Rome, Dec. 10, 1867.
Cardinal Antonelli constantly talks of you with affection and respect and often expresses his desire to see you again.
Many thanks for your letter of the 4th about a preliminary conference. Rouher's speech, I take it, has put an end to all that—at least so Cardinal Antonelli tells me—and the joy caused at the Vatican that France will never allow Italy to hold Rome is immense.
You are perfectly right in not thinking that the Court of Rome has changed since you were here.
French diplomatists and statesmen are but too apt to interpret the clear and precise language of the Court of Rome according to their own wishes and to think and proclaim that the Pope will adopt and follow the wise counsels of France, etc. etc.
Now I say, give the Pope his due, and at least give him credit for being consistent, whether you agree with him or not.
In the long run, an Italian priest will always outwit a French statesman, and no Frenchman can resist the influence of Rome. A year's residence suffices to make him more Papal than the Pope, whom he fondly believes to be a French institution under the immediate control of the French clergy.
I have often marvelled at French notions of the Papacy, and now it has grown the fashion to mistake the cause of the Pope for that of France, even among men who might know better.
A permanent French occupation is the only possible machinery by which the Temporal Power can be imposed on Italy. The national feeling against the Temporal Power is certainly much stronger than I myself thought in Italy, and the bitter hostility of the Romans has been proved by the hideous means employed by them to destroy life and property in the October conspiracy.
The accuracy of these views was sufficiently demonstrated in 1870.
Before the end of the year Prince Napoleon made another of his frequent appearances at the Embassy, and announced that he looked upon a war with Germany in the spring as certain. He considered that there were only two courses which could have been taken with prudence—the one to resist the aggrandizement of Prussia immediately after Sadowa—the other to accept it with favour; what had been done had merely caused so much irritation that France would eventually be forced into war. He denounced Thiers, who, while pretending to advocate peace, was always crying out that France was being wronged and humiliated, and thought that even a successful war would be full of danger to the Empire. Apparently his own policy was to unite with Italy against the Pope and establish liberal institutions in France, a course which the Emperor had now rendered it impossible to adopt, as he had committed himself to the Pope, and was not likely to play the part of a Constitutional monarch after eighteen years of absolute power. 'He speaks very well, and with a good deal of animation,' wrote Lord Lyons, 'and his opinions sound much better as he delivers them than they read as I write them.' But, making every allowance for exuberant verbosity, this Prince seems to have held much sounder and more definite opinions than his Imperial relative.
Not long after Prince Napoleon came the Foreign Minister, M. de Moustier, with his story.
Lord Lyons to Lord Stanley.
Paris, Jan. 16, 1868.
M. de Moustier says that the reports he receives from Berlin and other quarters confirm his impression that Prussia is averse to a war with France; that the relations between Austria and Prussia are improving, and that such being the case Prussia is awakening to a sense of the danger of Russian designs in Eastern Europe. On the other hand he says that Baron Brunnow gives the most positive assurances that Russia will do nothing against Turkey. He trusts that these assurances may be depended upon, but he thinks that the Russian Government uses its ambassadors as screens, behind which to carry on its own man[oe]uvres.
Nigra, the Italian Minister here, tells me that his last news from Florence gives him strong hopes that the Menabrea Ministry will maintain itself. I presume that the object of Italy should be to convince the Emperor that Rome will be safe without the French troops—I mean to make the Emperor himself really confident of it. This done, I suppose diplomacy is capable of devising some formal guarantees to satisfy the French public. I do not believe that France has as yet done more than hinted at some security that Italy will take her side, if she quarrels with Prussia. I do not know that she has even hinted at anything of the kind. A demand for an engagement of this sort would be unreasonable and probably futile. If France is ever hard pressed by Prussia, the Italians will go to Rome unless some other Powers step forward to bar the way. At all events, it will not be by promises extracted beforehand that they will be stopped.
The real danger to Europe appears however to be in the difficulties of the Emperor Napoleon at home. The discontent is great and the distress amongst the working classes severe. The great measure of the session, the new Conscription Act, is very unpopular. There is no glitter at home or abroad to divert public attention, and the French have been a good many years without the excitement of a change. I think that Europe, and England in particular, are more interested in maintaining the Emperor, than in almost anything else.