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der Talleyrand's unceasing (though often hidden) suggestions, distinctly intersectional.

We have attempted to show how the formation, as it were, of Talleyrand's mind and opinions (social and political) was made subservient to the pressure of his earliest experiences. The activity that we have termed " preparatory," and which, as a matter of fact, extended from 1760 to 1792, takes the protagonist of the 'Memoirs' from the time of his quitting the Collége d'Harcourt and the Séminaire de St Sulpice till the moment when, after the failure to found the monarchy in France upon a solid alliance with England, he exiled himself from Europe and settled in the United States, learning the English language and some little knowledge of English underlying unofficial opinions from William Cobbett, the Radical professor of Cottage Economy.' This is for many reasons not unworthy of remembrance, for it points out with precision the considerable space of time during which Prince Talleyrand remained whatever nature and his own thought had made him, and during which no external circumstance directly obliged him to serve his own personal ambition, or in any way to pander to the ambitious intrigues of others. It is instructive to see, as clearly as we can, what the original churchman was before the necessities of public life and the suggestions of self-interest could by any possibility have fashioned him into what history tells us he became. He was and remained for over

forty years a "churchman." 1 To represent and promote and defend the Church of France was his

profession: it was as a prelate charged with upholding the ecclesiastical institution that he entered on his self-invented diplomatic functions, and started for England on the eve of the events that drove the Revolution of 1789 to its fatal close.

At Mirabeau's death in 1791, the Bishop of Autun was still officially and by profession a bishop, and there was no particular cause that could lead him to discern any immediate advantage likely to accrue to himself from suddenly plunging into the vortex of political agitation or place-hunting. Spite of all the daily recurring mistakes, faultsnay, even crimes of the time; spite of emigration, and even the flight to Varennes,-monarchy, in a kind of form, still endured; and a certain number of cooler-headed, wiser, more cultivated men turned their thoughts to the study of what had a hundred years previously transformed an impossible absolutist royalty in a neighbouring nation into a constitutional Government founded on parlia mentary practices.

Mirabeau's teachings had left their mark, even though countermined by the weaknesses and popularity worship of Lafayette; and Talleyrand, spurred on by his unqualified admiration for the plans that Mirabeau's daring spirit had conceived, resolved to carry out what the famous tribune had been prevented by death from achieving. Hence the determination, so prodigious for the time, and the situation, and the characters of the actors concerned, taken by M. de Talleyrand to proceed at once and in his own person to London, and (even though unaccredited) ne

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1 He was still classed formally as belonging to the Episcopacy of France, and could perceive no personal advantage foreign to that class.

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gotiate for an understanding of some sort commercial entente, neutrality treaty, or what not a standing - ground, in short, with Parliament or nation, with Ministers, Government, or, who shall say with the Crown itself! The real trait de génie in the bold priest who, unbidden, seized on the heritage of the dead patriot (and it was indisputably a trait de génie !) was its very undefined vagueness. It was based on no preliminaries or drawn-up documentary papers, connected with no protocols, nor in any way made practically "diplomatic." It was essentially the product of a gifted individual brain, and as such pre-eminently modern, so much so, indeed, that the very instrument (if such a slip of paper might be so called) by which his Minister introduced the negotiator to the British Prime Minister bore merely the certificate that "a bishop of distinction wished to be enabled to communicate with Lord Grenville on his own affairs."

And hence the entire and intensely interesting correspondence with the Foreign Minister, M. de Lessart, every detail whereof we owe to M. Pallain, and which, preserved in the archives of the French Foreign Office, reveals to us, under the handwriting of the authors themselves, what the thoughts and the endeavours were, for over six months, of a small knot of earnest, hard-working politicians, who were banded together to

save their country from impending disaster, and recruited from the highest ranks of official society, under the inspiration and by the energy of one amongst them whom all were ready to obey.

Here let us pause to note what is the principal characteristic of the whole-namely, the unconcealed leadership of the Bishop of Autun.1 It is, in fact, the only time in which we find Talleyrand the admitted chief. He bounds forward upon the death of Mirabeau to take his place, to do his work, because he feels with indomitable self-consciousness that it is the place to be taken, that he perhaps alone can take it, and that on its being filled as the originator filled it depends the salvation of a people. We must not forget that Talleyrand had been already associated with Mirabeau, and knew beyond all others the strength of will, the reliability in action, of his dead colleague. had laboured in 1786 (six years before) at the Commercial Treaty with him, when he was in Berlin and the "Bishop" in Paris; and there are letters signed by the latter on the advantages of free exchange that might easily bear the names of Cobden or Rouher, and be dated in the year 1860.2

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And this short and closing period of what we must still term M. de Talleyrand's preliminary political activity (as preceding the more chaotic era of the Revolution and its consequences, with his own entrance on more strictly defined

1 As is well known, and as the 'Memoirs' confirm, Prince Talleyrand's method in his whole later period of political activity (from 1798 to 1814) was a suggestive one. He preferred wire-pulling to any form of downright command.

