POLITICAL MORALITY (1862)
ON Moran's promotion to be Secretary, Mr. Seward inquired
whether Minister Adams would like the place of Assistant Secretary for
his son. It was the first--and last--office ever offered him, if indeed
he could claim what was offered in fact to his father. To them both,
the change seemed useless. Any young man could make some sort of
Assistant Secretary; only one, just at that moment, could make an
Assistant Son. More than half his duties were domestic; they sometimes
required long absences; they always required independence of the
Government service. His position was abnormal. The British Government
by courtesy allowed the son to go to Court as Attache, though he was
never attached, and after five or six years' toleration, the decision
was declared irregular. In the Legation, as private secretary, he was
liable to do Secretary's work. In society, when official, he was
attached to the Minister; when unofficial, he was a young man without
any position at all. As the years went on, he began to find advantages
in having no position at all except that of young man. Gradually he
aspired to become a gentleman; just a member of society like the rest.
The position was irregular; at that time many positions were irregular;
yet it lent itself to a sort of irregular education that seemed to be
the only sort of education the young man was ever to get.
Such as it was, few young men had more. The spring and summer
of 1863 saw a great change in Secretary Seward's management of foreign
affairs. Under the stimulus of danger, he too got education. He felt,
at last, that his official representatives abroad needed support.
Officially he could give them nothing but despatches, which were of no
great value to any one; and at best the mere weight of an office had
little to do with the public. Governments were made to deal with
Governments, not with private individuals or with the opinions of
foreign society. In order to affect European opinion, the weight of
American opinion had to be brought to bear personally, and had to be
backed by the weight of American interests. Mr. Seward set vigorously
to work and sent over every important American on whom he could lay his
hands. All came to the Legation more or less intimately, and Henry
Adams had a chance to see them all, bankers or bishops, who did their
work quietly and well, though, to the outsider, the work seemed wasted
and the "influential classes" more indurated with prejudice than ever.
The waste was only apparent; the work all told in the end, and
meanwhile it helped education.
Two or three of these gentlemen were sent over to aid the
Minister and to cooperate with him. The most interesting of these was
Thurlow Weed, who came to do what the private secretary himself had
attempted two years before, with boyish ignorance of his own powers.
Mr. Weed took charge of the press, and began, to the amused
astonishment of the secretaries, by making what the Legation had
learned to accept as the invariable mistake of every amateur diplomat;
he wrote letters to the London Times. Mistake or not, Mr. Weed soon got
into his hands the threads of management, and did quietly and smoothly
all that was to be done. With his work the private secretary had no
connection; it was he that interested. Thurlow Weed was a complete
American education in himself. His mind was naturally strong and
beautifully balanced; his temper never seemed ruffled; his manners were
carefully perfect in the style of benevolent simplicity, the tradition
of Benjamin Franklin. He was the model of political management and
patient address; but the trait that excited enthusiasm in a private
secretary was his faculty of irresistibly conquering confidence. Of all
flowers in the garden of education, confidence was becoming the rarest;
but before Mr. Weed went away, young Adams followed him about not only
obediently--for obedience had long since become a blind instinct--but
rather with sympathy and affection, much like a little dog.
The sympathy was not due only to Mr. Weed's skill of
management, although Adams never met another such master, or any one
who approached him; nor was the confidence due to any display of
professions, either moral or social, by Mr. Weed. The trait that
astounded and confounded cynicism was his apparent unselfishness.
Never, in any man who wielded such power, did Adams meet anything like
it. The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of
self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies; a
diseased appetite, like a passion for drink or perverted tastes; one
can scarcely use expressions too strong to describe the violence of
egotism it stimulates; and Thurlow Weed was one of the exceptions; a
rare immune. He thought apparently not of himself, but of the person he
was talking with. He held himself naturally in the background. He was
not jealous. He grasped power, but not office. He distributed offices
by handfuls without caring to take them. He had the instinct of empire:
he gave, but he did not receive. This rare superiority to the
politicians he controlled, a trait that private secretaries never met
in the politicians themselves, excited Adams's wonder and curiosity,
but when he tried to get behind it, and to educate himself from the
stores of Mr. Weed's experience, he found the study still more
fascinating. Management was an instinct with Mr. Weed; an object to be
pursued for its own sake, as one plays cards; but he appeared to play
with men as though they were only cards; he seemed incapable of feeling
himself one of them. He took them and played them for their face-value;
but once, when he had told, with his usual humor, some stories of his
political experience which were strong even for the Albany lobby, the
private secretary made bold to ask him outright: "Then, Mr. Weed, do
you think that no politician can be trusted?" Mr. Weed hesitated for a
moment; then said in his mild manner: "I never advise a young man to
begin by thinking so."
