“We have not been misled,” he says, “by any of the semblances of
impartiality or of neutrality which unfriendly proceedings towards us
in a perilous strife have put on. When any Government shall incline to
a new and more unfriendly attitude, we shall then revise with care our
existing relations towards that Power, and shall act in the emergency
as becomes a people who have never yet faltered in their duty to
themselves while they were endeavouring to improve the condition of
the human race.”
Compared with these prophecies the ravings of Mother Shipton become
respectable oracles. Yet on them was founded the entire foreign policy
of the Federal Government; the complaints that foreign statesmen and
other sane persons would not confide in them were incessant; and they
were the lights by which American envoys were expected to steer.
These gentlemen, with more or less sense and discretion, all write in
the stilted creaking style, stuck over with hard metaphors, which
distinguishes the master-spirit Seward, and which appears to be the
characteristic of American public compositions. They seem to have
caught, and to express very honestly, not only his style but his ideas,
and to represent perfectly the querulous, arrogant, exacting tone of the
Secretary. It is not, probably, from a wish to do him homage that they
thus accurately reflect him, but rather because it is natural to
American politicians to take abroad with them that idea of the
pre-eminence of their country which they have passed their lives at home
in asserting, and because their habit of regarding England as the abode
of a jealous aristocracy, and as being always in the wrong, places them
in a position of natural antagonism to us in every case that can arise.
But, granting this to be inevitable, we may consider ourselves very
fortunate that America is represented among us by a gentleman in every
way so entitled to respect as Mr Adams. The son of one President and the
grandson of another, both of whom were elected to the chief place in the
Republic at a time when something else besides obscurity and the absence
of any quality which could excite the jealousy of aspiring men, was
demanded for the attainment of the position which Washington had filled,
the claims of Mr Adams as a public man evidently rest on other grounds
than those of ordinary American politicians. We do not doubt that the
expressions of goodwill and courtesy addressed to him from our Foreign
Office are perfectly sincere and deserved. It is true that the tone of
his correspondence with that office is often captious, and his demands
are sometimes unreasonable. Without prompting from his own Government he
seems often to prejudge questions of international law with a bias that
blinds him to the true bearing of the question, as in the case of the
Emily St Pierre, and leads him to treat as an injury the denial of
concessions which are denied because impossible to be granted. But this
is the traditionary character of American diplomacy: it thus expresses
the spirit of the people, with the promptings of which a Minister may
think himself bound to comply; and both Mr Adams and Mr Dayton, Minister
to France, appear in their correspondence to discharge their duties with
great zeal and fidelity, and, moreover, to display the virtue, not by
any means universal among their brethren, of confining themselves to the
business of their own legations.
We need not say that our remarks relate only to Mr Adams’s share in the
published correspondence, and not to his later acts. The extraordinary
step he took on the 9th April, in granting a permit to an English vessel
enabling her to pass the blockade, is fraught with consequences too
important to be dwelt on here, and, if unexplained, would force us
largely to qualify our encomium.
It might be supposed that the ties between Austria and America are
neither numerous nor close, and that consequently the Minister to Vienna
would find but a narrow field for the display of his qualities as a
diplomatist. Accordingly we find Mr Motley, in the dearth of other
matter, falling back upon the grand resource of American politicians,
and discussing English affairs as the most natural topic possible to
engage the attention of an envoy at Vienna. From that convenient point
of observation, then, he proceeds to enlighten the Washington Cabinet on
the disposition and intentions of the statesmen, and organs of the
press, of Great Britain; and as other ministers elsewhere imitate this
course, the Government of Mr Lincoln has the advantage of seeing British
policy represented, not merely in the aspect in which it is seen by Mr
Adams the special photographer, but as it appears when viewed by
amateurs from the various capitals of Europe.
Should a Tory Government succeed the present Cabinet, Mr Motley
anticipates much trouble. Nothing, he says, can exceed the virulence
with which the extreme Conservative party regard America, nor the
delight with which they look forward to its extinction as a nation. The
hatred to the English Radicals is, he has discovered, “the secret of the
ferocity and brutality with which the ‘Times,’ the ‘Saturday Review,’
and other Tory organs of the press, have poured out their insults upon
America ever since the war began.” How the journals thus classified may
approve being linked together as Tory organs, we cannot say. To
ourselves we, of course, see nothing personal in the general allusion,
our leaning to Radicalism and Republicanism being too notorious to admit
of any mistake. Subsequently Mr Motley writes a long essay about British
matters, explaining the sentiments of the “venerable Premier of England”
and our Foreign Minister, and criticising the speech made by Mr
Gladstone at Newcastle, part of which makes him very angry, and causes
him to express a hope that that statesman’s tongue may be blistered.