2 We are in no degree attempting to discuss the merits of free trade or protection; we are merely setting forth that at the end of the last century Talleyrand was a disciple of Adam Smith, and in his own letters (1786, to Mirabeau and to M. de Choiseul Gouffier) are to be read the arguments resting on the principle of increased revenue produced by the larger numbers of smaller taxes raised on definite and various articles.

VOL. CXLIX.-NO. DCCCCVII.

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official authority), this short period brings to view a Prince de Talleyrand whom we shall never meet again, but whose peculiarities -whatever the later estimate we may form-it would be manifestly unjust to leave unnoticed.

We have already stated what an opinion prevails amongst the habitual associates of the Bishop of Autun of his haughty, domineering ways, and of his dislike to accept the guidance of others. Now here, during his whole struggle to form a possible constitutional monarchy in France, we find him, on the contrary, soliciting the incessant aid and co-operation of his supporters of those whom he has persuaded to be his supporters, to act with him cordially and unreservedly. He is the guiding spirit of all the rest of that there can be no doubt. His inspirations are autographed in the perpetual letters which M. Pallain's valuable book brings to our notice; but the value of combination, the recognition of the power to be alone secured by various but collective and strongly united energies, presses upon us in every line. It is on a combination of opinion and thought in the Governments of Europe that he builds his best chances of success; it is by public opinion, in reality secured through the agency of diplomacy, that he aims at a kind of foreign consensus to avert the excesses which, once committed in France, he foresees must inevitably bring on war.

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From spring to autumn he leaves in sober earnest no "stone unturned to obtain this species of counter-coalition, and the ardour of his perpetual efforts does from

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time to time animate, and all but inspire, the more hesitating forces in the great reactionary centres. This is a chorus, a whole concert, of the different voices that, in the name of France, and of what still remains to her of self-styled government, speak to Europe of the means yet to be employed to save the ancient monarchy. From north to south, from west and east, we have the minute and urgent explanations of the nonaccredited negotiator in England, and the often equally lengthy replies of his "colleagues Vienna or Brussels, in Constantinople or Berlin. From Constantinople there come some of the most modern of all, signed by M. de Choiseul Gouffier, and containing projects for the internal reorganisation of France on parliamentary lines, provoking from "the Bishop" one of the most remarkable proofs he ever furnished of his civil and administrative superiority. In spite of his appreciation of the modes of British government, Talleyrand never hesitates to say: "Above all, no imitations! Follow out the spirit where you will, but leave all mere formal modifications untouched. Preserve national foundations as ages have left them, and remember no good can come of what destroys the origins of a people, and to us French, every possible good is contained in the popular customs and usages of our earliest history. The utmost capacity for all reform or improvement lies grounded there."

Curiously enough, this theory will be best discovered some half a century after in the pages of more advanced historians, and most of any in Michelet; but it is

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1 M. Pallain's own untiring labours to procure the original manuscript of the De Lessart Correspondence, lodged at last in the French archives, are amply described in his preface, and constitute a remarkable chapter of modern history.

not without surprise that it is so plainly recognised in Talleyrand.

In Vienna he has his friend, M. de Noailles; in Paris, for the time as permanent Minister of War, the spirituel Louis de Narbonne; in Valenciennes, Biron, holding command; in Berlin, M. de Ségur, who is the object of his infinite anxiety. "We cannot do without Berlin," is one of his constantly recurring phrases; "we must be quite sure of Ségur!" For from the outset (six years previously) Talleyrand never once loses his hold on the importance of the Prussian co-operation with France. Potsdam is the completion to his policy of Versailles, and, as against the retrograde instincts of Austria and the union of northern autocracy, the more liberal ideas of the great philosopher-king and confrère of Voltaire stand out to his sense as a manifest resource to be invoked at the latest hour.

