Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/818

Rh 782 CALLING familiar intercourse, the true Parisian. Between the issuing from the press of these two series, Henry Bulwer had prefixed an intensely sympathetic Life of Lord Byron to the Paris edition of the poet s works published by Galignani, a memoir republished sixteen years afterwards. A. political argument of a curiously daring and outspoken character, entitled The Lords, the Government, and the Country, was given to the public in 1836 by Bulwer, in the form of an elaborate letter to a constituent. At this point his literary labours, which throughout life were with him purely labours by-the-way, ceased for a time, and he disappeared during three decades from authorship and from the legislature. It was within that interval of thirty years, however, that he succeeded in building up what has ever since constituted the sum and substance of his reputation, securing to him his eminent and now historical name as a diplomatist. During the period of his holding the position of charge&quot; d affaires at Brussels, Bulwer had seized every opportunity of making lengthened sojourns at Paris, always for him the choicest place of residence. It was in the midst of one of these dolce far niente loiterings on the Boulevards that, on the 14th August 1837, he received his nomination as secretary of embassy at Constantinople. Although he held that position for little more than a year, he contrived within that brief period to make his mark upon the Ottoman empire. He did this by opening up single-handed its resources to Western Europe, through the negotiation of a commercial treaty that has ever since proved of the greatest importance, not to England alone, but in a more or less considerable way to all Christendom. Until then the mercantile relations subsisting between the Sublime Porte and the outer world were not merely unsatis factory, they were simply intolerable. Recognizing, imme diately upon his advent, the exceptional abilities of the new secretary, Lord Ponsonby, then ambassador at Stam- boul, devolved upon Bulwer the responsibility of dis covering some solution for this apparently insoluble problem. Dexterously overcoming difficulties which had heretofore appeared insuperable, the young diplomatis; succeeded within an astonishingly brief interval in removing the barriers which hampered trade at the Golden Horn. So triumphant in their result were his negotiations that Lord Palmerston, in writing his con gratulations to him from Windsor Castle, on the 13th September 1838, pronounced his treaty a capo $ opera, adding that without reserve it would be at once ratified. Shortly after this a2hievement he was nominated secretary of embassy at St Petersburg. Illness, however, compelled him to delay his northern journey almost opportunely, as it happened, for in the June of 1839 he was despatched, in the same capacity, to the more congenial atmosphere of Paris. At that juncture the affairs of the Levant were threatening to bring England and France into armed collision. In 1839 arid 1840, during the temporary absence of his chief, Lord Granville, the secretary of embassy was gazetted ad interim charge d affaires at the court of France. Opportunities were thus afforded him, of which he availed nimself, for winning new distinction as a diplomatist. The reward earned by his devotion to his profession came to him at last towards the close of 1843. On the 14th November he was appointed ambassador at the court of the young Spanish Queen Isabella II. Upon his arrival at Madrid signal evidence was afforded of the estimation in which he was then held as a diplomatist. He was chosen arbitrator between Spain and Morocco, then confronting each other in deadly hostility. As the result of his mediation, a treaty of peace was signed between the two powers in 1844, their antagonistic interests having through his negotiations been adroitly reconciled. Two years had hardly elapsed after Bulwer g success in this way as a peacemaker when, in 1846, a much more formid able difficulty arose, one which, after threatening war between France and England, led at last to a diplomatic rupture between the British and Spanish Governments. The dynastic intrigues of Louis Philippe were the imme diate cause of this estrangement, and those intrigues found their climax in what has ever since been discreditably known in European annals as the Spanish Marriages. The storm sown in the Spanish marriages was reaped in the whirlwind of the February revolution. And the ex plosion which took place at Paris was answered a month afterwards at Madrid by a similar outbreak. Marshal Narvaez thereupon assumed the dictatorship, and wreaked upon the insurgents a series of reprisals of the most pitiless character. These excessive severities of the marshal-dicta tor the British ambassador did his utmost to mitigate. Whan at last, however, Narvaez carried his rigour to the length of summarily suppressing the constitutional guarantees, Bulwer sent in a formal protest in the name of England against an act so entirely ruthless and unjustifiable. This courageous proceeding at once drew down upon the British envoy a counter-stroke as ill-judged as it was unprecedented. Narvaez, with matchless effrontery, denounced the am bassador from England as an accomplice in the conspiracies of the Progressistas ; and despite his position as an envoy, and in insolent defiance of the Palmerston ian boast, Civis Britannicus, Bulwer, on the 12th June, was summarily required to quit Madrid within twenty-four hours. Two days afterwards M. Isturitz, the Spanish ambassador at the court of St James s, took his departure from Lon don. Diplomatic relations were not restored between the two countries until years had elapsed, nor even then until after a formal apology, dictated by Lord Palmerston. had been signed by the prime minister of Queen Isabella. Before his return the ambassador was gazetted a Knight, Companion of the Bath, being promoted to the Grand Cross some three years afterwards. In addition to this mark of honour, he received the formal approbation of the ministry, and with it the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. Before the year of his return from the peninsula had run out Sir Henry Bulwer was married to the Hon. Georgiana Charlotte Mary Wellesley, youngest daughter of the first Baron Cowley, and niece to the duke of Wellington. Early in the following year, on the 27th April 1849, he was nomi nated ambassador at Washington. During his sojourn in the United States in that capacity he acquired immense popularity. Though possessing few popular qualifications as a speaker, he frequently roused American audiences to enthusiasm by his generous sentiments and impressive address. His principal success, as ambassador at Washing ton, was the compact known equally in the Old World and in the New as the Bulwer-Clayton treaty, which was in the main the fruit of his sustained labour as a diplomatist. This convention, ratified in May 1850, pledged the con tracting Governments to respect the neutrality of the meditated ship canal through Central America, bringing the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific into direct com munication. If it did no other good, it unquestionably for the time being allayed the jealousies which so often before then had sprung up between the two countries in regard to the British right of protection on the Mosquito Coast and in the Bay of Honduras. After having been accredited as ambassador to the United States for three years, Sir Henry Bulwer, early in 1852, was despatched as minister plenipotentiary to the small but stately court of the grand duke of Tuscany at Florence. Shortly after his retirement from that post in the January of 1855, he was intrusted with various diplomatic missions of an almost nomadic character, in one of which he was empowered aa commissioner under the 23d article of the Treaty of