Nor, unusual as his style of diplomatic correspondence may appear, does
he stand quite alone in it.
It is possible that the godfathers and godmothers of Mr Cassius
Marcellus Clay are, in principal degree, responsible for the efforts
made by that gentleman to attain notoriety. It would be mean to sneak
obscurely about the world under such magnificent appellations. Better,
in such a case, be called John Thomas. Hence, without any quality
apparent that would entitle the bearer of these historic names to claim
distinction amid the company of a pothouse, his efforts to become known
in the world have been as unceasing as if he were some wronged genius
entitled to a hearing. At the outbreak of hostilities he launched from
Paris a tremendous defiance against our unfortunate country. Then he
published a letter in the ‘Times,’ telling us what we ought to do in the
American quarrel, and, in case we should not comply, threatening our
great-grandchildren with the vengeance of we forget how many millions of
unborn Yankees. At this time he was on his way to St Petersburg as
United States Minister to Russia. For his guidance he had received one
of Mr Seward’s most elaborate moral essays, beginning in this remarkable
way: “Sir,—Nations, like individuals, have three prominent wants: first,
freedom; secondly, prosperity; thirdly, friends. The United States early
secured the two first objects by the exercise of courage and enterprise.
But, although they have always practised singular moderation, they
nevertheless have been slow in winning friends.” Fortified with a great
deal of this kind of composition, Mr Clay arrived in the Russian
capital. From his own correspondence we learn that he found the Emperor
“absent in the direction of Moscow,” and being advised by the
Assistant-Secretary of State to await his Majesty’s return, “I
presumed,” he says, “it would not be agreeable to the Emperor for me to
follow on.” In a few days he had an interview with Prince Gortchakoff,
who “asked after Pickens” (whether Pickens is something, or some place,
or somebody, does not appear), “my family, and other things in a
familiar way, when I was dismissed by again shaking hands.” Soon after
we learn that he and “his suite, Green Clay, William C. Goodloe, and T.
Williams,” set out for Peterhoff, where the Emperor received them, and
addressed Mr Clay in a set speech, which was delivered in Russian,
though, says he, “the Emperor spoke American mostly.” We are at liberty,
therefore, to suppose that his Majesty, during great part of the
interview, spoke through his nose; and, no doubt, Prince Gortchakoff,
who spoke only English, beheld with wonder, not unmixed with envy, this
exhibition of his Imperial master’s accomplishments as a linguist.
Mr Clay then addressed to the Emperor an essay on the moral government
of Russia, which, from internal evidence, we pronounce to have been
learnt by heart from a prize paper by Seward. “The Emperor,” he says,
“seemed much gratified and really moved by this last remark,” possibly
because it was the last; and, besides speaking Russian and American,
Alexander was so ostentatious as to conclude the interview by speaking
English, perhaps deeming it appropriate to the subject-matter. “He
wanted to know if I thought England would interfere. I told him we did
not care what she did; that her interference would tend to unite us the
more; that we fought the South with reluctance; we were much
intermarried and of a common history; but that the course of England had
aroused our sensibilities towards her in no very pleasant manner. The
Emperor seemed to like my defiance of old John Bull very much. He wanted
to know if I was a relative of Henry Clay, and what was my military
rank. I told him I was only a distant relation of Clay, and that I wore
the uniform of an American colonel” (borrowed, perhaps, from another
relation, Pipe Clay), “which rank I filled in my own country.” His
Majesty then shook hands twice with the Ambassador, and dismissed him.
Before concluding the despatch from which we learn the foregoing
interesting particulars, it seems to have occurred to Mr Clay that it
would be judicious to show Mr Seward that moralising on the war was a
game which two could play at; and he wound up in the following style:—
“I have already made this letter too long; but I cannot conclude
without saying how much more and more I value the great and
inestimable blessings of our Government, and how I trust in God that
no compromise will be made of the great idea for which we have so long
fought, but that General Scott, following out the programme of Mr
Lincoln’s inaugural, will _slowly_ and _surely_ subdue the rebellion,
‘stock, lock, and gun-barrel,’ ‘hook and line, bob and sinker,’ and
that we may all be spared to see once more the glorious old banner
restored,—‘Liberty and union, now and for ever—one and inseparable.’”
