Bought with the income
ofthe
Class of 1872 Fund

MEMOIRS AND LETTERS OF THE
RIGHT HON. SIR ROBERT MORIER, G.C.B.

FROM 1826 TO 1876

LONDOK: EDWARD ARNOLD

MEMOIRS AND LETTERS
OF THE RIGHT HON.
SIR ROBERT MORIER, G.C.B.
FROM 1826 TO 1876

By his Daughter
MRS. ROSSLYN WEMYSS

WITH PORTRAITS

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1911
Ail rig^kts rtseroed

PREFACE
The following Memoirs have been almost entirely com
piled from letters, memoranda, diaries, and notes in
my possession.
My grateful thanks, however, are due to the friends
who have so kindly placed at my disposal letters of my
father's; especially to Lady Margaret Cecil for those
addressed to Lady Derby, to the Hon. Rollo Russell
for the ones on Schleswig-Holstein written to Lord John
Russell, to Mr. Bernard Mallet, the late Lady Arthur
Russell, Miss Palgrave, and Lady Grant-Duff.
VICTORIA WEMYSS.
London, November 1911.

CDNTENTS

VOLUME I
CHAP. I. PARENTAGE — BIRTH — CHILDHOOD
II. SCHOOLDAYS ....
III. OXFORD ....
IV. THE SWISS TROUBLES
V. OXFORD AGAIN
VI. VISIT TO GERMANY .
VII. LONDON. PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE. VIENNA
VIII. VIENNA ....
IX. BERLIN ....
X. AN ESSAY ON THE POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE
KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, WITH SPECIAL REFER
ENCE TO THE HISTORY OF ITS CONSTITUTIONAL
DEVELOPMENT .....
XI. BERLIN ...
XII. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT IN ELECTORAL
HESSE
XIII. BERLIN
XIV. BERLIN
XV. SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN .
XVI. SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN — continued

PAGE I
IO
22
3861
84
III
135162

179223
255292
342362393

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SIR ROBERT MORIER .
ANNA, WIFE OF DAVID RICHARD MORIER
DAVID RICHARD MORIER

Frontispiece
Facing page 140
292

MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER
CHAPTER I
PARENTAGE. BIRTH. CHILDHOOD
The Moriers were of French origin ; a Huguenot family,
who, on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had
migrated to Switzerland, at the end of the seventeenth
century. Isaac was the first Morier naturalised a British subject.
Bom in 1750 at Smyrna, where a branch of the family had
settled, and where he was to spend the greater part of his
life, it was ovidng to his extensive knowledge of the East
that, when compelled by the loss of his fortune in 1803 to
seek employment, he entered the service of the Turkey
Company, and was by them appointed Consul General
at Constantinople in 1804. Two years later, in 1806, the
Company was dissolved, and the post converted into that
of His Britannic Majesty's Consul, which appointment
Isaac Morier continued to hold, until his death in 1817.
He had married in 1775 Clara, daughter of David Van
Lennep, Dutch Consul General at Smyrna and President
of the Dutch Levant Company, the eldest of a family of
beautiful sisters, as remarkable for their personal attractions
as for their intellectual gifts; and it is undoubtedly from her
that some, at least, of the Uterary talent of the family is
derived, for her letters are distinguished not only by their
admirable style, but by the great originality of thought and
expression, and the keen sense of humour which later on
characterised in so marked a degree the writings of her sons
and grandson.
She lived much in England, where her sons were being
educated at Harrow, and where two of her sisters, Cornelia,
VOL. I. ^

2 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER
wife of Admiral Waldegrave,^ and Mrs. Lee, were settled.
Thither, too, fled her third sister, the Marquise de Chabannes
La Palice, at the first outbreak of the French Revolution.
Many of Mrs. Morier's letters to her husband, then foUovsdng
his fortunes abroad, referred to the sayings and doings of
the small society of emigres which she much frequented,
and which centred round Calonne, the exiled minister of
Louis XVI., whose wife,^ was a great friend, if not connection,
of the Van Lennep sisters.
Clara Morier's four sons all entered the public service,
the three elder Diplomacy, the youngest the Navy, and,
being endowed with no inconsiderable amount of ability
and inteUect, aU four rose to distinction, taking their fuU
part in the stirring events then ushering in the nineteenth
century. Cultured, gifted men of the world, cosmopoUtan
in the best and truest sense, they aU shared this famUy
characteristic : they were all great travellers with a strong
literary bent, the one eventuaUy most known being James,
the second son, author of The Adventures of Hadji Baba,
whom Sir Walter Scott declared in the Quarterly Review to
be the best novelist of the day.
Bom at Smyma in 1780, James entered the diplomatic
service in 1807, and was attached to Sir Harford Jones's
mission to Persia. Promoted to the rank of Secretary of
Legation at Teheran, he came home in 1809, only shortly
afterwards to retum to Persia as Secretary of Embassy to
Sir Gore Ouseley, who was sent there to negotiate a treaty
to oppose the then subsisting Franco-Russian AUiance.
Both missions were described by him in a Journey through
Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor and A Second Journey
through Persia, and these two books, with the above-
mentioned Adventures of Hadji Baba, often called the
Oriental Gil Bias, soon established their author as an im
portant authority on all matters concerning Persia, or
indeed the East.
On his retum to England in 1817, he practically retired
from pubUc service, devoting the remainder of his Ufe to
Uterature. He was only once more employed, as Special
' Honble. William, b. 1753, d. 1825, afterwards Baron Radstock.
^ His second wife, 'la belle Madame d'Harv61y.'

THE MORIER FAMILY 3
Commissioner to Mexico, to negotiate a treaty in 1824-6.
He died in 1849, having married in 1820 Harriet, daughter
of WiUiam Fulke GreviUe.
His elder brother, John Philip, bom in 1776, had begun
his career in 1799 as Secretary to Lord Elgin, of Elgin
Marble fame, at that time ambassador at Constantinople.
He was then sent on a secret mission to Egypt, accompany
ing the Grand Vizier on the Turkish expedition against
General Kleber, of which he pubUshed an account entitled
Memoir of a Campaign with the Ottoman Army, and in 1803
was entrusted with a very important political mission to
Ali Pasha, a powerful quasi-independent vassal of Turkey,
then reigning supreme in Albania. Here he remained
some time, having been appointed Consul General at
Janina. After filling various posts in Europe and America,
he was in 1816 named Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary at Dresden, where he remained till his
retirement in 1825. He had married in 1814 Horatia,
daughter of Lord Hugh Seymour, a sister of Mrs. Dawson
Damer, Mrs. Fitzherbert's adopted daughter. John Morier
died in London in 1853.
The youngest brother, WiUiam, bom in 1790, entered the
Navy in 1803, saw much service in the Mediterranean, took
part in the bombardment of Stonington during the
American War, and, retiring as a post-captain in 1830,
attained the rank of retired Vice-Admiral two years before
his death, in 1864.
The father of Robert Bumet David Morier was the third
brother, David Richard, whom Dean Stanley described as
' a model of the piety and virtue of the antique mould,' and
of whom it could Vidth truth be said, that he was ' A man
equally admirable in his pubUc and his private Ufe, who
compelled the love of aU — of those who knew him most, as
of those who knew him least.' ^
His mother speaks of him as being the one amongst her
sons who, having the most to do, was always the most
careful to write her news, ' et par la U me parait que vous
6tes plus pr^s de moi,' and when, after a life reaching to the
extreme Umits of old age, he died in 1877, in fuU possession
> Morier to Jowett, July 1877.

4 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER
of all his faculties, both mental and physical, his son records
that ' he closed one of the happiest of Uves by a happy and
painless death, preserving to the end his perfect bright
inteUigence, his warm heart, and his playfulness and wit.
The loss to me is one out of all proportion to that usually
experienced by sons of fifty losing fathers of ninety-four,
for so marveUously fresh had his sympathies, moral and
inteUectual, remained, that there was no one whom I could
so absolutely commune with as wdth him, and the
absence of whom, in my daily life, could make so large
a gap.' 1
Bom at Smyrna in 1784, and, like his brothers, educated
at Harrow, David Morier began his diplomatic career in
1804 by being attached to his brother John Morier's mission
to Ali Pasha at Janina. Here he spent three years, and
collected the materials for his novel. Photo the Suliote,
pubUshed many years later. Left in entire charge of the
mission at the early age of twenty-three, he was, on the
rupture of diplomatic relations with the Porte, transferred
to Sir Arthur Paget's Mission to the Dardanelles, then
employed in peace negotiations, and despatched to Egypt
to effect the release of the British prisoners taken captive
by Mahomet Ali Pasha during General Fraser's expedition
against Rosetta in 1807. With the exception of a short
mission to Persia in 1809, he remained at Constantinople for
four years, first under Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Adair,
and then under Mr. Stratford Canning (afterwards Lord
Stratford de Redclyffe), with whom he formed a warm
friendship destined to last over seventy years. * He accom
panied the latter to England on the termination of his
appointment, and in the subsequent year, 1813, was attached
to Lord Aberdeen's Embassy. From then dates the most
interesting part of his career, for under Lord Castlereagh,
' Morier to Stockmar, 30th December 1877.
' Verses written in memory of David Richard Morier by Lord Stratford
de Redclyffe, 22nd July 1877.
Thro' length of years — alas, for ever gone —
A blameless life was his, surpass'd by none,
A cheerful mind, a conscientious zeal.
Whereon the heart's religion set its seal.
And all the charities that kindle love
Mark'd him as one whose home was fix'd above.

THE MORIER FAMILY 5
the Duke of WeUington, and Lord Castlereagh again, he
was employed in all the historical transactions of the time—
the Conferences of ChatiUon-sur-Seine, the Congress of
Vienna, and the Treaties of Paris— his zeal, tact, and diplo
matic experience, and his knowledge of the French language
making him an invaluable coUaborator, especiaUy to Lord
Castlereagh, himself singularly deficient in the latter respect.^
' Lord Castlereagh thoroughly appreciates you, my dear
David,' his mother writes, November 1815, 'and that
alone is a sufficient reward to a spirit as sensitive as yours.'
In 1815 he had married Anna, youngest daugther of
Robert Bumet Jones, Attomey-General of Barbadoes, a
lineal descendant of Bishop Bumet, and of EUzabeth,
daughter of Samuel Eastwick, sometime M.P. for Westbury ;
a woman of the rarest moral and inteUectual gifts, and
destined up to the end to exercise the most unbounded
influence over her son.
If to his father Bumet Morier was to owe the independ
ence of character, the fearless disregard of obloquy and
opposition, the extraordinary impartiality and fair minded-
ness which later gave him the great hold he undoubtedly
possessed over the many he came in contact with, it was
from his mother that he inherited the liveliness of mind,
quickness of thought, and vividness of perception, the
large-hearted toleration and eagerness to know aU that was
best in men and things which were to be such distinguishing
traits of his" character,
When the work of the treaties was completed in 1815,
the young couple settled dovwi in Paris, where David
Tho' born of strangers to that envied shore,
Where freedom's shout contends with ocean's roar,
Esteem'd and prized in ripening youth he gain'd
A hold on England's favour long retain'd ;
While duty, source of Nelson's matchless fame.
Breathed in his every act with kindred aim.
Farewell ! my friend, dear yoke-fellow in days
When clouds hung dark, tho' streak'd with golden rays.
Blest was the path thy feet so nobly trod,
Its guerdon peace, its end, the throne of God,
' David Morier used often to describe his feelings, when, on an
important occasion, a great dinner at the diplomatic headquarters of the
Allies at Dijon in 1814, given to celebrate the news of Napoleon's fall.
Lord Castlereagh, called upon to propose the health of the ladies, did so
in the following words ; ' Le bel sexe partoutte dedans le monde.'

6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1826
Morier had been appointed Consul General for France and
Commissioner for the claims of British subjects on the
French Government, and here it was that, after four
daughters,^ their youngest child and only son was bom on
the 31st March 1826, and christened Burnet, after his great
Whig ancestor — the name he was always known by to his
family and friends.
With pride, when he was about four months old, his
father, writing to his sister Emily, says, ' I wish you knew
my boy. He reaUy is a Uttle love, and attracts the gaze
of aU the passers-by. Although there is no resemblance in
feature, I have detected an air about him which puts me
in mind of dear little Hadji,^ quite enough to show they
belong to the same stock.' A pride apparently shared
by the whole family, for his grandmother writes, ' As for
the baby, whom I shaU no longer call baby, since I find
him so big for his age, he is superb. His physiognomy is
so expressive that one can never forget so fine a child when
one has once seen him.'
Four years later, in 1831, his father notes that ' Bumet
begins now to read with such facility as ,to make it a great
pleasure to him to read to Nourrice stories from the Bible
history in French.'
In 1832 David Morier was appointed to the post of
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Swiss Confederation, suc
ceeding his old friend Stratford Canning.
In a letter dated Beme, February 1833, shortly after his
promotion, addressed to ' His darUng Mother,' he humor
ously justifies himself against the imputation of not answer
ing letters : —
' I am not quite sure whether my own dearest Mamma
does not think my Excellency to have grown either a fine
gentleman or a lazy dog. You must therefore bear with
me whilst I justify myself from the imputation of either,
both for your satisfaction, who have taken my defence on
yourself and for the information of all complainants in
• Dorothea Clara Horatia, b. 1817, d. 1891 ; Elizabeth Leila, b. 1822, d.
1839; Mary Henrica, b. 1823 m. Sheffield, third son of Sir Th. Neave,
Bart., d. 1884; Cepilia, b. 1824, d. 1839.
* James Morier. S iC^^n cyic^^eu -t-«^--n. IS?.'/

i833l DAVID MORIER 7
future. There are twenty-four hours in the day and night.
That 's sure — and in twenty-four hours surely, there is
half an hour to spare for a few lines to a friend. That 's
true again. WeU then, Mr. Devis.i why in the name of
old Burrup, the stationer, have you not found time for a
letter to A.B.C. ... to Z . . . since you have been
plenipotising at Beme ? Reply of H.E. Firs' —Because
I have been plenipotising. Do you think that I have
nothing to learn, nothing to talk, nothing to read, nothing
to meditate, nothing to write about my twenty-two sovereign
independent ^^ ? Have I not to study German in
order to understand the forty-six newspapers of this en
lightened many puzzled-headed confederation ? Have not
I to talk politics with my brother Dips, with Landammans,
avoyers, " Great Raths," and " Little Raths," and to look
wise aU the time, and let me teU you that looking wise all
the time takes up a great deal of time because the effort
makes one so very stupid all the time afterwards. Secundo
— Because I have a wife and five children. Do you think
I have nothing to do with them, and for them, and about
them ? Is no time consumed in scolding them, pinching
them, teaching their young ideas which way to shoot so as
not to miss fire, walking with them, talking with them,
eating with them, yawning with them, and lastly, I am
sorry to say, for the last ten days nursing them day and
night. Tertio — Because I have lots of other things to do,
etc. Don't you think, dearest mother, that the reply is
sans replique, and am I not an injured and traduced plenipo ? '
Burnet's childhood was of the happiest, and to few has
it been given to begin life surrounded by such an atmosphere
of love and affection.
Of the reUgious system of training adopted by his father,
the foUowing may give some idea : —
' I know of no remedy but getting the faulty child to
acknowledge his fault when the moment of irritation is
over, and to fray against it. I am sure that those who say
that all souls are aUke, and that our nature is not inherently
corrupt, can never have superintended a nursery. The
• His pet name.

8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1836
world, the flesh, and the devil are as busy there as with
grovm-up people, and yet your phUosopher teUs you to
tmst to reason for bringing the man to perfection.'
They lived at the Hiibel, a charming country place in the
vicinity of Beme. From there, his father, writing when
Bumet was seven years old, encloses a prayer written by the
latter : ' I am told he wrote it one evening by the light of
his veilleuse before going to sleep. He generaUy reads a
prayer out of Osterwald for his chere nourrice and the house
maid before he gets to bed.'
At the age. of ten his family's eastern and diplomatic
training began to assert itself, for writing to ' his precious
mamma,' Bumet takes up the * pen of delight in the fingers
of happiness,' at the same time informing his sister Dora
that, though ' enough is as good as a feast, yet my thirst
after despatches is not yet satisfied. You may conceive
my pride at having copied a private letter which is to go to
L. P. [Lord Palmerston] by the courier, and for which papa
gave me five francs.'
From about the same period dates the foUowing character
drawn by himself and addressed to his father : —
' Je trouve que j'ai de la vanit6 et surtout autrefois j'ai
cru que j'^tais plus haut que les autres enfants et je vols que
quelquefois je mets de la vanite en disant que je dessine
mieux les chevaux que mes soeurs et que je me plais a faire
le petit connoisseur.
' Je trouve que j'ai souvent des moments d' humeur et de
susceptibUit6 et que je me fache quand on m'appelle " Maitre
Pastete est un effet combustible."
' Je trouve que j'ai souvent de la peine a fixer mon atten
tion et je me sens souvent de la paresse et des distractions.
' Je suis souvent bmyant et j'ai I'habitude de mettre
dans la bouche ce que je trouve.
' Voici, mon cher papa, la liste de quelques uns de mes
d^fauts. Je chercherai a m'en d^faire, et je suis, Votre
affectionn6 enfant, R. Burnet D. Morier.'
On a joumey to Stuttgart, undertaken with his German
tutor, Dr. Wagner, in the summer of 1838, he observantly
remarks : —

1838} CHILDHOOD 9
' Stuttgart is full of places where ladies and gentlemen
come to drink bear [sic] and eat cheese, a thing which may
appear funny, but which is quite tme : the Wurtemberg
people have a great tendency to this sort of dissipation,
but I have been assured that the churches are now much
more frequented than twenty or thirty years ago, over and
above which there is nothing wrong in this kind of pleasure,
because it is generaUy relations who assemble and chat
over their pots of bear [sic].'
In the early part of 1839, just whilst his parents were
making arrangements to send Bumet to England for his
education, weighing the alternative advantages of Eton
and a private tutor, they were overwhelmed by a terrible
catastrophe. Within the short interval of a week, their
two daughters, Leila, aged seventeen, and Cecilia, aged
fifteen, were carried off by an epidemic of confluent measles,
then raging at Beme, to which the old family butler also
fell a victim. Bumet and Dora, the eldest daughter,
though both dangerously ill, recovered.
Bitter as was the blow, it was borne by both David Morier
and his wife with that simple spirit of Christian resignation
and piety which characterised them, but constant refer
ences in letters many years afterwards prove how unhealed
the wound remained.
Soon afterwards they left the Hiibel, too full of painful
associations, and removed to the Chateau of Oberhofen,i
on the lake of Thun, from where many of the subsequent
letters are dated.
The Hiibel was then occupied by the ChevaUer de Bunsen,^
at that time Prussian Minister at Beme, and the great
friendship which ever afterwards united the two famUies
commenced at this period.
In the summer of 1839, Bumet was taken to England
by his parents, and placed under the charge of the Rev.
J. Dod at EdgehiU, near Chester, strongly recommended
by an old family friend, ChanceUor Raikes.^
1 Now belonging to Count Pourtal^s.
* Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, Chevalier de, b. 1791, d. i860, statesman,
diplomatist and scientist ; Prussian Minister to the Court of St. James,
1842-1854. • Raikes, Henry, b. 1782, d. 1854, divine, Chancellor of the Diocese of
Chester.

10 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1839

CHAPTER II
SCHOOLDAYS
"¦ August i^th, 1839.
' O MY dear papa, I am in another of those dreadful fits
of low spirits, I am bathing both my paper and cheeks
with tears ; they come upon me in the most hideous forms.
I imagine I will never see you again, I think I see you lying
[sic] dying in some out of the way inn, or drowning near
Antwerp. Oh, dear papa, don't quiz me, don't caU me
chUdish, but do write to me as soon as you have crossed
the sea. Let me hear from you more than once a
week. . . .'
This letter of Bumet's, the first dated from EdgehiU,
testifies to the feelings of desolation of the homesick little
boy, so suddenly transplanted to such totally novel sur
roundings ; but in truth it must be added, that two days
later he writes to his mother : ' The more I examine this
place the more I like it, and only regret that you and dear
papa don't Uve at Chester.'
AU his life his usuaUy high spirits alternated with deep
fits of despondency.
His vrish was fulfilled ; constant was the flow of letters
which reached -him from both parents, reveaUng the wisdom
and sympathy with which they watched over his moral
and physical development ; his mother's letters especially,
proving by their weU-worded and admirable advice, how
much her son was to owe her.
Mrs. Morier to Burnet Morier ' September i^th, 1839.
' I recommend you, dearest Bumet, to get a book and put
down regularly your expenditure. I know it is sometimes
in a hurry tiresome to do, but unless you do, you can
never calculate what money you wiU require, nor check any

i839] SCHOOL DAYS ii
imposition nor any inclination to expense in yourself ; for
you must always remember, dearest, that the only way to
indulge your fondness for giving, is by being economical.
When one reflects that a labourer with a family can often
not obtain more than eight shillings for a week's labour, it
makes one quite ashamed of the thoughtless manner in
which one expends small sums.'
From Burnet Morier to his Mother ' October "jth, 1839.
"... I have had very little opportunity of doing good,
but Saturday last gave half a crown to James the stable-
boy, an excellent religious lad, to give to any poor people
he might be disposed. ... I have given a great deal of
money to poor people for little services, such as holding my
horse, picking up my whip and so forth, which is also a way
to charitify.' A proceeding not entirely approved of by his mother, for,
answering, she says : ' I think you made a mistake in ele
vating the stable-boy into your almoner. It is a great
temptation to him, who is probably not overburdened with
cash himself, to put into his own pocket what is given for
the poor, and as we pray not to be tempted ourselves, we
should be careful not to tempt others.' And amongst
other advice : ' Remember that crowing is always mean
spirited, and ungentlemanly, and the surest mark of one
who has never studied that most essential of all studies,
himself.' His first Christmas holidays were spent with his aunt,
Mrs. Dottin,^ at Bugle Hall, Southampton, and many were
the recommendations with which he set out on his travels.
' December 1st, 1829-
' . . . The Southampton coach by which you wiU start
on the foUowing moming, starts from the Spread Eagle,
Regent Circus, is called the ' Independent,' and leaves at
eight. I hope I need not, on this, your first joumey alone,
recommend prudence to be careful on the raUroad, to be
in the carriage in time, and neither to put your head nor
» Wife of Abel Dottin, M.P. for Hampshire.

