OUR RECENT FOREIGN RELATIONS.
The founders of the American Republic were wise alike in their grasp of temporary difficulties and in the forethought they bestowed upon the period of construction which was to come. Before a government was formed, its necessary elements had attained something of order, much of efficacy. In the very inception of revolution, the beginning was made of that elaborate diplomatic system which became the medium by which we have asserted rights, elicited respect, and received amenities from the great powers of the earth.
In the early days of our Revolution, the conduct of the foreign correspondence was intrusted to the care of a Committee, composed of men of established reputation for capacity and patriotism. Through their labors, not only did we receive substantial sympathy from those unselfish men in the mother-country who discountenanced the hateful oppression of the crown: France, guided by the generous Vergennes, was also attracted to our active defence; the independent spirit of the Low Countries cheered and helped us; Tuscany, inheriting the sentiment of liberty from Dante and Macchiavelli, extended loans with a liberal hand; Spain and Portugal rose superior to their traditional bigotry, and sent us money, ships, and stores. So efficient was our infant system of diplomacy, that, long before the war had ended, England stood absolutely without the countenance of a single Continental power, and confronted boldly by her most ancient and most dreaded enemy. Proudly as she entered into the conflict with her colonies, she became humbled as well by the skill with which they attracted monarchies and empires to their aid as by the valor with which they met her armies. It is hardly to be doubted that our final success is to be in a great degree attributed to the excellent diplomacy of Franklin, Lee, and Izard. Certain it is that their labors vastly accelerated that success. How gigantic those labors must have been, to bring the representatives and supporters of mediæval systems of state-craft to countenance not only rebellion, but the sentiment of republican liberty which rebellion matured, and which successful revolution was to lay at the foundation of a new government!
The Confederation, established for the more easy transition to a permanent system, included almost as its corner-stone a Department of Foreign Affairs. The duties of the Secretary were confined to the performance of the specific acts authorized by Congress, at that time at once the executive and the legislative power,—and consisted chiefly in the preservation of the papers and records of the office, and conducting the correspondence with ministers and agents abroad; he had likewise a seat, but without a vote, in Congress, to give information and answer inquiries. He was powerless to perform any executive act; he could not negotiate a treaty; he could not give positive instructions to ministers; and he was removable at the pleasure of Congress. Under the Constitution, the duties of the Secretary of State became more responsible; and the office was recognized as the highest in dignity, next to the Executive.
We may attribute our present rank among nations in no little degree to the conspicuous fitness of our envoys at foreign courts for the peculiar mission which it was their duty to fulfil, in the first quarter of a century of our national existence. As soon as the British ministry recognized the nationality of the United States, it was clear, that, on the new footing, our relations with the mother-country must of necessity be more intimate than those with any other nation. To pave the way for the establishment of such an intercourse, no man could have been more aptly chosen than John Adams. While his high-toned manners opened the way to favor, his nervous logic followed up the advantage so gracefully won, and drove home his purpose to its end. Franklin was equally felicitous in attaching to himself the good-will of the court of Versailles. Their successors well sustained the respect which they had inspired; and it was a matter of surprise among the best educated Europeans that such cultivated and capable men should proceed from a country which they had thought to be a wilderness, and from a people of whom they expected only the most flagrant barbarisms.
That the elevated standard thus set up by our early diplomacy has been preserved with but little exception is a simple matter of history. We have been almost uniformly fortunate in the choice of our ministers abroad, especially those to Great Britain. It is rightly regarded as a distinction hardly inferior to any in the State, to occupy the post of Plenipotentiary to St. James's or Versailles,—and this no less because the incumbent has generally been one of our most honored statesmen than because of the essential dignity and importance of the office.
If we consider, in connection with this fact, the persistency with which the Government has asserted the rights of an equal power, the promptness with which it has resented every indignity offered to our flag, and the vigor with which it has enforced in our favor the principles of international law, it can be no matter of surprise that we should stand, as we assuredly have stood, second to none in the estimate of our physical and moral power.
Starting on a totally new system,—a system which, if successful, would disprove the universally received dogmas of the political philosophers of Europe,—running counter to every prejudice and every conclusion of the Old-World statesmen,—the United States had to work their way through difficulties innumerable to their present rank, and were forced to prove their institutions by experience, before they could assume the dignity of a first-class power.
When the present Rebellion arose, America had thus far proved the success of democratic institutions. In military and naval power, in education, in the administration of justice, in commercial thrift, in mechanical and agricultural enterprise, in the development of the national resources, the progress had been steady and rapid. The politicians of Europe had been amazed to find that their unanimous prediction of the frailty of our political system had totally failed. The idea of a political centre combined with separate State organizations was as firmly fixed as ever. The General Government wielded an undiminished power in aid of the general good; the local Legislatures controlled, within the original limits, local interests. The people had suffered no curtailment of their liberties from the delegation of political power; the executive had not been weakened either by the accession of new States or the disaffection of old ones. The most philosophic of the English statesmen had predicted again and again that one of these alternatives must occur,—but they had begun to doubt their own theories, and wellnigh confessed that our institutions were a success. It was difficult for them to conceive that an entirely novel frame of government, deriving its genius from an idea, and regardless of precedent, could live to shame a system which had received the sanction of centuries of success, which was seemingly Providential in its stability, which had everywhere superseded every other form, which had absorbed into itself the elements of all other systems. Our Government was an anomaly; as such, there were ten chances to one against it. And now, the Englishman who, above all others, is, on both sides of the Atlantic, regarded as the ablest of modern political theorists, has in a series of papers triumphantly vindicated the wisdom of the founders of this Republic, and placed in the clearest logical sequence the origin and tendency of our institutions. Every American feels gratitude and reverence toward John Stuart Mill, who, in the disinterestedness and courage of a great mind, has led the honest opinion of England to appreciate at its value the system in which our reason and our feelings are alike bound up.