PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--In some of the ancient Republics, all citizens who, in time of
danger and trouble, remained neutral, were punished as traitors or
treated as enemies. When, by our Revolution, civilized society and the
European Commonwealth were menaced with a total overthrow, had each
member of it been considered in the same light, and subjected to the same
laws, some individual States might, perhaps, have been less wealthy, but
the whole community would have been more happy and more tranquil, which
would have been much better. It was a great error in the powerful league
of 1793 to admit any neutrality at all; every Government that did not
combat rebellion should have been considered and treated as its ally. The
man who continues neutral, though only a passenger, when hands are wanted
to preserve the vessel from sinking, deserves to be thrown overboard, to
be swallowed up by the waves and to perish the first. Had all other
nations been united and unanimous, during 1793 and 1794, against the
monster, Jacobinism, we should not have heard of either Jacobin
directors, Jacobin consuls, or a Jacobin Emperor. But then, from a petty
regard to a temporary profit, they entered into a truce with a
revolutionary volcano, which, sooner or later, will consume them all; for
I am afraid it is now too late for all human power, with all human means,
to preserve any State, any Government, or any people, from suffering by
the threatening conflagration. Switzerland, Venice, Geneva, Genoa, and
Tuscany have already gathered the poisoned fruits of their neutrality.
Let but Bonaparte establish himself undisturbed in Hanover some years
longer, and you will see the neutral Hanse Towns, neutral Prussia, and
neutral Denmark visited with all the evils of invasion, pillage, and
destruction, and the independence of the nations in the North will be
buried in the rubbish of the liberties of the people of the South of
Europe.
These ideas have frequently occurred to me, on hearing our agents
pronounce, and their dupes repeat: “Oh! the wise Government of Denmark!
Oh, what a wise statesman the Danish Minister, Count von Bernstorff!” I
do not deny that the late Count von Bernstorff was a great politician;
but I assert, also, that his was a greatness more calculated for regular
times than for periods of unusual political convulsion. Like your Pitt,
the Russian Woronzow, and the Austrian Colloredo, he was too honest to
judge soundly and to act rightly, according to the present situation of
affairs. He adhered too much to the old routine, and did not perceive
the immense difference between the Government of a revolutionary ruler
and the Government of a Louis XIII. or a Louis XIV. I am certain, had he
still been alive, he would have repented of his errors, and tried to have
repaired them.
His son, the present Danish Minister, follows his father’s plans, and
adheres, in 1805, to a system laid down by him in 1795; while the
alterations that have occurred within these ten years have more affected
the real and relative power and weakness of States than all the
revolutions which have been produced by the insurrections, wars, and
pacifications of the two preceding centuries. He has even gone farther,
in some parts of his administration, than his father ever intended.
Without remembering the political TRUTH, that a weak State which courts
the alliance of a powerful neighbour always becomes a vassal, while
desiring to become an ally, he has attempted to exchange the connections
of Denmark and Russia for new ones with Prussia; and forgotten the
obligations of the Cabinet of Copenhagen to the Cabinet of St.
Petersburg, and the interested policy of the House of Brandenburgh. That,
on the contrary, Russia has always been a generous ally of Denmark, the
flourishing state of the Danish dominions since the beginning of the last
century evinces. Its distance and geographical position prevent all
encroachments from being feared or attempted; while at the same time it
affords protection equally against the rivalry of Sweden and ambition of
Prussia.
The Prince Royal of Denmark is patriotic as well as enlightened, and
would rule with more true policy and lustre were he to follow seldomer
the advice of his counsellors, and oftener the dictates of his own mind.
Count von Schimmelmann, Count von Reventlow, and Count von Bernstorff,
are all good and moral characters; but I fear that their united capacity
taken together will not fill up the vacancy left in the Danish Cabinet by
the death of its late Prime Minister. I have been personally acquainted
with them all three, but I draw my conclusions from the acts of their
administration, not from my own knowledge. Had the late Count von
Bernstorff held the ministerial helm in 1803, a paragraph in the Moniteur
would never have disbanded a Danish army in Holstein; nor would, in 1805,
intriguers have been endured who preached neutrality, after witnessing
repeated violation of the law of nations, not on the remote banks of the
Rhine, but on the Danish frontiers, on the Danish territory, on the banks
of the Elbe.
It certainly was no compliment to His Danish Majesty when our Government
sent Grouvelle as a representative to Copenhagen, a man who owed his
education and information to the Conde branch of the Bourbons, and who
afterwards audaciously and sacrilegiously read the sentence of death on
the chief of that family, on his good and legitimate King, Louis XVI. It
can neither be called dignity nor prudence in the Cabinet of Denmark to
suffer this regicide to serve as a point of rally to sedition and
innovation; to be the official propagator of revolutionary doctrines, and
an official protector of all proselytes and sectaries of this anti-social
faith.
Before the Revolution a secretary to the Prince of Conde, Grouvelle was
trusted and rewarded by His Serene Highness, and in return betrayed his
confidence, and repaid benefactions and generosity with calumny and
persecution, when his patron was obliged to seek safety in emigration
against the assassins of successful rebellion. When the national seals
were put on the estates of the Prince, he appropriated to himself not
only the whole of His Highness’s library, but a part of his plate. Even
the wardrobe and the cellar were laid under contributions by this
domestic marauder.
With natural genius and acquired experience, Grouvelle unites impudence
and immorality; and those on whom he fixes for his prey are, therefore,
easily duped, and irremediably undone. He has furnished disciples to all
factions, and to all sects, assassins to the revolutionary tribunals, as
well as victims for the revolutionary guillotine; sans-culottes to
Robespierre, Septembrizers to Marat, republicans to the Directory, spies
to Talleyrand, and slaves to Bonaparte, who, in 1800, nominated him a
tribune, but in 1804 disgraced him, because he wished that the Duc d’
Enghien had rather been secretly poisoned in Baden than publicly
condemned and privately executed in France.
Our present Minister at the Court of Copenhagen, D’ Aguesseau, has no
virtues to boast of, but also no crimes to blush for. With inferior
capacity, he is only considered by Talleyrand as an inferior intriguer,
employed in a country ruled by an inferior policy, neither feared nor
esteemed by our Government. His secretary, Desaugiers the elder, is our
real and confidential firebrand in the North, commissioned to keep
burning those materials of combustion which Grouvelle and others of our
incendiaries have lighted and illuminated in Holstein, Denmark, Sweden,
and Norway.