Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/114



of the strongest influences, personal and political in the Queen's earlier life was that of Baron Stockmar. This remarkable man attained, simply by dint of character, the position of being one of the chief of the unseen political forces of Europe. Without any official political position, he was the friend and confidant of statesmen and princes, and acquired extraordinary influence by his clearness of view and tenacity of purpose in political concerns, joined with personal honesty and disinterestedness, and also in a remarkable degree with a singularly firm grasp of "the inexhaustibly fruit truth that moral causes govern the standing and falling of States."

The formative influences on his character had been the political misfortunes of Germany under the first Napoleon, in the early part of the century. As a youth he witnessed the bitter humiliation of his country, and later the downfall of her oppressor; and from henceforth the bed-rock of his character was the belief in the existence of a moral power ruling over the fate of nations and individuals. His son and biographer narrates an event which influenced Stockmar deeply. During the Napoleonic tyranny in Germany, he formed one of a group of enthusiastic young Germans, some of whom broached the possibility of delivering their country by murdering her oppressor. An old Prussian officer who was present reproached the lads for their folly: "This is the