12 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1840
your hands out of the window. There are some young
people in the world, as you wiU find as you mix more in it,
that think that foolhardiness shows courage, which is a very
sUly mistake. A good and wise man would risk his life to
save that of a fellow creature, but he would never tempt God
by exposing it foolishly and unnecessarily. If any of your
feUow traveUers should strike up an acquaintance with you,
and propose your going anywhere with them, you will, of
course, decline any such sudden friendships. . . .'
Railways were still a novel mode of locomotion, judging
from a letter of David Morier, dated Windsor Castle a few
months later : — '¦ September Ith, 1840.
' . . . Don't be astonished at the date of this my letter.
I write whUe waiting to set off for tovra by the railroad,
which will be my fourth experiment in that line since
Wednesday moming. On that day, having previously
ascertained, as I thought, that I had no chance of getting
my audience to take leave of the Queen for the next ten
days, I carried off your dear mother to Aunt Lee's, and
spent the night, and we were back in Bond Street by half-
past one. I found the house in a hubbub on account of a
letter which had been left by a F.O. messenger marked
Immediate from Lord Palmerston, with injunctions to find
me out, dead or alive. This proved a command dated the
day before to come here (Windsor) to dine with our Sover-
reign Lady Victoria Regina yesterday as a stomachique for
my audience this moming. AU this has been duly effected
without trouble or hurry, thanks to the invention of those
great walking kettles, and that you may judge of the effects
upon Louis,^ by the good treatment he has received under
the Royal roof, I transcribe the following lines I have dis
covered written by him on a page of the blotting book on
which I am now writing from a most comfortable room,
looking out on the beautiful Long Walk. "Charmant
Chateau que Dieu te protege. Tu renfermes les dflices de
ce monde e;t veuille le Seigneur faire la grace a toutes
personnes qui, y, sont ^levdes en dignit6 de passer de tes
' His Swiss valet.

i84i] SCHOOL DAYS 13
delices aux Delices etemels. L. Decoppet — Suisse." It
is not everybody in whom the view of an earthly palace
raises the thoughts of a heavenly one. I Uke the feeling
which dictated the prayer, and surely if danger and ele
vation of station go together, there is no human being who
ought to be the subject for more sincere sympathy and
earnest prayer of all loyal men than the young Queen who
dweUs in this " Charmant Chateau." Cela n'empSche pas
qu'on s'y ennuie furieusement. I never witnessed so
portentous a yawn as the one uttered last night by the
Prime Minister [Melbourne] as the party, only twenty persons
altogether, broke up at about eleven. I played at chess
with a young lady, and was only saved from an imminent
checkmate by the rising of Her Majesty to withdraw. " Sic
me servavit ApoUo." When you can send me a spirited
translation, prose or verse, no matter, of Horace's Epistle,
in which that passage is found, I wall say — what shaU I say,
Dulcissime rerum, ought it not to be Dulcissima rerum ? '
Bumet's progress at Mr. Dod's not being considered very
satisfactory, his father a year later moved him to another
tutor, the Reverend J. Utterton, at Holmwood parsonage,
near Dorking ; where, however, he does not seem to have
gained much more profit by his studies, for, when three
years later he faUed in his matriculation examination at
BalUol, it was unanimously attributed by his examiners
to ' his lamentable deficiency in the rudiments of Latin and
Greek ' ; a result perhaps not so very surprising when it is
bome in mind that the choice of tutors seems to have
depended more on their religious views than on their classical
attainments. Bumet passed three very happy years at Holmwood;
thoroughly accustomed now to EngUsh ways and Ufe, his
high spirits, ready wit, and warm affections gaining him a
host of friends. His matemal grandmother writes to his
mother 13th April 1841: 'Your darling boy came to me late
on Saturday looking the picture of health, strength and
spirits. Never did I see a human creature with so much
quicksilver in their frame and so much solidity in their
brain. Take him altogether, he is a marveUous creature—

14 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1841
immensely tall and immensely handsome — yourself on a
larger scale.'
His holidays were spent with various relatives, and often
at Killerton, Sir Thomas Acland's,^ an old friend of the
Morier family. Happiest of aU when he was able to retum
to his beloved home in Swdtzerland. Speaking of his
arrival there, his mother writes on nth July 1841 —
' ... In order to get as fast as possible he seems to have
tried every possible conveyance, and, speaking fortunately
German with tolerable faciUty, to have managed un
commonly well. At Bale he found the diUgence just set
ting off, they assured him there was no place, at which he
grumbled ; that would not do. He then offered a double
fare, but they had already put one more than the right
number in, and could not in any way stuff in another. He
then said as a last resource, he would try what being the
son of a plenipo would do. So he pulled out his passport,
proved to them who he was, and that it was indispensable
that he should reach his father's without delay; upon which
the conductor on learning the name, gave him up his seat,
and stowed himself away he does not know where. In this
way he got to the next place, and there he went shares with
a Swiss officer in a smaU carriage which brought them to
Beme. He had three hours before the diUgence started for
Thun ; instead of resting himself after having been travelUng
two nights and days without sleep, he went to the riding
school, astonished the people who could not believe he was
the same little boy they had knovra before, and under
pretence of seeing how the establishment was flourishing,
tried every horse in the stable.'
On the eve of his confirmation on 13th June 1842, his
mother writes to him : —
' . . . Indeed it is a most important era in your life, for
amongst all nations the change from boyish dependence to
manly responsibility was considered of the greatest import
ance ; you are reading the History of Rome, and therefore
could tell me to an hour when the puerile dress was left off
1 Sir Thomas Acland, Bart., b. 1787, d. 1871, M.P. for Devon.

1842] SCHOOL DAYS 15
and the manly robe put on. If I remember my bygones
correctly, it was at sixteen or seventeen, and attended by
much ceremony and rejoicing, and yet what was it compared
to the equipment St. Paul speaks of which you now at the
same age would attempt to wear. Highly as they may have
rated the duties of citizen, what are they compared to those
of Christian, which add spiritual to moral responsibilities,
which include all — duty to God, to the State, to your neigh
bour, to your family, and to yourself. ... It is said that
those who are brought up on goat's milk are fond of climbing
and capering. An old Comte de RuUy used to declare that
he could see the ears grow of those who were nursed on the
milk of asses. You, my dearest boy, were not only born in
Paris, but nourished on French milk ; I would have you
therefore exceedingly on your guard against the two great
faUings of the Frenchman, levity and vanity. . . . High
spirits accompanied with a pure conscience and love and
trust in God have carried men over the roughest ways in
the stormiest events of life with a facility astonishing to
one equaUy good perhaps, but by nature of a low and
desponding temperament. But on the other hand, they
are the greatest snare unless accompanied by a mo^t
determined wiU, an obstinate determination to resist
temptation in its bud, and all seduction from friends and
acquaintances to do anything however trifling that might
lead further than a tender conscience wiU aUow, and that
manly hardness, which, like the bone of the racehorse or the
wood of the oak, is capable from the closeness of its texture
to receive the highest polish of religious principle, and bid
defiance alike to the example of the greater part of your
own sex and the foolish flattery of the other.'
As far back as April 1840, his father had put his name
down forBaUiol College, 'on Dr. Jenkyns's Ust of candidates,
and as the men at that coUege stand very high, you wiU find
it necessary to work hard during the next three years in
order not to disgrace eihter your father or your coUege.'
Meanwhile, it had been decided, with a view of giving
a more definite object and greater interest to his studies,
that he should compete for a scholarship at the same coUege

i6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1844
though, as his tutor said, there was no hope that one so
young should succeed. It was therefore no disappoint
ment when, on going up for the examination in November
1843, he faUed to obtain the scholarship. Great, however,
was the consternation when in the foUowdng spring he failed
to pass his matriculation examination for BalUol.
Burnet to his Father 'June 2nd, 1844.
' . . . You will have perceived by my last letter to my
mother . . . that I had great misgivings as to how my
examination would tum out, and now I need not teU you
how great is my mortification and pain in having to inform
you that my apprehensions have been realised, and that my
examination did not tum out successful. The point on
which it tumed, however, was not that which I feared, but
my Latin prose composition, which I am afraid I never paid
sufficient attention to in my work. ... I cannot tell you,
dearest father, how great a trial this has been to me, and I
am sure if you knew how deeply I felt it, you would feel for
me. ... I find my principal faults to be want of steadiness
and perseverance in the pursuit of my duties, want of
humility and resting on myself, and no greater check to all
these, if rightly used, could have been found than my late
failure. Nothing but steady and constant work wiU redeem
the lost ground, it has humbled me in my opinion, and has
taught me to put my trust in God — at least I hope I may say
it has. . . .' The Same io the Same '¦June nth, 1844.
' . . . I cannot sufficiently thank you for your letter of
the 2nd June received this moming. There is consolation
and encouragement in every line of it, and the oftener I
read it, the more strengthened I feel by it. ... I have,
thank God, by this time recovered to a great degree the
equUibrium, if such an expression is allowable, of my mind,
which was at first quite stunned, as it were stupefied by the
shock. . . . About my future prospects, I would not now
give up Oxford for the world. I have not only before me

i844] SCHOOL DAYS 17
to acquire honour, but to wipe out disgrace, and with God's
blessing I shaU do both. . . . Whatever you do, let me
beseech you not to give up the idea of sending me to Oxford.
Let me not go into a profession where it could be said,
" There is the man who is sent here because he could not
get into Oxford." '
His cousin, A. Carlton Cumberbatch, who had been sent
to look after him at Oxford, thus reported to his father in
May 1844 : —
' . . . I have seen your dear old boy twice ; he is a dear
feUow, and I love and admire him ; his character is just what
it ought to be at his age, and can be read in his face in five
minutes. He requires the management only of a blood
horse, and his impetuosity should be restrained with a
gentle hand, for I never met with so nervous and sensitive
a creature in my Ufe. Poor dear fellow, he has been put
to the test by his late examination. It has cut him to the
quick, and a hard word would drive him almost to despair.'
His faUure notwithstanding, he had made a very favour
able impression on his examiners ; the master of BaUiol,
the well-known Dr. Jenkyns, writing of him soon after
wards in the foUowing terms : ' From his exceUent dis
position and high moral character, he left us a very favour
able impression, and made us deeply regret his failure.'
His iU-success being attributed to want of preparation and
deficiency in accurate scholarship. Dr. Jenkyns strongly
advised him to go to Mr. Holden, a BaUiol man, an exceUent
scholar and capital crammer, a proposal which, though
warmly backed by Sir T. Acland, Carlton Cumberbatch, and
other friends and counsellors, Bumet at first, from a feeUng
of loyalty and affection to Mr. Utterton, strongly opposed.
' I think if I left Utterton,' he writes, ' I should be greatly
wanting in my duty to him, or at least in common charity
to 'him, and charity to our neighbour is a duty ... no,
my dear father, though I cannot be sufficiently thankful for
the kindness of my friends, still, they cannot put themselves
into my position. I cannot make them enter into my
VOL. I. B

i8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1844
feelings, and though false sentiment and morbid sensitive
ness are my abhorrence, stiU people ought to remember
that a tutor, especially such a one as Utterton has proved
himself to me, is not a piece of machinery, or a mere drudge
or beast of burden, whose feelings you would no more
consult than a cook would that of a wretched tumspit,
and ask him whether he felt hot and close in the pleasant
roimd of his occupations. . . .'
Ultimately, however, the advice of his family and friends
prevailed, and Bumet joined Mr. Holden at Upminster in
August 1844. His defeat had nerved him to severe efforts,
and he set to work with a wUl to retrieve his failure — aU the
while, even in the midst of his hardest studies, keeping up
an unflagging correspondence with his family.
Burnet Morier to his Father
'Upminster, September 1844.
' ... By the way, my dear father, I have determined
at last to keep a commonplace-book, and as I mean it to be
a good one of its kind I should not like to begin it without
a few hints on your part. Talking of this sort of thing, I
do not know whether I mentioned to you having dined
some time ago, whilst still in Surrey, at Mrs. Evelyn's,
Wootton Park, the seat and family of old John Evelyn,
who lived in Charles the First's time, and wrote some
famous memoirs, and also a book called Sylva. It is
a curious old house, and surroimded with woods, etc. —
scenery so truly English and beautiful as never to be
obUterated from my memory. I dined in company with a
regular brick of an old antiquary, who was the discoverer
of the memoirs some twenty years ago in a heap of letters
and papers. Seeing I took an interest in his conversation,
the old dog was pleased, and promised to show me the
identical memoirs, which he did, and immensely interesting
they were. Besides this he showed me heaps of original
letters of Charles the First at different periods of his reign
down to a few days before his execution, and more beautiful
letters, or filled with a more angelic spirit, you cannot
conceive.'

i844] SCHOOL DAYS 19

To his mother about the same date
' . . . I wish very much to know whether you have read
Coningsby, and if you have, what you think of it. I make
a point of never reading novels except in vacation time,
but have made an exception in favour of this, as being a book
that you cannot very well enter a drawing-room without
hearing discussed, and also affording, as I was given to
understand, a great insight into the political world of the
last twenty years, of which I was dying to know something.
It has intensely interested me, and given me a great thorough
acquaintance, though just now I cannot afford time for it.
But I shall be able in future to appreciate much more the
conversation of Acland, etc. At the end of the third volume
there are a few cursory remarks on the various fields opened
respectively by Diplomacy and the Bar, which, strange to
say, had been occupying my thoughts for a long time before,
and the line recommended being exactly what I in my
mind rather leaned towards, and for the same reason. If
you have not read the book yet, get it as soon as you
can. . . .' From his Mother
ChAteau de Oberhofen, March 1844.
' . . . I am sorry to say I can have no chat with you on
the subject of Coningsby, not having read it. English
novels only get to Beme when pirated, which takes time.
The author has the reputation of being an unworthy member
of Young England, and not exactly the person whose axioms
one would swallow whole ; but if he has tumed your mind
towards the Law rather than Diplomacy, and you have time.
Lord Eldon's Memoirs, I am told, give an exceUent picture
of what a young man must do in the way of work if he
would inherit his big wig. ... I have been reading lately
Arnold's Memoirs, which have interested me a good deal ;
with opinions leading straight to the wUdest democracy,
both in Church and State, there was a deep and abiding
love of his Saviour, and the poor, and an anxious desire for
the improvement of his country and her institutions, for

20 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1844
which one cannot help heartily loving him, and at the same
time thanking Heaven that he had nothing else to rule
over than little boys, to whom he did not talk politics, but
in whom he did engraft a portion of that divine love which
raised the tone of his school far above all others of the
day. . . .' The same to the same
'ChAteau de Oberhofen, October 21st, 1844.
' I have done as you bid me, bought Coningsby, and have
been reading it. With regard to what seems to have made
an especial impression upon you, Sidonia's opinion with
regard to the respective merits of Diplomacy and Law, I
cannot agree with you, nor admit that the representative
of a great and mighty nation is a phantom without nation
ality, without country and political creed ; on the contrary,
I know he can be very positively and substantially a person
capable of doing much good and preventing great harm,
and that he can be the very incarnation of nationality and
love, and adhere to his country by all the distance that
separates him from her faults and brings him in contact
with those of her neighbours ; and that the habit of weigh
ing and comparing a variety of political creeds, judging
them by a high and holy standard, gives a much more
enlarged and enlightened view than is held by those who are
straitened and pent up in the trammels of party spirit
and party faction at home. ProfessionaUy I know few
objections to diplomacy, personally I know many. Law
certainly avoids expatriation, and if it be followed as Lord
Eldon followed it, working from four in the moming with a
wet towel round his head untU late at night, refusing all
society whatever, and interrupting himself merely to run
to the other end of the street to purchase six pennyworth
of sprats for his dinner, it may, if the solicitors who now
bring up their sons to the Bar, secure professional aid and
carefully exclude all interlopers from any opportunity of
showing their powers, will for once favour him with a few
briefs, it may by a continuance of the same labour ulti
mately secure a handsome fortune, a judge's, or even a
chancellor's wig. But this career is not the one which is

i845] SCHOOL DAYS 21
running, I suspect, in your young head. You would enter
the Law with a secret hope that something or other might
tum up to bring you into the House of Commons where
you would hope to distinguish yourself, and obtain office
in the Government of the country. Confess, is not this it ?
Is it not politics, and not Law, that you are really hankering
after ? Now, my dearest Bumet, beware of encouraging
this feeling, for it will only lead to misery. You are not so
placed as to be able to pursue a political career either with
honour or advantage. You are not independent, you must
live by your profession, and no politician can do his country
service or obtain honour for himself who cannot afford to
spurn all office and advantage which might compromise a
principle. There is no career so full of snares, so dangerous
to probity, as that of politics to a poor and talented man.
I could say a great deal more on this subject, but that for
the present at least our decision in favour of one profession
rather than another does not press.'
A letter which evidently carried conviction.
Burnet Morier to his Mother "¦June c,th, 1845.
' . . . My retuming love for the diplomatics grows
warmer every day. The fact is, I never loved the law -pour
ses beaux yeux, but only looked to it as a stepping-stone
for all manner of fine things in the Parliamentary and
Prime Minister line. The day of rotten boroughs is, how
ever, over, and next to serving one's country in that line I
certainly own nothing can be more noble than supporting
her owm high character before the astonished eyes of
foreigners. A life of public service is certainly one to which
circumstances as well as my own inclination seem to point
to, and for that purpose no better foundation could be had
than three years at Oxford spent as I hope and intend mine
may be. Exactitude and business manners, together with
a knowledge of the machinery of society to be acquired only
in the best society, are equally necessary as cement to such
foundations.'

23 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845

CHAPTER III
OXFORD
' March Sth, 1845.
' My BELOVED Father and Mother, — I have, thank God,
just passed at Balliol. I am going to matriculate in a
few minutes, having already taken the oath.'
To the end of his life, Morier never forgot all he owed
to Oxford, to the friendships and interests he formed
there, and to which he clung ever after. Thirty-five years
later, in 1879, he wrote to Jowett : —
' ... If I take stock of what Oxford did for me, I can
safely say it made me personally acquainted with one
Jowett, one Thucydides, and one Aristotle. Number i,
thank God, has never parted from me nor I from him.
Number 3 did a deal for me for many years afterwards
and even to the present day. In these days of total
moral anarchy, it is well worth considering what that
old ethical discipline of the unreformed Oxford schools
did for the generations it educated. I had this extra
ordinary advantage, that I came in for the old discipline
at the very moment it was being impregnated with the
new, so that I got the advantage of both. Say what
you wUl, it is incalculable what a body of ethical doctrine
assimilated partly as dogma and partly as science so as
to become a very part of one for the rest of one's life, will
do for a man. I very much doubt if speculations on the
solar spectrum and the microscopic investigation of proto
plasm will do as much. Number 2 has always haunted
me as the poire pour la soif, that I should reserve for the
day I should really be called upon to do public work,
having a dim but deep recollection of the concentrated
political wisdom it contained. ..."

i845] OXFORD 23
Burnet Morier to his Father ' March wth, 1845.
' . . . I suppose you will ere this have received my
hurried scrawl from Oxford announcing the joyful news of
my now being an unworthy member of that University.
I must now put you a little more up to details. I heard
of the 5th having been appointed for matriculation about
a fortnight before, but thought it on the whole best not
to mention anything about it, that you might not be more
fidgety than needful. I crammed up like bricks to the
last. On the morning of the 5th I entered the dread
hall which I had left the last time in no very amiable
mood. By one o'clock my fate was settled. The master
and tutors highly complimented me and said I had done
the greatest credit both to myself and tutor. At three
o'clock we went through the ceremony before Dr. Jenkyns
of having all our names inscribed in a huge book and
taking oaths of being good boys, etc. Amongst other
things that are written down in latin in the records are
what one's worthy parents are. Poor little Jenkyns when
he came to Minister Plenipotentiary was regularly
flummuxed, and was obliged to ask me how he should put
it down in latin. I said I thought Legatus would do, so
you will go down to posterity as Legatus ad Helvetios
Confederatos. ... At five we were invested in our
academicals, viz. cap and gown, white tie and bands,
and marshalled before the Vice-ChanceUor, where we
swore to the Thirty-Nine Articles and No Popery. . . .
The next day I went and saw Mr. WooUcombe, my future
tutor, who told me what books to read in the meanwhUe.
I shall in all probabUity have rooms in October. . . .'
His father, greatly relieved, wrote from Berne, where
he was immersed in the Swiss troubles then approaching
a crisis : — • March 21st, 1845.
' . . . The delight your letter gave us is not to be
expressed, after two previous faUures to have got it at
last so well, is great and unspeakable comfort. I expect

24 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845
detaUs of your examination, what were the chief points,
etc' And a few days later, 25th March 1845 : —
' . . . You are naturaUy anxious to know the real
state of things in this distracted land. A few days will
perhaps clear up the at present rather doubtful point
whether or no the Frei Schaaren wUl, at last, have the
courage to run the risk of having their heads broken, while
they break what is now declared to be the law by the
Diet, viz. that the members of the same famUy have no
right to cut one another's throats. The general report,
spread since the adjournment of the Tagsatzung, stUl
continues to be that the long-threatened and boasted-of
attack on Lucerne is to take place to-day. If it is to be,
the sooner the better, for all parties are sick of waiting so
long for the drawing up of the curtain, and wish to have
done with it. The truth is the Eidgenossenschaft is very
ill ; seedy, rickety, no patching or plastering wiU do.
The various sorts of court-plasters which have been applied,
beginning with ours, continued by jolly old Pontois,^
carried on by grim gaunt PhUlipsberg,^ and to be concluded
by prussic acid, will not effect a radical cure ; caustics
or the knife can only reach a gangrene, but in the operation
the patient may be so cut up as to leave no traces of his
former self. All accounts from Vaud agree in describing
the revolutionary spirit there as hideous.. The worst
feature is that it has principally displayed itself among
the youth from sixteen and upwards in the shape of
everything connected with religious feeling. The churches
and chapels have been the scenes of scandalous outrage,
and private houses, where prayer-meetings common
amongst many families are known to be held, have been
invaded by the paid guard of the revolutionary Govern
ment. I had a long visit from the facile prineeps ^ of
this movement while at Ziirich. He came evidently to
talk me over into the belief that it was a pure and holy
' Pontois, Comte de, French Minister at Beme.
'^ Austrian charge d'affaires.
^ Druey, Deputy for Vaud.

i845] OXFORD

25

revolution, and that he was a much calumniated innocent.
He has so thick a neck and embarrassed a thorax that every
word he utters is accompanied by the distressing sound
as of a superannuated pair of bellows which no sane person
would either lend or borrow, and raises the apprehension
lest the speaker should go off in a fit of apoplexy. His
fundamental maxim is : the wiU of the people is the
measure of right and wrong and must be obeyed. I had
the satisfaction of teUing him that the principle of the
sovereignty of the people was a monstrous lie. We parted
very good friends, and if he could knock me and all Dips
on the head to-morrow I doubt not he would do it with
right goodwiU. But these fanfarons are a set of abject
cowards. God bless you, my dearest Burnet. I longed
to get your answer as to the details of your examination.
Do you not now feel the truth of the Psalmist's words, " It
is good for me to have been in trouble that I might keep
Thy statutes " ? '
The attack of the Freischaaren on Lucerne took place
on 1st April and was repulsed with great loss.
Burnet Morier to his Father ^ April ISth, 1845.
' . . . What a kick-up there has been at Lucerne,
hurrah for the licking the Radicals have got. I cannot
say I feel the least compassion for them in the world.
I saw Bunsen the other day and had a very long talk with
him on Swiss politics, ditto with Sir Charles Vaughan.^ . . .
There has been rather a fine mal entendu which has given
rise to much fun and some bother. Kitty,^ in order to
frighten Aunt Emily, put me up to saying Berne had been
bombarded. I immediately took the hint and with a
most solemn face entered into the particulars, describing
how the balls whizzed about and even lodged in your
house. Having taken the hint from Kitty first and she
seeing me look so grave, was humbugged herself and
^ Vaughan, Sir Charles, b. 1774, d. 1849, diplomatist. Minister Pleni
potentiary to Confederated States of Switzerland, 1823-1825.
2 Daughter of John Morier, afterwards married to Hon. F. Grimston.

