In the following year, papers were laid before parliament, and attention was drawn to the language used by Mr. Russell to Bismarck, in the pregnant sentence about the question being of a nature in its present state to compel us with or without allies, to go to war with Russia.[226] Mr. Gladstone, when directly challenged, replied (Feb. 16) that the agent had used this argument without specific authority or instruction from the government, but that the duty of diplomatic agents required them to express themselves in the mode in which they think they can best support the proposition of which they wish to procure acceptance. Mr. Odo Russell explained to Mr. Gladstone (Feb. 27) that he was led to use the argument about England being compelled to go to war with or without allies by these reasons: that we were bound by a definite treaty to regard any retractation of the stipulations of March 30, 1856, as a cause of war;[227] that Gortchakoff's assumption of a right to renounce provisions directly touching Russian interests seemed to carry with it the assumption of a right to renounce all the rest of the treaty; that Mr. Gladstone's government had declared (Nov. 10) that it was impossible to sanction the course announced by Gortchakoff; that, therefore, France being otherwise engaged, and Austria being unprepared, we might be compelled by our joint and several obligations under the tripartite treaty, to go to war with Russia for proceedings that we pronounced ourselves unable to sanction; finally, that he had never been instructed to state to Prussia, that the question was not one compelling us ever to go to war, notwithstanding our treaty engagements. What was Mr. Gladstone's reply to this I do not find, but Lord Granville [pg 355] had very sensibly written to him some weeks before (Dec. 8, 1870):—
I am afraid our whole success has been owing to the belief that we would go to war, and to tell the truth, I think that war in some shape or other, sooner or later, was a possible risk after our note. In any case, I would reassure nobody now. Promising peace is as unwise as to threaten war. A sort of instinct that the bumps of combativeness and destructiveness are to be found somewhere in your head, has helped us much during the last five months.
III
The London Conference
Having undertaken to propose a conference, Bismarck did the best he could for it. The British cabinet accepted on condition that the conference was not to open with any previous assumption of Gortchakoff's declaration, and they objected to Petersburg as the scene of operations. Mr. Gladstone in some notes prepared for the meeting of his colleagues (Nov. 26), was very firm on the first and main point, that “Her Majesty's government could enter into no conference which should assume any portion of the treaty to have been already abrogated by the discretion of a single Power, and it would be wholly out of place for them, under the present circumstances, to ask for a conference, as they were not the parties who desire to bring about any change in the treaty.” Russia made difficulties, but Bismarck's influence prevailed. The conference assembled not at Petersburg but in London, and subject to no previous assumption as to its results.[228]
The close of a negotiation is wont to drop the curtain over embarrassments that everybody is glad to forget;[229] but the obstacles to an exact agreement were not easily overcome. Lord Granville told Mr. Gladstone that no fewer than thirteen or fourteen versions of the most important protocol were tried before terms were reached. In the end Lord Granville's conclusion was that, as no just rights had been sacrificed, it was a positive advantage that Russia should be gratified by the removal of restraints naturally galling to her pride.
The conference opened at the foreign office on Dec. 17, and held its final meeting on March 13. Delay was caused by the difficulty of procuring the attendance of a representative of France. Jules Favre was appointed by the government at Bordeaux, but he was locked up in Paris, and he and Bismarck could not agree as to the proper form of safe-conduct. What was even more important, the governing men in France could not agree upon his instructions; for we must remember that all this time along with the patriotic struggle against the Prussians, there went on an internal struggle only a degree less ardent between republicans and monarchists. It was not until the final meeting of the conference, that the Duc de Broglie was accredited as representative of his country.[230] At the first formal meeting a special protocol was signed recording it as “an essential principle of the law of nations that no Power can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting Powers by means of an amicable arrangement.”
To give a single signatory Power the right of forbidding a change desired by all the others, imposes a kind of perpetuity on treaty stipulations, that in practice neither could nor ought to be insisted upon. For instance it would have tied fast the hands of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel in the Italian transactions which Mr. Gladstone had followed and assisted with so much enthusiasm, for Austria would never have assented. It is, moreover, true that in the ever recurring eras when force, truculent and unabashed, sweeps aside the moral judgments of the world, the mere inscription of a pious opinion in a protocol may seem worth little trouble. Yet it is the influence of good opinion, tardy, halting, stumbling, and broken, as it must ever be, that upholds and quickens the growth of right. The good rules laid down in conferences and state-papers may look tame in the glare of the real world of history as it is. Still, if we may change the figure, they help to dilute the poisons in the air.
IV
Changes In English Opinion