[APPENDICES.]
A.
THE FLASSAN MEMOIR.
This Memoir (see pp. 116-18 and note 312) is noticed by M. de Broglie, who rejects it as—
(i.) Probably unauthentic; as it has not been discovered by him or by M. Zevort among the ordinary sources; and
(ii.) Certainly unimportant; since it is nowhere referred to, as it assuredly would have been, in d'Argenson's Memoirs.
Now (i.) unless there existed, not merely this Memoir, but the whole policy of which it may have been a part, a considerable portion of the "Mémoires du Ministère" becomes unintelligible. That policy is constantly referred to throughout Book I., Art. 4 (Rathery, IV. pp. 239-66); and it is mentioned occasionally in the "Mémoires" of 1746, and in d'Argenson's Journal after he had ceased to be minister. Such a document, therefore, may naturally exist.
(ii.) This Memoir is given in Flassan, "Histoire de la Diplomatie Française," V. pp. 242-45 (published [second edition] in 1811). It deals with facts and not with ideas, and so cannot at once be recognised as d'Argenson's.
(iii.) On turning to the pages which precede the Memoir, we feel we are strangely familiar with M. Flassan's text. The fact is explained by a comparison with Rathery, Vol. IV. We find, for instance, that Flassan, V. pp. 236-41, is positively little else than a verbal transcription from d'Argenson, "Mémoires du Ministère," I. Art. 4 (Rathery, IV. pp. 239-66). It is not a question of the use of an authority, but simply of the wholesale appropriation of his text. It is generally given in inverted commas, though the source does not appear to be mentioned; but in Flassan, V. p. 239, we find a paragraph, beginning "Quoique véritablement" (Rathery, IV. pp. 256-57), and two entire pages, "La Savoie," &c., pp. 240-42 (cf. Rathery, IV. pp. 257, 259-60), bodily transferred without acknowledgment, M. Flassan securing his interest in the whole by occasionally changing a word or an expression. An example of the process is a sentence, taken haphazard, on Flassan, V. p. 240; in four lines of letter-press the only alterations are "dans" (for d'Argenson's "sur"), and "domaine de l'Autriche" (for d'Argenson's "domaine autrichienne"; see Rathery, IV. p. 259, line 21). In fact, the whole account of the early part of d'Argenson's ministry is a conscientious copy of d'Argenson's text, M. Flassan confining himself to the transposition, or occasional omission, of paragraphs, and the changing of unimportant words. The transcription is from the original manuscripts then in possession of the d'Argenson family, and afterwards in the Library of the Louvre; and it was executed about fifty years before the editions either of Jannet or Rathery were issued from the press.