These extracts from the Clay correspondence of 1861 will no doubt cause
the reader keenly to regret that we cannot give more. But the fact is
that, whether Mr Seward was jealous of Mr Clay’s native humour as
displayed in these papers, or considered him a formidable rival as a
moral essayist, or whatever the cause might be, the omissions are so
numerous that a great part of the Ambassador’s correspondence consists
of asterisks, leaving only the driest details, such as any ordinary John
Thomas or Green Clay might have written. So numerous are the stars
between the stripes of print, that the successive pages look like so
many representations of the American banner. But in January last year he
wrote an essay on the subject of the perfidy and general villainy of
Great Britain, which has fortunately been preserved entire. “In this
critical time,” he says, “whether war or peace with England ensues, I
deem it my duty to give the President my impressions of European
sentiment.” He then details the reasons why the monarchies and
aristocracies of Europe have always regarded his republic with jealousy.
“Their jealousy, their secret hate, their blind vengeance verges,” Mr
Clay thinks, “upon insanity;.... they renew with us the fable of the
wolf and the lamb; though we are below on the mountain stream, we are
accused of muddying the waters.” His method of dealing with Secession is
tersely expressed—“I have always thought that the whole property of the
rebels, slaves and all, should be summarily confiscated.” But before
prescribing this treatment for the South, he devotes a paragraph to the
way in which England should be handled:—
“In case of war with England,” he says, “Canada should be seized at
all hazards. A large force should be first placed in fortifications in
some place suitable near the coast, which would cut off reinforcements
from England. Union with us, with equal rights, should be offered the
Canadians, and the lives and property of friends secured. Men and
money should be sent to Ireland, India, and all the British dominions
all over the world, to stir up revolt. Our cause is just; and
vengeance will sooner or later overtake that perfidious aristocracy.”
Such was the esteem in which the Cabinet of Washington held either the
practical qualities evinced in this essay, or the diplomatic services
veiled under the asterisks, that they were considered to entitle him, on
his return to America, to the position of a Brigadier-General. In the
records of the war we cannot, however, find that Brigadier Cassius
Marcellus ever performed any military achievement worthy either of the
foe of Cæsar or the foe of Hannibal. He seems to have worn his warlike
honours with remarkable meekness, and never to have done anything to
fulfil his own aspiration that “liberty and union may be for ever
inseparable,” by taking the smallest step towards the subjugation of the
enemy. Under these circumstances Mr Seward, finding his military so
inferior to his diplomatic talents, seems to have thought that the
Brigadier who had failed to bid defiance to the South would find a more
appropriate field of action in resuming his employment of gratifying the
Emperor of Russia with other defiances of “old John Bull”—and
accordingly we learn that the eminent statesman either is, or is to be,
once more Minister to St Petersburg, and may possibly be at this moment
engaged in his favourite occupations of shaking the hand of the Emperor,
and shaking his own hand at the British monarchy. If it be so, we may
perhaps hope to read, in another state paper, of his second reception at
the Court of Russia—which, judging from the familiar cordiality
displayed in the first, may, if the Czar should again deign to express
himself in the American language, open something in this way,—“Wal,
Cassius M. Clay, how air you, old hoss? Do you feel pretty brisk and
spry, sir? How is it you ha’n’t chawed up them rebels yet, lock, stock,
and gun-barrel, hook and line, bob and sinker? What do you think of
_our_ insurrection to Poland, sir?”
Future volumes of these documents will probably reveal Mr Seward as
still assuring his correspondents that the end of the rebellion is at
hand; that foreign Governments will soon see dire reason to repent their
hostility; that the Union is growing stronger with every “reverse of our
arms;” that discord and desertion and corruption are only “fresh
developments of patriotism;” and that the flooding of the lands on the
Mississippi, far from being an act of barbarous vindictiveness, will be
as beneficent in its consequences as the overflowing of the Nile. We
shall probably see, too, that American envoys, addressing themselves,
not to Mr Seward, but to the masses behind him, his masters and theirs,
are still denouncing our perfidious aristocracy and jealous monarchy. Is
it a comedy or a tragedy that these men are acting? If unconscious
absurdity and ludicrous unfitness for the conduct of grave affairs were
all the elements of the exhibition, we might well afford to laugh; but,
unfortunately, the grotesque display has its terrible side, and
incapacity and conceit only increase the tremendous power of mischief
wielded by the principal characters in the burlesque. Meanwhile the
course of foreign Governments is not likely to be materially affected by
the lucubrations of the American Secretary of State; and, amidst the
strange displays of weakness made by the North, not the least strange
will be the futility of its diplomacy.