This lesson, at the time, translated itself to Adams in a moral
sense, as though Mr. Weed had said: "Youth needs illusions!" As he grew
older he rather thought that Mr. Weed looked on it as a question of how
the game should be played. Young men most needed experience. They could
not play well if they trusted to a general rule. Every card had a
relative value. Principles had better be left aside; values were
enough. Adams knew that he could never learn to play politics in so
masterly a fashion as this: his education and his nervous system
equally forbade it, although he admired all the more the impersonal
faculty of the political master who could thus efface himself and his
temper in the game. He noticed that most of the greatest politicians in
history had seemed to regard men as counters. The lesson was the more
interesting because another famous New Yorker came over at the same
time who liked to discuss the same problem. Secretary Seward sent
William M. Evarts to London as law counsel, and Henry began an
acquaintance with Mr. Evarts that soon became intimate. Evarts was as
individual as Weed was impersonal; like most men, he cared little for
the game, or how it was played, and much for the stakes, but he played
it in a large and liberal way, like Daniel Webster, "a great advocate
employed in politics." Evarts was also an economist of morals, but with
him the question was rather how much morality one could afford. "The
world can absorb only doses of truth," he said; "too much would kill
it." One sought education in order to adjust the dose.
The teachings of Weed and Evarts were practical, and the
private secretary's life turned on their value. England's power of
absorbing truth was small. Englishmen, such as Palmerston, Russell,
Bethell, and the society represented by the Times and Morning Post, as
well as the Tories represented by Disraeli, Lord Robert Cecil, and the
Standard, offered a study in education that sickened a young student
with anxiety. He had begun--contrary to Mr. Weed's advice--by taking
their bad faith for granted. Was he wrong? To settle this point became
the main object of the diplomatic education so laboriously pursued, at
a cost already stupendous, and promising to become ruinous. Life
changed front, according as one thought one's self dealing with honest
men or with rogues.
Thus far, the private secretary felt officially sure of
dishonesty. The reasons that satisfied him had not altogether satisfied
his father, and of course his father's doubts gravely shook his own
convictions, but, in practice, if only for safety, the Legation put
little or no confidence in Ministers, and there the private secretary's
diplomatic education began. The recognition of belligerency, the
management of the Declaration of Paris, the Trent Affair, all
strengthened the belief that Lord Russell had started in May, 1861,
with the assumption that the Confederacy was established; every step he
had taken proved his persistence in the same idea; he never would
consent to put obstacles in the way of recognition; and he was waiting
only for the proper moment to interpose. All these points seemed so
fixed--so self-evident--that no one in the Legation would have doubted
or even discussed them except that Lord Russell obstinately denied the
whole charge, and persisted in assuring Minister Adams of his honest
and impartial neutrality.
With the insolence of youth and zeal, Henry Adams jumped at once to the
conclusion that Earl Russell--like other statesmen--lied; and, although
the Minister thought differently, he had to act as though Russell were
false. Month by month the demonstration followed its mathematical
stages; one of the most perfect educational courses in politics and
diplomacy that a young man ever had a chance to pursue. The most costly
tutors in the world were provided for him at public expense--Lord
Palmerston, Lord Russell, Lord Westbury, Lord Selborne, Mr. Gladstone,
Lord Granville, and their associates, paid by the British Government;
William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, William Maxwell Evarts,
Thurlow Weed, and other considerable professors employed by the
American Government; but there was only one student to profit by this
immense staff of teachers. The private secretary alone sought education.
To the end of his life he labored over the lessons then taught.
Never was demonstration more tangled. Hegel's metaphysical doctrine of
the identity of opposites was simpler and easier to understand. Yet the
stages of demonstration were clear. They began in June, 1862, after the
escape of one rebel cruiser, by the remonstrances of the Minister
against the escape of "No. 290," which was imminent. Lord Russell
declined to act on the evidence. New evidence was sent in every few
days, and with it, on July 24, was included Collier's legal opinion:
"It appears difficult to make out a stronger case of infringement of
the Foreign Enlistment Act, which, if not enforced on this occasion, is
little better than a dead letter." Such language implied almost a
charge of collusion with the rebel agents--an intent to aid the
Confederacy. In spite of the warning, Earl Russell let the ship, four
days afterwards, escape.
Young Adams had nothing to do with law; that was business of
his betters. His opinion of law hung on his opinion of lawyers. In
spite of Thurlow Weed's advice, could one afford to trust human nature
in politics? History said not. Sir Robert Collier seemed to hold that
Law agreed with History. For education the point was vital. If one
could not trust a dozen of the most respected private characters in the
world, composing the Queen's Ministry, one could trust no mortal man.