26 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845
really believed it had been ; she immediately told the
cousinhood and my Aunt Morier ; the latter goes to a
soiree at Lady Palmerston's that evening, and, by way
of something to say, enters into a detail of the siege to
Lady Shelley. Great, as you may suppose, is the interest
and cross-questionings as to the certainty of the informa
tion and the faith to be put in it. I am lugged in as the
very best possible authority, and a letter is said to have
been received by me that day. Lady SheUey immediately
goes up and gives the whole account to the Duke of
WelUngton, who draws a very long face (as weU he
may, for he was doubtless well up in the whole of the
circumstances and must have known that the bombard
ment of Berne was about as likely as the blowing
up of the North Pole). The next morning there was
an eclair cissement, and my aunt had to write to Lady
SheUey.' Though now a matriculated member of Oxford Uni
versity, Morier was only to go into residence in October ;
so, in the meanwhile, he had returned to Upminster to
read with Mr. Holden, and there spent the spring and
summer, diversified by occasional expeditions to London,
which caused his mother some anxiety, fearing, as she did,
that social pleasures might lead him to neglect his studies,
though in answer to her warning against paying too much
attention to the ' fair civUities of Mrs. Dawson-Damer or
M. Brunnow ' ^ he assures her, ' You need not fear my head
being turned by it, as I had last year, when much younger,
quite enough to turn it, and yet I think it is straight enough
on my shoulders.'
After spending three months in Switzerland with his
family, Burnet returned to England on 3rd October to
settle down at Oxford.
' . . . Shall I not be glad,' his mother writes on loth
October, ' to hear of your first impressions on the life
you have begun upon, your interviews with Dr. Jenkyns —
if you have, as I anxiously hope, rooms in College — your
first visits to Don WaU and Don WooUcombe— the old
^ The Russian Ambassador.

i845] OXFORD 27
friends you find — ^the new acquaintances you make — all
of which and every possible detail I hope you will give
me at your leisure ; not wait till conscience speaks of
courier day and then sit down five minutes before the
post. It will not make you conceited, nor wUl you learn
more than you know, when I tell you how constantly you
have been in my thoughts since you left us. Perhaps I
have never felt your quitting us so keenly. It seemed as
if I loved you more as I foresaw the temptations you will
now be exposed to will be greater than any you have yet
encountered, and that a three months' experience has
shown me that you had not yet obtained the thorough
command over your temper and your will which may,
with God's blessing, attend the efforts which I am sure
you feel necessary and are resolved to make, although you
do not declare your resolve.'
On 14th October Burnet wrote from London to his
father : —
' . . . Obeying my instructions to a T., I arrived
at Oxford Thursday evening and presented myself at
the gates of Balliol early on Friday morning and asked
for Mr. WooUcombe. " Mr. WooUcombe, zur," says the
female Cerberus of Balliol, " vy, he is wisitin' with the
Master." "The Master," says I, " why, is he not here ? "
" Oh no, zur, we don't meet till this day week." This
is a seU, cries I (and perhaps added in parenthesis, they
will believe me another time). I then turned my steps to
Mr. Wall, who told me he had been taken quite by surprise
and did not understand it yet. So aU I had to do was
just to turn back again. ... My name is not down for
rooms, but Wall says I am certain to be squeezed in some
where ' — which he was. Three days afterwards he announces
to his mother that he is at last a resident member of the
University. '. . . I found a very nice bedroom ready for
me in CoUege, though no sitting-room. The latter I have
accordingly procured for myself in Broad Street, only
about three or four hundred yards from the gates of
Balliol. ... I had a long interview with Mr. WooUcombe,

28 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845
and delivered him my credentials, and he seems in every
sense of the word a good fellow.'
His letters home are full of his new interests and ex
periences. A month later, speaking of a freshman's first
term, he says : —
' ... He is in a perpetual state of fiUing-up-time-
iveness. To understand this you must know that a fresh
man is not supposed to, and cannot, refuse any invitations
the first term ; the second term he asks aU men back
again, selects his acquaintance, and drops those he does
not like. This being the case one's spare time is pretty
weU fiUed up.' And referring to the length of lectures
he says : ' I do ten chapters of Thucydides instead of
five I was used to, and then Jowett, who is one of the
best tutors in the University, has a much wider range
of questions, including history, etc. . . . You may be glad
to hear that I got great kudos for my English theme last
week.' To his Mother ' November 2nd, 1845.
' . . . I long for one of your two-sheet letters, having
heard but once from you since my arrival at this seat of
learning, into which I am beginning to get graduaUy more
and more shaken down, though it is not a process that takes
place so soon as one might imagine. WooUcombe is
my tutor, and a more gentlemanlike nice fellow could not
exist as far, at least, as I can see of him in lecture and in
the shop, for the tutors may say what they wUl, but it is
impossible for dons and undergraduates to mingle much.
Of my acquaintance in College those, of course, I am
thickest with are freshmen of my own standing. Of
these, those I live with almost entirely are of course
my old and tried friends, Slade, Peel, a son of Lawrence
Peel and Lady Jane, and Campbell, a son of Lord Cawdor's.
The two latter are remarkably nice fellows, and we gener
ally mess, in fact live together. ... As far as work is
concerned, it is impossible in your first term to do any

1846] OXFORD

29

more than just get up the lectures, do the weekly essay
and weekly piece of Latin, catechetics and work at the
analyses for the term, viz. one of Thucydides and the
divinity one, viz. Ezra and Nehemiah. This, I can
assure you, is regular stumping work ; but next term I
shall have fewer lectures and be more settled down, and
I shall then begin my regular little go work. . . .'
On 1st April 1846 he tells his father how he spent his
twentieth birthday in ' Collections.'
' . . . Can you fancy a poor victim before a Board
of Inquisition in some such place as the Dungeon of Spiez ?
If so, fancy me in CoUections. I was kudized in the
highest terms, first by the Master for essays, by WooU
combe for Latin, by Jowett for Thucydides, and Temple
for mathematics, which you know is a voluntary, and
therefore double kudos.' He states his intention to stay
up for the Easter vacation : ' ... It is a bore rather,
but as old Slade stays up and Peel and Grosvenor ^
it will not be half so bad.' Of the latter he says :
' ... He is a most charming fellow, and I hope to
introduce him to you this summer. With his high rank
and the immense fortune he is coming into, there is not
one single atom of pretension of any kind. He has the
best temper in the world, and without exception is the
best-looking fellow I ever saw. He, together with Gija,
one of my great friends here, and Stephen Lawley, late
of this College, brother of my great friend Frank Lawley,^
are coming abroad this summer.'
His family correspondence seems to have been some
what neglected at this time, for his mother, writing on
3rd March 1846, rather sardonically observes : —
' I had reaUy begun to be in a rare fidget and fancy no
end to your chuckings, your tumbles, and the consequences
thereof amounting at least to the dislocation of your right
' Afterwards first Duke of Westminster.
2 Sons of Lord Wenlock.

30 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1846
thumb and forefinger, and therefore was considerably
relieved when I learned it was only Thucydides and Euclid
who were the stumbling-block, and your pitching into
them so, and so much to your satisfaction, the only cause
for your silence. I rejoice to hear your tutors think you
have something in you. What that is, I shall know when
it comes out, but should it prove seed of aught that is
great or good, grudge no watering you can give or get.
Man with all his fourscore years has but one spring.'
The period Morier joined Oxford was one of great
poUtical and religious excitement, coinciding, as it did,
with the end of the great tractarian movement which had
proved so eventful a crisis in the history of the University.
When still at Upminster, on 13th February 1845, he
records that —
' Holden has gone up to-day to vote on the Ward question
at Oxford, which is creating a vast deal of interest at present ;
he intends to vote against the Vice-Chancellor,^ not so
much for the sake of Mr. Ward as for the unfair manner
in which they gave notice of their intention, only having
given Members of Convocation five days to determine
the points on which he is to be judged.'
And a week later, on 20th February : —
' The famous Convocation has at length had its meeting
and delivered its judgment, and an iniquitous judgment
it is, one guided entirely by party spirit and fanatical zeal,
a majority consisting of fat little no popery evangelical
parsons on one side and men like Grant, Manning, and
Acland on the other. . . .'
Describing the scene at Christchurch in a letter to his
father a year later, 26th February 1846, he says : —
' . . . I heard Pusey a few Sundays back ^ deliver his
first sermon since his suspension. The cathedral was
crowded to a fearful excess, dons, undergraduates, and
' Dr. Symons. 2 On ist February.

1846] OXFORD 31
townsmen being heaped up together in incongruous masses.
His subject was Confession, and certainly in my humble
opinion there was not one word which his bitterest foe
could have laid hold of. His delivery as well as the sermon
was exactly what I expected and what I am sure you would
have liked. The language plain and unadorned, but full
of depth and meaning like the calmness of the river, the
surest indication of its depth. His delivery corresponded
exactly to this, earnest but unimpassioned, with a tone
of melancholy winningness in it, almost a weakness in
the voice, proclaiming the man of fasting and mortifica
tion. The sermon was strictly argumentative and required
to be closely followed up. The impression the whole left
upon me was as if I had heard some hermit of renowned
sanctity just emerged from the wilderness to spend a few
hours amongst us. The portly person of his persecutor,
the Vice-ChanceUor, contrasted anything but to the
advantage of the latter, as with pompous tread he wedged
his way through the crowd, attended with all the panoply
of pokers.*
His mother, referring to this letter, says : —
' ... If he [Pusey] treats, as I presume he does, on
confession to God he cannot express himself too strongly.
Without it no progress can be made, no grace obtained ;
no duty ought to be performed so regularly, so conscien
tiously, so minutely, and when it is, confession to our
fellow-man wiU not often be necessary, although I do
not presume to say that there may not be many cases
where such a course may be both useful and proper if
the right man can by any means be found. St. Frangois
de Sales, in the little book I gave you, says a good director
is one in ten thousand, perhaps if he added another o
he would have been stiU nearer the truth.'
She adds : —
' . . . We have depths within us which we know not
of, untu some deep calamity, some overwhelming trial
which rends in twain our heart and spirit opens them to
our view, as a traveller crossing the Mer de Glace comes

32 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1846
suddenly on a fearful rent cleft by the storm which has
raged but an hour ago.'
Not only was Oxford at that time in the throes of a
religious crisis, but in the political world the agitation
consequent on the repeal of the Corn Laws was even more
momentous. On 23rd January 1846 Morier writes to his
mother : —
' I am most deeply interested in the state of affairs,
having had long and frequent conversations with both
Sir Thomas [Acland] and Tom on the present political
crisis. I breakfasted with Sir Thomas this morning and
he was in very low spirits about things, after Sir Robert's
[Peel] speech last night.'
And on the 22nd March : —
' . . . The present political crisis is certainly a puzzler
to me. Having all one's ideas turned topsy-turvey, sud
denly to find out that a Cobden has been right for the last
three years, a wonder of political prescience, is a shaker.
I expect in another year to find that O'Connell is in reality
the patriotic redeemer of poor Ireland he pretends to be.'
In a letter from Berne, dated the 3rd March, on the
same subject, his mother had said : —
' . . . Here we are stiU waiting for the termination of
the Corn Law debate, whUe at home, I suppose, the exact
number by which Sir Robert [Peel] is to carry it has
become settled in each man's mind long ago. As a financial
question, our Premier has shown himself so correct in his
tariff anticipations that I, for one, when he tells the agri
culturists that Free Trade raises prices and proves it from
beef to bedding, bow with the farmer, and say Amen,
and when he tells the cotton-spinner that Free Trade is
to produce such low prices that he wUl be enabled to
compete with the world, I bow again and say. So be it,
leaving his long head and weighty arms to bring these
two ends to meet. But as a political question, whether
by breaking his own party into fractions he has not there
by taken the drag off tlxe democratic wheel and by thus

1846I OXFORD 33
putting his shoulder to it, given it an impetus which wUl
prevent his ever forming one strong enough to fasten on
again, is what he would find it difiicult to reply to himself,
and indeed what nothing but time can show.'
The enjoyment of the summer vacation of 1846, spent
in Switzerland, was considerably marred by the serious
illness of Frank Lawley, Morier's great friend, who had
accompanied him. October saw him back at Oxford,
from whence he writes on the 26th : —
' . . . The close and, I must add, unpleasant vicinity of
my " smalls " prevents my writing more than to let you
know that I am getting into my reading by degrees. . . .
I should have plenty of time for my " little go " work
had I nothing else to do, but having just begun Aristotle's
Ethics, it leaves me but a portion of my time to employ
on what at present I am getting in a desperate funk about„
. . . An account of my row,^ copied, I believe, from the
Presse, having got into the Times, Herald, and other
newspapers, has formed the subject of no few jokes and
discussions here, and has occasioned a new nickname,
viz., " the old masse of gallantry " which has since been
shortened into masse.'
On 17th November : —
' . . . The only piece of extravagance I have been
guilty of this term is putting on Walrond as a coach with
the ground I have to go over. I could not do without
one, and his conversation and company is worth that of
a hundred coaches. I am doing Aristotle's Ethics with
him at present, though I have a public lecture in them
besides, — but with such a tough party as Aristotle il n'y
en a pas de trap. WooUcombe kudized me the other day
for my Latin composition, and again urged me strongly
to read, at least, at present for a class, and most good
naturedly, with the work he has as senior tutor, gives me
two hours private coaching a week in the evening, and
to choose my own book, which is for the present Tacitus,
1 Vide infra, p. 53.
VOL. I. C

34 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [T847
as it is a hard book to construe at the same time
correctly and elegantly. I am, joking apart, working in
earnest. . . .'
The year 1847 began under unfavourable auspices for
the Morier famUy. Politically the state of Switzerland
was growing daUy worse ; indeed, all idea of law and
government seemed to have vanished altogether. Already
the year before, in 1846, Lord Aberdeen, then Foreign
Minister, and ever since Vienna days a staunch friend
of David Morier's, knowing how uncongenial Switzerland
had become, had offered to move him to Florence, a pro
posal which David Morier had been obliged most reluct
antly to decline on account of the great and recent expense
of transferring the Legation inside the town of Berne,
stating that he had — ' from the beginning found no small
difficulty in making my official income, now further
diminished by the Income Tax, meet the necessary ex
penses of my establishment, which I have always felt
myself bound as a British Minister to maintain at least
on a level with the best appointed missions in this country.'
On the other hand, Mrs. Morier's health, which had been
failing ever since the shock of her daughters' death in
1839, began to give way entirely. Burnet therefore
proposed to his father, then detained in England by public
business, to cut the term at Oxford so as to remain with
her. ' Oh, this horrid, horrid climate,' he writes on 24th
February to his father, already distracted between the
conflicting claims of his official duties and the anxiety
of his wife's Ulness, ' Dr. Bourgeois has added his mite
to the overwhelming testimony there existed before, that
nothing can avaU her as long as she stays in this town.
Every breath she draws here is poisonous. Let me beg
of you, dearest papa, not to use your entreaties but your
commands that as soon as it is possible for her to be moved
she shall go to some sheltered spot, if it were only some
lodging at Thun.'
Convalescence, however, set in, and Burnet was enabled
to return to Oxford in AprU. A graphic account of his

i847] OXFORD 35
journey home, dated from Boulogne-sur-Mer, 9th AprU
1847 :—
' . . . Got into the MaUe Poste at Basle about four
o'clock. Nothing particular happened, as I was alone
most of the way. We changed MaUe-Postes at Troyes, a
britska for a berline, and with the latter got an addition
in way of live goods in a stout old lady and a sUent gentle
man. The road is dull enough, nothing varying the
eternal monotony of everlasting fallows except now and
then a dismal-looking straight line of wood never once
breaking the unvaried straight line of the horizon. The
only change is the few minutes occupied in rattling through
some old fortified town with its now stationary draw
bridge, deep moat, and solid battlemented walls, all the
very type of a bygone century, and absurdly out of char
acter with the dwarfish-looking, tight-laced, loosed-
breeched French sentinels who now manned their walls.
For some sixty or seventy seconds the cynosure of a
thousand ragged eyes (excuse the expression, poetical
licence for a thousand eyes belonging to ragged pro
prietors, vide Virgil, Aeneid, 11- 14, 436, etc.), while the
sweating, neighing, biting, kicking, muddy team is ex
changed for one equaUy neighing, biting, kicking, and as
muddy, and we are again off, rattling through the narrow
crazy streets, apparently threatening destruction to the
tumble-down looking houses on each side, were it not that
their almost touching roofs seem to promise each other
support.' Writing to his mother on his return to Balliol, 27th
April 1847, after complaining of the dullness of London,
he says : —
"... However,, thanks to my being in the company
of my dear father, I had not only the pleasure of his
society, but I was also introduced to some of his friends,
amongst others to Sir Stratford Canning, whose acquaint
ance I had long wished to make. I had the good luck
to make one of a double tete-A-tete to breakfast the next
morning to my "introduction, the other two being my

36 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1847
father and Sir R. Inglis.^ The conversation (in which I,
of course, took no share) was, as you may suppose from
your knowledge of the component parts, most interesting ;
the freshness and vividness which the impressions made
on my father by the East have retained with the naturaUy
poetical colour of his mind, and the immense store of old
Inglis' plain facts, acted admirably as a set off to the graphic
and masterly delineation of Sir Stratford. Comparing
the conversation to a picture, the one might be said to
afford the lighter and warmer tints, the second the materiel,
the big rock, I mean, or foreground, or anything of the
sort, not much in itself but indispensable as bringing out
the meaning of the artist ; whilst the latter would be rather
the action of the picture (if you understand what I mean,
something akin to what the moral is in a tale). Sir
Stratford Canning, next to Sir Thomas Acland, gives me
the idea of the greatest cleverness of any man I have met.
I should say Sir Thomas was a man of greater natural
genius. Sir Stratford the more cultivated intellect ; the
one has made Nature his principal study, the other has
made man. Hence Sir Stratford is more at home when
sketching off with a few masterly touches the character
of a Talleyrand or a Pozzo di Borgo ; Sir Thomas, when
describing some scene in the Tyrol. Hence the language
of the one is more classical and pure, that of the other more
poetical and imaginative.'
In another letter to his mother, equally dated from
BalUol, 9th May : —
' . . . There is very little going on here of general
interest. The boat races succeed each other on alternate
nights. BaUiol has bumped University, but is not likely
to get higher. I went a few nights ago by invitation of
Walrond to a meeting of the Decad Society. This society,
consisting originally of ten members, was got up by Stanley,
WooUcombe, Lake, and others about ten years ago, and is
a spouting club. They meet once a week in one another's
rooms, or in the common rooms of their respective colleges,
and discuss some subject or other proposed by one of tlieir
* Inglis, Sir Robert, b. 1786, d. 1855, poUtician.

i847] OXFORD 37
members and having in general regard to some topic of
the day ; only first-rate men belong to it, and it certainly
was very interesting to watch (as it was more for discus
sion than for the display of oratory) the way in which these
men, all deeply read in Aristotle, met each other's argu
ments. The principal speaker was one by name of Con-
ington (John Virgil), who has carried everjd;hing before him
here, as well as before at Rugby. He is not a man of any
extraordinary or original genius, but wonderfully read in
almost every branch of science and literature. Clough,
Walrond's intimate friend, was decidedly the next best
speaker, next to him Walrond. The subject was the
advisability of a separation of Church and State. The
curious feature, as it struck me, was to hear all these first-
rate men, however different in principle, yet all seeming to
argue that this separation must take place sooner or later.'
In June 1847 David Morier proceeded to Switzerland
to present his letters of recall and bring back his wife, his
diplomatic career thus terminating after a period of forty-
three years of uninterrupted public service.

