Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/50

 Powers and the European Concert of the nineteenth century were, in like manner, only secondary and conditional expedients—the second best, and not a bashful one, in the accepted absence, at a distance, of the best desirable. The 'Concert of Europe' has often been made use of as a fiction to cloak the mutual jealousy and enmity of the Powers. If there was something of despair, there was also much that was robustly British and healthy in Canning's exclamation in 1823: 'Things are getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation for itself, and God for us all!' It is possible, as has been said, to agree with both sentiments at the same time. There ceased to be any European law, such as was projected in the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, to which the weaker States could appeal in defence of right as against the might of the stronger. It was aptly observed by Prince Gortschakoff on the occasion of the Schleswig-Holstein dispute, 'qu'il n'y a plus d'Europe'.

In the vigorous era of diplomacy, during the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, diplomatists, accredited to