Lord Russell felt the force of this inference, and undertook to
disprove it. His effort lasted till his death. At first he excused
himself by throwing the blame on the law officers. This was a
politician's practice, and the lawyers overruled it. Then he pleaded
guilty to criminal negligence, and said in his "Recollections":--"I
assent entirely to the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice of England
that the Alabama ought to have been detained during the four days I was
waiting for the opinion of the law officers. But I think that the fault
was not that of the commissioners of customs, it was my fault as
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs." This concession brought all
parties on common ground. Of course it was his fault! The true issue
lay not in the question of his fault, but of his intent. To a young
man, getting an education in politics, there could be no sense in
history unless a constant course of faults implied a constant motive.
For his father the question was not so abstruse; it was a
practical matter of business to be handled as Weed or Evarts handled
their bargains and jobs. Minister Adams held the convenient belief
that, in the main, Russell was true, and the theory answered his
purposes so well that he died still holding it. His son was seeking
education, and wanted to know whether he could, in politics, risk
trusting any one. Unfortunately no one could then decide; no one knew
the facts. Minister Adams died without knowing them. Henry Adams was an
older man than his father in 1862, before he learned a part of them.
The most curious fact, even then, was that Russell believed in his own
good faith and that Argyll believed in it also.
Argyll betrayed a taste for throwing the blame on Bethell, Lord
Westbury, then Lord Chancellor, but this escape helped Adams not at
all. On the contrary, it complicated the case of Russell. In England,
one half of society enjoyed throwing stones at Lord Palmerston, while
the other half delighted in flinging mud at Earl Russell, but every one
of every party united in pelting Westbury with every missile at hand.
The private secretary had no doubts about him, for he never professed
to be moral. He was the head and heart of the whole rebel contention,
and his opinions on neutrality were as clear as they were on morality.
The private secretary had nothing to do with him, and regretted it, for
Lord Westbury's wit and wisdom were great; but as far as his authority
went he affirmed the law that in politics no man should be trusted.
Russell alone insisted on his honesty of intention and
persuaded both the Duke and the Minister to believe him. Every one in
the Legation accepted his assurances as the only assertions they could
venture to trust. They knew he expected the rebels to win in the end,
but they believed he would not actively interpose to decide it. On
that--on nothing else--they rested their frail hopes of remaining a day
longer in England. Minister Adams remained six years longer in England;
then returned to America to lead a busy life till he died in 1886 still
holding the same faith in Earl Russell, who had died in 1878. In 1889,
Spencer Walpole published the official life of Earl Russell, and told a
part of the story which had never been known to the Minister and which
astounded his son, who burned with curiosity to know what his father
would have said of it.
The story was this: The Alabama escaped, by Russell's confessed
negligence, on July 28, 1862. In America the Union armies had suffered
great disasters before Richmond and at the second Bull Run, August
29-30, followed by Lee's invasion of Maryland, September 7, the news of
which, arriving in England on September 14, roused the natural idea
that the crisis was at hand. The next news was expected by the
Confederates to announce the fall of Washington or Baltimore.
Palmerston instantly, September 14, wrote to Russell: "If this should
happen, would it not be time for us to consider whether in such a state
of things England and France might not address the contending parties
and recommend an arrangement on the basis of separation?"
This letter, quite in the line of Palmerston's supposed
opinions, would have surprised no one, if it had been communicated to
the Legation; and indeed, if Lee had captured Washington, no one could
have blamed Palmerston for offering intervention. Not Palmerston's
letter but Russell's reply, merited the painful attention of a young
man seeking a moral standard for judging politicians:--
GOTHA, September, 17, 1862
MY DEAR PALMERSTON:--
Whether the Federal army is destroyed or not, it is clear
that it is driven back to Washington and has made no progress
in subduing the insurgent States. Such being the case, I agree
with you that the time is come for offering mediation to the
United States Government with a view to the recognition of the
independence of the Confederates. I agree further that in case
of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the Southern States
as an independent State. For the purpose of taking so important
a step, I think we must have a meeting of the Cabinet. The 23d
or 30th would suit me for the meeting.
We ought then, if we agree on such a step, to propose it
first to France, and then on the part of England and France, to
Russia and other powers, as a measure decided upon by us.
We ought to make ourselves safe in Canada, not by sending
more troops there, but by concentrating those we have in a few
defensible posts before the winter sets in....