38 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1847

CHAPTER IV
THE SWISS TROUBLES
The events which led to David Morier's recall from the
Berne Mission were summed up many years later by his
son as foUows : —
' . . . For generations Switzerland has been either the
battlefield for the rival intrigues of its big neighbours, or
the green room in which political dramas, to be afterwards
acted on the big European stage, have been rehearsed.
As long as England considered herself as still belonging to
the European family she was, on numberless occasions,
able to act as the moderator and peacemaker in regard to
quarrels which, originating in Switzerland (refugee ques
tion, Jesuit question, etc.), threatened the peace of Europe.
Not being limitrophe like France, Italy, Austria, or Ger
many, and having no conceivable interest in common with
any of these neighbours, she was marked out as the natural
mediator and neutral friend. During the fifteen years
that my father was minister at Berne, four or five blazing
questions of this kind (the extradition of Louis Napoleon
amongst others) were extinguished bj' the action of
England. My father's wisdom and moderation, his long
experience and thorough acquaintance with the peculi
arities of the position, and the great personal respect which
both the then rival governments of France and Austria
had for him, enabled him to play the part of moderator
with eminent success. These very qualities, however,
were the cause of his faU ! Lord Palmerston, furious
with Guizot about the Spanish marriages, was determined
to get his revenge wherever he could find it. Seeing the
terror with which the rising revolutionary movement
fUled the French Government, he suddenly determined on

i847] THE SWISS TROUBLES 39
giving up the business of peacemaker, and, feeling that
my father's well established character in this line of business
was in the way of a sudden catastrophe, he recalled him
and instigated Peel to perform his celebrated feat of pre
cipitating the Sonderbund War (1847), which was, by the
impulse it gave to the revolutionary party, the direct cause
of the February Revolution which destroyed Guizot, and
with him the repose of Europe for generations to come.'
For the better comprehension, however, of the causes
leading up to the Swiss Revolution and the war of the
Sonderbund, a more detailed explanation will here be
necessary. When, after the era of the first French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Wars, the great reconstruction of the
map of Europe took place at the Congress of Vienna in
1815, Switzerland, after a prolonged period of foreign
invasion and internal disorders, settled down under the
constitution known as the Federal Compact, under which,
her neutrality and independence being guaranteed by
England, France, and Austria, the country enjoyed an
unexampled spell of prosperity and of material and intel
lectual progress. Wealth increased, industry prospered,
education advanced, arts and literature flourished. This
happy state lasted till 1830, when the July Revolution
again disturbed the peace of Europe.
Owing to her geographical position and close proximity
to the storm centre, Switzerland was the first to feel the evil
effects. Political aspirations, which had long lain dormant,
revived, and led to disturbances and riots, and even in many
cases to the overthrow of existing institutions. Before
the end of 1831 eleven cantons had changed both rulers
and constitutions ; moreover, the country was soon over
run by hordes of political refugees, chiefly of German
origin, who not only repaid the protection they received
by actively propagating their revolutionary doctrines and
by fomenting discontent, but who, by their abuse of the
rights of asylum and of the laws of hospitality, were the
causej of the RepubUc being constantly embroUed in
difficulties with her neighbours ; such, for instance, was

40 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1841
the famous Polish eruption into Savoy under Mazzini's
leadership in 1834. A great deal of the mischief after
wards so much deplored was subsequently directly traced
to many of these refugees being at that time admitted to
the universities of Berne and Ziirich, and to the editorship
of Swiss journals.
Soon the whole of Switzerland was seething with political
trouble ; the old religious difficulties in the Catholic and
Protestant cantons being revived with increased violence
by the suppression of all the convents of Argovy by the
government of that canton in 1841. The admission of the
Jesuits into Lucerne in 1844, on the one hand, and the
invasion of the Catholic cantons by large bodies of armed
men known as Corps Francs, or Freischaaren, on the other,
formed the culminating point of the agitation. But it
must be borne in mind that, however impolitic the former
measure may have been, it was strictly legal and within
the rights of cantonal sovereignty ; whereas the organisa
tion of the Freischaaren was radically illegal, and a violation
of the peace.
One of the causes of the evU, which subsequently grew
to such a height, is clearly indicated in an administrative
report of the year 1841, drawn up by the Executive Council
for the Grand Council of Argovy, and therefore not liable
to the suspicion of partiality, addressed as it is to the same
public authority which in 1841, by its confiscation of the
Argovian convents, was the first to openly violate the
federal laws.^
' The reports which we receive with respect to the instruc
tion of the people are not favourable, and for the most part
contain rather blame than praise. Complaints are made especi
ally of the progressive tendency of the youth of the canton
to meetings and insubordination, the adult scholars particu
larly are distinguished by their irreligious spirit and the rude
ness of their manners and character.^ Our people have been
too often excited to insubordination. Too much has been
said of their natural rights and not enough of their natural
duties ; the public newspapers of the canton have too much in
flamed their minds with the pompous words of light and progress,
so that we are now just only reaping what has been sown. The
citizens no longer acknowledge any authority : the youth
1 Report by the School Committee of Zoffingen.

i845] THE SWISS TROUBLES 41
of the canton, without experience and relying on their physical
force, continue to break through every restraint whiclx would
check their presumption. . . .'
The excitement, which had for pretext the Jesuit ques
tion, began undoubtedly at first by being fictitious and
confined to the meetings called by the Committee of the
People's League.! Soon, however, the people, inflamed
by the mischievous activity of revolutionary agitators and
press, were goaded into real fanaticism and into a feverish
state of excitement and distrust, which was skilfully seized
upon by the Radical Party for the advancement of their
aim, i.e. the establishment of a Unitarian Government on
the ruins of the existing Federal Compact.
' The Radicals,' wrote Morier to Sir R.Gordon at Vienna in
May 1845, ' have succeeded in enlarging the scene of contest ;
from the Grand CouncU Chambers it has been transferred
to popular meetings in the open air, and what was formerly
a rivalry for political ascendancy between a few dema
gogues and their partisans is now assuming every day
more and more the character of a rupture between popula
tions of different creeds. The Jesuit question was seized
upon with most perverse adroitness and fatal success by
the Radical leaders of Argovy and Berne, leagued together
to revenge the defeat 2 of their party. La Jeune Suisse, in
the Valais a twelvemonth ago. It was to be foreseen that
they would so act from the moment that Lucerne passed
that ill-advised law [admitting the Jesuits]. The mischief
is now done and has fully justified the apprehensions of
the friends of good order and the hopes of the anarchists
who could not suffer a greater disappointment than to be
deprived of their favourite grievance by the withdrawal
of that law.'
From the beginning of the troubles, the three guarantee
ing Powers — France, Austria, and England — had acted
together in the closest accord and done their very best by
mutual and conciliatory measures to work at the pacifica-
* Denounced by M. Moneau in his presidential speech at the opening
of the Diet.
¦¦' At Trient in the lower Valais, 21st May 1844.

42 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845
tion of the country, and to try and prevent any isolated
or precipitate action which might eventually lead to
civil war. Their efforts were energetically seconded by
all the other Powers, more especially by Prussia, fully
aware that in the then state of Europe any breach of the
peace might involve not Switzerland alone, but the whole
of Europe in incalculable dangers. As Morier pointed
out to Lord Aberdeen on 24th January 1845 : —
' The anti- Jesuit movement in Switzerland would, if it
became an international question, prove peculiarly embar
rassing to both Austria and France in different ways, because
of their own relations with the clerical party. France
especially was between the Devil and the deep sea, because
to uphold the cantonal principle attacked by the Radicals
would affront the French democrats ; whUe the opposite
course, viz. the abandonment of the Federal Compact,
would alienate the Catholic cantons in Switzerland and re
act upon the Catholic party in France. The matter was
further complicated by the fact that France was one of the
Powers guaranteeing the " independence of the Helvetic
body in its present form." '
And on 5th March 1845 he again repeats : —
' . . . France is so situated as to render her Government
most cautious to avoid the appearance of favouring the
Jesuits, Austria on the contrary having no motive for
keeping on terms with the Radicals. We fortunately,' he
adds, ' are so situated as to make it a matter of perfect in
difference to us if both parties, Radicals and Jesuits, were
safely lodged at the bottom of any Swiss lake.'
Lord Aberdeen's endeavours from the first had been
directed towards supporting the moderate party in the
Diet and discouraging foreign intervention,^ whilst his
instructions to Morier, in the opinion of the Geneva
magistrates,^ to whom they had been communicated, were
eminently characterised by a spirit of moderation, wisdom,
and kindly feeUng towards Switzerland. His efforts had
• Morier to Lord Aberdeen, 30th April 1845.
' The same to the same, iztli March 1846.

i845] THE SWISS TROUBLES

43

the whole-hearted support of the Austrian and French
Governments, both expressing their entire accordance with
his views as laid down in his dispatch of the nth February
1845, containing the warning that the ' violation of the
Federal Compact by any party, either through violent
means or by means of a majority obtained in the Diet for
any object subversive of the principle of the cantonal
sovereignty, would be considered by the Powers as involving
the forfeiture by the Confederation of the advantages of
neutrality and territorial inviolability guaranteed to
Switzerland under its present form.'
Referring to this dispatch. Prince Metternich, writing to
the Austrian Ambassador in Paris, Count Apponyi, pro
posed that a declaration should be simultaneously made
by the Powers represented in Switzerland to the same
effect, adding : ' No one more than I do desires the pacifica
tion of Switzerland and that it should be a work wholely
and entirely Swiss,' and in a further communication to
the same, with reference to M. Guizot's wish that all the
Powers should be agreed on the Swiss question. Prince
Metternich says : ' This wish is equally shared by the
Austrian Cabinet, which sees in the unanimous agreement
of the Powers the only means of exercising a beneficial
influence on the march of Swiss affairs.'
Still more emphatic was M. Guizot who, in a note addressed
to the French representatives at Berne, to which the
Ministers of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia had
given their approval, expressed ' his profound conviction
that equitable and patient adjustment of the rights, the
interests, and sentiments concerned is the only road to a
peaceable and honourable arrangement.'
Morier and the Comte de Pontois, the French Minister,
worked in the closest agreement, the former taking a
leading part in most of the negotiations, possessing as
he did not only Lord Aberdeen's but also M. Guizot's
confidence in the highest degree. In a dispatch, dated 13th
January 1845, Morier, writing to Lord Aberdeen, says : —
' There is no doubt that the admission of the Jesuits into
the Canton of Lucerne is a great political mistake, but

44 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845
the attempt to expel them by force, which Berne seems
to be meditating, is not only a mistake but a crime, since
it will involve the ruin of the Confederation. . . . Lucerne
is still disposed even now to give up the Jesuits, if the
single convent of Muri, UlegaUy suppressed with the other
convents of Argovy, were re-established. Let the Pro
testants be just and the Catholics will be reasonable.'
The real aim of the anti- Jesuit agitators could be
gathered from the following passage in the same dispatch : —
' The object of the Bernese rulers is to obtain a majority
in the Diet for the proposition that the expulsion of the
Jesuits from Swiss territory is a question of federal com
petency, and not to be determined by an appeal in limine
to the principles of cantonal sovereignty.'
On 5th March 1845, writing from Berne to Lord Aberdeen,
Morier says : —
' . . . I beUeve the revolution in the Canton de Vaud
has opened their [the Berne Government] eyes and made
them reflect on the contagion of example which might
perhaps encourage the ultra-radical central committee
of anti-Jesuit agitation to try the experiment of pushing
the present avoyers from their seats. M. de Tavel con
fessed to me that the news of that revolution had fiUed
them with consternation, and weU it might, for it has
placed at the head of the most flourishing canton in Switzer
land a set of men who may best be judged by the cry set
up by their partisans — " a bas les braves gens — k bas
ceux qui ont des domestiques — a bas les chr^tiens — a bas
la religion — a bas le bon Dieu." '
This revolution had placed in power as dictator M.
Druey, the Vaudois deputy and leader of the ultra-radical
party, whose political tenets seem to have been resumed
in his dictum, " L' opinion pubUque, c'est la rue," and whose
real object was to suppress the Catholics in the Canton de
Vaud. Frequent assaults were made upon chapels and
oratories and on private houses where religious services
were held. In an interview with Morier, which the latter

1845] THE SWISS TROUBLES 45
reports to Lord Aberdeen on the 26th February 1845,
M. Druey told him that
' the party with whom he acted were resolved at all
hazards to effect the expulsion of the Jesuits from Switzer
land ; that for this purpose they aimed at obtaining a
majority! to decree the expulsion, which they intended
immediately to carry into execution, if need be, by force of
arms ; that should they fail in having a majority (this
result is anticipated by all parties) then a most terrific
crisis must ensue — war to the knife, unmitigated by
discipline, ending only by the extermination of one of
the parties. . . .' In the same letter Morier adds :
' I may take the liberty of stating to your Lordship my
full conviction that the maintenance of the Jesuit establish
ments in any part of Switzerland is now become incom
patible with the maintenance of public tranquillity, and
that no greater service could be rendered to this country
than for the Catholic Powers of Europe to unite in urging
the Papal See to order the withdrawal of those establish
ments from the canton immediately.'
On the 24th March 1845 Morier wrote that the extra
ordinary Diet * ' after a multitude of divisions ended in the
discomfiture of the anti-Jesuit cantons, whose deputations
failed in obtaining a majority on any of the points they
strove for.' With regard to the volunteer bands, a small
majority gave, in Morier's words, ' the formal sanction of
the highest federal authority to a truism never before
disputed in a civilised community, viz. that the con
federates, bound together by a common compact, have no
right to invade each other's territory . . . the result of the
Diet may be considered upon the whole favourable, in
appearance at least, to the cause of the Conservative
Party. . . .'
But this was only a luU in the storm. On the 31st March
the long-threatened movement began with the invasion
of Lucerne territory by a body of six thousand men, con
sisting of refugees and armed volunteers under the command
1 From the Diet sitting at Ziirich. " Then sitting at Zurich. |

46 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845
of the notorious lawyer, Ochsenbein, who ^ ' from his own
published report seems to have placed himself beyond the
risk of capture or hurt.'
The Berne Government was unable or unwilling to do
anything, but the expedition ended in the complete defeat
of the Radical invaders, who were signaUy repulsed and
dispersed under the waUs of Lucerne on ist April 1845.
This victory toned down for a time the Radicalism of the
Berne Government, and induced them to disavow the
' iUegal and consequently condemnable measure ' which
had ended in such discomfiture. The Lucerne Govern
ment, acting on the whole with great forbearance, issued
a manifesto, the spirit of which may be conveyed in the
following extract : ' The desire of revenge is unworthy
of victors ; it is unworthy of Christians.' At the same
time, the Radical press was railing at the Lucerne Govern
ment for detaining the prisoners till ransomed, and inciting
to a second expedition.
During the month of May, Morier was actively engaged
in an endeavour to save Dr. Steiger from the sentence of
death passed upon him at Lucerne, which seems to have
been thoroughly deserved. This Dr. Steiger had already
been implicated in the first attempt 2 to overturn the
Lucerne Government, and arrested, but allowed to go free
for want of proof. He then went to Berne, where he was
received with distinction by the anti-Jesuit party, and since
then had been considered as the leader of the Lucerne
refugees, and generally designated as the President of the
Provisional Government, which it was intended to estab
lish in Lucerne, had the expedition proved successful. In
the report of the operations of the Freischaaren, pub
lished by Ochsenbein, Dr. Steiger is alluded to as the person
who recommended the bombardment of Lucerne, being
himself a citizen of Lucerne !
That Morier, to whom the Executive Council of the
Berne Republic had addressed an appeal to intercede on
his behalf, did his utmost, may be gathered from a letter
of M. Riittimann, avoyer of Lucerne, of 7th May 1845 : —
1 Morier to Lord Aberdeen, 22nd April 1846.
" Sth December 1844.

i845] THE SWISS TROUBLES 47
' Les sentiments nobles et g6nereux de votre lettre ne
m'ont pas moins fait une impression vive et touchante.
Soyez s6r que je ferai valoir toute mon influence pour
que Steiger, tout grand criminel qu'U soit, resolve sa grace,
pourvu qu'on puisse trouver moyen de le mettre hors
d'etat de nuire.'
In justice to the Catholics it must be added that the
Papal Nuncio actively sided with these efforts. Dr.
Steiger shortly afterwards, however, spared the Lucerne
Government the trouble of any further deliberations as
to his disposal by escaping from prison on 20th June into
Ziirich territory, where he was received with shouts of
triumph by his partisans.
During all this time Morier had been unremitting in
his endeavours to induce the Powers to bring pressure
to bear upon the Lucerne Government, so as to cause them
to withdraw the privilege of the Jesuits, persuaded as he
was that this measure was from the first ' deprecated by
all reflecting men as well in the Canton of Lucerne as in
the rest of Switzerland,' ^ and that ' it is well knovm that
even in the Canton and Government of Lucerne many who
most jealously joined in repelling the invasion of the free
booter bands were amongst the most determined adver
saries of that [Jesuit] cause.' 2
The difficulty, however, was that the majority of the
peasants identified the cause of the Jesuits with that of
Catholicism generally. Morier, therefore, suggested to
Sir R. Gordon, Ambassador at Vienna, that ' Prince Metter
nich could not exert the influence of his Court with greater
benefit to the cause of general peace and security of the
Catholic interest in Switzerland than by obtaining that
Leu (whom he elsewhere describes as the leader of the
peasants, " himself an honest, upright, but very obstinate
peasant ") be induced by a word from the Nuncio to pro
pose to the Grand Council of Lucerne instructions in the
sense of a withdrawal of the decree.'
This Grand Counsellor Leu von Ebensohle, the leader
' Morier to Lord Aberdeen, 22nd May 1845.
2 Morier to Sir R. Gordon, Ambassador at Vienna, nth May 1845.

48 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1845
of the peasant party, was shortly afterwards foully mur
dered by the Radicals, a crime which their press openly
justified. So far the representatives of the Powers had been in
absolute agreement, both Austria and Rome from the
first discouraging the admission of the Jesuits, which would
probably by then have been abandoned, but for the con
duct of their unprincipled assailants. After the attack
on Lucerne, however, there were signs that in future Rome
and some of the Catholic Powers would, from a mistaken
feeling of honour, encourage the Lucerne Government to
stand by their original decree. Morier therefore, with the
ever-present fear of foreign intervention before his eyes, was
most anxious to arrange a compromise which ' Lucerne,
being now the victor, might without derogation of principle or
honour ' accept. His proposal was based on the following : —
' That Luceme will consent to waive her ovra undoubted
right in this matter, on the condition that the other cantons
should desist from their declaration of the competency
of a majority of the Diet to interfere in the confessional
and educational arrangements of individual cantons — ^and
secondly, that the sequestered property of the convents
of Argovy should be applied to the maintenance of a
theological seminary for all Swiss Catholics as an indemnity
for the suppression of the said convents.'
These endeavours were unfortunately not attended with
any results. Switzerland was graduaUy sinking more and
more into a state of anarchy, and in a private letter to Lord
Aberdeen, dated 6th June 1845, Morier wrote : —
' The Cantonal Governments are in a state of decomposi
tion, the spirit of ultra-democracy is gaining men, women,
and children ; it is becoming what a writer of Geneva on
the Swiss democracy caUs la societe poussiere, where there is
no cement of authority or moral principle or religious
feeling to make the unit grains of dust cohere.'
After the attack on Lucerne, and threatened as they
conceived themselves to be by further invasions of the
Radical party, the Catholic cantons began to concert measures

1846] THE SWISS TROUBLES 49
for mutual protection and to negotiate an aUiance offensive
and defensive, of which one of the conditions was that at the
first alarm of actual attack upon any one of the allies the
rest were to come to his assistance without formal summons.
The cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwitz, Unterwalden, Zug,
VaUais, and Freyburg were the parties to this alliance, first
kept secret, but which the Lucerne Government begged
Count Crotti, the Sardiiuan Minister, confidentiaUy to com
municate to Morier, who equally confidentially transmitted
the information to Lord Aberdeen.
This aUiance was knowm as the Catholic League, and
later as the Sonderbund.
In the spring of 1846 the ultra-radical party seized the
Government of the canton of Berne, which, following the
example of the canton of Vaud, now started fuU sail on a
radical course.
A committee of seven was appointed with the object of
drafting the new Constitution, whose tendency may be
judged by some of its members, comprising as it did
Ochsenbein, the commander of the expedition against
Luceme ; Funk, a lawyer of doubtful reputation in his pro
fession ; Kohler, a former member of the Executive Council,
from which he had been excluded some years previously
on account of the notorious profligacy of his conduct ; and
Staempfli, an attorney, editor of the Berne Zeitung, the
organ of the ultra-radical faction. The latter was the
son-in-law of Professor Wilhelm Snell, a German refugee
whose removal from the chair of International Law at the
Berne University, and banishment from the canton by the
late Government, as much on account of his revolutionary
doctrine as of the constant state of intoxication in which
this professor was seen both in the chair and out of it, had
been the question on which the strength of the two parties
had been tried.
' There is no saying yet,' wrote Morier to Lord Aberdeen
on 6th March 1846, ' what direction the revolution aimed
at by the Rads at Berne wiU take. That it must end in the
break up of the present political order of things in the
Confederation cannot be doubted. It is now merely a
question of time and mode ; the spirit and object of the
VOL. I. '^

50 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1846
revolution are not to be mistaken, namely, the establishment
of democratic autocracy on the ruins of all existing institu
tions which impose the slightest restraint on the gratifica
tion of the popular wiU.'
It was at this juncture, when the situation was becoming
daUy more and more critical and requiring the most delicate
handling, that the defeat of Sir Robert Peel's Government
caused Lord Aberdeen to be succeeded as Foreign Secretary
by Lord Palmerston.
Of the latter's mischievous activities, and the disastrous
direction he imparted to English foreign policy, the opinion
of so shrewd and broad-minded an observer as King
Leopold I. of the Belgians need only be quoted, who,
writing to his nephew, Duke Ernst of Coburg Gotha, on
6th April 1847, says : —
' . . . Times are getting somewhat troubled, to which
it must be confessed England, i.e. the present Cabinet, has
contributed to an enormous extent. They have behaved in
an uncommonly fooUsh manner in the Spanish affair, which
Lord Palmerston is quite aware of and feels very deeply ;
it makes him angry, rade, and threatening, which leads him
on to commit fresh mistakes, so that we may now expect
unforeseen catastrophes, possibilities of war,' etc.!
In a dispatch to Lord Palmerston, dated 24th July 1846,
Morier informed him of the report laid before the Diet *
at its openmg by the President : ' The most important of
the topics therein adverted to is that of the so-called CathoUc
League, which is condemned as a violation of the Federal
Compact, although the admission is made that the dis
turbances at the beginning of last year were of a nature to
awaken serious uneasiness for the future in some cantons,
and that the duty of self-preservation might have impressed
on them the necessity of concentrating their force.' Not
withstanding this, Moriei anticipated ' with aU reflecting
men a mpture of the Confederation owing to the irrecon
cilable views of the two pernicious extremes of RadicaUsm
* Denkwiirdigkeiten Herzogs E. von Coburg, vol. i. p. 181.
' Sitting at Ziirich.

1846] THE SWISS TROUBLES 51
and Ultramontanism.' With regard to the revision of the
Federal Compact, Morier quoted the language of the Presi
dent as follows : ' UntU the existing Federal Compact has
undergone amendments calculated to iUl the gaps and to
remove defects, as well as to define with greater precision
the relations between the federal authorities and that of the
cantons, it is the sacred duty of the federal authorities to
uphold the Compact in spite of all its imperfections, and to
defend it against all attack ; it must not be forgotten that
for the time being the Compact of 1815 is the only bond by
which the Confederates, who have such opposite political and
reUgious goals in view, find themselves attached as a nation
to the poUtical system of Europe, and every annulment of
the provisions of this Compact, so long as they are not
adequately replaced by another equaUy valid provision,
must compromise the position whicii Switzerland occupies
in the aforesaid political system.'
The result of the discussions in the Diet ! relative to the
defensive alliance of the seven Catholic cantons ended in
a resolution being submitted to the vote by the President,
declaring the said alliance to be considered incompatible
with the Federal Compact, and accordingly ipso facto
dissolved ; but as this resolution was only supported by
ten cantons and two half-cantons, the seven aUies were left
to maintain or abrogate their engagements towards each
other according to the view they entertained of their ovm
interests. They accordingly issued a protocol in which
they stated that they were resolved '' to maintain their
alliance under all circumstances so long, but only so long,
as the attempts made in violation of the Federal Compact
against the sovereignty and territory of their successive
states shaU continue.'
At the beginning of September the foreign representa
tives received official notice of the nomination of MM. Funk
and Ochsenbein as President and Vice-President. ' The
scandal of M. Ochsenbein's elevation to the highest post
in the Confederation,' wrote Morier to Lord Palmerston
from Ziirich on 4th September, 'should it be aUowed,
being stiU further aggravated by the circumstance of his
1 From 31st August to 4th September 1846.

