[344] Compare infra, [p. 412].
[345] Compare with the following account of the declaration of war by M. F. de Champagny, de L’Acad. Fr., in the Correspondant, 25 Juin 1871:—“A government wrongly inspired proposed to us a war. Without asking it why it wished to make it, without asking if it could make it, without reflection, without discussion, without listening to the men of name and experience, who implored of us at least twenty-four hours for reflection, we accepted this war, I do not say with enthusiasm, but with frivolous levity, not as crusaders, but as children. It seemed to us sufficient to tipple in the ‘cafés,’ singing the ‘Marseillaise,’ to intoxicate the soldiers, to throw squibs into what were then called sensational journals, to cry ‘à Berlin!’ in order to go right off to Berlin. And when it was discovered that we were not going on at all to Berlin, but that Berlin was coming to Paris, that this enthusiasm of the ‘café’ did not cause armies to spring into life, what was our resource? Always the same: to overthrow a government!”
[346] Vide [note 19, p. 403].
[347] These were the words which the Marquis of Bath had the courage to use in the House of Lords when everybody else was joining in a ludicrous “dirge of homage” to Cavour. I wish to put this protest, as well as the similar protests of the Marquis of Normanby and the Earl of Donoughmore on record, as there may come a time when England will be glad to recur to them.
[348] Vide “Current Events,” in Rambler, 1860.
[349] “Does the faith of treaties, the right of treaties, still exist? Look at what has happened in Europe during the last twenty years. The treaties made with the Church were the first violated; they have declared that a ‘concordat’ is nothing more than a law of the State, which the State can alter at will—in other words, that, unlike all other contracts, conventions of this nature, inviolable for one of the parties, can be broken by the other at its pleasure; kings have thus put the Church outside the law of nations. But, in consequence, they have excluded themselves. When the most sacred of all treaties were thus trampled upon, how would they have the others respected? They have even written, or caused to be written, on a solemn occasion (‘Napoleon III. et L’Italie, 1859’) that treaties no longer bind when the general sentiment declares against them; in other terms, when they displease us. At this epoch, in 1859, we were disputing with Austria a possession which all treaties had guaranteed to her, and the neutral signatories of these treaties did not protest. Victorious over Austria, we have in our turn made a treaty with her; and this treaty was violated when scarcely signed; and neither we nor the rest of Europe protested. Later on, the dissensions between Germany and Denmark ended in a treaty, which the rest of Europe guaranteed; but soon Germany broke this treaty by force of arms, and Europe did not say a word. I omit here the convention of September, ... the treaty of 1856. On all these occasions the indifference of third parties has come to the aid of the cupidity of the aggressors; and the moral sense has been so far wanting in the Cabinets that they have assisted and applauded acts of brigandage for the love of the art, and without even thinking that the brigand, when he grew strong, would fall on the morrow on themselves. Will you find in European history twelve years so fruitful in pledges and perjuries?”
Transcriber’s Note
Footnotes in the original were numbered consecutively for each chapter. They have been renumbered to be unique to the text. References to notes below follow the newly numbered sequence. For those issues which occur in footnotes, the page number refers to the page on which the note begins.
The punctuation of many quoted passages is haphazard, with quotation marks incorrectly or incompletely indicating the nesting thereof. For example, Footnote 112 on p. 134 consists in part of a quotation ending with “...the last work of the Creator.” Here, the punctuation of nested quotations is incorrect. It is not clear where the boundary of the quote should be. There are also lapses in the use of parenthesis and brackets.