great art of pleasing and engaging the
affection and confidence, not only of those with whom you are to
cooperate, but even of those whom you are to oppose: to conceal your own
thoughts and views, and to discover other people’s: to engage other
people’s confidence by a seeming cheerful frankness and openness, without
going a step too far: to get the personal favor of the king, prince,
ministers, or mistresses of the court to which you are sent: to gain the
absolute command over your temper and your countenance, that no heat may
provoke you to say, nor no change of countenance to betray, what should
be a secret: to familiarize and domesticate yourself in the houses of the
most considerable people of the place, so as to be received there rather
as a friend to the family than as a foreigner. Having these principles
constantly in your thoughts, everything you do and everything you say
will some way or other tend to your main view; and common conversation
will gradually fit you for it. You will get a habit of checking any
rising heat; you will be upon your guard against any indiscreet
expression; you will by degrees get the command of your countenance, so
as not to change it upon any the most sudden accident; and you will,
above all things, labor to acquire the great art of pleasing, without
which nothing is to be done. Company is, in truth, a constant state of
negotiation; and, if you attend to it in that view, will qualify you for
any. By the same means that you make a friend, guard against an enemy, or
gain a mistress; you will make an advantageous treaty, baffle those who
counteract you, and gain the court you are sent to. Make this use of all
the company you keep, and your very pleasures will make you a successful
negotiator. Please all who are worth pleasing; offend none. Keep your own
secret, and get out other people’s. Keep your own temper and artfully
warm other people’s. Counterwork your rivals, with diligence and
dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to
them; and be firm without heat. Messieurs d’Avaux and Servien did no more
than this. I must make one observation, in confirmation of this
assertion; which is, that the most eminent negotiators have allways been
the politest and bestbred men in company; even what the women call the
PRETTIEST MEN. For God’s sake, never lose view of these two your capital
objects: bend everything to them, try everything by their rules, and
calculate everything for their purposes. What is peculiar to these two
objects, is, that they require nothing, but what one’s own vanity,
interest, and pleasure, would make one do independently of them. If a man
were never to be in business, and always to lead a private life, would he
not desire to please and to persuade? So that, in your two destinations,
your fortune and figure luckily conspire with your vanity and your
pleasures. Nay more; a foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be
a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too.
Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures; his views are
carried on, and perhaps best and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers,
assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and
connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of
amusement.
These objects now draw very near you, and you have no time to lose in
preparing yourself to meet them. You will be in parliament almost as soon
as your age will allow, and I believe you will have a foreign department
still sooner, and that will be earlier than ever any other body had one.
If you set out well at one-and-twenty, what may you not reasonably hope
to be at one-and-forty? All that I could wish you! Adieu.