52 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1846
name having been expunged from the list of officers on
the federal staff, in consequence of the part he took in the
scandalous attack upon Luceme. His expulsion had
been pronounced by the extraordinary Diet of 1845, on
the proposal of the same military council of which the
presidency would officially devolve upon him in his capacity
as Federal President.'
The first acts of the new Executive Ministers were : the
recall of the Germanrevolutionary refugee. Professor Wilhelm
SneU; the granting of the cantonal burghership to the
notorious Dr. Steiger, condemned to death for high treason
by the Tribunal of Lucerne ; the nomination of Ochsenbein
himself to be second deputy for Berne in the place of
one already named, which was considered as a gratuitous
insult to the Diet, although he declined to appear on some
pretext or another in his capacity as deputy at Zurich.
That, in consequence of these nominations, diplomatic
relations with the Berne Government would be greatly
embarrassed was to be foreseen. On 8th September,
writing from Ziirich, Morier informed Lord Palmerston
that M. de Pontois had submitted to M. Guizot's considera
tion, whether it would be consonant with the dignity of the
French Government to aUow its representative to have
personal intercourse with a man who had led an expedition
operUy condemned, and in a manner protested against,
in the French note the year before, and on that account
judged unworthy to hold an inferior station in the federal
military staff.
Both the French and English Ministers concurred to
draw the attention of their respective Governments to the
importance of this state of things being attentively con
sidered by the Powers interested, to prevent it degener
ating into a state of complete anarchy and consequent
civil war, which might eventually lead to an intervention
earnestly to be deprecated, and that the course it should
be found expedient to pursue should be determined previ
ously to the transfer of the directional functions from
Ziirich to Berne.
A spirit of utter lawlessness began more and more to
prevaU at Beme. At the beginning of August a baggage

1846] THE SWISS TROUBLES 53
waggon belonging to the CathoUc canton of Schwitz, on its
way to the federal camp, had been attacked and destroyed
by the population of Schuppach, a village in the canton
of Berne, and the driver, recognised as one of the Land-
sturm who the year previously had defeated the Frei
schaaren, throwm into the Aar. In a quarrel in the streets,
shortly afterwards, M. Weber, the Director of the Central
Police, one of the retiring Government, felled M. Funk,
President of the late Constituent Assembly and of the
Supreme Tribunal, to the ground, being himself shortly
afterwards assaUed in like manner by Captain Karl, the
proprietor of the inn where the meetings of the famous
Bear Club were held.
On 2ist September a brutal attack was made by an
individual in the employment of the Bernese Post Office
on Burnet Morier, then on a holiday in Switzerland, whilst
quietly walking in the streets of Berne in the company of
an English clerg5anan, who afterwards testified how utterly
unprovoked the assault had been. Burnet, however,
with commendable vigour and promptitude, had knocked
his assailant down. Although unofficial complaints for
this outrage were addressed to the Executive, they refused
to offer ¦ a single expression of regret, disapprobation, or
apology for the conduct of one of their own servants,' for
whom, on the contrary, they claimed an indemnity.
His father therefore asked Lord Palmerston's permis
sion to treat the matter seriously : —
' . . . I cannot therefore but express my conviction
that nothing less than the determination of the British
Government, declared by express authority in the most
explicit terms not to overlook any injury or insult wantonly
offered to any British subject whatever in any part of
Switzerland, wiU be sufficient to enable H.M. Minister
in this country to maintain the position which belongs to
the high character of the country he has the honour to
represent. For these considerations I deem it my duty
now to request your Lordship to authorise me to demand of
the Bernese Government, in the name of H.M. Govemment,
the fuUest satisfaction to which the latter may judge

54 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1846
themselves entitled to exact in this instance, not merely
for the personal outrage committed without provocation
against an individual forming part of the family of H.M.
Minister, accredited to the Swiss Confederation, but for
the additional wrong of the marked neglect, not to say
contempt, with whicii the representations of H.M. Minister
respecting that outrage have been treated by the Bernese
Government.' Very shortly afterwards a yet more heinous outrage
was to take place, when Morier himself had to complain
of an unprovoked insult which ' I received from one of
the urban guards during the military occupation of the
town on Sunday, who, after being informed of my public
character as British Minister in this country, added the
insult of gross language to the blow by which he in the
first instance stopped my way along the street.' !
In vain did Morier urge upon H.M. Government the
impossibility, without compromising its owm dignity, of
leaving such conduct disregarded.
'. . . H.M. Govemment wiU perhaps be disposed to
take into consideration how far such a manifest vra.nt of
courtesy and deference to the representations of H.M.
Minister in this instance, which the Bernese Government
cannot but suppose is knovm to your Lordship, can con
tinue to remain unnoticed, without disadvantage to the
character and influence of H.M. Mission.'
The Minister, who very few years later was to proclaim
so grandUoquently in the House of Commons the sacred
rights of the British subject — Civis Romanus sum — on
behalf of a Gibraltar Jew of doubtful reputation, did not
on this occasion feel it incumbent upon him to resent a
gross personal insult to the Queen's representative, nor to a
member of his family. As to the latter. Lord Palmerston
formally declined to allow any demand for reparation to
be made to the Berne Government. As to the former,
1 Morier to Lord Palmerston, 20th October 1846.
" Dispatch, Morier to Lord Palmerston, 23rd November 1846.
' Don Pacifico debate, 25th June 1850,

1846] THE SWISS TROUBLES 55
six weeks after the occurrence, of which many detailed
accounts had been forwarded, he was stiU writing : —
' . . . With reference to your dispatch of 23rd November,
explaining the circumstances of the insult offered to you
by one of the urban guard, I must still observe that your
statement is not sufficiently explanatory of the circum
stances to enable me to form a decisive judgment of the
case. I should wish to have a connected narrative of what
took place.' !
The position was gradually becoming untenable. M.
de Pontois, the French Minister, was retiring because
of ' the repugnance he felt, after the strong language held
by his Govemment last year in condemnation of the law
less expedition of the free bands against Lucerne, to be
placed in the position of holding personal official intercourse
with the members of what is called Le gouvernement des
Freyschaaren.' The other Powers contemplated transferring their
representatives from Berne to Ziirich, so as to avoid
personal communication with the Government,* ' a de
monstration on their part which, if it do take place, wiU
not mend their position in the least,' but which Morier
foresaw he would be obliged to follow.
His application to Lord Palmerston, ' in consideration
of forty-three years' uninterrupted active service,' to be
transferred to another mission, either Florence or Frank
furt, met with total disregard.
Under these circumstances he therefore proposed to
be aUowed to proceed to London, on temporary leave, to
discuss Swiss affairs fully by word of mouth with Lord
Palmerston, a suggestion which the latter, for reasons of
his ovm, eagerly concurred in. He consequently received
instructions to return to England, with orders to leave
Peel* in charge, a transfer of mission to which, when he
announced it to the Federal Govemment, they officiaUy
replied : —
' Lord Palmerston to Morier, 30th November 1846.
2 Morier to Lord Palmerston, 6th November 1846.
' Morier to Bidwell of the Foreign Office, 20th October 1846.
? Afterwards Sir Robert, 3rd Bart., b. 1822, d. 1895.

56 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1846
' . . . Les Burgomestres et Conseil d'fitat du Canton de
Ziirich, Directoire actuel de la Confederation Suisse,
aiment a r6iterer a S.E. I'assurance de leur vive recon
naissance pour la bienveiUance distingu6e avec laqueUe
M. Morier a constamment cultiv6 les relations d'amiti6 qui
existent entre la Confederation Suisse et le Royaume Uni
de la Grande Bretagne.' !
Arrived in England, Morier was not long in discovering
that it was far less the desire for better information as to
the state of Switzerland, than the intention of removing
him from his post, which dictated Lord Palmerston's
conduct, and that the latter had irrevocably decided on
the recall of a diplomatic representative whose principles
and sentiments so radicaUy differed from his owm.
' . . . From the embarrassed and round-about manner
in which here, certainly not unconstrained, he [Lord
Palmerston] touched on the affair of the non-satis
faction of the Rads at Berne, I am confirmed in your
notion, that his lenity towards the latter was political in
his sense, and that my horror of such dirt does not accord
with his feelings. I don't know whether our conversation
may not have modified those feelings a little, but at aU
events I feel so convinced that the actual state" of our
foreign relations is so transitional to a new and unguessable
state, that I cannot but consider it as rather a blessing to
be thankful for, than a misfortune to be deplored, to Ue
by, a watchful spectator, rather than active agent at, this
period of transition.' 2
He was, however, not unnaturally anxious that his
recaU should not present the appearance of a disgrace : —
' . . . I may confess also, that I feel some anxiety not
to quit a post, which I have held for fifteen years of
approved service, without leaving on record a proof that
my recaU from it is not the result of any delinquency on
my part.' ^ 1 Ziirich, 14th December 1846.
' David Morier to his wife, 7th March 1847.
' Morier to Lord Palmerston, 14th April 1847.

i847] THE SWISS TROUBLES 57
But although Lord Palmerston had himself fuUy admitted
to him in an interview ! ' that the friendly relations between
our Government and the Confederation, so far from being
impaired under my guidance, had been maintained on the
best footing, and that it would be equally unfair towards
me, and impolitic and lowering to H.M. Government, to
allow it to be supposed that my withdrawal from the
Mission was the effect of disapproval of my conduct or a
desire to encourage the Radical revolutionary party,' yet
to propitiate these same revolutionaries, whom he had now
elected as the instruments of his revenge on Guizot, and
with whom he was already actively intriguing. Lord
Palmerston did not scruple to sacrifice to their rancour
a man who, after forty-three years' approved public service,
was at the very time of his dismissal acting under the
last instructions received from the Foreign Office founded
upon his own suggestion. Those instructions simply
adopted and approved the conduct suggested by himself.^
He was recalled from the Swiss Mission ' not only with
out any mark of approval or favour, such as others much
junior in the service received, but his dismissal was effected
under circumstances, which gave it all the appearance of
disgrace, and as such, was looked upon and boasted of, by
many in Switzerland.' *
When Morier returned to Berne for a short whUe before
his definite departure, it was in complete ignorance of
the fact that Lord Palmerston, without his knowledge or
that of the two other guaranteeing Powers with whom
England was supposed to be acting in agreement, had
instructed Peel to call on Ochsenbein and congratulate
him in the Queen's name on his becoming President, a visit
haUed by the latter's supporters with no small satisfaction,
and affording the revolutionary party great encourage
ment. They shortly afterwards denounced the iUegality
of the Sonderbund,* a step taken at the instigation of
Ochsenbein, who calmly stated that the expedition of the
Freischaaren was produced by the Sonderbund, ' a chrono-
• David Morier to his wife, 7th March 1847.
" Morier to Lord Aberdeen, 23rd January 1853. ' Ibid.
* The name by which the league of the seven Catholic cantons was
known.

58 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1847
logical arrangement of facts which,' as Morier dryly ob
served,! ' was on a par with the mUitary prowess which the
speaker so singularly displayed in the famous affair of
ist AprU 1845.'
And yet one more effort was to be attempted in the
cause of peace.
King Louis PhUippe, who for many years had honoured
Morier with his friendship and confidence, sent for him on
his way through Paris, and had a conversation with him at
NeuiUy, on the evening of the 30th June 1847, which shall
be described in his own words : —
' . . . His Majesty began by observing, that he con
sidered the state of things in Switzerland to be so bad, as
to present no prospect of remedy. There were none of the
means or elements of stable government in the cantons,
no administration, no police, no mUitary force. He saw
no issue to the present detested discord but a civil war, in
which he hoped and believed that the Radical cantons,
should they venture to attack the little primitive cantons
in their mountains, would be soundly beaten. In foreign
intervention under the present circumstances, the King
saw no remedy, but rather an aggravation of difficulties.
Both he and his Government were decidedly opposed to
intervention. He was resolved not to allow a single French
soldier to cross the frontier, knowing that such a step
would only make matters worse. The public opinion in
France forbad any act of his Government, which would
appear to be taken in concert with Absolute Powers in
favour of the Sonderbund, which was considered to be the
ally and instrument of Jesuitism. As for the notion of
France having an eye on Basle or Geneva, it was aU non
sense. France and its population and territory was quite
as much as they could manage ; to dream of conquest and
influence as in former times was all folly. It was no longer
suited to the days we lived in, etc.
' In the Swiss question, much depended upon the line the
British Government would take. The concert between the
Great European Powers was in this question essential to
^ Morier to Lord Palmerston, Sth June 1S47.

i847] THE SWISS TROUBLES 59
the preservation of the general tranquUlity, which aU had
in view and were all interested in securing, Great Britain
equally with the rest ; and he repeated that upon the
conduct of the British Government in the Swiss question
much depended. As for himself and his Government, the
King declared that they would wiUingly consent to a
Conference of the Powers being held, not in Paris, neither
in Vienna, but in London (as affording the best pledge
of impartiality), for the purpose of consulting what could
be done in the present crisis, with a view to prevent the
apprehended conflict and the ultimate complications,
dangerous to the general peace which must result therefrom.
' The King expressed his desire that I would state this
his view to Lord Palmerston : "I cannot authorise you
officially," observed His Majesty, " to speak on what passes
in a conversation de salon, but the British Govemment
may be assured, that I am ready to act upon the proposal
I have now made to hold a Conference in London " ; and
His Majesty was pleased to add " that he had known me
for many years and was sure that I would faithfuUy report
what he had said on the subject." In reply to the ob
servations, which I took the liberty to make, with respect
to the principle on which, and the object for which, the
Conference should be held, viz. to secure the national
independence and territorial neutrality of Switzerland on
the terms declared in the Act of Guarantee of 1815, the
King declared his cordial acquiescence, referring to the
speech made in the Chamber of Deputies by M. Guizot, as
the rule of his Government in Swiss affairs.
' In the course of conversation, which lasted nearly
three-quarters of an hour, and of which the above is only
an outline (for the King spoke as usual a great deal, and
occasionaUy with much pleasantry and animation), he
called Guizot " my exceUent and invaluable Minister,"
and dwelt with some emphasis upon the entire coincidence
of their views against intervention.'
On Morier's arrival in London from Paris, on 5th July,
he applied in writing to Lord Palmerston for an audience,
which was granted two days later, on the 7th, when he

6o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1847
deUvered the above-mentioned message from King Louis
Philippe to Lord Palmerston, who, at the time, seemed
much struck with its importance, and on Morier going away,
said he would see him again on the same subject.
' . . . From that day, however, 7th July 1847, I have
never been caUed for or admitted when calling at his door,
and I have had no further communication from him on
Swiss affairs.' !
Of this conciliatory and fair-minded proposal, which even
then, at the eleventh hour, might possibly have effected
a truce between the two contending parties, and thus saved
the ensuing strife and bloodshed, no mention has ever
been made. There is no evidence to prove, that it was ever
taken into consideration, or even submitted to the Cabinet.
Indeed, there is every reason to suppose, that Lord Palmer
ston, with characteristic unscrupulousness, simply suppressed
it, according so little as it did, with the object he had in
view, which was assuredly less the pacification of Switzer
land, than the humiliation and overthrow of a detested
rival. His desire, therefore, was not peace, but the sword —
his aim, not to prevent but to precipitate civil war,
an aim which he was not long in successfully accomplishing.
A few weeks after David Morier's recaU, the catastrophe
he had so long and so anxiously striven to avert, had taken
place ; the war of the Sonderbund had broken out, the
whole of Switzerland stood in flames.
What all lovers of peace and friends of good order had
feared, the revolutionaries hoped for, and every one fore
seen, did not fail to come to pass.
The Revolution, which beginning in Switzerland cost
David Morier his post, was soon to cost Louis Philippe his
throne. It spread all over Europe, carrying civil war into
almost every country and deluging the land with blood ;
thrones were shattered, institutions overthrown. Society
shaken to its very foundations ; but it enabled Lord
Palmerston to wnreak his vengeance on the one man whom
above all others he hated, M. Guizot.
* Written in February 1848.

1848J OXFORD AGAIN 61

CHAPTER V
OXFORD AGAIN
David Morier's first care, on giving up the Beme Mission,
was to move his wife, whose health had completely broken
down and was giving him great anxiety, from Switzerland.
They spent the summer at various health-resorts, and
finally settled down at Bath on account of its beneficial
climate. Not the slightest bitterness at the unfairness of the
treatment meted out to him, tinged in the smaUest degree
the happy serenity of his nature. On a note, scribbled
on one of his son's letters of this period, he thus describes
himself : ". . . My name is David, in No. 9 Queen's Square
your father tends his wife. An old ex-Dip whose constant
care is to abuse F.O. and keep his only son yourself at work.'
To Sir Stratford Canning he wrote on 24th January
1848 :—
' ... If the present generation of worthies of that
class [the Bernese Gross Raths] with whom you have had
to do, realise their promises of moderation and amnesty
given to you, it certainly wiU be a progres in a direction
so opposite to that in which they set out and to their
idios3mcracies that you may lay claim to canonisation as
the performer of a miracle : for it will prove a conversion
from all that is selfish, coarse, violent, and fraudulent
to wisdom, forebearance, and patriotism, of which my owm
experience of the ruling party never discovered a trace.
Guizot will have to fight his Swiss battle over again in
the Chamber of Deputies as in the Chamber of Peers, where
he seems to have succeeded better than he probably wiU
with the former Assembly.
' I suppose ParUament wiU have communication made

62 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1848
to it of your instructions and reports, but it is despairing
for us unhappy Dips to see how little touched Mr. BuU ever
is by the most interesting foreign questions, unless they
come in a shape to alarm his breeches pockets. But for
this stupid indifference of that dull individual the British
Public a tolerable scene d' interpellation might be made out
of the injustice with which two meritorious causes, that of
the Sonderbund and of your ancien secretaire perpetuel
have been treated, the first by their confederates, the
second by his own Chief. Next to promotion a grievance
is the best thing ; and were you now in ParUament I should
ask you to take the opportunity of vindicating my good
name (if I have one) from the injurious surmises and the
aspersions of those bear-foxes in Switzerland that after
fifteen years' service amongst them I was set aside as
incapax or non compos or heaven knows what else, pre
cisely at the period when had my representations just a
twelvemonth ago been attended to, the mischief which I
apprehend is not crushed but only, if at all, aUayed, might
at least have been postponed till the Powers could at least
agree as to their view of the subject. But as the world now
goes, " Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandeUe," and as dear old
Ludolf used to say, '^Ce n'est pas \k I'embarras." '
Even the fact of Canning's accepting an Extraordinary
Mission to Berne from Lord Palmerston, thus giving David
Morier every appearance of having been in the wrong, did
not cast the smallest shadow on their friendship, though
it was bitterly resented by both his wife and son ; the
former with regard to an invitation from the IngUses to
meet Sir S. Canning, wTiting ;!".../ beg to be excused,
as I care not if ever I see him again,' whilst the latter
writes : * —
" . . .To you, dear mother, I feel I can talk without
reserve on the subject that is gnawing at my heart. The
deep damnable injustice under which my father is labouring,
not at the hands only of that half-hornet, half-butterfly.
Lord Palmerston, but of those who have found him their
only friend through life.
' February 1848. ' June 1848.

1848] OXFORD AGAIN 63
' Oh, woe, is that Government, which makes the sting
of injustice to be felt by the meanest even of the Govern
ment. The debt, you may depend upon it, wUl and must
be paid and with usurious interest. I shall work myself
up into a pitch of savageness not quite compatible with
the smooth flow of Christian feeling if I go on, so I shall
stop, but you wiU know where there is the gaU. It has
worked into the whole core of my being and affected its
course d, jamais. How I shall rejoice to be again in the
heart of our little circle. Everything around is so dull
and cheerless, heartless and cold, unreal and devUish, that
if it were possible one might even be led to doubt whether
the fire on one's hearth would keep in. But that, thank
God, like the sacred fire of the Prytaneum, for ever burns.'
In a letter to his father, written on the eve of his parents'
departure for Bath, Burnet says : —
' . . . I should rather like to have your opinion of a
letter signed B that appeared in The Times of Tuesday
on Switzerland. I wrote it one night in Argyle Street
for want of anything better to do. I was rather flattered
at their inserting it, but they left out one principal para
graph, and thereby made nonsense of the last sentence.
It was to the foUowing effect, and intended to reduce the
subject to one of the fundamental maxims of International
Law as laid down by Thucydides : " A demand as of right,
instead of an appeal to legal arbitration, thrust by equals
upon their neighbours, is alike pregnant with the germs
of slavery, be the occasion of the smallest or the greatest
magnitude." This principle, which I emphatically beg any
one who can to refute, exists nowhere in my printed letter.
. . . Some wonderfuUy able letters have appeared in the
Spectator on the other side of the question. They are
written by Grote, the Grecian historiographer, perhaps the
greatest historian of the present day. He has been to
Switzerland to gather information, and the way in which
he has worked the question out from its earliest beginnings
is marveUous, as also is the mass of knowledge ; the whole
bears the stamp of a deep-searching honest mind thoroughly

64 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1847
versed in the work of sifting historical facts. You must
read them as soon as possible. . . .'
MeanwhUe he was pursuing the course of his studies.
In the summer of 1847 he formed one of a reading party
under Temple which spent the vacation at Bridlington
Quay in Yorkshire.
' I wish you and she ' (his mother), he writes enthusiastic-
aUy to his father,! ' could know old Temple weU. He is the
noblest feUow that was ever born, and such a head ! The
brick makes a rule (though he has only his feUowship, not
£200 a year, to live upon) not to take private pupils in
term, in order more conscientiously to fulfU his coUege
duties, but he has promised me sua sponte three days a
week coaching all next term ! There is a chance for one, to
be working alongside one of the greatest intellects of the day . '
To his mother he uses the expression —
' There is nae time ' — and goes on : ' Pardon my Scotti
cisms, but as entremets to the pieces de resistance of ethics
and Thucydides, I have been making a beast of myself
(excuse an Oxford expression for eating too much) on
Burns. I perfectly delight in him, and now that I am used
to his Scotch parlance, I hardly feel as if I could ever
enjoy English again. By the way, how delighted I am
at the character I have for non-reading. Pray by all
means keep it up.' And his letter ends : ' . . . And mind
you do not contradict people, but turn up your eyes and
look resigned when they talk of me as a non-reading
party ! '
October saw him back at Oxford.
' I have been put,' he writes, ' thanks to old Temple's
intrigues, into some fierce lectures this term amongst
scholars and that style of sweU — A History of Philo
sophy, i.e. pure metaphysics, with Jowett, and Aristotle's
'Opyavov with Temple. The old beast somehow knows
what he is about in putting me a little above my work, as
hitherto I have been rather below it ; besides that, he is
1 17th August 1847.

