OUR BRITISH DIPLOMATISTS.
OUR British economists have long familiarized us with the truth,—once so incomprehensible to our commercial men —.that the gain of any one nation by its international trade must be, not at the expense of the nation with which it tra es, but to its profit also,—that the exchange to be permanently profitable to either must be profitable to both. The practical grasp of this truth caused, we all know, a thorough revolution in the commercial policy of our people ; but there is, if not another aspect of it, a very closely allied truth with regard to the political intercourse of nations, which has not yet worked itself into the mind of any nation, not even of England, namely, that in the interchange of interna- tional ideas the object of every great diplomatist ought equally to be twofold,—not only to represent his own country worthily in a foreign land, but to represent that land also worthily to his own chief. This last, it may be supposed, is the duty less of our minister abroad than of the foreign ambassadors here. But the truth is that both alike are needed to discharge it well. We cannot trust the official expla- nations of a minister, stationed here expressly to make such ex- planations, as we can the confidential reports of our own servants; and now every year is making us conscious that the highest diplomatists we have, endeavour to identify themselves as fully with the country in which they reside in describing it to their chief, as they do to identify themselves with the country from which they are sent in representing the British Government there. Sir James Hudson, whom the English Government has so unworthily badgered into resignation, is the most illustrious example we have ever had of the greatness of this double service. In England we regret bitterly his resignation, because we know that few, if any of our diplomatists, could have won for England so vast a moral power in Italy at a price immeasurably less than France has paid for a far inferior influence. We know that he has presented England to Italy as we wished her to be pre- sented, and in the dangerous and difficult times which must soon recur in Italy we know of no man who could do it so well. But if this is the feeling in England, the feeling in Italy is far keener,—for the Italians know that, in a post where it was certainly not his official duty to search below the surface, where he might have contented himself with representing the uppermost stratum of political society, he has devoted incessant energy to discovering the truth of the popular feeling and resolve, and has taken care that this shall be fully known to England, and through England to all Europe. He has a work to look back upon which is more than honourable to his own country and beneficial to Italy. He has, as we said last week, gained England a moral triumph such as is almost unparalleled in diplomacy, and also saved Italy at the critical moment, and he has effected all this by the deep conviction which evidently ruled his official conduct, that an English Minister who does not identify himself,—heart and soul if he can,—with the interest and honour of both the countries be- tween which he mediates though, of course, reserving his loyalty only to one, does not do his duty.
No doubt this is quite a new page even in our diplomacy, and our diplomatic staff is equal to any in the world. Hitherto the prevalent notion has been, though it has long been partly undermined, that a diplomatic representative is a kind of honourable British spy on the proceedings of foreign/ countries, who is to watch very closely all the opportunities. which circumstances afford to wring concessions out of their difficulties, and use them for our political advantage. In first-rate representatives of this inferior kind,—necessary in times of trouble and growing enmity between State and. State,—England has always been rich. It is the greatest of errors to suppose that our diplomacy is poor or inferior in any way to that of other European countries. Probably no. country was ever better served in this respect; for the aristo- cratic staff to which we trust is eminently well fitted both for the social tact and the cold self-restraint which are most needed. Let us but consider the principal diplomatic pro- blems of recent years, and we shall find scarcely any country to compare in diplomatic force with our own. Take the- crisis with Russia which preceded the Crimean war, and which certainly did little credit to the courage of our Foreign Office under either Lord Clarendon or Lord John Russell. Yet how could we have been better served. diplomatically than we were at that time by Sir Hamilton Seymour ? It is true that he was a member of the old school of diplomacy, that he cared not at all for Russia except to outwit her, and connected the duty of feeling the Czar's political pulse with little if any direct interest. for the patient or for his people' all his anxiety being_ for the British foreign policy against which the Czar seemed likely in the rising delirium to direct an onslaught. But how well the work was done, if any one had but had the- sagacity to take it in good time as a proper warning ! How graphically—nay, how dramatically, the secret correspondence laid bare Nicholas's hankerings after the property of the "raalad,e ;" how well it revealed the deep and anxiously cal- culated schemes ; how little likelihood it left to any reasonable- mind of stilling those Imperial yearnings concerning which the Czar sounded the British