Here, then, appeared in its fullest force, the practical
difficulty in education which a mere student could never overcome; a
difficulty not in theory, or knowledge, or even want of experience, but
in the sheer chaos of human nature. Lord Russell's course had been
consistent from the first, and had all the look of rigid determination
to recognize the Southern Confederacy "with a view" to breaking up the
Union. His letter of September 17 hung directly on his encouragement of
the Alabama and his protection of the rebel navy; while the whole of
his plan had its root in the Proclamation of Belligerency, May 13,
1861. The policy had every look of persistent forethought, but it took
for granted the deliberate dishonesty of three famous men: Palmerston,
Russell, and Gladstone. This dishonesty, as concerned Russell, was
denied by Russell himself, and disbelieved by Argyll, Forster, and most
of America's friends in England, as well as by Minister Adams. What the
Minister would have thought had he seen this letter of September 17,
his son would have greatly liked to know, but he would have liked still
more to know what the Minister would have thought of Palmerston's
answer, dated September 23:--
... It is evident that a great conflict is taking place to
the northwest of Washington, and its issue must have a great
effect on the state of affairs. If the Federals sustain a great
defeat, they may be at once ready for mediation, and the iron
should be struck while it is hot. If, on the other hand, they
should have the best of it, we may wait a while and see what
may follow...
The roles were reversed. Russell wrote what was expected from
Palmerston, or even more violently; while Palmerston wrote what was
expected from Russell, or even more temperately. The private
secretary's view had been altogether wrong, which would not have much
surprised even him, but he would have been greatly astonished to learn
that the most confidential associates of these men knew little more
about their intentions than was known in the Legation. The most trusted
member of the Cabinet was Lord Granville, and to him Russell next
wrote. Granville replied at once decidedly opposing recognition of the
Confederacy, and Russell sent the reply to Palmerston, who returned it
October 2, with the mere suggestion of waiting for further news from
America. At the same time Granville wrote to another member of the
Cabinet, Lord Stanley of Alderley, a letter published forty years
afterwards in Granville's "Life" (I, 442) to the private secretary
altogether the most curious and instructive relic of the whole lesson
in politics:
... I have written to Johnny my reasons for thinking it
decidedly premature. I, however, suspect you will settle to do
so. Pam., Johnny, and Gladstone would be in favor of it, and
probably Newcastle. I do not know about the others. It appears
to me a great mistake....
Out of a Cabinet of a dozen members, Granville, the best
informed of them all, could pick only three who would favor
recognition. Even a private secretary thought he knew as much as this,
or more. Ignorance was not confined to the young and insignificant, nor
were they the only victims of blindness. Granville's letter made only
one point clear. He knew of no fixed policy or conspiracy. If any
existed, it was confined to Palmerston, Russell, Gladstone, and perhaps
Newcastle. In truth, the Legation knew, then, all that was to be known,
and the true fault of education was to suspect too much.
By that time, October 3, news of Antietam and of Lee's retreat
into Virginia had reached London. The Emancipation Proclamation
arrived. Had the private secretary known all that Granville or
Palmerston knew, he would surely have thought the danger past, at least
for a time, and any man of common sense would have told him to stop
worrying over phantoms. This healthy lesson would have been worth much
for practical education, but it was quite upset by the sudden rush of a
new actor upon the stage with a rhapsody that made Russell seem sane,
and all education superfluous.
This new actor, as every one knows, was William Ewart
Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. If, in the domain of the
world's politics, one point was fixed, one value ascertained, one
element serious, it was the British Exchequer; and if one man lived who
could be certainly counted as sane by overwhelming interest, it was the
man who had in charge the finances of England. If education had the
smallest value, it should have shown its force in Gladstone, who was
educated beyond all record of English training. From him, if from no
one else, the poor student could safely learn.
Here is what he learned! Palmerston notified Gladstone,
September 24, of the proposed intervention: "If I am not mistaken, you
would be inclined to approve such a course." Gladstone replied the next
day: "He was glad to learn what the Prime Minister had told him; and
for two reasons especially he desired that the proceedings should be
prompt: the first was the rapid progress of the Southern arms and the
extension of the area of Southern feeling; the second was the risk of
violent impatience in the cotton-towns of Lancashire such as would
prejudice the dignity and disinterestedness of the proffered mediation."