1848] OXFORD AGAIN 65
going to coach me like a brick twice a week, so that he has
driven me right up into a corner and nolens volens obliged
me to strain every nerve.'
On Sth February he teUs his mother : —
' I broke the ice last night at the Union on a motion
about the Jews, and, as might have been expected, broke
down completely, which served me right, however, as I
went down quite unprepared, and not even knowing what
the motion was. However, my pecker is up, and I have
just put forward a motion in propria persona.'
To which his mother answers from Bath : —
' . . . I cannot resist telling you how pleased I am that
you have at last broken the ice and tried your lungs at
the Union. As to breaking down, that you wiU probably
do more than once, but don't let it break your spirit and
you wUl probably learn as much from your stumbles as if
you had always remained straight on end.'
The second attempt was more successful : —
' I made my ddbut the other night at the Union, and
with more success than I had any right to expect, — at least
so they tell me, and so to a certain extent I feel, — as I did
not break down, got worked up after the first nervousness
worked off, and found no lack of words. After some
opposition my motion was carried. There was a most
tremendously full house on the occasion, all my own
coUege, as no motion had been made by a BaUiol man
for many terms, and all my out-college acquaintance.
Temple was satisfied.'
The foUowing Memorandum on the meeting was
appended : —
'Thursday, 24th February 1848 — Wyatt's Rooms.!
Mr. Congreve,^ Wadham, President, in the chair.
Mr. Morier, BaUiol, moved :—
"That the establishment of diplomatic relations with the

1 The Union had not as yet got a house of its own.
' The future Positivist.

VOL. I.

66 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1848
Court of Rome is peremptorily caUed for by the present state
of politics in Europe."
In the affirmative : — .
Mr. Morier, BaUiol. Mr. Grant Duff, BaUiol.
Mr. Blackstone, C.C.C. Mr. W. H. MUman, C.C.C.
Mr. Tidman, Lincoln. Mr. Sandford, Balliol.
Mr. Dalton, Trinity. Mr. Conington, University.
In the negative : —
Mr. Smith, Worcester. Mr. Temple.
Mr. Morier replied. The motion was carried without
a division.
In February 1848 the first mutterings of the coming
Revolution began to be heard. His mother, writing on
25th February, says : —
' . . . I quite envy your residence at Oxford, which
inspires me with a feeling of quiet and repose, the com
fortable absence from the noisy and stirring scenes which
are reverberated from afar, and tend to unsettle and
fidgetise in every other place but that. Yes, even Bath,
whose drowsiness you so much condemn, has not night
cap-ism enough to extinguish an audible grunt coming in
but every other day ; whereas, were I but at Oxford I
should only have to go to that blessed New College Chapel
not to care (for four-and-twenty hours afterwards)whether
the Pope were deposed, Louis Philippe dethroned, or Sir
Robert re-primed.'
His father, writing on 4th March, said : —
' . . . The ecstasy in which people seem to be in Paris,
at the order and tranquillity so miraculously restored after
the brief hurricane which has swept away another royal
race, reminds one of what Madame de Stael said of the
same kind of delight at the breaking out of the first great
Revolution, which she likened to the pleasurable sensation
of a man falling swiftly through the air from a garret window
tUl the moment he alighted on the pavement, " C'est bel
et bon tant que cela dure." But, as Sir T. Acland observes,
the event is too appaUing to produce mere feverish excite
ment ; it calms and sobers the reflecting mind by the weight
of the tremendous consequences it involves.'

1848] OXFORD AGAIN 67
And his mother on 30th March : —
' . . . The faU of Paris is now matter of history. The
fideUty of the armies to the Royal FamUy seems undeniable.
Three of the King's sons in the fiUness of youth were chiefs
of its most important branches, the opposing force most
contemptible, — an unarmed rabble against a hundred
thousand veterans, and a string of forts and fortifications
surrounding and commanding the entire city. Tell me
if, in ancient or modern history, there is such another in
stance. I have no books to refer to ; but, except the
waUs of Jericho, which fell down when the people shouted
and the trumpets were blown, I can recollect nothing
so unexpected. As to the rest of the world, the conduct
of aU the Kings, Dukes, Princes, and Governors is so
cowardly and disgusting that if my precious mother had
not kneaded Church and King into all and every particle
of my composition, I know not what might have been the
consequences, so far at least as the latter is concerned.'
Vague plans, which had not met with much approbation
from his famUy, of running over to Paris at Easter of this
year to watch the events there, took, however, concrete
form by the starting for that capital of Jowett and
Stanley, and their offer to him to accompany them.
' . . . The extraordinary piece of good fortune which
wUl thus throw me on intimate terms during the interesting
period of their investigation of novce res with the very two
men whose acquaintance I most coveted, and who are
certainly the two greatest men of the age, and with whom
the intercourse of five days would be equal to ten centuries
of coaching, you may suppose I was not so great a fool
as to throw away. It has all been settled in so incon
ceivably a short space of time, in fact, only ten minutes ago,
that it was impossible for me to let you know, as we are off
in half an hour, and intend to be in Paris by Sunday night.'
Speaking of the dubiousness of the post, he bids his mother
' . . . mind this when you write, and only talk generaUy
and approvingly as a Democrat, which, by the way, I
much more than half am.'

68 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1848
F. T. Palgrave, a son of Sir Francis Palgrave, had joined
the party, which arrived in Paris on the 9th of April.
Stanley at this time writes ! of Morier as ' ... a BaUiol
undergraduate of gigantic size, who talks French better
than English, is to wear a blouse and go about disguised
to the clubs.' ' Paris, April gth, 1848.
' My dearest Mother, — Here I am, safe and sound, in
this city of wonders, the headquarters of political pheno
mena. Oxford is exchanged for Paris, and what a
change !
" The sky is changed !
But what a change. Oh, night and darkness,
Winds, lakes, clouds, thunders, lightnings. Ye
Are wondrous strong, but lovely is your strength.
As is the light of a dark eye in woman." Childe Harold, Canto IIL
The words are wrongly quoted owing to my bad memory,
but the sentiment contained in them (you must read the
whole passage to understand what I mean), describing the
change from the exquisite stUlness of a summer night to
the tremendous, but at the same time grand, horrors of an
Alpine storm, is the only thing I can think of to express
the sort of impression made upon me by this marvellous
contrast. Not forty-eight hours since, and my whole self
was being lulled into an exquisite kind of Penseroso slumber
as I stood in Christchurch Walk, gazing on dear old
Oxford's towers and spires, gradually meUowing down
from the rich, golden tints of a bright spring sunset to their
own dear venerable grey. Term was over, and everything
was hushed into heavenly sUence. What a tale the scene
told ! What associations were called up ! What noble
expressions lay there of one great fact in the history of
the human mind, its worship and veneration, its chUdlike
affection for the past ! A few hours' steam and raU, and
here I am standing on the ruins of one of the most powerful
monarchies of the world, its palaces turned into hospitals
for those who were wounded in attacking them, its streets
bristling with the bayonets of les hommes en blouse, to
' Life and Correspondeiice of A. P. Stanley, vol. i. p. 401.

1848] OXFORD AGAIN 69
whose custody this lately briUiant capital, stUl mosaiced
over with the sumptuous magnificence of former periods
of princely splendour, is altogether entrusted. How much
fuUer of horror and dismal foreboding, but yet how equally
pregnant with the other great fact or converse side of that
great world's mind, its thirst for advancement, its deter
mined wiU not to stand stiU like the sun at Ascalon, but
to hurry onward on its briUiant fiery course. The first
object that struck one's notice was the numberless Trees
of Liberty, raising their bald, withered heads, and seeming
very much indeed to require the Phrygian nightcaps of
Liberty, with which they were all bedecked. The next
object of interest were the Garde MobUe sentries, which
on every post have succeeded the National Guard and
Line. This is certainly, especially accustomed as one is to
see the blue coat and red breeches at every other yard,
the thing that strikes you most, and most glaringly im
presses you with the fact that the People are masters. They
are dressed tel et tel as most of them fought on the memor
able day in their tattered blouses and jackets, and are
only armed with a musket. They have hitherto made an
exceUent police.
' There we stood face to face with the TuUeries. Heavens !
what a stream of tumbling recoUections came rushing upon
my mind at the sight. The gardens, as you weU know,
£ire the classic ground of all my earliest memories, its
fountains and trees are the bright spots in that blank period
of one's existence before dates, the magnificence of one of
its chUdren's balls is my earliest initiation into sights of
royal splendour and a brUliant impression of gay colours
and fairy forms sun-outdazzling lights it left. And there
it stood in the cold dawn looking, with its Republican flag
heavUy drooping and its gutted windows, the very picture
of desolation. But every inch a palace stUl, it seemed, as
if conscious of its degradation, and proudly and with a sort
of grandeur to yield to its fate, belying by its very look
the chalk-inscribed hieroglyphics over it, " Propriety
Nationale," and seeming to say, " a King did, and none
but a King could, have buUt me." . . . What a strange
personality associations endue inanimate objects withal.

70 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1848
. . . Too many thoughts had been aroused to allow me
quietly to go to bed as my friends did, so I stroUed out.
The gardens of the TuUeries being shut up at that early
hour, I sauntered down to the Place Vend6me. A boy of
no more than fifteen or sixteen was on duty, in his blouse
and tattered trousers. I entered into conversation with
him ; in a second or two, with the volubUity of a French
man, he was detailing all his deeds of prowess on the
memorable three days. He was a fine lad, and had great
readiness in expressing himself, and a graphicness of de
scription which proved he was relating scenes he had not
only seen, but acted in, and which had left an indelible
stamp on his mind. There was a strong mixture of
ferocity and tenderness, brutality and fine feeling, as he
alternately described the wholesale murders and burning
alive of the Municipal Guards, and his comrades shot by
his side and deluging him with their blood. The gusto
with which il a crible de balles the poor wretch who stole
a sUver spoon, or the awful change from the revelry of a
conquering mob to the death sUence and uncovered heads
as in solemn procession the crucifix was carried from the
Chapel of the TuUeries to the Church of St. Roch. I have
mentioned this lad's description in particular, as he was
the first I spoke to. I have since spoken to dozens of
others of the Garde MobUe, of all ages and sizes, and the
same strange kind of romantic mixture is there. One
general feature, however, is observable in aU the people, —
in those, I mean, who actually fought and conquered quite
exclusive of their demagogues and club preachers (who in
most cases at least before the row were more clever than
plucky, and kept very quiet after they had once set the
mass in motion), a certain elevated tone as of men who
really have done a great deed. How long this effect wUl
last and how far it is spread it is impossible to say, but
that it does exist to a great extent I have no hesitation
in saying. In speaking generally of the whole population,
I should say that the principal feature is a subdued look,
which in a Frenchman is most striking. The bourgeois
is desperately down at the mouth, and the Garde Nationale,
who here and there is on guard with a gamin of the Garde

1848] OXFORD AGAIN 71
MobUe, looks as if he had made but a poor change for the
little dapper red-legged " Line " of the Ancien regime.
AU these, however, are the first general impression. I shall
proceed to-morrow to details of my proceedings at the
club estaminets, etc., when I have talked with the Sovereign
People, and watched them gradually seizing the reins of
government.' He continues on the foUowing Saturday : —
' . . . Having got a few hours sleep after my talk with
the Garde Mobile, I got up and walked into the TuUeries.
The gardens were all loveliness, and presented a very
different aspect from the morning, already mantled over
with the brightest spring green, and swarming with Parisian
life. They, barring the great preponderance of the before
banished blouse, presented much their usual look. I had
often heard of, though never seen, the magnificent views
down the Champs Elysees with the Obelisk in the middle.
It certainly is the most magnificent thing I ever saw. I
don't know whether you recoUect a large pedestal with a
bronze statue of Cleopatra on the terrace fronting the Seine
to the left of the TuUeries as you look towards the Etoile.
It forms a debouchment of a secret subterranean passage
communicating with the castle. Out of this, on the
celebrated Friday, the last Bourbon King of France
emerged, and then from the dark cold stUl vault suddenly
faced the noisy tumult of an enraged people, and for a
whUe got carried to and fro in the boUing surge tUl a hack
cab received and gave a safe asylum to what the dramatic
cast of French thought at the moment termed une grande
inforttme. This grUled aperture with its whiffs of sepul
chral air had a wonderful interest for me, and I have again
been to see it.
' After the TuUeries I proceeded by the Carrousel to the
Palais Royal. On the former various quacks and singers
were trying to amuse the Peuple Souverain, and collected
His Majesty into various not unpicturesque groups. There
a great yeUow Hercules was dangling a huge stone of sixty-
five pounds weight in his mouth, and pitching it back over
his head, to the great danger of the Sovereign's toes, and

72 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1848
then in a monotonous chant singing the lays of the pav6
with flatteries without end to the pave monarch. There
a patriotic howler, with a certain number of chUdren of aU
sizes and kinds, was singing Beranger's songs and Mourir
pour la Patrie in a very husky voice. Next came the
Palais Royal, and, as far as the actual battlefield is con
cerned, the principal object of interest. You must recoUect,
immediately in front of the principal entrance to the
Palais Royal an open space used as a cab-stand. Oh this
stood the Corps de Garde Municipale, commonly caUed the
Chateau d'Eau from the fact of its also acting as the
reservoir to the Palais Royal and the adjacent part of the
town. The tank, holding an immense amount of water,
ran along the whole length of the top, a handsome fountain
in the shape of a sheU formed the centre, on either side was
the roof of the Corps de Garde tremendously fortified by the
late King, as commanding three great inlets to the Carrousel,
the Rue de Chartres, St. Thomas du Louvre et du Mus6e.
For the preceding days the cab-stand had been removed
and the place occupied by the troops of the line bivouacking.
On the fatal Friday it was occupied by a body of Municipal
Guards and two troops of the line drawn up in front.
There is but one entrance, and that by a low door barred
and rendered impregnable except to cannon. The whole
base of the buUding is driUed with meurtrieres. It was the
first post attacked, the point of rendezvous of the vast
masses that came rolling down the quays and every street
and all^e of the rive droite. It was a sort of point of
honour for the various streams that poured in to be the
first that attacked the devoted band. For a few moments
the soldiers stood the unequal fight, and then after two
or three volleys retired in order into the poste, and began
a galling fire from the meurtrieres. The people, maddened
by being exposed to what could not be returned, again and
again tried to burn the wicket, which was soon heaped
up with dead ; volley after voUey was discharged at the
thick walls, now studded all over with shot holes. At last,
finding all unavailing, they procured mattresses from the
neighbouring house, and, having saturated them with
vitriol and thrust an opening through, I believe, a window

1848] OXFORD AGAIN 73
or the door which was at length broken through, they
conveyed the mattresses along the staircases, and then set
fire to them, and in a minute or two the whole was in
a blaze, the soldiers stiU pouring volleys into the people
from the midst of the flames. At last, the buUding wrapped
in flames, the rafters that supported the tank gave way,
and a mighty deluge of molten lead and tons of water feU
in upon the few that were not burned to death. Only
about ten or twelve escaped by a back door, and were saved
by my informant, whom I poked out on the spot, and who
lived in the house immediately behind the Corps de Garde.
The fire was almost instantaneously put out by the falling
in of the tank, and the now dark buUding sent forth a
black column of vapour that mingled with the burning
rafters quenched in water the fumes of burnt human
flesh, a ghastly incense to the Goddess of Liberty. Next
morning, all that remained of the building were the
blackened walls and the now dry fountain graced by six
ghastly heads of Municipals mis — as the man, with true
French feeling, said — aufrais.'
This expedition was the commencement of friendships
destined to last through life. A few months later Morier
again joined Jowett in a reading tour in Scotland.
Detailing his adventures en route for Oban to his mother,
he tells her how he was nearly trapped into a ' regular
old goods tub ' without berths, etc., by an insidious waiter,
whose brother was steward on board the tub : —
' . . . I came back fuming, but the barefaced way in
which the said waiter kept on assuring me that the boat
was the fastest sailer in England, and the accommodation
of the first class also, overcame my gravity. . . . The
landlord gave me a funny account of the sort of way in
which party spirit sent people running to church ; where
before the churches were but half full, now, with the
number doubled, not a seat could be got. Can't you fancy
the Devil grinning as he drives his teams to church and
beats them down upon their knees with a little whip of
party spirit ? '

74 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1848
To his father, on 7th August 1848 : —
' . . . Jowett is a very shower-bath of knowledge. It
comes out in bucketsful every now and then — ^ten words or
so an hour, but which might be worked out in sermons of half
a century. He is a giant, as old Boswell said of Johnson.'
Talking of an adventure, when they had got lost, after
having started at five o'clock in the afternoon ' my counsel
suggested by the old Swiss rule of following a stream pre
vailed. After various fordings, etc., in which Jowett
re-enacted Stanley's part at Paris and sat monkey-fashion
on my back,' ! finaUy they gave up and made a shelter
for the night, ' . . . I managed to make a sort of seat
with big stones, and seated on this and sheltered as much as
possible from the wind by my back to the mound, I made
Jowett sit on my knees, which made me warm and kept
him dry. We had but one thin plaid, but we made a sort of
tent of this to keep the rain out, and patiently abided the
mom. I even went to sleep for half-an-hour or so, the rest
of the time Jowett and I talked, and I recapitulated to
myself the history of the first two years of the Pelopon
nesian War.'
Morier was back at Oxford for the beginning of Term.
In a letter of his mother's, dated the 14th November, she
asks : —
' . . . What is Stanley about ? Has he published any
thing since his sermons ? When is Temple to set up his
coUege ? What do you hear of the Duke of Argyll's book
Presbytery Examined ? I heard it mentioned as remarkably
weU written, but offensively dogmatic in so young a man.'
To which Tie repUes : —
' . . . StaiUey has pubUshed nothing since his sermons,
nor will he, I fancy, till his great work with Jowett comes
out — ^how soon that will be I do not know. They contem
plate, I fancy, editing a Commentary of the whole of the
New Testament. At first, however, they will publish the
Romans. This, though not absolutely a secret, you need
not talk about. In the meantime, parties in Oxford are
^ Memoirs of Dean Stanley, vol. i. p. 401.

1848] OXFORD AGAIN 75
rather stirring. The old Oxford orthodox Heads-of-House
Party has received a tremendous slap in the face by the
appointment of Vaughan to the Modern History Professor
ship. The Ultra-CathoUc Party is daily losing ground, and
where before their name was legion, they may now be
pointed out and counted, as, haggard and fast-worn and
cassock-swathed, they shuffle along the streets. A few
storm-beaten bulwarks stand erect here and there. Pusey
the learned, Marriott the good, Sewell the narrow-minded,
but they stand high and dry only to show where the stream
has swept by.
' Clough, the conscientious, has just throwm up his feUow
ship and published a poem entitled ' A Long Vacation
Pastoral,' the precursor of a volume of poems that are to
appear at Christmas. Good little honest hardworking
WooUcombe has been stirring about poor undergraduate
haUs to be attached to coUeges, and others have bestirred
themselves otherwise. But there is a passive form of
resistance in this Alma Mater of ours which sets all at
defiance. The one great object now, however, which has
united the efforts of most parties is a reform in the examina
tion statute. But even on this, like the mass of crude
flesh which not all the gastric juice of the healthier portion
of the University can digest, the Heads of Houses lie Uke
a misshapen nightmare. Not even the gathering storm
of a ParUamentary Commission can stir them. It wiU have
to come to barricades after aU.' He then goes on to speak
of his own personal friends. ' . . . The old stock at least
have much thinned. The person I see most of is Miiller, my
German friend. We have struck up a great intimacy, and
a more noble creature does not live. On the whole I Uve
mostly with Jowett, Palgrave, Stanley and Co., but my
time is almost entirely filled up with my reading, which is
progressing satisfactorily.'
From this period, too, dated his friendship with Froude.
' I was at one time very intimate with Froude,' he wrote,
many years later. ' . . . About the close of my time at
Oxford, just before he published the Nemesis of Faith, but
we have only met at far intervals since, owing to my

76 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1848
having lived abroad. I have the highest possible opinion
of his abiUties, and he has a godlike power of writing
English ; but like Gladstone, he is organicaUy crotchety
and paradoxical, and that will, I think, prevent him ever
achieving anything really great, in* the highest sense of the
word, at least. There is a very great charm in his inter
course, and by his friends he is much loved, but as regards
the influence he is capable of exercising, it must, I think,
be admitted that he belongs essentiaUy zu den Geistern die
verneinen, and this not from any momentary phase or
imperfect development, but from psychological necessity,
his negativeness being not a bit less, it seems to me, in his
orthodox revival in the History of England than it was in
his earUer works. The genius, however, with which he
wields his paradoxes wUl produce infinite benefit to the
study of that portion of English History upon which he is
employed, throwing light into dark corners which a less
powerful touch would never have reached, and throwing
open new gates for criticism which would otherwise have
remained closed. I defy any one who has read his History
not to feel, however little such readers may have been
seduced by his special pleading in favour of Henry viii.,that
he has throwm sunlight where all before was darkness, and
left men and women where he had found nothing but
dummies.' In December 1848 he spent a couple of days with Froude
at Peelwicke on Bassenthwaite Water, being completely
knocked up with his work and requiring refitting. He
was then working hard for his Degree, and his mother,
writing from Dawlish on 23rd February 1849, inquired
whether Jowett still promises a second, notwithstanding
the incision made in his logic, and also with whom he
coaches ?
In May 1849 he teUs her of a long letter ' just received
from Clough from Rome just before the defeat of the
French. The letter is not a little interesting, as you may
conceive. He was bearer of a letter of introduction from
Carlyle to Mazzini, and had several interviews with him.
... I offer to bet two to one the King of Pmssia dies on

i849] OXFORD AGAIN 77
the scaffold within a year. WiU you take me ? Poor
MiiUer has been sadly anxious the last few days, as his
mother and sister reside at Dresden.'
In a subsequent letter to his mother he says : —
"... My father will in aU probability have told you
that I had some notion of putting off going up for my
degree till October, even at the risk of having to quit
Balliol and going to a HaU. There were and are stUl
many pros and cons, too many to be written, but the main
features of the case are these. The great object to be
gained is what Aristotle would call an " energy," viz.
a certain confirmed habit of using one's intellectual
faculties, a kind of economy of the brain, which may be
applied to any given subject-matter. Now such an energy
is only to be gained by a constant well-kept-up application
for a sufficient time to form the habit. I had at one time
well-nigh given up the hope of acquiring such a habit both
from natural indolence and the want of early drilUng.
But since the great spurt of 1849 begun at Dawlish I have
had reason to take quite a new view of the matter and
found, I think I can say honestly, that though a devUish
hard customer to deal with and a party apt to slip through
one's fingers very much when one fancies one has tight hold
of and kept — ^the fact is, I have just about half got the
habit now, and it would be a great pity to pluck it half
ripe, which a cessation of my work au beau milieu would do
— I mean a stopping of work in the middle of my books — ^as
even if I began to read Law next day, the schoolbooks
would be all shut up, and it is impossible altogether to
separate " the energy " from the " concrete work." Now
all I was afraid of was, how far I could trust myself to keep
up the spurt all the Long. The answer to this I wanted
to get by trial of this vacation. Now I have been able
quite unassisted and working altogether for myself to make
a distinct hole in my work. Other considerations are
these. I cannot, though I tried at first — ^it is against the
nature of my beast — ^to cram. So that an enormous
amount of my work is quite undone, though some of it is
Ai. The consequence is that a " plough " or pluck is