Ambassador with so much careless anxiety,—suggesting arguments casually in brilliant ball-rooms and bribes in private receptions —except by either satisfying or wounding them ! Sir Hamilton Seymour's despatches would be read with literary interest even where the political importance of the coming events was depre- ciated or forgotten. And all through the same memorable struggle, and long after it had ceased, there was a British Ambassador at Constantinople who, with all the keen British jealousy of the extremest national feeling, united much of that personal pride in sustaining and restoring the greatness of the country to which he was accredited that distinguishes thenew school of diplomacy. True, it began with him only in policy, but it ended, no doubt, in something like generous- sympathy and disinterested regard. Lord Stratford de Red- cliffe, as all admit, united the strong originality and resolution of a statesman of the highest order with the skill and intellectual_ subtlety of true diplomacy, and showed the power to feel with the Government to which he was commissioned in the very moment of overbearing its counsels in the interest of his own country. In Paris, perhaps, Lord Cowley has not entirely sub- stantiated to the public the high traditional esteem in which he is held by both Liberal and Tory Governments. Certainly he misled Lord Malmesbury very much during his useless mission. before the breaking out of the Italian war in 1859, and had not the wit to see that the pacific professions both of France and. Austria were but a lava de parler, and not grounds for seriously expecting peace. But still Lord Cowley has con- ducted with uniform credit one of the most difficult of our embassies. And coming to the more recent diplomatio crises, it is not easy to conceive how we could have been better served. Lord Lyon ir has so discharged his delicate duties in America, one of which involved at least some- thing closely approaching to menace, and all of which have- been thickset with political pitfalls, as but once to excite a dim flash of popular resentment in the *United States, and. yet always to keep the dignity of his office and the honour of his Government unstained. The highest credit, too, is due to his full reports of all the explanatory circumstances of a situa- tion peculiarly difficult for an English Government to under- stand. At St. Petersburg Lord Napier has shown a warmth of sympathy with the Russian reforms which has won him considerable influence with the Russian Government, and yet he has not permitted that sympathy to deter him from lodging strong and timely remonstrances, even on his own responsi- bility, against the almost insulting irony of their recent con- duct to England in defence of the great Polish crime. Even Sir Andrew Buchanan has taken a stand in Berlin on the Russo-Prussian.military convention, which has won for the British Embassy the respect of the German Liberals and the fidgetty fear of Herr von Bismark Schonhausen. It is, then, a palpable blunder to call our diplomacy in any sense weak or inefficient. If it has ever appeared so of late years, the cause has certainly lain far more with the Foreign Office, which is often both hesitating and fussy, than with the diplomatists. But of all the diplomatists we have had, Sir James Hudson has presented the highest type, though he must be placed second in commanding power to Lord Stud- ford de Radcliffe. It is impossible to turn to the record of his despatches in 1858-9, while Lord Malmesbury was whining to him from the Foreign Office, like Balak the son of Beor, "to curse him these Sardinians," without feeling that it was our Minister at Turin, and not our Minister in London, who directed the Italian policy of this country with such brilliant result. Calm, impartial, even frigid in his reports, always understating the true force of the national movement, as is proved by the far more immediate and brilliant result than any which he chose to predict, Sir James Hudson continued to expose respectfully but mercilessly the fallacies by which the Tory Foreign Secretary strove to persuade himself that the smallest of the belligerents was the one most deserving blame. It was he who, while obediently harassing Count Cavour with official remonstrances, which he knew to be futile, gradually unveiled the eyes of the English Govern- ment and people to the true attitude of the popular mind in Italy ; indeed, interpreted Italy to England at least as well as he interpreted England to Italy. If it should ever prove that the Foreign Office is really jealous of the influence natu- rally wielded by such statesmen, and prefers to deal with a man who will consent to see with its eyes rather than with his own,—an event which, we hope, is exceedingly unlikely, —we should have the best reason to insist on some funda- mental change at the Foreign Office. To increase the power of our Foreign Secretary in any country by diminishing as much as possible his store of genuine knowledge about that country, is not a proceeding which Englishmen will be inclined to endorse. They would much rather that Sir James Hudson forced the hand of our Foreign Secretary from Turin, than that our Foreign Secretary should force his Turin Ambassador's hand from London. We do not like to increase power and responsibility at the expense of knowledge. Admirable as our British diplomacy everywhere is, we cannot well afford to sacrifice such a master of it as Sir James Hudson.
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