It was in this latter sense, however, that the term ambassador was
originally used.
Just when it had its origin it would be hard to say, but it was so far
back in antiquity that the sanctity of religion must needs be thrown
about the persons of the officials to shield them from violence. In
ancient times when an ambassador went to a foreign court he went with a
special message, and having delivered it and received a reply, his
business was ended and he returned homeward. His official dignity was
but little inferior to that of the sovereign. Indeed he represented not
only his country but the person of his sovereign, and he was accredited
not to any foreign minister, but directly to the sovereign. Hence his
visit, especially if friendly, was attended with an elaborate display of
pomp and ceremony, the exchange of gifts and courtly compliments, and it
would have been a royal sight to have beheld his journey through the
“lovely land ...
Whose loveliness was more resplendent made
By the mere passing of that cavalcade
With plumes and cloaks and housings, and the stir
Of jeweled bridle and of golden spur”.
When he began to stay abroad, some four or five hundred years ago, his
purpose was mischievous. He stayed to act as a court spy and intriguer,
to find out secrets while keeping his own. A certain diplomat of the
seventeenth century is said to have written in praise of his occupation,
diplomacy “causes sudden revolutions in great states. It excites
hatreds, jealousies and seditions. It arms princes and whole nations
against their own interests; it forms leagues and other treaties among
sovereigns and peoples whose interests are quite opposed to one another;
it destroys those leagues and snaps the closest ties asunder”. There is
no doubt as to what this means. It is war—polite war, if you please,
where the weapons are deception, hypocrisy, insinuation and innuendo—the
meanest kind of war, where cowards may be greater than heroes.
“If they lie to you, lie still more to them”, was the naive instruction
given by one sovereign to his ambassadors.
Not to multiply instances on a point where history is unfortunately too
full, it is interesting to notice, as some one has pointed out, that
with rapid communication by train and by telegraph, court intrigues have
gradually died away; for now that the capitals of the world are within
“whispering distance” of each other, as it were, ambassadors have
assumed a position of secondary importance to the minister for foreign
affairs (or in America the Secretary of State), an officer who resides
at the home capital.