78 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1849
quite on the cards. Jowett strongly recommends my
putting off, and is perfectly satisfied with my work hitherto.'
At the beginning of the vacation he again returned to
Borrowdale. ' My dearest Mother, — It is reaUy quite a blessing
to be able to sit down with nothing but the murmur
of the Derwent and the buzz of mountain insects and the
dog-rose-scented whiffs from the hiUside and the least taste
in life of tobacco to disturb one after the roaring, rushing,
clashing, puffing, which act a chorus to all one's thoughts
and talks in London. . . . Up here in the hills there is
nothing to disturb one, and so my only companions are the
citoyenne Nature and the citoyen Miiller. Perhaps for the
first time Liberty, Fraternity, Egalite are fully realised on
earth. It is a wonderful alternative this dropping into an
entirely new place and hooking on of one's individual self
to a complete new set of eyes. Oneself of yesterday
seems so stale and dusty and routiny (phonetically rout-
eeny) after the dipping and washing of one's spiritual body
in beautiful new scenery and exchanging the brick-and-
mortar thoughts begotten by crowded streets and long,
long chimneys for the fresh buxom offspring of sky, moun
tains, rivers, wind, lakes, lightnings.
' After two days of incessant rain, to-day is exquisitely
beautiful. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the great
rain mists came down the valley, lashing the old Grange
like huge fragments of torn drapery howUng in the wind.
The river rose three or four feet in a few hours, and boiled
and hissed under the windows. Indeed, I began to fancy
that the very original firm of storm manufactories must lie
somewhere up at the head of the valley ; for, once gulped
out of its mouth here, they seem to disperse and go breeding
little storms all over England. I shut myself up, and after
much Rhetoric and a little dinner went searching for
" summat " to read. I found an old Tyburn calendar of
1735, and regaled myself with hangings and transportations
tiU my neck began to ache, and then Rhetoric again. WeU,
yesterday being Saturday, I set off on a pony (having with
my usual luck retwisted my old strain so that I am now

i849] OXFORD AGAIN 79
unsound on both legs) to meet the mail at Keswick. Old
Muller alone made his appearance. The very sight of the
mountains has already done him good. Jowett has
arrived since this letter began, so we are now three joUy
postboys.' From his mother, 27th July 1849 • —
' . . . I wish particularly to hear the impression you
received of Miss Martineau. The works of hers I have
met with, clever as they are, have always struck me as
exhibiting an unfeminine hardness (which is not S3mony-
mous with masculine strength), and which the study of
political economy is very lijiely to produce in a woman's
mind if not viewed through the love and charity of a Chris
tian lens. . . . What race of ponies exists in those parts
that you can find one to carry you ? They must be
wonderful creatures.'
He replies : —
' . . . I am sorry I cannot give you any information
as regards Miss Martineau, as I did not succeed in making
her acquaintance when at Ambleside, or rather Skelwith
Bridge, with Froude. I just saw a bit of her, or rather
" what my fancy painted her," at about eleven the night
I arrived at Ambleside, as, having entirely forgotten Froude's
address, I was forced to make an inroad upon her to ascer
tain it. Her famous mesmerising clairvoyante slavey,
Jane, opened unto me many bars, etc., wherewith the
habitation was already fenced in, and through the curtain
a burning light and a figure, dimly painting itself on the
retina of my eye, of a quaint old male in women's clothes
writing at a table either from within or without is aU I
can speak of. From what I hear of her, however, I should
say that to the carnal eye she very much represents the
idea you had formed of her. She is an able woman, how
ever, and gets through a most supernatural amount of
work. Besides half a hundred novels, works on political
economy, a long work on Egypt, a kind of rival or brother
to Bunsen's, she has just published a history of the Thirty
Years of Peace. Du reste, she is attending bodUy to a model

8o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1849
farm of one acre, whereon she keeps two cows and herself
throughout the year, and lectures all the apprentices in
the Lake Country on political economy. She has walked
over every inch of ground about here, and has written a
guide-book thereon. AU this naturally places her in a
very high position in her own esteem ; indeed, as was ob
served by Mr. Myers the other day, she thinks herself at
the head of creation, which is certainly a fausse position.
Of Mrs. GaskeU I saw so little that I really have nothing
to write, as she is exceedingly human — not one speck
of literary dust soUs her Weibheit (feminity), and is
thoroughly unaffected. She is still handsome, though her
features are on rather too large a scale. Her strength lies,
as I think you can see in her book, in a certain truth and
reality, an earnestness of character more than in any
brUliancy of genius. In fact, I think herself very much
an improved edition of her book. Froude's friends, the
Manchester lot, I like very much, very unaffected, simple-
mannered and simple-thinking people — people with their
ten or twelve thousand a year dining at two, and with
nothing but maid-servants. They are quite unlike any other
English I have ever seen, and have evidently the stamp of
a class upon them — a class, by the way, that I intend to see
something more of, and shall, in consequence, accept their
invitation to Manchester as soon as I can. It is the sterling
clciss just now, and the one in which, if I mistake not, the
most vitality resides. I shall come on Mrs. GaskeU for
an introduction to the lower classes, and so I hope ere long
to see clothed in flesh and blood Cobdens and Mary Bartons.
The only other acquaintance I have made here has been
the Mr. Myers above mentioned, a friend of Stanley's, who
has printed, but not published, a very able book called
Thoughts on the Church. He married a Miss Marshall, a
sister of Mrs. Whewell and of Lady Monteagle — a nice,
clever woman, with two of the loveliest chUdren I ever saw.
I have likewise heard that maniac Wolff ! preach. It
was the most disgusting exhibition I ever saw in a church,
and I cannot conceive how people who consider a church
sacred ground can let such a maniac howl at them for two
» Father of Sir H. Drummond Wolff.

i849] OXFORD AGAIN 8i
hours. The subject was that of his monomania, namely, the
re-establishment of our Lord's personal kingdom amongst
the Jews. It was argued with all the cuteness of a madman,
and with a complete recklessness which such people have
of the whereabouts they get their premises. As a specimen
of what can be proved from what, it was amusing enough,
and joined to his appearance, rolled up in a big, fat carcase,
great, long, shaggy hair and a twinkling eye peculiar to
madness, and his intense enthusiasm when he thought
he had made a hit, and his Jew's accent, I was kept in a
state of most unpleasant roar the whole time.'
Plans for a further tour in the Isle of Man with Jowett
were disconcerted by the sudden death of the Bishop of
Norwich,! and Morier had to go alone. Writing to Pal
grave in the middle of September 1849, he says : —
' . . . ' On leaving Borrowdale about a week ago, in
company of Jowett and Gordon, we proceeded to White
haven, intending from thence to push on to the snug little
island ^ after a couple of days spent at Scott's,* at his
brother's place at Westwater, Harecroft by name. By
a vUe arrangement of steamers, however, we were detained
at Scott's a week. Jowett remained behind to get a letter
from Stanley. He possibly arrives to-morrow ; but wiU,
I think, probably join Stanley at Norwich. What a very
sudden death the Bishop's was. StaiUey was with us the
week before, and wUl be deeply grieved at it. In many
respects the breaking up of the Eastern tour will be a great
loss. My stay at Scott's was very pleasant. He is in
every respect a good fellow, with lots of humour, without
much originality, and I should not think any very great
power of mind ; but he possesses that very exceUent sub
stitute, lots of learning. He was as good as, if not very much
better than (saving one the trouble of looking up), a book,
and not having my lexicon with me I used him as such in
getting up the seventh book of Thucydides.'
Palgrave's reply is dated 25th September : —
' . . . I saw StaiUey on his way from Scotland to Nor-
^ 1 Stanley's father, on 6th September 1849.
' Isle of Man. ' Author of the Lexicon.
VOL. I. F

82 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1849
wich. He seemed much cut up. Although his Eastern
journey is given up, he takes advantage of the arrange
ments already made with Goldwin Smith to cut Oxford
next term altogether. Jowett's company, if he has been
able to give it, wUl have been a great comfort. Temple is
with his mother in lodgings at Twickenham.'
Temple's sister had been very iU, and so had Lingen,
' which renders all arrangements about KneUer Hall very
uncertain.' This was the college that Temple was then
proposing to set up, and of which Palgrave was eventuaUy
Vice-President. ' I saw Clough,' he continues, ' on his
retum from Italy, more brown than red, at least externally.
Various adventures d la Bothie I leave you to learn from
his lips. Poems may also be recited to you in some
favoured moment. They show that his mechanical skiU
is bringing itself more en rapport with his power of thought.'
In November 1849 Morier went up for his degree, and
took a Second Class in Literae Humaniores, evidently better
than he had expected, for during the examination he teUs
his mother, — ' a third is the most I can possibly get, it may
possibly be a fourth, but, never mind, I have made a good
fight for it, I feel quite joUy.'
From his mother at Bath, 28th November 1849 • —
' . . . I never felt how true it is that real joy is a serious
thing, more than I did this morning, dearest old feUow,
on hearing this hard trial of yours was over, and, well
over. The Jungfrau seemed to rise majesticaUy from my
chest, and I should have been as light as a feather but for
the gravity of my pleasure. Thank God, thank God, rises
to my lips every minute as I realize the immense anxiety
got rid of, and feel how very happy I am in being able to
congratulate you, my dear boy, on your success, which,
if not as briUiant as you would have it, quite satisfies me.
If you despise a bay leaf plucked from a lower stem, I will
stick it in my cap and be as proud of it as if it were a heron's
plume, for it bears the impress of God's blessing on honest
perseverance. I long to see your father come back none
the worse for his expedition in such bitter weather, and
ask him no end of questions about you. It must have

i849] OXFORD AGAIN 83
been a delicious surprise to see him at that moment.
Adieu, dear fellow ; may God bless and prosper the future.
You have had success enough for encouragement, — not
enough to satisfy, which is perhaps the best basis for a
fresh fight that could be desired.'
To a letter of thanks from Morier's father, Jowett
replies : ' For what little I have been able to do for your
son, I have been much more than repaid by his attachment
and gratitude.'
Morier to Palgrave, 6th December 1849 : ' Many thanks,
indeed, for your letter of congratulation. Much the
pleasantest part of getting one's humble little meeds of
honour is the reception of these congratulatory epistles.
... I hope to start for Miiller's Vaterland in about a
fortnight.'

84 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1849

CHAPTER VI
visit to GERMANY
In fulfilment of a long-standing promise, Morier started
for Germany in December 1849, ^'^d his first letter from
there to his mother is dated the 28th of that month : —
' . , . You wiU probably be wondering at the date of
my letter. Shortly, the reason is this. Miiller missed my
letters, I missed his, so on my arrival at Dessau I found
him in a state of frantic and tearing-hair-with-his-hands
excitement, exclaiming against aU the English and myself
in particular, as well he might, having been waiting three
weeks for an answer to a letter I had never received. Well,
I began to be frantic, and likewise to tear my hair. This
was about 9 p.m. on Christmas Day, at which hour I
arrived at Dessau, having missed a day owing to the
abominable passage I had from Dover.'
To the Same. 'Dresden, January loth, 1850.
' . . . Chemnitz ' (whither he had gone with Max
MiiUer from Leipzig), ' . . . like the finger-post in the
pantomime, is exactly eight German miles, that is twenty-
four English, that is twelve hours, German SchneU-post,
from ever57where ; that is, in non-pantomimic language, from
any railroad. To it and from it you are conveyed in huge
yellow boxes caUed Diligences, which aie placed on parallel
lines of wood called a sledge. To this four great, gaunt
animals, with very pointed collars and very long taUs indeed,
and stiU longer traces, are attached, who seem to be ever
lastingly trying to discover how many of their feet make up a
German mile, as never by any chance do they place one foot
elsewhere than exactly before the other. Inside a kind of

i85o] VISIT TO GERMANY 85
covered balcony in front of the yeUow box sit two men :
one holds a number of things of leather, communicating
with the four animals before him, and a thing caUed a whip
which for ever and ever he cracks ; the other upon every
possible occasion doodles on a cracked cornet-d-piston. If
it happens to be in the night, and you arrive at a turnpike,
the inhabitants of which are all asleep, after about ten
minutes fumbling out comes the instrument and a tune is
played. Ten minutes pause without a word of any sort
being spoken, or the least sign of impatience shown,
when half of an English damn well wrapped out would
bring the whole place about one, tune number two and
pause number two, etc., tiU, after all his tunes, including
Luther's hymn, the Old Hundredth, and most of the new
polkas having been gone through, der gute Mann thinks it
worth his whUe to appear. The most friendly conversa
tion then ensues, the turnpike man's family, his wife and
children are all separately inquired after, then after many
" Achs " a parting is at last effected. All this at 2 a.m.
in the morning. ... At Freyberg, a little towm in the
Erzgebirge, an old watchman, who to judge from his appear
ance must have been selected for his post about the time
of the Reformation, and probably then chosen for his
antique appearance, was " blessing the doors from nightly
harm " in the quaintest and j oiliest of old chants. . . .
The German (bourgeois be it understood) lives for the most
part up two pair of stairs. A bell subscribed by his name
and occupation, if pulled, will probably cause the door to
be opened by a Mddchen chubby as to her features and with
lots of flaxen hair festooned on her head ; by the Mddchen
you are introduced through a kind of ante-chamber (having
on your right hand a kitchen from which savoury steams
under the agency of the careful housewife are issuing) into
the sitting-room. This is a moderate-sized apartment : on
one side is a piano, on the other a green ivy tower under
which die gute Frau sits and knits (if not in the kitchen),
and is spooned by der gute Mann. It is very pretty, and,
if you could get rid of the association of earwigs and
company, would be hochst ideal. Around the room are
numberless lithographs and silhouettes, partly of Germany's

86 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
great men, alas ! the only point of Unity, partly of friends
and relations. ... At 7 in the morning the family gets
up, and en bonnet de nuit and robe de chambre partakes
of caf6. This lasts until twelve, when dinner is served.
This is the great event of the day; to it the housewife's
thoughts and care has been directed all the morning, and
with a kind of nervous excitement she watches the removal
of the covers and the effect this has on the countenance
of her guests. Should the look of anxious expectation
which has been sitting there the whUe be suddenly changed
to a radiant expression of recognition, as the eye suddenly
greets some well known-fare (namely, pig's face or some
other choice German tit-bits) and the distended nostril
catches some old famUiar sniff, her soul's holiday is there.
But if the contrary, and some unfortunate accident . . . !
on this scene of woe I cast a Timanthes' veil. Gastronomy
in Germany takes a peculiar and highly characteristic tum.
In France, gastronomy takes the form of a sort of hero-
worship, — an ideal chef is idolised, shrines are raised to the
Vatels and Soyers. It is not any particular dish, but the
Man, the power that can call forth the infinite from the
finite ; the subject matter is lost in infinite form. In
England it is a kind of fetish-worship of roast beef and plum
pudding as par excellence that which makes them morally
and physically superior to frog-eating foreigners ; but in
Germany it is a particular personal Leidenschaft for certain
particular bits of certain particular animals dressed in
certain particular ways. These bits are wrapped up in a
mist of poetical associations. They formed his father's
joys. To his chUdren he hands the receipts. Every
paper swarms with advertisements informing one that
so-and-so at such an hour on the morrow wiU have such-
and-such a dish (and mind, no other) ready for his
admirers.'

To his Father 'Berlin, February 2nd, 1850.
' . . . I made the acquaintance of several people, who,
as far as names go, are interesting ; as " men and brothers,"

i85o] VISIT TO GERMANY 87
however, otherwise. Amongst others. Count Brandenburg,!
the Prime Minister, with whom I chatted some ten minutes.
He looks exactly what he is, and what he wiU go down to
history as, a soldier-Uke feUow of marked and determined
character, a man to keep a mob at bay, but quant au reste
Zero ; Van der Heydt,^ Finance Minister, not much more ;
Persigny,* of whom you know more than myself, and lots
of lesser fry. The two most thorough men and statesmen
I have met are von Usedom,* Prussian Ambassador at
Rome ; and Biilow, the foreign ditto at Hanover, who not
long ago refused the porte-feuille for foreign affairs, because
the King insisted on having a private foreign correspond
ence which he was not to see ! Madame Usedom was a
Miss Malcolm, an old partner of mine, a neighbour of the
Lees. We have struck up a great friendship, and in con
sequence I have seen a great deal of Usedom. He has
the reputation of being the best diplomatist they have. . . .
Humboldt ^ I have not yet seen, having not yet delivered
my letter to him. Of women, the most interesting speci
men has been Bettina von Arnim,* the celebrated authoress
of the letters to Goethe. In outward appearance she has
a good deal of the witch about her ; she is very wild and
has strange ways, often receiving her guests seated on a
large round table in the centre of it. The night I called
upon her, however, she was very tame, but talked — a steam
mill would be a joke to her. However, it was all thoroughly
well worth listening to, about Goethe and about her child
hood and about the King and the Revolution. She re
counted the most marvellous Marchen [fairy-tale] about
her chUdhood, pure inventions, but in which she firmly
believed ; how she lived near a village which was altogether
^Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von, b. 1792, d. 1850, son of
King Frederick William 11. by his morganatic wife. Countess Sophie
von DonhoS, Prussian statesman, Minister of State from 1848-1850.
' Van der Heydt, Aug. Freiherr von, b. 1810, d. 1874, Prussian statesmeui.
Minister of State, 1 848-1 862.
' Persigny, Due de, b. 1808, d. 1S72, French statesman and diplomatist.
* Usedom, H. L. Graf von, b. 1805, d. 1884, Prussian statesman and
diplomatist. ' Humboldt, Alexander von, b. 1769, d. 1859, traveller, scientist, author.
" Arnim, Bettina von, b. 1788, d. 1859, authoress, sister of Klemens
Brentano, grand-daughter of Sophie Laroche, m. 1811 the poet L. von
Arnim.

88 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
inhabited by a colony of Indian princes, living in Eastern
houses and gardens ; how their money and remittances
from India (they were six hundred in number) used to run
short, and then they were in penury, living on the charity of
their neighbours ; how, when their remittances came, they
drove about in carriages altogether made of gold, and hung
the Catholic Church, which they frequented, with embroid
ered tapestries, etc. All this, with a circumstance of detaU
which, convinced as I was that it was mere myth, was very
amusing. Her latest stories about the King and the revolu
tion — she is a strong though (as far as this is possible) a
sensible Socialist — ^were, however, really interesting. . . .
In spite of aU her foUy, however, Bettina is a remarkable
person.' Shortly after his arrival in Berlin he was seized with a
virulent attack of quinsy, which for a few days endangered
his life. He was nursed through it with devoted care by
Max MiiUer, who, himself in delicate health at the expense
of much valuable time which shoiUd have been spent in
Paris, sat up with him for nights and days.
'Berlin, February 29th, 1850.
' My dear Max, — I am selfish enough to know that the
best news I can send you is that I continue to get better,
and have both to-day and yesterday enjoyed long walks
in the loveliest of weather. I called on Usedom and had
a long and interesting talk with him. He does not seem
to think that anything wiU come of Erfurt.! . . . i told
him, in case I had to give up Stein,^ I thought, if I could
induce anybody to print them, of bringing out a translation
of his letters. He gave me full leave to mention in a pre
face his name as the author, and offered in parts, which
would be less clear to English readers, to furnish me with
material to " make smooth the rugged paths." I really
think something very good might be made of it. The
style is admirably graphic, and the originals of the portraits
of Metternich, the King, etc., are of a weltgeschichtliche
* Assembly at Erfurt, then sitting.
' Life of Stein, which he was then contemplating translating. '

i85o] VISIT TO GERMANY 89
interest. ... I wish I coiUd as easily as the foregoing has
been scribbled off make you know the rich load of gratitude
for all you have been to me within the last month, which
joyfully, and like a triumphal car, I draw about with me.
Gratitude for benefits received at the hand of one indifferent
to me is a very mixed feeling, half pleasure, half pain, with
a great desire to pay back and have done with it, but
gratitude to a friend one loves with one's whole heart is,
I think, the purest and most ennobling and least selfish
feeling the soul has.'
This visit to Berlin was fated to exercise a great influence
on his future life and career, laying as it did the foundation
of his friendship with two men, Roggenbach! and Samwer,*
both of whom, in their several ways, were later on so in
timately to be associated with the struggles for German
Unity. The former was destined ultimately to become
one of the most prominent of German statesmen, the liberal
Prime Minister of that most liberal of German Sovereigns,
the Grand Duke of Baden, and as such to take a leading
part in many of the subsequent events. The latter, an
eminent Schleswig-Holstein jurist and strong upholder
of the Augustenburg rights of succession, had taken a
great and active share in the efforts of the Duchies to main
tain their old established liberties. Both men, enthusi
astic adherents of the cause of Schleswig-Holstein, soon
communicated their enthusiasm to Morier who, with
impetuous zeal and all the ardour of youth, threw himself
heart and soul into a movement of whose justice he had
become passionately convinced.
The question of Schleswig-Holstein was eventually to
become so all-important, and to be fraught with such far-
reaching consequences, that a slight sketch of its historical
aspect may here not be out of place ; for, strange as it may
appear, the political state of Europe, as at present con
stituted, has its roots in the rights and wrongs of two obscure
Duchies on the North Sea, and it may with truth be added,
1 Roggenbach, Franz Freiherr von, b. 1825, d. 1907, Prime Minister of
Baden, 1861-1865.
'Samwer.Karl Friedrich Lucian,b.i8i9,d. 1882, jurist. Took a prominent
part in the Schleswig-Holstein que.stion advises to Duke Frederick.

