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25, 1863.] creating less disgust perhaps at home, but much greater mischief abroad.

Any foreign sovereign, born and bred to the throne, is not only excusable for supposing any English applicants for an audience on affairs of national policy to be authorised by some great national party or opinion, but must inevitably proceed on such a supposition. It is only as national representatives that he can have any political communication with them. When, therefore, the three Quaker gentleman who waited on the Czar Nicholas on the 10th of February, 1854, listened to the Emperor’s prepared reply to their address, they ought not to have been surprised that it was altogether of a political character; nor should they have expected that he would receive and understand their explanations that they came only as moralists, though their theme was political. Those three men, and those who sent them, did an act which was not only ignorant in its conception, impertinent in its spirit, and audaciously unpatriotic in its carrying out, but fatal in its consequences beyond all estimate in all time to come. A sovereign, and especially an ignorant, narrow-minded, and egotistical sovereign like Nicholas, could understand the visit of these Quakers only in one way. He supposed them to be the representatives of the great body of English sentiment against the war; and the whole affair was from this point one great and disastrous bungle. He listened to them, imagining he was receiving an engagement from England not to go to war with him. They listened to him,—puzzled at the political character of his reply, but hoping at last that they had made him understand that they were not politicians. When he had introduced them to the Empress as good friends of Russia, they were charmed with admission to the domestic privacy of the man so much dreaded; and he, on his part, made himself easy when their backs were turned, in the supposed assurance he had received that he need fear no war with England. Before the mistake into which these ignorant meddlers had led him was cleared up to his mind, the mischief was done. He was at war with England; there had never been any reason why he should not be, if he chose to provoke it: his heart was broken; and sectarian zealots had a lesson, if they could but receive it, that private convictions and individual good intentions are no warrant for interfering in affairs of general policy on false pretences:—and it is a false pretence when any applicant appears before a foreign potentate as if the national diplomatic representative was not adequate to the business.

The practice of pushing and meddling in international affairs, and snatching at a gratification of vanity or of a partisan spirit, by coming between the Foreign Office and its work, had now become so mischievous that it was strongly denounced on this occasion: but it takes a long time to put down an abuse in which vanity and self-opinion are involved. All the world now pities the three Quaker gentlemen who went to St. Petersburg; but for a time there was a disposition among persons of little sense and bad taste to imitate them. I need not go fully into the story of the four (so-called) Liverpool merchants, who thought fit to address the Emperor of the French in a spirit highly offensive to their own countrymen. They undertook to comfort him about the harmlessness of our Volunteer movement. They got an answer from the Emperor, through his private secretary; and they got something else,—a repudiation by the merchants of Liverpool, and a lecture from the whole newspaper press of the country, one effect of which was to show the Emperor that he had spent his time in writing to persons too insignificant to deserve such notice.

Another recent incident has some amusing aspects; but it is on the whole highly vexatious, irritating, and injurious. I need not repeat here the story of Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Lindsay going to Paris, and on to Fontainebleau, to do our ambassador’s work for him, without leave, in the most important point of national policy now under discussion. It is not necessary to explain Mr. Roebuck’s weaknesses. We all know Mr. Roebuck’s ungovernable craving for notoriety, and his womanish inclination for scenes,—so repugnant to the taste of Englishmen, and especially to the English House of Commons. We have seen him work his way into the presence of an emperor before; and we are but too familiar with his sensation scenes in the House. The serious part of the case is that these things may not be known out of England,—and especially at Washington and at Richmond. It will soon be made clear to both that Mr. Roebuck is not much accustomed to success in his political projects, and that causes taken up by him, and left in his hands, are usually considered doomed. All that needs to be known about him will soon be known by all whom it concerns; and I need here only record my protest, as every fellow citizen of these amateur diplomatists has a right to do, against any trick of intrigue, or meddling, or mere vanity, by which the office of our ambassador at any foreign court is encroached upon,—by which any party at home is misrepresented, and any foreign sovereign misled, or subjected to impertinent intrusion and inquisitive speculation. Every citizen has a right to protest against any meddling of a foreign sovereign with the English parliament, and any intrusion on a foreign sovereign in the name of the English parliament. As for the act of intrusion being ventured upon by a man who has used such language as Mr. Roebuck has, repeatedly and publicly, of the Emperor of the French,—that may be called his own affair: and it is so; but it affects the estimate of the act generally, in the judgment of all honourable men. Whether the Emperor admitted him to his presence in ignorance or indifference about Mr. Roebuck’s former revilings, every honest Englishman thinks the request for an audience an act of meanness which he would not be supposed to countenance.

The practical question is,—what is to be done to put a stop to this practice of mock diplomacy? We have surely had warnings enough within ten years to induce us to consider and consult about a remedy. On the one hand, foreign courts may be advised of the true character of self-constituted diplomatists: and on the other, we may—not deter such pretenders by any appeal to a sense or a modesty which they do not possess,—but so