Had the puzzled student seen this letter, he must have
concluded from it that the best educated statesman England ever
produced did not know what he was talking about, an assumption which
all the world would think quite inadmissible from a private
secretary--but this was a trifle. Gladstone having thus arranged, with
Palmerston and Russell, for intervention in the American war, reflected
on the subject for a fortnight from September 25 to October 7, when he
was to speak on the occasion of a great dinner at Newcastle. He decided
to announce the Government's policy with all the force his personal and
official authority could give it. This decision was no sudden impulse;
it was the result of deep reflection pursued to the last moment. On the
morning of October 7, he entered in his diary: "Reflected further on
what I should say about Lancashire and America, for both these subjects
are critical." That evening at dinner, as the mature fruit of his long
study, he deliberately pronounced the famous phrase:--
... We know quite well that the people of the Northern States
have not yet drunk of the cup--they are still trying to hold
it far from their lips--which all the rest of the world see
they nevertheless must drink of. We may have our own opinions
about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is
no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South
have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and
they have made, what is more than either, they have made a
nation....
Looking back, forty years afterwards, on this episode, one
asked one's self painfully what sort of a lesson a young man should
have drawn, for the purposes of his education, from this world-famous
teaching of a very great master. In the heat of passion at the moment,
one drew some harsh moral conclusions: Were they incorrect? Posed
bluntly as rules of conduct, they led to the worst possible practices.
As morals, one could detect no shade of difference between Gladstone
and Napoleon except to the advantage of Napoleon. The private secretary
saw none; he accepted the teacher in that sense; he took his lesson of
political morality as learned, his notice to quit as duly served, and
supposed his education to be finished.
Every one thought so, and the whole City was in a turmoil. Any
intelligent education ought to end when it is complete. One would then
feel fewer hesitations and would handle a surer world. The
old-fashioned logical drama required unity and sense; the actual drama
is a pointless puzzle, without even an intrigue. When the curtain fell
on Gladstone's speech, any student had the right to suppose the drama
ended; none could have affirmed that it was about to begin; that one's
painful lesson was thrown away.
Even after forty years, most people would refuse to believe it;
they would still insist that Gladstone, Russell, and Palmerston were
true villains of melodrama. The evidence against Gladstone in special
seemed overwhelming. The word "must" can never be used by a responsible
Minister of one Government towards another, as Gladstone used it. No
one knew so well as he that he and his own officials and friends at
Liverpool were alone "making" a rebel navy, and that Jefferson Davis
had next to nothing to do with it. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he
was the Minister most interested in knowing that Palmerston, Russell,
and himself were banded together by mutual pledge to make the
Confederacy a nation the next week, and that the Southern leaders had
as yet no hope of "making a nation" but in them. Such thoughts occurred
to every one at the moment and time only added to their force. Never in
the history of political turpitude had any brigand of modern
civilization offered a worse example. The proof of it was that it
outraged even Palmerston, who immediately put up Sir George Cornewall
Lewis to repudiate the Chancellor of the Exchequer, against whom he
turned his press at the same time. Palmerston had no notion of letting
his hand be forced by Gladstone.
Russell did nothing of the kind; if he agreed with Palmerston,
he followed Gladstone. Although he had just created a new evangel of
non-intervention for Italy, and preached it like an apostle, he
preached the gospel of intervention in America as though he were a
mouthpiece of the Congress of Vienna. On October 13, he issued his call
for the Cabinet to meet, on October 23, for discussion of the "duty of
Europe to ask both parties, in the most friendly and conciliatory
terms, to agree to a suspension of arms." Meanwhile Minister Adams,
deeply perturbed and profoundly anxious, would betray no sign of alarm,
and purposely delayed to ask explanation. The howl of anger against
Gladstone became louder every day, for every one knew that the Cabinet
was called for October 23, and then could not fail to decide its policy
about the United States. Lord Lyons put off his departure for America
till October 25 expressly to share in the conclusions to be discussed
on October 23. When Minister Adams at last requested an interview,
Russell named October 23 as the day. To the last moment every act of
Russell showed that, in his mind, the intervention was still in doubt.
When Minister Adams, at the interview, suggested that an
explanation was due him, he watched Russell with natural interest, and
reported thus:
... His lordship took my allusion at once, though not
without a slight indication of embarrassment. He said that Mr.
Gladstone had been evidently much misunderstood. I must have
seen in the newspapers the letters which contained his later
explanations. That he had certain opinions in regard to the
nature of the struggle in America, as on all public questions,
just as other Englishmen had, was natural enough. And it was
the fashion here for public men to express such as they held in
their public addresses. Of course it was not for him to disavow
anything on the part of Mr. Gladstone; but he had no idea that
in saying what he had, there was a serious intention to justify
any of the inferences that had been drawn from it of a
disposition in the Government now to adopt a new policy....
