AN AMERICAN LESSON TO EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY.. Ammo the merits of
American diplomacy is its frankness, and the address publicly delivered by Mr. Reed, the American pleni- potentiary in China, on his return, is a useful contribution, not only to what we hopefully regard as the rising custom of greater explicitness in diplomatic affairs, but also to a discussion of im- portant questions in the ethics of diplomacy.* For the moment however we will notice it in reference only to two points—the degree to which diplomacy itself is strengthened by courting the support of public opinion, and the degree to which nations may fairly combine for the control of any one state.
Mr. Reed's speech comprises a distinct narrative of his whole proceedings, from the time when he first landed in China, to his final parting at Shanghai with the British plenipotentiary. He explains why the United States declined to enter into the Chinese war ; partly, perhaps we may say principally, because the causes of war were not sufficient at least for any third power who had no direct grievance of its own ; secondly, because the Chinese in- voked the intervention of the neutral powers, America and Rus- sia; but, thirdly, it must be confessed, because by some accident Lord Elgin did not receive until long after they were sent the cominunications which Mr. Reed had actually despatched to Lord Elgin. Mx. Reed treats the evasive shuffling of the Chinese with a charity more intelligible in an American than an Englishman; our cousins across the water being fami- liarized with a certain free and easy treatment of intercourse to which the more systematic administration of old Europe has not yet been tutored. We have our laxities, our slovenly habits, and our evasions, but they are more refined, certainly less glaring, than those of China, and the English undoubtedly felt tempted to chastise the lawless cruelty and shameless lying of the Chinese. Mr. Reed admits a thoroughly good understanding with Count Putiatine ; while he hints a certain degree of coldness on the part of the French and English negotiators, one cause of which we have already mentioned. One point, however, is interesting. It seems that the French and English plenipotentiaries might per- haps have exercised over the American, with all his stoical for- bearance, a greater degree of influence than they knew ; but their reserve was the cogis of his stoicism.
"And here, arraigned SA I have occasionally and thoughtlessly been, for a want of fidelity to my cooperators (I have to use the word for want of a better,) I must refer to a matter of interest, and which I confess in some of its relations is yet a mystery. In the Yamum of Yeh, in Canton, were found many important documents throwing much light on the past relations of the empire to foreigners. These were translated, and were in the hands of the Allies. Some of minor importance were shown to me. One, how- ever, purporting to be the report made by the Commissioners who met Sir J. Bowring and Mr. M`Lane in 1854, and the Imperial comments or re- scripts—a document of great and painful interest, as illustrating the ha- bitual faithlessness of Chinese officials—was in the hands of the Allies du- ring the whole of the difficulties at the Peiho, and was never shown to or seen by me. I never saw the document till three months afterwards at Shanghai, when all was over, and it had but a faint historical interest. I do not venture to affirm that this was purposely withheld. It may have been forgotten. It related largely to important American affairs. It would have enabled me in the difficult complication which arose, to regulate my con- duct by a full and accurate knowledge of the whole truth. In one view; I am sincerely rejoiced that the inadvertence or intention to which I refer kept these documents from me. They were certainly the most painful revelations of the mendacity and treacherous habiti of the high officials of this empire yet given to the world. They cannot be read without con- temptuous resentment ; and I have no such confidence in my equanimity and self-control as to determine what might have been my inclination be- fore and after the fall of the Talus forts, had the contents of these papers been known to me. Nothing, of cot:rse, that the Chinese authorities, high or low, could say or write would have materially influenced my course of action under or without instructions, but had these papers been seen by me, I am quite sure the moderate confidence I had in their professions would have been lessened, and my conciliatory tendencies not a little embarrassed. If it be, as I think it was, a mistake on the part of the English and French Ministers, concealing or omitting to communicate these things, it was not without its good fruits in allowing my peaceful inclinations to have full scope. I do not at all regret what was done or omitted last summer, but I deprecate any criticism on the course of the United States when, either intentionally or inconsiderately, information to which we were entitled in
a Speech of the Honourable William B. Reed, at the Board of Trade of Philadel- phia, on Tuesday, 31st May 1859. Published by Messrs. C. Sherman and Son. the friendly cooperation to which we supposed we were invited, was with- held."
