AMBASSADORS IN PARTIBUS.
lUiR. ROEBUCK on Tuesday night paid an unexpected in compliment to his countrymen. He announced—and by acts, not words—his belief that the national character is greatly changed. That insular self-esteem, that haughty impatience of interference from abroad, that ignorant inability to bear with foreign dictation, of which foreigners used so bitterly to complain, has, he conceives, departed. The Eng- lishman has become a cosmopolitan, and, like most neophytes, betrays the novelty of his convictions by their unbounded ardour. He is ready to welcome the foreigner not only as a brother, but as a bosom friend ; to learn from him not only how to act, but even how to behave ; not merely how to treat his neighbours, but how to guide the proceedings of the family circle. These are lessons the meekest of men are seldom willing to receive, yet Mr. Roebuck obviously believes that his fellow-citizens have, after centuries of stiff-neeked- ness, attained even to this height of Christian humility. At least, that is the only theory upon which we can explain the audacity with which he conveyed to the House of Commons a rebuke addressed by the Emperor of the French through him to the Government of Great Britain. Mr. Roebuck, it appears, had heard that the Emperor had changed his mind on the subject of the recognition of the South, and, taking "His Majesty" to be the natural dictator of English policy, "went across" to ask him the question, with as little scruple evidently as he might address an interpellation to the Under. Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The Emperor, with that magnanimity which has in it so much either of Christianity or contempt, spoke as frankly as if Mr. Roebuck had never denounced—as he did in Sheffield—the " peijured lips" which " polluted the Queen's cheek." "I said, Your Majesty may make a formal application to England.' He stopped me, and said, 'No, I cannot do that, and I will tell you why. Some months ago I did make a formal application to England, and England sent my despatch to America. That despatch got into Mr. Seward's hands, and was shown to my ambassador at Wash- ington, and it came back to me, and I feel that I was ill- treated by such conduct. (" Hear, hear," and sensation.) I cannot subject myself to the danger of similar treatment ; but I will do everything short of it—I will give you full liberty to state to the English House of Commons that this is my wish, and to state that I am determined in all things to act with England, and more than this, that I wish to act with her as regards America.'" The intent of that sentence is clear. The Emperor, if Mr. Roebuck reports him truly, thinks himself betrayed by the British Government, and appeals from his betrayer to the House of Commons. So earnest is he in the matter that he does not even respect ordi- nary forms of international courtesy. Instead of inserting his complaint in a despatch, and then suffering that despatch to ooze out through an " officious " print, he selects a special envoy, that envoy an Englishman, that Englishman a Radi- cal representative notorious for his anti-Napoleonic speeches, and bids him carry a verbal reproof of the Government of Great Britain into the British Parliament. That reproof, moreover, is made formal by his consent to its publication, and couched in the form of a charge of treachery against a Government with which, adds His Majesty, "I am deter- mined in all things to act."
No incident could be better calculated to expose the mis- chief of a practice now becoming too prevalent, that of members of the Lower House turning themselves at their own discretion into volunteer ambassadors. It was bad enough when Mr. Roebuck stood up to speak as salaried agent for Canada, though Canada was a British colony, and his em- ployers a section of unrepresented British subjects, for such an -office of necessity reduced the representative into the advocate. It was worse when Mr. Thompson appeared in his place as advocate of the King of Delhi, a foreign though a protected potentate, for, as was proved in 1857, he represented a hostile though almost powerless Prince. But for a member of the House to act as the agent even for one night of a great foreign Power is worst of all—it is a menace of indefinite danger to future public tranquillity. Either Mr. Roebuck has correctly represented the Emperor or he has not. The latter is almost certain, for it is clear from Mr. Layard's statement, on Thursday, that the despatch was not betrayed, but first pub- lished by the Emperor himself, and first shown to Mr. Seward by M. Mercier. Mr. Roebuck may, therefore, be as mistaken as he has been imprudent, but we are willing to accept either assump- tion. If he has misconceived the Emperor, then Parliament has been misinformed on a point most essential to its guidance, and which will greatly influence its votes. If he has not, tken he has flung out a statement which, in itself, and in the mode of its delivery, cannot but tend to weaken that cordiality between the two Powers on which the peace of the world depends. The House of Commons just now is left to Minis- terial underlings, but suppose the head of the Foreign Office had been present, he could hardly have remained silent, and we all know how sharply a British Minister would take up a charge so stated. There would have been a denial or an explanation, and then the relations, the personal relations between- this Government and the Emperor, must have been the subject of acrimonious con- troversy. Is this the way to warm up friendship, or concili- ate jarring interests, or even to keep the peace ? Where is such a system of correspondence, if once admitted, to stop? Is the Government to be rebuked in the House by the honourable member for Russia because it disapproves of the knout; by the member representing Austria because it desires to see Venice free ; by the member agent for Prussia because the Premier thinks Herr Bismark rather imprudent? There would be something fine, perhaps, in such an appearance of the kings of the earth at the bar of a British Assembly, but there would be also something monstrously inconvenient. If the forms of diplomacy are useful at all, it is because they keep personal feeling out of international politics ; but a King whose command is rejected, an Emperor whose word is doubted, a Czar whose rebuke excites only laughter, is not very likely to be in the mood for temperate discussion. All the safeguards between power and power, the moral buffers so carefully devised to avoid collisions dangerous to peace, are by such a system removed, and angry Sovereign meets excited Minister as blankly as two costermongers quarrelling over the quality of their goods. We say nothing of the great danger lest the member of Parliament, in his anxiety to acquit him- self well, should forget for which country he was chosen the representative, nothing of the difficulty he might have in avoiding rewards such as those which Barillon distributed and Algernon Sydney received. There are not, we believe, enough of Mr. Roebuck's stamp in the House to make the first temptation frequent, and even he would despise the second. But we gravely ask whether, if Parliament is to discuss hear- say despatches and recollected protocols, unsigned proposals for treaties and gossipping offers of alliance, the private chat of sovereigns instead of their deliberate thoughts, it will long be possible to maintain international relations at all ? It is hard enough as it is for great nations to avoid collision ; but if diplomacy is to be succeeded by gossip, ambassadors by go-betweens, and official declarations by an Emperor's ipsissima verba, the difficulty will become one of those in which true wisdom only suggests a despairing resignation.
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