A student trying to learn the processes of politics in a free
government could not but ponder long on the moral to be drawn from this
"explanation" of Mr. Gladstone by Earl Russell. The point set for study
as the first condition of political life, was whether any politician
could be believed or trusted. The question which a private secretary
asked himself, in copying this despatch of October 24, 1862, was
whether his father believed, or should believe, one word of Lord
Russell's "embarrassment." The "truth" was not known for thirty years,
but when published, seemed to be the reverse of Earl Russell's
statement. Mr. Gladstone's speech had been drawn out by Russell's own
policy of intervention and had no sense except to declare the
"disposition in the Government now to adopt" that new policy. Earl
Russell never disavowed Gladstone, although Lord Palmerston and Sir
George Cornewall Lewis instantly did so. As far as the curious student
could penetrate the mystery, Gladstone exactly expressed Earl Russell's
intent.
As political education, this lesson was to be crucial; it would
decide the law of life. All these gentlemen were superlatively
honorable; if one could not believe them, Truth in politics might be
ignored as a delusion. Therefore the student felt compelled to reach
some sort of idea that should serve to bring the case within a general
law. Minister Adams felt the same compulsion. He bluntly told Russell
that while he was "willing to acquit" Gladstone of "any deliberate
intention to bring on the worst effects," he was bound to say that
Gladstone was doing it quite as certainly as if he had one; and to this
charge, which struck more sharply at Russell's secret policy than at
Gladstone's public defence of it, Russell replied as well as he could:--
... His lordship intimated as guardedly as possible that Lord
Palmerston and other members of the Government regretted the
speech, and Mr. Gladstone himself was not disinclined to
correct, as far as he could, the misinterpretation which had
been made of it. It was still their intention to adhere to the
rule of perfect neutrality in the struggle, and to let it come
to its natural end without the smallest interference, direct or
otherwise. But he could not say what circumstances might happen
from month to month in the future. I observed that the policy
he mentioned was satisfactory to us, and asked if I was to
understand him as saying that no change of it was now proposed.
To which he gave his assent....
Minister Adams never knew more. He retained his belief that Russell
could be trusted, but that Palmerston could not. This was the
diplomatic tradition, especially held by the Russian diplomats.
Possibly it was sound, but it helped in no way the education of a
private secretary. The cat's-paw theory offered no safer clue, than the
frank, old-fashioned, honest theory of villainy. Neither the one nor
the other was reasonable.
No one ever told the Minister that Earl Russell, only a few
hours before, had asked the Cabinet to intervene, and that the Cabinet
had refused. The Minister was led to believe that the Cabinet meeting
was not held, and that its decision was informal. Russell's biographer
said that, "with this memorandum [of Russell's, dated October 13] the
Cabinet assembled from all parts of the country on October 23; but ...
members of the Cabinet doubted the policy of moving, or moving at that
time." The Duke of Newcastle and Sir George Grey joined Granville in
opposition. As far as known, Russell and Gladstone stood alone.
"Considerations such as these prevented the matter being pursued any
further."
Still no one has distinctly said that this decision was formal;
perhaps the unanimity of opposition made the formal Cabinet
unnecessary; but it is certain that, within an hour or two before or
after this decision, "his lordship said [to the United States Minister]
that the policy of the Government was to adhere to a strict neutrality
and to leave this struggle to settle itself." When Mr. Adams, not
satisfied even with this positive assurance, pressed for a categorical
answer: "I asked him if I was to understand that policy as not now to
be changed; he said: Yes!"
John Morley's comment on this matter, in the "Life of
Gladstone," forty years afterwards, would have interested the Minister,
as well as his private secretary: "If this relation be accurate," said
Morley of a relation officially published at the time, and never
questioned, "then the Foreign Secretary did not construe strict
neutrality as excluding what diplomatists call good offices." For a
vital lesson in politics, Earl Russell's construction of neutrality
mattered little to the student, who asked only Russell's intent, and
cared only to know whether his construction had any other object than
to deceive the Minister.
In the grave one can afford to be lavish of charity, and
possibly Earl Russell may have been honestly glad to reassure his
personal friend Mr. Adams; but to one who is still in the world even if
not of it, doubts are as plenty as days. Earl Russell totally deceived
the private secretary, whatever he may have done to the Minister. The
policy of abstention was not settled on October 23. Only the next day,
October 24, Gladstone circulated a rejoinder to G. C. Lewis, insisting
on the duty of England, France, and Russia to intervene by
representing, "with moral authority and force, the opinion of the
civilized world upon the conditions of the case." Nothing had been
decided. By some means, scarcely accidental, the French Emperor was led
to think that his influence might turn the scale, and only ten days
after Russell's categorical "Yes!" Napoleon officially invited him to
say "No!" He was more than ready to do so. Another Cabinet meeting was
called for November 11, and this time Gladstone himself reports the
debate:
Nov. 11. We have had our Cabinet to-day and meet again
tomorrow. I am afraid we shall do little or nothing in the
business of America. But I will send you definite intelligence.