The happy conclusion of all these proceedings is now a matter of history. We obtained from China even better terms than the Americans, the Russians, or the French ; in truth, we obtained everything we wanted,—always excepting some guarantee that the Chinese themselves will have the good faith or the power to observe the treaty. The Chinese, in fact, is a lower animal than the Caucasian, and all high influences demand in those over whom they are exercised a coordinate power of being influenced ; for it is a great mistake to suppose that the capacity of governing is the only thing wanted in the world: there is also its precise co- relative and coequivalent, the capacity to be governed ; and it is a happy fact for the world that the freest and greatest countries are likely to produce the noblest and most powerful statesmen. But it may fairly be said, on the evidence of Mr. Reed's speech, concurrently with all that has come from Lord Elgin, that our best guarantee for the formation of something like an opinion in those remote and basely peopled regions is the concurrence of the Cau- casian races who are gradually multiplying their numbers there. Now this concurrence can only be brought about by enabling the representatives of each nation which meets commercially in China to know what the rest are doing ; not only in order that they may cooperate in specific actions, but, so to speak, that their knowledge of each other, their sympathies, their powers of calculating each other's action and accumulating each other's good will, may be permitted to grow up in the genial atmosphere of free intercourse and cordial open understanding. Rightly considered, diplomacy is the art of employing the most refined perceptions and feelings by which the ruling powers of states are governed. In a semi-barbarous condition of the world, when power resides in castes, hierarchies, aristocracies, and other freemasonries, a certain secresy in the agency passing between these sublime heads of states may be desirable ; but in the civi- lized world of our day, when the most prosperous Governments represent only the flower of intellect and feeling springing from the body of the nation, diplomacy overreaches itself when it takes to secresy. Into the European congress somewhat irre- gularly held in China, Mr. Reed imported a manner which com- bined prudence with spirit ; and it is a satisfactory evidence to the progress of which we are speaking, that towards the last all the plenipotentiaries, especially the British and American, came to a far better understanding. In. fact the force of personal cha- racter in such men as Lord Elgin and Mr. Reed is beginning to lay: the foundation for that large diplomacy to which we have been pointing. Statesmen cannot be the narrow-minded diplomatists of the old school of which Metternich was the archetype ; for true nobility and wisdom have their incapacities as well as their powers,—though in these fast times it is sometimes thought a weakness to confess to any sort of incapacity.
Mr. Reed's speech raises a still more important question which is especially interesting at the present moment—how far is it fit that many states should combine against one. He speaks pecu- liarly of a combination by very strong states against one very weak state ; but the question is capable of a much larger applica- tion. If indeed the whole civilized world could agree to the general laws by which its feelings, convictions, and interests, led it to be governed,—if it could appoint proper authorities to enact and proclaim those laws, and proper officers to enforce them,—then we might have such combinations as were burlesqued in the Holy Alliance and were invited by the Western Powers in the Chinese case.
Alliance, we have not yet arrived at that stage in the world's progress. The law, such as it is, which governs us inter- nationally resides in the commentaries of distinguished. in- dividuals, in the decisions of eminent judges, in the practices and customs that happen to have been adopted by all countries, and in the chance that each country of the world may, if it so pleases, on each occasion obey these indicatiomaet wird- should be the law. All this is very keen, but possibly it is better than airy preciaalaIr which might be enacted by a Congress appointed ad hoe. Could we obtain anyj such permanent conference of the civilized states we might justly afraid that its first proceedings
would be rule be d by a spirit of priggishness, or else by the "old established" laws which have become exploded commonplaces. We must wait many years, perhaps generations—it may be bold in these days of progress t.,c) centuries,—before we can see any- thing like an international legislature, with its code, and its tri- bunal of appeal and enforcement.
What, then, is the best substitute for that unobtainable juris- . diction ? The question is the more urgent, since already we are dissatisfied with the existing state and administration of inter- national law, and have also arrived at a time when mere author- ity can scarcely sustain itself against the boldness of public ques- tioning. It would be very desirable, if the "public opinion" of the most influential States, in the want of a more specific legisla- ture, could determine what henceforward is to be the relation of :States in this behalf; and it appears to us that the essential and urgently-needed principles are not obscure nor complicated. The -first paramount want which every State acknowledges in order to the development of its own genius, the due workin of own ad- • ministration, and the progressive improvement of its own laws, is
national independence ; but that which is the most essential for each one State becomes, in order that it may deserve it, the duty of that State to assist in securing for others. If I desire to be free, I must deserve to be free ; and if I would be free myself, I must defend the freedom of my neighbour. I must be ready to stand by him whenever that freedom is menaced, to aid in re- straining him whenever he invades the freedom of another neigh- bour. We need scarcely point to the application of this principle to the conflict now raging in Europe,—to the brilliant light which it casts on the claims of Italy, to the sentence of condemnation which it pronounces upon any revival of that international in- stitution, the Holy Alliance.
The second international duty, quite as simple, flows directly from this first—it is the observance of thorough good faith and of honest frankness with other states, our neighbours—open diplo- macy. We do not indeed mean that in no case should there be any confidential communications. Such things happen in fami- lies, happen between individuals in all relations of life, and may well happen between states. But we do mean, that in the main, when one state is about to do anything which concerns the wel- fare, moral or material, of another state, it is bound to make that state cognizant of what it proposes to do, and of the grounds of its action. Here again America furnishes us at once with the ex- ample of the duty and of its advantageous effect. There is no de- nying that in many recent transactions the practice of the Ameri- cans, in the open conduct of their diplomacy, has not only secured. for them an advantage which older states have more or less lost in the comparison, but has begun to have its effect in extorting a like promptitude of disclosure from older states, however stiffly they might resist the process at first. We might even pick out the converse example from the records of America, and show that where her diplomatists have swerved from this straightforward and open course, they have in like manner lost the opportunity to exercise power and Linfluence. But the instances would be far more numerous and more profitable, taken from the records of states older in the world.
Could we fairly establish an international system under which all states would in the first instance become bail for the national freedom of other states, and in the second instance cultivate the most direct and open explanations all round, we should have the first instalment of an international law which would protect the growth of each, and therefore of the whole. Let every country stand free from crowned conspiracies against it, and it must de- velop the largest proportion of knowledge, justice, and art, which it can produce ; and then the Congress of the whole would indeed be able to consult, and perchance to legislate with something like wisdom and understanding for the whole.
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