From M. B. St. Hilaire [Footnote: At this time Ministre des Affaires Etrangères.]
Paris: January 10.
Cher Monsieur Reeve,—I quite understand that the reticence of the Tories is very wise. Office is not tempting, and it is prudent to leave it to those who actually have it. But the situation is very precarious, as Mr. Gladstone will no doubt soon learn. Meanwhile he has given me powerful assistance by speaking of arbitration as he has done, supported by the complete and unanimous assent of the English Cabinet. This may very likely decide the Greeks and Turks to adopt more sensible notions. But the thing is giving me a great deal of trouble…
I hope you may be able to pacify Ireland, but it will be very difficult. Against such atrocious and persistent determination, force is almost as unavailing as gentleness. If, as we may believe, that is what Cromwell met with, we can understand the excesses into which the barbarity of his age led him; but in two hundred and thirty years we have not gained much. Even emigration has had no good effect. 'Tis a frightful sore; though during the last forty years England has done wonders to cure it.
Much might be said on this subject. I see by the newspapers that you have read before our Academy a most interesting paper on Property in Ireland. If you should print it, I hope you will not forget me. Towards the end of this month I will send you one of my latest works—to wit, a Yellow Book on Greece. It will at least be curious.
Agréez, cher Monsieur Reeve, tous mes voeux de nouvel an pour vous et pour tous ceux qui vous sont chers. Bonne santé.
Votre bien dévoué,
B. ST. HILAIRE.
Paris, January 11th.—I am greatly obliged for the account of your interview with Musurus Pasha. If the key to this business is in our views on the Conference of Berlin, the house is open, and we have nothing to do but enter. I have written with my own hand three long despatches, showing by a reference to Vattel that the Conference was nothing more than the mediation promised by the XXIVth article of the Treaty of Berlin. These despatches I have communicated in the first place to Athens and Constantinople, and afterwards to all the foreign ambassadors here, as well as to Essad Pasha and to Braïlas Arméni.
If there is one thing certain, it is that the Conference of Berlin neither did nor could do anything but mediate; it merely gave advice; it did not deliver judgement to be enforced. I am doing what I can to convince the Greeks of this all-important fact, but hitherto without much success. I have even gone farther, and have pointed out to them in these despatches the limits within which arbitration will probably have to confine itself. As I am only one out of six, I can do no more, and even this was perhaps too much. The Porte and Greece cannot help knowing all this. The public also will know it by the end of the present month, when I shall publish the despatches in the yellow book which I am preparing, and which I will send to you.