Both Lords Palmerston and Russell are right.
Nov. 12. The United States affair has ended and not well. Lord
Russell rather turned tail. He gave way without resolutely
fighting out his battle. However, though we decline for the
moment, the answer is put upon grounds and in terms which leave
the matter very open for the future.
Nov. 13. I think the French will make our answer about America
public; at least it is very possible. But I hope they may not
take it as a positive refusal, or at any rate that they may
themselves act in the matter. It will be clear that we concur
with them, that the war should cease. Palmerston gave to
Russell's proposal a feeble and half-hearted support.
Forty years afterwards, when every one except himself, who
looked on at this scene, was dead, the private secretary of 1862 read
these lines with stupor, and hurried to discuss them with John Hay, who
was more astounded than himself. All the world had been at
cross-purposes, had misunderstood themselves and the situation, had
followed wrong paths, drawn wrong conclusions, had known none of the
facts. One would have done better to draw no conclusions at all. One's
diplomatic education was a long mistake.
These were the terms of this singular problem as they presented
themselves to the student of diplomacy in 1862: Palmerston, on
September 14, under the impression that the President was about to be
driven from Washington and the Army of the Potomac dispersed, suggested
to Russell that in such a case, intervention might be feasible. Russell
instantly answered that, in any case, he wanted to intervene and should
call a Cabinet for the purpose. Palmerston hesitated; Russell insisted;
Granville protested. Meanwhile the rebel army was defeated at Antietam,
September 17, and driven out of Maryland. Then Gladstone, October 7,
tried to force Palmerston's hand by treating the intervention as a fait
accompli. Russell assented, but Palmerston put up Sir George Cornewall
Lewis to contradict Gladstone and treated him sharply in the press, at
the very moment when Russell was calling a Cabinet to make Gladstone's
words good. On October 23, Russell assured Adams that no change in
policy was now proposed. On the same day he had proposed it, and was
voted down. Instantly Napoleon III appeared as the ally of Russell and
Gladstone with a proposition which had no sense except as a bribe to
Palmerston to replace America, from pole to pole, in her old dependence
on Europe, and to replace England in her old sovereignty of the seas,
if Palmerston would support France in Mexico. The young student of
diplomacy, knowing Palmerston, must have taken for granted that
Palmerston inspired this motion and would support it; knowing Russell
and his Whig antecedents, he would conceive that Russell must oppose
it; knowing Gladstone and his lofty principles, he would not doubt that
Gladstone violently denounced the scheme. If education was worth a
straw, this was the only arrangement of persons that a trained student
would imagine possible, and it was the arrangement actually assumed by
nine men out of ten, as history. In truth, each valuation was false.
Palmerston never showed favor to the scheme and gave it only "a feeble
and half-hearted support." Russell gave way without resolutely fighting
out "his battle." The only resolute, vehement, conscientious champion
of Russell, Napoleon, and Jefferson Davis was Gladstone.
Other people could afford to laugh at a young man's blunders,
but to him the best part of life was thrown away if he learned such a
lesson wrong. Henry James had not yet taught the world to read a volume
for the pleasure of seeing the lights of his burning-glass turned on
alternate sides of the same figure. Psychological study was still
simple, and at worst--or at best--English character was never subtile.
Surely no one would believe that complexity was the trait that confused
the student of Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone. Under a very strong
light human nature will always appear complex and full of
contradictions, but the British statesman would appear, on the whole,
among the least complex of men.
Complex these gentlemen were not. Disraeli alone might, by
contrast, be called complex, but Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone
deceived only by their simplicity. Russell was the most interesting to
a young man because his conduct seemed most statesmanlike. Every act of
Russell, from April, 1861, to November, 1862, showed the clearest
determination to break up the Union. The only point in Russell's
character about which the student thought no doubt to be possible was
its want of good faith. It was thoroughly dishonest, but strong.
Habitually Russell said one thing and did another. He seemed
unconscious of his own contradictions even when his opponents pointed
them out, as they were much in the habit of doing, in the strongest
language. As the student watched him deal with the Civil War in
America, Russell alone showed persistence, even obstinacy, in a
definite determination, which he supported, as was necessary, by the
usual definite falsehoods. The young man did not complain of the
falsehoods; on the contrary, he was vain of his own insight in
detecting them; but he was wholly upset by the idea that Russell should
think himself true.
