Upon further consideration Lord Clarendon decided that it would be unwise if the British representative took any part in the proposed joint congratulation, as it was foreseen that it might provoke awkward discussions in the House of Commons. Lord Lyons was therefore directed to inform Ollivier at once, that, much as the British Government sympathized with the Emperor and his dynasty, no worse service could be done to him than by offering compliments upon his success. He would at once be attacked for having invited or rather tolerated intervention in the internal affairs of France, and the Queen of England, in an analogous case, could not possibly accept such an address from foreigners as that would imply a sort of right to interfere which might prove extremely inconvenient. The Emperor would gain much more with the nation by courteously declining to receive foreign opinions upon his own acts and the domestic affairs of France, than by any assurance that Foreign Governments were united in approving a measure about which there existed a considerable difference of opinion in France. These views were to be communicated to Ollivier in a friendly manner with the assurance that they should be brought to the Emperor's notice.
Lord Lyons to Lord Clarendon.
Paris, May 19, 1870.
I think we are well out of the scrape of the collective congratulations. The notion was Metternich's and the Nuncio only came into it to a certain degree, lest his refusing to do so should give offence. So far as I know, the Nuncio has behaved very well, and has not brought us forward, but has simply told Metternich that he found the Diplomatic Corps generally cold on the subject, and therefore thought it better not to go on with it. Metternich appears to have acquiesced. I have not seen him; he was out when I called, which was, I think, lucky; and we have not met.
There is a Ball at the Tuileries on Monday, at which I shall probably have a chance of saying something pleasant to Cæsar. I shall be careful to keep within the terms sanctioned by Mr. Gladstone. We may at any rate rejoice at the establishment of Parliamentary Government in France, and hope, till we have evidence to the contrary, that the means provided for upsetting it will not be resorted to. The present Plébiscite was undoubtedly technically necessary to the legality of the new Constitution, and as such was insisted upon by Daru and other Liberals. Let us hope it will be the last.
I have received the usual invitation in the name of the Emperor to the function on Saturday evening. I must not leave the Embassy in darkness if everybody else illuminates, but I think the idea a foolish one, as being likely to give rise to street riots.
Two of the new Ministers are unknown to fame, but their appointment is a relief to those who apprehended appointments from the Right. There is no remarkable speaker in the Ministry except Ollivier himself.
Gramont called upon me yesterday and was profuse in expressions of friendship to England, to you, and to me.
The appointment, however, of the Duc de Gramont[17] could hardly have been in the nature of a relief, for, as far back as the beginning of 1868, when Ambassador at Vienna, he had announced that he considered a Franco-Prussian war unavoidable.
The formal announcement of the result of the plébiscite was made to the Emperor on May 21, in the Salle des États of the Louvre, and must have been one of the last, if not the very last, of the brilliant ceremonies which marked the reign of Napoleon III. It was attended by all the dignitaries of the realm, the Senators, the deputies, the civic functionaries, the Diplomatic Corps; an imposing array of troops filled the Place du Carrousel; and Cæsar himself, elevated upon a dais, replied to the congratulations offered to him by the Chambers in a speech full of those resounding and occasionally meaningless phrases which invariably meet with a responsive echo in an assembly of Frenchmen. It was, in fact, the final coruscation of the Imperial fireworks, and, in the prosaic words of Lord Lyons, 'the ceremony went off extremely well.'
Lord Lyons to Lord Clarendon.
May 24, 1870.