At the congress of Verona, Hardenberg was seen, for the last time, exerting all his strength to support the opinions of the Emperor Alexander and Metternich, upon the necessity of a war with Spain. His last public act was a journey to Rome, to sign a concordat between Prussia and the Holy See; and the reconciliation between a Protestant state and the head of the Catholic Church was certainly a most singular and novel proceeding. Whence did it proceed? and what was the cause of it? The excitement occasioned in Europe by the Holy Alliance had reunited the various and scattered sovereignties. Their ideas were confounded by the necessity of mutual defence, and the various shades of opinion were effaced by the urgent anxiety for the repression of the democratic principle; so that the Pope was restored by the English, Prussians, and Russians, who all belong to different communions. These political reconciliations had strengthened the religious feeling, and, at this time, the Czar was dreaming of an universal church, by the union of all the sects, which offers some explanation how Hardenberg might go to Rome to sign the concordat. We must not, however, forget that, owing to her new position, and her great acquisition of territory, nearly half her population were now Papists, all the Rhenish provinces surrounding the great cathedral of Cologne being of that profession, and it was necessary to secure the exercise of their religion to these people, but half-subject to their new master. Hardenberg had still sufficient strength to preside over this treaty; he then proceeded to Genoa in search of a milder climate, and had taken one of those delightful villas where Lord Byron was accustomed to enjoy the charms of a lovely country, when he was surprised by illness and death, at the age of seventy-two years.
It was a diplomatic career as long as that of Prince Talleyrand; but Prince Hardenberg had not, like him, preserved the polished manners and mode of expression which, in his youth, won the hearts of the republicans. His speech had become thick and heavy; he spoke French well, but with the German accent, that is slightly observable with Baron Humboldt. His language was very cold, and appeared the mirror of his feelings, which seldom permitted themselves to be excited by the imagination; he appeared to be even more a man of business than a statesman; and, in fact he has organised, not created, an administration which still exists, and gradually advances on the path marked out for it by him.
At present, Prussia has done nothing beyond enlarging this system, and at the same time stamping it more powerfully with a poetical and philosophical tendency; for the ideas and impressions of stormy and difficult times are not required in calmer seasons. Prussia appears likely to realise the problem of an intelligent people, highly advanced in philosophical knowledge, and yet capable of doing without what are called constitutional institutions. The idea that proposes to centralise and confound every thing, the visionary desire that would group Germany around the cathedral of Cologne, is grand and vast; but, in order this unity should triumph, would not the first necessary condition be, that there should be but one faith, one object of love, one system of belief? And how can Protestantism, which is so constantly subject to internal dissensions, create unity? To make Berlin the capital of science, to cause all the universities to converge towards that point, as to an Athens dreamed of by the philosophers, is a noble idea of the government; but, on the other hand, what means this license against Christianity? Though Frederic the Great received Atheists privately at his table, he would never have permitted atheism to be publicly taught; and an empire desirous of seeking for unity in science and philosophy must lay the first foundations in religion and Christian instruction. My opinion, then, is, that the Romish system can alone form a powerful bond among the people; otherwise, Cologne restored will only present a barren proof of the utter incapacity of Protestantism to renew the Catholic union of the arts and religion, as it existed during the middle ages.
[COUNT NESSELRODE.]
In the march of generations two distinct periods are observable: the one of ardent and vigorous activity, when quiet and lukewarmness are vexatious and annoying; the other of fatigue and exhaustion; and, when this reaction has taken place, it is necessary there should be at the head of affairs, wise and moderate ministers, perhaps even men who are themselves weary of too active and busy a life. The great European monarchies enjoy an incontestable advantage over freer but more stormy governments, in the perpetuity of their system and the lengthened career of their statesmen. Look at Austria and Russia during the last thirty-three years; they have been under the unvarying direction of two ministers, who have alone had the direction of affairs,—Prince Metternich and Count Nesselrode; and only the death of Prince Hardenberg has deprived Prussia of his services. This perpetuity of statesmen is attended with many advantages: it creates a constant succession of precedents in the cabinet; it permits the conception of a long series of measures, and allows one idea to be followed and worked out with perseverance. A young man is selected immediately he has finished his studies, and placed in the second or third rank among the attachés of an embassy; he next becomes a minister plenipotentiary; and, if he rises and distinguishes himself, he obtains a post in the chancellerie; and when, owing to the confidence of his sovereign, or the force of circumstances, he has once been placed in a superior rank, he remains there to the end of his life. And what is the result?—a most serious attention to all transactions, and a most profound knowledge of business: the political situation, which was originally the great object of his ambition, now becomes the subject of his careful study, and, indeed, his whole existence is bound up in it.
England, always intelligent and clear-sighted, has striven to apply a remedy to the instability of men, by the stability of parties. In that country there are two schools opposed to each other, the Whigs and the Tories; and men from their earliest childhood are destined to belong to one, or other of these vast divisions. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge receive into their bosom this twofold generation of students, who apply themselves to the study of the peculiar ideas which divide these shades of parliamentary opinion, and proceed without hesitation on the path they have chosen for themselves; and, on quitting the university, they support in parliament the opinions in which they have been educated, or which they have adopted. Suppose a young man to be a Tory, if the Tories are in power he obtains an appointment as one of the under-secretaries of state, and only resigns it when his party go out of office; should he be a Whig, and the Whigs are at the head of affairs, the same thing takes place: every thing is fixed, and proceeds according to rule in the government; by that means alone it is known whence people come, and they are equally well acquainted with the course they are likely to take.