Young Adams thought Earl Russell a statesman of the old school,
clear about his objects and unscrupulous in his methods--dishonest but
strong. Russell ardently asserted that he had no objects, and that
though he might be weak he was above all else honest. Minister Adams
leaned to Russell personally and thought him true, but officially, in
practice, treated him as false. Punch, before 1862, commonly drew
Russell as a schoolboy telling lies, and afterwards as prematurely
senile, at seventy. Education stopped there. No one, either in or out
of England, ever offered a rational explanation of Earl Russell.
Palmerston was simple--so simple as to mislead the student
altogether--but scarcely more consistent. The world thought him
positive, decided, reckless; the record proved him to be cautious,
careful, vacillating. Minister Adams took him for pugnacious and
quarrelsome; the "Lives" of Russell, Gladstone, and Granville show him
to have been good-tempered, conciliatory, avoiding quarrels. He
surprised the Minister by refusing to pursue his attack on General
Butler. He tried to check Russell. He scolded Gladstone. He discouraged
Napoleon. Except Disraeli none of the English statesmen were so
cautious as he in talking of America. Palmerston told no falsehoods;
made no professions; concealed no opinions; was detected in no
double-dealing. The most mortifying failure in Henry Adams's long
education was that, after forty years of confirmed dislike, distrust,
and detraction of Lord Palmerston, he was obliged at last to admit
himself in error, and to consent in spirit--for by that time he was
nearly as dead as any of them--to beg his pardon.
Gladstone was quite another story, but with him a student's
difficulties were less because they were shared by all the world
including Gladstone himself. He was the sum of contradictions. The
highest education could reach, in this analysis, only a reduction to
the absurd, but no absurdity that a young man could reach in 1862 would
have approached the level that Mr. Gladstone admitted, avowed,
proclaimed, in his confessions of 1896, which brought all reason and
all hope of education to a still-stand:--
I have yet to record an undoubted error, the most singular and
palpable, I may add the least excusable of them all, especially
since it was committed so late as in the year 1862 when I had
outlived half a century ... I declared in the heat of the
American struggle that Jefferson Davis had made a nation....
Strange to say, this declaration, most unwarrantable to be made
by a Minister of the Crown with no authority other than his
own, was not due to any feeling of partisanship for the South
or hostility to the North.... I really, though most
strangely, believed that it was an act of friendliness to all
America to recognize that the struggle was virtually at an end.
... That my opinion was founded upon a false estimate of the
facts was the very least part of my fault. I did not perceive
the gross impropriety of such an utterance from a Cabinet
Minister of a power allied in blood and language, and bound to
loyal neutrality; the case being further exaggerated by the
fact that we were already, so to speak, under indictment before
the world for not (as was alleged) having strictly enforced the
laws of neutrality in the matter of the cruisers. My offence
was indeed only a mistake, but one of incredible grossness, and
with such consequences of offence and alarm attached to it,
that my failing to perceive them justly exposed me to very
severe blame. It illustrates vividly that incapacity which my
mind so long retained, and perhaps still exhibits, an
incapacity of viewing subjects all round....
Long and patiently--more than patiently--sympathetically,
did the private secretary, forty years afterwards in the twilight of a
life of study, read and re-read and reflect upon this confession. Then,
it seemed, he had seen nothing correctly at the time. His whole theory
of conspiracy--of policy--of logic and connection in the affairs of
man, resolved itself into "incredible grossness." He felt no rancor,
for he had won the game; he forgave, since he must admit, the
"incapacity of viewing subjects all round" which had so nearly cost him
life and fortune; he was willing even to believe. He noted, without
irritation, that Mr. Gladstone, in his confession, had not alluded to
the understanding between Russell, Palmerston, and himself; had even
wholly left out his most "incredible" act, his ardent support of
Napoleon's policy, a policy which even Palmerston and Russell had
supported feebly, with only half a heart. All this was indifferent.
Granting, in spite of evidence, that Gladstone had no set plan of
breaking up the Union; that he was party to no conspiracy; that he saw
none of the results of his acts which were clear to every one else;
granting in short what the English themselves seemed at last to
conclude--that Gladstone was not quite sane; that Russell was verging
on senility; and that Palmerston had lost his nerve--what sort of
education should have been the result of it? How should it have
affected one's future opinions and acts?
Politics cannot stop to study psychology. Its methods are
rough; its judgments rougher still. All this knowledge would not have
affected either the Minister or his son in 1862. The sum of the
individuals would still have seemed, to the young man, one
individual--a single will or intention--bent on breaking up the Union
"as a diminution of a dangerous power." The Minister would still have
found his interest in thinking Russell friendly and Palmerston hostile.
The individual would still have been identical with the mass. The
problem would have been the same; the answer equally obscure. Every
student would, like the private secretary, answer for himself alone.