But when Frederick has disappeared and the philanthropic Schwärmer Joseph is succeeded by Leopold, the sheet-anchor of the threatened vessel is, before every other stay, England, and, in truth, England only. There is, improbable as it may seem to narrower minds, the one great hope to be sought for, to be forged into a reality. Talleyrand's was never (above all, under the still undefined circumstances of the epoch before '98) a narrow mind; and, once his imagination-of which he was plentifully possessed-was set in motion, he saw without hesitation the real truths touching men and things which others neither perceived nor ventured to divine. When the Bishop of Autun, who in childish years had been familiar with the histories of Richelieu and Ximenes, and other lordly churchmen, came to acknowledge the tremendous power of

British will and its dogged obstinacy, together with the latent faculties of wealth lying beneath them, he at one glance discerned the man who would invincibly rule the whole country, and sway the life of the nation if it ever came to resolute resistance. He had a marvellous power of seeing beneath surfaces, and guessing at hidden power; and he foresaw William Pitt as his first and determined aim. In the situation, this is also a fact not to be neglected. It is easy to dispute the consequences of Pitt's policy; but of his predominance over the statecraft of the world and of his own time no man unblinded by prejudice ever doubted, or could doubt.

The Bishop of Autun never swerved for an instant from his conviction. He went over to London, after Mirabeau's death, to see, not Lord Grenville or any other Minister of easier accesshe went to see Pitt himself, and talk to him about the "affairs of France." And with no small amount of difficulty, this was exactly what he did. "You are not accredited," said the great English leader with a smile, and knowing as well as did his visitor the value of those with whom he had to do, and disdaining (no one more) the worth of credentials or etiquette. "I know it," was the reply, "and am not going to propose anything to you. Je veux causer avec vous des affaires de France."

And this they did to so much purpose, that the Neutrality Treaty was obtained and signed in the following month of May. We know all the rest, and what European convulsions ensued. But there was no fault on Talleyrand's part; no blame can attach to him. What the most convinced and decided champion of a cause could at

tempt, he attempted. He tried every issue-he forced every resistance; brought such influence, direct and indirect, to weigh upon the reluctant king, that the famous letter to Louis XVI. was written in his own hand; so roused the anger of the chiefs of the Opposition, that the effect was undisguisedly appreciated by haughty Chatham's haughtier son; and when every ray of hope had vanished, and failure was the unescapeable doom, sentenced himself to banishment in the distant and uncivilised West, of whose future development, long before the poet Chateaubriand, he was the first European to guess.

When Talleyrand returned from America in 1797, still as a Bishop, it was as a disappointed, unbelieving, utterly altered man. His period of real, eager, public activity is over; public life is at an end. What lies before him during the Directoire is a monotonous, uneventful existence of the dullest, and all notion of helpfulness has collapsed. Under the impulse of Mirabeau, we had a man the precise reverse of what historic records afford us-a man so full of zeal, that he can supply a dozen other men with his indefatigable strength. After the meeting with Barras and Bonaparte, and the 18 Brumaire, Place, attained to by mere individual ambition, appears to be the sole future employment of a subordinate manner of life. We have before us the systematic professor of "Messieurs, pas de zèle!"

The first part of the Talleyrand, of whom the world comparatively knows so little, ends here, where the Bonapartist usurpations and dreams of empire begin, gradually forcing upon England her inevitable fame, and condemning her to Trafalgar and Waterloo; the second part opens in '98, and continues

through the Italian and German campaigns, until all the sins of Imperial France provoked all the retribution of 1814-15-et le reste! This epoch from 1815 to 1840, through the restoration and "July Monarchy," when occurred the Prince's own death, is presumed to be familiar, more or less, to the entire political world, andi ts importance is simply revived by the publication of the present Memoirs.'

The personal knowledge of the famous statesman is, we again affirm, most distinctly shown in its true colours by the earlier acts of his life; and this is a "life,” not a career," a term but ill defining it.

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For the forty years elapsing between Chalais and St Cloud, on the return from the United States, we have hitherto imperfectly known Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, and his natural raisons d'être. we watch him more closely, we have to admit what a genuine and considerable part of himself lay here, and helped to create the future man. We find no matter what may be changed or obliterated later on-a bitter sense of injustice and oppression; an unmistakable contempt for hypocrisy and weakness, allied to a real regard for courage (wherever undeniable); a desire for truly merited distinction; a keen perception of all those unlimited capacities for freedom such as the United States may eventually produce, and an ineradicable esteem for British institutions, and British character and public qualities.

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With the remainder of the Prince's career, with what the 'Memoirs offer to us "under control," there is still a good deal to study, though infinitely less; and what there is has been made subject for discussion in nearly every country for the of space fifty years.

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