ARTICLE V.-PRINCE METTERNICH IN THE NAPOLEONIC TIMES.

Memoirs of Prince Metternich; 1773-1815. Edited by Prince Richard Metternich. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1880.

PROBABLY no memoirs have ever been published which have presented their subject in quite so new a light to the public as those of Prince Metternich. The impression they give of him is, on the whole, just about the reverse of that which the world has hitherto had. Where he has been thought bad they make him good; where he has been placed second, they put him first; where he has been esteemed small, they make him great. The niche which the public had made for him will no longer hold him.

It is not surprising, indeed, that a misconception of Metternich should have arisen. He is best known at this day as a bureaucrat. It was his delicate but powerful and sure hand that was stretched over all Austria, and was instrumental outside of Austria, to repress every liberal political tendency of his time, to check the movements toward nationalization, and to keep constitutional government out of Europe. Whether he was a statesman or a great patriot, people did not stop to inquire; it was granted that he was a fine diplomatist; but that had no relation to the greatness or goodness of the man, if, indeed, according to the popular notion, it did not show his moral obliquity; he was great, too, as a conservative; but that did not give him general greatness. What was plain about him was that he was a bureaucrat; and perhaps it was only natural that people should stop there in thinking about him. For it was the latter part of his life with which they were most familiar, and it was the latter part of his life which mostly exhibited his bureaucratic tendency. The events of 1848 are fresh in people's minds and belong to our period of political thought. Those of 1814 are not only more remote in point of time, but they belong to a period of political thought which is

strange to us, which closed in 1815, and with which we cannot become familiar except by an effort. What Metternich was to the revolutions of 1848 is clear to us; what he was to that of 1815, is not so clear; and we have been apt to judge him by that part of his career which we know best. Moreover, the revolutions of 1848 and 1849 passed in the broad light of day. But much of what Metternich did before 1815 was done in the quiet of the cabinet, and only now is brought to light. All this has been unfortunate for Prince Metternich's fame. Conservatism has been out of vogue, little of Metternich has been known but his conservatism, and people have become prejudiced against him; there has been nobody to clear up his career, and no means of doing it if any one had wished to. Metternich directed that his memoirs should not be published until twenty years after his death. They are now brought out and the world will have an opportunity to judge him truly.

Beyond doubt, Metternich has been underrated. As to his statesmanship, there can be no question. The documents which comprise the second volume, place it in the first rank. They quite upset the notion that he was clever rather than wise. The most startling revelation, however, is that which the autobiography, contained in the first volume, makes as to the character of the writer. Metternich, the mere schemer, the Machiavellian diplomatist, the ambitious courtier, is not to be found there. On the contrary, there appears a person who constantly makes reference to "duty," to a "sense of duty," to "conscience," to standing on "principles" and that frankly, to a predominant love of the arts and sciences, and of a quiet life. Already having been Ambassador at the Hague, he says of himself, when at the age of twenty-two, "I have already said that the public service presented no attractions for me. I had determined to remain in private life and to devote my time to the cultivation of learning and science. I must also acquaint my readers with other causes which kept me aloof from public affairs. Still young, and placed in a position which allowed me to observe, from the highest point of view, the course of the greatest events, I found that they were not conducted as they ought to have been. Les affaires

ce sont les hommes; affairs are only the expression of the faculties or the weaknesses of men, of their inclinations and their errors, their virtues and their vices. Inaccessible to prejudice, and seeking only the truth in everything, my modesty did not allow me to find fault with persons in power if I was not satisfied with what I saw; on the contrary, I ascribed to the weakness of my own understanding and to my inexperience the feeling which forced me to disapprove of the course they had taken. But neither inclination nor duty led me to acquire the necessary experience. My particular vocation seemed to me to be the cultivation. of knowledge, especially of the exact and physical sciences, which suited my taste particularly. I loved the fine arts, too, so that nothing aroused in me any desire to put my freedom into fetters. The diplomatic career might certainly flatter my ambition, but during all my life I have never been accessible to this feeling."

Again, "The Congress of Rastadt drew me out of my retirement. The Counts of the Westphalian 'Collegium' entrusted me with the care of their interests. I undertook the charge more from a feeling of duty than in the hope of being able to serve a body whose existence was threatened as was that of the German Empire. My stay in Rastadt only strengthened me in my opposition to a career which in no wise satisfied my mind and disposition. Was there anything to summon me to exchange my peaceful life for a life of activity, constrained to move within limits conflicting with my spirit of independence and cramping my conscience?"

