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“What! suppress the mission at Hohen-Schwein-stadt, when I hold here,” exclaims the Minister, “the admirable report of our diplomatic agent on the state of public feeling in that important capital? Will the honourable gentleman, to whose long experience of foreign politics I am ready to bow, inform me how the relations of England with the Continent are to be carried on unless through the intervention of such appointments? Can the honourable member for ——” (a shipowner, perhaps) “carry on his great and important business without agencies? Can the honourable gentleman himself” (a brewer) “be certain that the invigorating and admirable produce of his manufacture will attain the celebrity that it merits, or become the daily beverage of countless thousands in the tropics, unassisted by those aids which to commerce or diplomacy are alike indispensable?” This is very like the Premier’s eloquence. I almost think I am listening to him, and even see the smile of triumph with which he appeals at the peroration to his friends to cheer him. Turco is safe this time; and, better still, he need never bark again till next Easter and another Budget.

It is a very curious thing–it opens a whole realm of speculation–how small and few are the devices of humanity. We fancy we are progressing simply because we change. We give up alchemy, and we believe in medicine; we scout witchcraft, and we take to spirit-rapping; and instead of monasteries and monks, we have missions and plenipotentiaries. If it be a fine thing to die for one’s country, it’s a pleasant one to live for it; to know that you inhabit an impenetrable retreat, which no “Own Correspondents” ever invade, and where, if it was not for Williams, no sense of fear or alarm could come to disturb the tranquil surface of a stagnant existence.

It is astonishing, too, what a wholesome dread and apprehension of England and English power is maintained through the means of these small legations in secluded spots of the Continent, in remote little duchies, without trade or commerce, far away from the sea, where no one ever heard of imports or exports, and the name of Gladstone had never been spoken. In such places as these, a meddlesome old envoy, with plenty of spare time on hand, often gets us thoroughly hated, always referring to England as a sort of court of last appeal on every question, social, moral, religious, or political, and dimly alluding to Lord Palmerston as a kind of Rhadamanthus, whose judgments fall heavily on ill-doers.

The helpless hopeless condition of small states in all such conflicts was actually pitiable. The poor little trembling King Charles dog in the cage of the lion, and who felt that he only lived on sufferance, was the type of them. I remember an incident which occurred some years ago at the Bagni di Lucca, which will illustrate what I mean. An English stranger at one of the hotels, after washing his hands, threw his basinful of soap-and-water out of the window just as the Grand-duke was passing, deluging his imperial highness from head to foot. The stranger hurried at once to the street, and, throwing himself before the dripping sovereign, made the most humble and apologetic excuses for his act; but the Grand-duke stopped him short at once, saying, “There, there! say no more of it: don’t mention the matter to any one, or I shall get into a correspondence with Palmerston, and be compelled to pay a round sum to you for damages!”

After all, one could say for these small posts in diplomacy what, I think it was Croker said for certain rotten boroughs in former days, “If you had not had such posts, you would have lost the services of a number of able and instructive men, who, entering public life by the small door, are sure to leave it by the grand entrance.”

These small missions are very often charming centres of society in places one would scarcely hope for it; and from these little-known legations, every now and then, issue men whom it would not be safe for Williams to bark at, and whom, even if he were rabid, he would not bite.