When Metternich was appointed (then twenty-eight years old) Ambassador to Dresden, he professed to the Emperor his diffidence as to his ability to perform the trust and expressed his unwillingness to undertake it. "The Emperor received my professions," he says, "with his accustomed kindness; but when he appealed to my patriotism I yielded to his will."

In 1806 Metternich received his appointment as Ambassador to Paris. Speaking of it he says, "The task of representing Austria in France, immediately after the Peace of Presburg, presented so many difficulties that I feared I should not be adequate to them." He waited on the Emperor and expressed

his apprehensions. But the Emperor so reassured him that Metternich could not oppose his master's wish. "I was thus placed in a position opposed to my inclinations, but being determined always to subordinate them to a feeling of duty, I endeavored to make clear to myself the line I ought to take. I did not, indeed, fear to go wrong, as so many had done, from a heated imagination or self-love, for I felt myself free from these failings."

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In 1809 he received a still more important appointment, with the same self-distrust. "On the morning of July 8, 1809," just after the battle of Wagram, "I was sent for by the EmpeHe received me with the following words: 'Count Stadion has just given in his resignation; I commit the department of foreign affairs to you in his place.' I begged his Majesty not to consider this appointment as definite. 'Two reasons,' said I, 'move me to make this request: one is, that this is not a favorable moment for changing the ministry; the other, to my mind no less important, that I do not consider myself fit for this post. Neither my inclination nor my talents, so far as I know them, qualify me for the high functions which your Majesty wishes to confide to me. This feeling is not based on the difficulties of the moment, but on the knowledge which I have of myself. I do not think myself capable of steering the vessel of the State in so great an empire; I do not wish to do as I have seen done by far more able men than I I should run the risk of advising badly, and my conscience does not allow me to bring this danger upon your Majesty and the State.'" Further, "I here avow with all sincerity that there was nothing in me to counterbalance the load of responsibility which was laid upon me but the feeling of duty. Free from the stimulus of ambition, as I have been all my life, I felt only the weight of the fetters which were to rob me of my personal freedom, and was, with more sensitiveness. than was natural to me, weighed down under the influence of my new position."

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How far he was from believing in anything like a Machiavellian sort of diplomacy may be seen from his brief dissertation on "Politics and Diplomacy." He says that what distinguishes the modern world from the ancient "is the tendency of nations

to draw near to each other, and in some fashion to enter into a social league, which rests on the same basis with the great human society developed in the bosom of Christianity. This foundation consists of the precept of the book of books: 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.' This fundamental rule of every human fraternity, applied to the State, means, in the political world, reciprocity, and its effect is what in the language of diplomacy is called bons procédés, in other words, mutual consideration and honorable conduct. In the ancient world, policy isolated itself entirely, and exercised the most absolute selfishness, without any other curb than that of prudence.. Modern history, on the other hand, exhibits the principle of the solidarity of nations and of the balance of power, and furnishes the spectacle of the combined endeavors of several States against the temporary predominance of any one to impede the extension of this principle, and to constrain such refractory State to return and conform to the general law of reciprocity.' The establishment of international relations upon the basis of reciprocity, under the guarantee of respect for acquired rights and the conscientious observance of plighted faith, constitutes, at the present day, the essence of politics,-of which diplomacy is only the daily application. When we master these truths," he says, "what becomes of a selfish policy, of the policy of fantasy, or of the policy of miserable greed, and especially what becomes of that which seeks profit apart from the simplest rules of right; which mocks at the plighted word, and, in short, rests solely on the usurpations of force or craft? After this confession of faith, it may be conceived what I have always thought of politicians of the stamp, or, if we will, of the authority of a Richelieu, a Mazarin, a Talleyrand, a Canning, a Capo d'Istria, or a Haugwitz, and of many more or less famous names. Resolved not to walk in their steps, and despairing of opening a path in harmony with my own conscience, I naturally preferred not to throw myself into those great political affairs, in which I had far more pros. pect of succumbing materially, than of succeeding; I say materially, for I have never been afraid of failing morally. The man who enters public life has always at command a sure resource against this danger, that is-retirement."