90 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
that few questions have been so much discussed and written
about, and so little understood.
At one time,- represented as the work of democratic
sympathisers with the German Revolution ; at another,
as an aristocratic conspiracy to resist the march of liberal
ideas ; again, as the ambitious schemes of an intriguing
Duke ; seized upon finally, as a link in the general plan of
Prussian aggrandisement, the cause which the Duchies
rose to defend in 1848 has rarely been judged upon its own
merits. Nor has it been often realised, that the Charter
of Liberties, which they sought to maintain against
tremendous odds, dated four hundred years back, and that
the war they engaged in was as pre-eminently defensive in
its nature as it was conservative in its principles. Like our
own Revolution of 1688, it was a rise en masse of an essen
tially loyal and conservative people. Princes of the Blood,
nobles, clergy, and commonalty, to prevent the Ulegal in
fringement of an old constitution, which the energies of a
whole people were called upon to maintain.
For the better understanding of the situation an
historical retrospect is necessary.
About the middle of the fifteenth century, by the death
of Count Adolf of Holstein, the Sovereignty of the Duchies
became vacant. At that time the right of election was
vested in the Diet of Schleswig-Holstein ; though such
right was not exercised arbitrarily, but generally confined
to the members of particular famUies. Two candidates
offered themselves for their choice — Count Otho iii. of
Schauenburg and Christian i., at the time King of Denmark.
The former had a better claim as agnatic kinsman to the
defunct Duke. The latter consequently offered higher
terms. It was the great object of the Diet to secure on a
firm basis the Union, which for several centuries had existed
between the then County of Holstein and the Duchy of
Schleswig. This union in respect to all their constitutional
relations was perfect : it rested on a community of race,
language, and institutions, and had been cemented by long
years of warfare, waged in common against their Scandin
avian neighbours of Denmark. The only obstacle to their
complete political unity was one external to themselves.

i850] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 91
and one they could not remove : the fact, that Schleswig
was a fief of Denmark, whilst Holstein was the fief of Ger
many. Now, however, an opportunity was offered them
of practicaUy preventing any future Ul consequences that
might flow from this fact. By offering the joint Crown
to Christian and to his descendants upon the stipulation
that he and his descendants maintained the common con
stitution of the country, and that, under no circumstances
whatever, a different succession should be introduced,
their perfect Unity, so long as their Sovereigns kept their
word, was secured. The choice of the King of Denmark
was even a more politic stroke than this. As mentioned
before, the Duchies had been at constant war with Den
mark : by making the Crown of the Duchies hereditary
in the Oldenburg famUy (of which Christian i. was founder),
whUst in Denmark the Crown remained elective, they
naturalised this famUy in the Duchies and forced them to
identify with these their more lasting interest : thus secur
ing a German Prince upon the Danish throne, i.e. insepar
ably binding up with their own interests those of the most
influential personage in the State, hitherto the most
hostUe to them.
Such was the history of the union of Schleswig-Holstein
with Denmark. The political wisdom displayed in framing
it is sufficiently attested by the fact that this constitution
was maintained in its integrity tUl the nineteenth century,
and with it the independence of the Duchies. Not only
was their union with Denmark a purely personal one, but
the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein by being placed on the
Danish throne became, so to speak, the safeguard of the
Duchies against the encroachments of the King of Denmark.
This unity, and at the same time this divisibility of person,
was from the first intended and adopted from the political
motive above mentioned. It is worthy of observation
that as long as Schleswig remained a feudal tenure the
King of Denmark, as Duke of Schleswig, had to pay homage
to himself for it.
The relations existing respectively in the Duchies and
in the Monarchy at the time of this union remained undis
turbed for two centuries. During that period the inde-

92 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
pendence and liberties of the Duchies remained intact.
The Kings of Denmark were powerfuUy interested in keep
ing them apart, and in precluding them from a share in
the unlimited right of election exercised in Denmark. Sup
ported by their hereditary claim on the Duchies, they had
no difficulty in obtaining the suffrages of Denmark to their
dynasty ; and, in order to secure that support, they took
care to preserve inviolate the privUeges of Schleswig-
Holstein. ' This happy combination seems, according to all experi
ence, to be the only condition under which a union of two
unequal States can continue to exist. If the larger State
possesses the more free institutions, the smaller State the
less free, there is no pretext for attacks on the latter. If,
on the other hand, the larger State has the more despotic
power and the lesser State the freer institutions, the attempt
wiU always be made to deprive the latter of its inconvenient
liberties.' !
The former relation existed between Denmark and the
Duchies during the first period of their connection. They
exchanged relations in 1660 when the celebrated Copen
hagen Revolution established "the Oldenburg dynasty
firmly upon the Danish throne, and changed the hitherto
aristocratic Government into the most absolute Monarchy
in Europe. In addition, the right of female succession was
introduced. As all the blessings which the Duchies had enjoyed
dated from the constitution of 1460, so all the evils from
which they subsequently suffered dated from the Revolu
tion of 1660. By it, the two great causes of all their
troubles were brought into existence : first, the anomaly
of a purely constitutional country and a purely absolute
country being yoked together under the same Sovereign ;
secondly, a difference of succession in the two countries.
From this time, it was but natural that the Kings of
Denmark, domesticated at Copenhagen and surrounded by
all the prestige of absolute authority, taught from their
cradle that their will was Law, that there vras none other
Law but it, should look with jealousy upon the free
' Vide Manifesto of the Stadtholderate, Kiel, 22nd July 1850.

i85o] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 93
institutions of that country, of which they were only
constitutional Sovereigns. One of the great objects of the
union was by this means defeated. The interests of the
reigning line of the Oldenburg family became identified
with Denmark, and thus the barrier to the old antagonism
between the peoples was removed ; but the other branches
of the family, the Princes of Augustenburg and Gliicksburg,
had taken firm root in the Duchies, and they became the
champions of their independence.
The history of the century and a half that succeeded
the Revolution of 1660 is the history of a continual persecu
tion of these branches and of their manly defence of the
liberties comnutted to their charge, as for instance in
1806 and 1813 when it was mainly through the efforts of
Duke Frederick Christian of Augustenburg ! that the
Danish efforts to incorporate the Duchies then were foiled.
By their means, and by the support, which the connection
of Holstein with the German Empire secured for the
Duchies from that quarter, the constitution of the country
was preserved in all its integrity, to the beginning of the
nineteenth century. It is true, however, that the absolute
Kings of Denmark attempted, by various administrative
reforms, to sap this constitution.
The separate administrations of Denmark and the
Duchies began graduaUy to be merged and transplanted
to Copenhagen. Since 1815, the intention had been
harboured of giving a separate constitution to each of the
Duchies, a breach of the ancient joint constitution, to which,
however, no effect was given.
The first direct blow aimed at the independence of the
Duchies were the Letters-Patent published by Christian
vm. in 1846.
Before this period, however, the relations of Denmark
to the Duchies had entered upon a new stage. The
Revolution of June 1830 had shaken the absolutism of
Denmark to its foundations ; and the popular element had
obtained a footing in the politics of Copenhagen. From
this time, the strong national contrasts existing between
the two peoples daily became more and more manifest ;
' Known for his friendship with Schiller.

94 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
the democratic elements, pecuUar to a commercial and
maritime population, daily came out in stronger relief
against the essentiaUy conservative character of the
agricultural population of the Duchies. The politics of
the people followed those of their Sovereigns, but with
this difference, that for the subtle underground policy of
a cabinet, was substituted the open defiance, the rough
plain-spoken language of a mob. For awhile, this popular
spirit was kept in check by the dexterous management of
Christian vm. During the whole of his reign, however,
the breach between Denmark and the Duchies widened
more and more. The conquest of Schleswig by the sword,
if necessary, became the war-cry of the Radical party at
Copenhagen. The recognition in principle and restitution
in fact of the old joint constitution of the country was the
moderate reply made by the Duchies. Christian vm.
used the passions of both parties for his ovm plan, and for
the purpose of carrying out his own policy.
This policy had for its two main objects, internally
opposition to, and if possible the suppression of, the growing
Radicalism at Copenhagen ; externally the incorporation
of the Duchies into the Monarchy ; or to use the expression
now for the first time introduced, 'Establishment of the
integrity of the Danish Monarchy.'
To obtain these two ends he kept playing off the con
servatism of the Duchies against the radicaUsm of Copen
hagen and vice versa. As regards the proj ects of annexation,
which was the only point held in common by Christian vm.
and his Danish subjects, there existed this vital difference
— the rendering asunder of the Duchies, and identification
of Schleswig with Denmark, was the object of the Radical
party. Every means of Radical propagandism had been
used to democratise and to unconservatise the population.
Holstein, according to their programme, was to be cut
adrift altogether. They felt, and it was a true instinct
which made them feel so, that so long as the latter duchy
remained within the monarchy there would exist a con
servative element in the State which would always be more
than a match for their plans. It was this very reason
which made Christian viii. all the more anxious to preserve

i85o] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 95
it. He opposed the radical tendencies by recognising the
union of the Duchies. The union of these two conservative
Duchies, he looked upon as a bulwark against his own
Danish subjects.
In his celebrated Letters-Patent of 1846, Christian vm.
declared that, after diligent investigation, he had made
the remarkable discovery that, rather more than a century
before Schleswig and the greater part of Holstein had
been incorporated into Denmark ; and that, for the
territory thus incorporated, the succession of the female
line, according to the Danish law, had been introduced.
He further declared, that his efforts would be directed
towards removing any difficulties that might be in the way
of a similar incorporation and change of succession in the
remaining portion of Holstein. As might be supposed,
this declaration produced the deepest sensation, as well as
the greatest astonishment in the Duchies. That a King
of Denmark should have had the intention, a century
before, of effecting such incorporation was sufficiently
natural ; but that it should have been effected without
anybody's knowing anything about it, either in Denmark
or the Duchies, was a staggering fact. That it had not,
hitherto, been known in Denmark, was sufficiently proved,
by repeated transactions, in which the agnatic claims of
succession had been acknowledged in Schleswig as weU as
in Holstein, and in which the old joint constitution of the
country, resting essentiaUy upon sameness of succession,
had been recognised.
However, granting that the transaction of 1721 bore
the impress of fraud which Christian tried to fix upon
it, the right of the Duchies to prevent its being put into
execution was in no wise impaired ; for the act which gave
to the Kings of Denmark the Sovereignties of the Duchies
was a constitutional compact, resting upon certain con
ditions, which no mere Royal Decree could possibly invali
date. The Letters-Patent of 1846 were an attempt to
destroy a fundamental law by a Royal Decree ; an attempt
which failed. The quiet but determined resistance of the
Duchies to its execution forced Christian vm. to give up
the plan. He did not, however, give up the project of

96 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
incorporation ; finding that the time was past when it
was possible for Sovereigns to carry out such plans by the
mere expression of their wUl, he determined, though detest
ing Liberal institutions, on a last attempt at putting his
project into execution, by the granting of a common free
constitution to the whole monarchy. He thought that by
means of such a boon, the wished-for centralisation might at
last be brought about. This constitution of Christian vm.
was the last attempt made by king-craft on the independ
ence of the Duchies. Christian died before its completion,
and with Christian's death the entire system which he had
so carefuUy and with such consummate art buUt up fell to
the ground. The vigilance, by which the balance had
been hitherto maintained, between the antagonistic forces,
arrayed against each other with such selfish skUl by the
King's hand, was now withdrawn ; the barriers, which he
had set up, against the increasing Radicalism of Copenhagen
broke down, the moment he was no longer there to watch
them ; aU the purpose they had served had been to
accumulate the water. On Frederick vii.'s accession, the
full tide of democracy set in. A feeble attempt was made
to carry out the constitution of Christian ; hateful as was
the project to the Duchies, they stUl consented to the pre
liminary steps of sending notables to Copenhagen to discuss
it. The project, however, was one which never had the
approval of the party whose hour was now come ; the
impulse given to the entire revolutionary party of Europe
by the Revolution of 1848 brought the ultra-democratic
party at Copenhagen into power. At the head of 15,000
men, the committee of a revolutionary club ordered the
King to change his ministers, and to call to power the
leaders of the movement — ^the same men whose motto had
been for the last six years, ' Denmark to the Eider,' the
meaning of which was more significantly expressed by the
words of Orla Lehmann : ' Let us write our Laws
with bloody swords on the Schleswig - Holsteiners'
backs.' !
This, the language of the leading member of the new
ministry, left the King no choice but that of breaking his
^ At the May festival of 1842,

i85o] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 97
Coronation Oath or of losing his Crown. He preferred
the former alternative.
The Duchies, thus wantonly attacked by the Power to
whom they had a right to look for protection, were driven
to the only resource left them — the armed defence of their
rights. The motives of this measure adopted by them in the
name of their legitimate sovereign, Frederick vii., Duke of
Schleswig-Holstein, against the tyranny of a revolutionary
party claiming the name of the King of Denmark, the tool
of the Copenhagen rabble, could not be more touchingly
expressed than in the concluding sentence, put forth two
years later, just before the battle of Idstedt, by the Stadt
holderate of the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein : —
' It is with a view to shield our people from this fate, to
save the domestic hearth from violation, to preserve our rights,
and with them our Country, that we are in arms against the
hostUe plans of Denmark. We know that the event of battles
is in the hand of God, and that we may be vanquished, but we
are not to be intimidated by a single defeat, nor are we to be
bowed dowTi by repeated disaster ; it shall not be an easy
task to conquer us, and, if conquered, it wiU be impossible
to keep us dovra for ever.
'It is only those few men, whom necessity has forced to
the helm of this little State, who speak these confident words
in the name of their feUow-countrymen ; they know that of
themselves they have no power to give effect to these words.
But they also know that by them stand the people, who, with
the simpUcity of ancient manners, have retained the strength
and truthfulness which gives them confidence in themselves :
a people slow to begin, but slower to abandon what they have
once Ijegun ; a people not made to gratify the expectations
of those who fancy them to be carried away with the excite
ment of revolt, and look out for its natural consequences,
lassitude and depression ; by a people endowed with that
reflective courage which, when there was need of moderation,
prevented them from urging on their leaders ; — but who, now
that the moment of action has arrived, are so much the less dis
posed to hang back through fear. We here solemnly appeal to
God and to the sentence of all unprejudiced men, as weU as
to the impartial judgment of future history, caUing them to
witness that this land, having suffered grievances the most
gaUing, repressed passions the most excusable, submitted to
the greatest sacrifices, employed every means of concUiation, has
at length exhausted the fuU measure of patience and endurance.
VOL. I. G

98 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
'Now that Denmark is for the third time endeavouring to
force upon us by the sword her interpretation of our rights,
for the purpose of trampling them underfoot, we march on-
war(k to the holiest of conflicts with the calmest resolution,
fervently breathing that same prayer which our forefathers
put up before the battle of Himmingstede : "If we are
wrong, may God let us fall ; if right, let Him not destroy
us." As soon as the news of the Revolution at Copenhagen
reached the Assembly at Rendsburg a provisional Govern
ment was formed, with the unanimous consent of the
people, to direct the armed resistance, a step which evoked
the greatest enthusiasm throughout Germany, where the
tide of feeling for National Unity was then at its flood,
and the rights of Schleswig-Holstein were looked upon as
a sacred trust. Volunteers flocked from all parts to enrol
themselves in the Schleswig-Holstein army, and many
names afterwards to become famous first attained to pro
minence during this campaign ; amongst others. General
Bonin,! the Commander-in-Chief of the Schleswig-Holstein
forces, later Prussian Minister for War ; and Blumenthal *
and the Bavarian Von der Tann,^ both later on to be so
weU known in the wars of '66 and '70.
On 24th March 1848 King Frederick William iv. recog
nised the rights of the Duchies in a letter to Duke Chris
tian August of Augustenburg ; German troops crossed the
frontier to their assistance, and the country was cleared of
the Danes.
Under pressure of the Powers, however, and more
especially owing to the threatening attitude of England
and Russia, German help was soon withdrawn, and after
repeated armistices the peace of Berlin was signed on
2nd JvUy 1850, which, by recognising the former rights both
of the German Diet and of Denmark, restored the status
quo ante.
Schleswig-Holstein gaUantly refused to give up the
1 Bonin, Eduard von, b. 1793, d. 1865, Prussian General and Minister for
War, 1 852-1 854 and 185S-1859.
" Blumenthal, Leonhard Graf von, b. 1810, d. 1900, Field-Marshal, Chief
of the Staff to "tlie Crown Prince's army during the wars of 1866 and 1870.
' Tann, Ludwig A. S. Freiherr von u&d zu der, d. 1815, d. iSSi, Chief of
the Stafi to Prince Charles of Bavaria's army in 1866; Commander-in-
Chief of Bavarian Army Corps in 1870.

i85o] VISIT TO THE THEATRE OF WAR gg
struggle, and single-handed continued the fight against the
overwhelming Danish forces, a fight which could have
but one conclusion. Their troops, under the incapable
leadership of General WiUisen,! who had replaced Bonin,
suffering defeat after defeat, and the war came to an end
in the autumn of 1850, when the heroic people, betrayed
by those on whose help they had relied, were delivered
over to the mercy of their foes at Copenhagen, where the
Eider-Dane party was holding fuU sway.
Fired with enthusiasm for the cause of Schleswig -
Holstein, Morier returned to England, anxious to arouse
the interest and to eiUist the sympathies of his country
men on behalf of the men then pouring out their blood
for the defence of their country and for the maintenance
of their old-established rights.
In August of the same year he started off himself for
the theatre of war, where the last scenes of the conflict
were being enacted.
In the foUowing letters, addressed chiefly to his mother,
he thus relates his experiences : —
23rd August — ' ... I have determined on the alternative.
Privy Council or Law. Should the former be favourable,
good. Should it not, then the ist of November 1850 sees me
setting to work on the latter. The meantime I intend to
devote in the following manner. Since my first interview
with Gervinus ^ I have had a most strong desire to see with
my own eyes the persons who are now defending the freedom
of the old Anglo-Saxon hearth. My doing so depended upon
my feeling that it would be of any practical utility, as,
unless it did serve some practical purpose, I did not con
sider myself for many reasons justified in so doing. My
second interview with Gervinus to-day, from which I have
just come, has settled that point. The means he has just put
into my hands of making the acquaintance of Reventlow,*
J Willisen, Wilhelm von, Prussian General, author of works on strategy
and tactics.
' Gervinus, Georg Gottfried, b. 1805, d. 1871, eminent historian and
author, professor at Gottingen University ; exiled for protesting against
King Ernst Augustus of Hanover's overthrow of the constitution.
» Reventlow, Friedrich Graf, b. 1797, d. 1874, member of the Holstein
Diet; Stadtholder from 1849-1851.

100 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
Beseler,! the Duke of Augustenburg,^ the Prince of Noer,^
Willisen, and Gagern * have convinced me that I shall have
an opportunity of probing to the bottom the morale of
the movement in a way which no one else can have. Such
an opportunity, with the historical knowledge of the move
ment which I already have, should not be throvm away
even in justice to the Duchies. The form which Meyr
recommends, and which I should prefer, would be a series
of letters descriptive in character, but interweaving the
historical facts. These letters should form answers to
others, which somebody quelconque should write to me.
The somebody quelconque should embody the view which
the pubUc has in England on the subject. For this the
leaders of The Times should be carefully studied, and the
views in them reproduced. The answers would bowl all
their positions over. This part of the task I wish you to
undertake, and the sooner the better. The more real and
colloquial they are the better. It wiU be all the more an-
greifend. I start to-night, there luckily being a boat for
Hamburg at 11 p.m. I arrive at Hamburg Sunday
morning and from thence proceed to Kiel, my headquarters.
Here I shall remain for about a week or ten days, the Provi
sional Govemment being there. A week or ten days is all I
can spare, as, on the seventh, I must be at John FfoUiott's,
whither I shall proceed through Hull. A week, however,
will be all I want, as a vivid impression is more than any
thing else what I want. I shall proceed writing the letter
to you immediately on landing. I would like, if possible,
to publish them first in the Examiner, and afterwards like
Grote's letters on Switzerland. I wUl see if Meyr can
manage it for me. The letters from you I wish you to write
off directly to Poste Restante, Kiel, as I want to write real
answers. You need not pretend to be my mother, but
just anyone knowing me well ; you chaff about German
'' 1 Beseler, William Hartwig, b. 1806, d. 1884, President of the Schleswig
Diet; Stadtholder, 1849-1851; exiled, and died as curator of Bonn
University. ^ Augustenburg, Christian August, Duke of, b. 1798, d. 1869.
r, ' Noer, Prince of, b. 1800, d. 1865, brother of the above.
* Gagern, Heinrich von, b. 1797, d. 1880, German liberal statesman.
President of National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848 ; took part in
Schleswig-Holstein campaign.

i85o] VISIT TO THE THEATRE OF WAR loi
enthusiasm, abuse radicals, say you thought me a con
servative, though a new-fangled one, and no backer of
Reds, etc., and then dish up your view.'
' The Prince Royal, Steam Packet
(jo miles up the Elbe),
8 p.m., Sunday, August 2Sth, 1850.
' ... It was with real joy and exuberance of spirits that
I entered my hansom forty-eight hours since. Nature,
I believe, intended me for a wanderer, and it was by one
of her unaccountable mistakes that it was the Rue des
Champs Elysees, and not a gipsy tent, that saw me emerge
into Ught. Then, also the feeling that my eventful letter
scribbled off at the Alfred had settled my fate and bound
me 'prentice to that grim corpse Law, and that perhaps
now, for the last time for years, I could freely and with
whole soul mingle with living men, made me feel every
minute to be pulsing out a whole flood tide of life in a
way the minutes had not done for weeks past. So, by a
bright moonlight away we went, gee-up down Oxford
Street, and through the endless labyrinth of the City
streets, till, in the open " Place " that surrounds it, the
Tower stood beaming out in the moonlight, side by side
with its great shadow, which seemed to lie there to testify
to the huge solidity of the aerial spectre-coloured buUding,
which from a thousand glittering points was reflecting
the rays of the moon.
' At St. Catherine's Wharf I exchanged my hansom
for a wherry, which took me out to the steamer lying some
way down the river. On emerging from the streets upon
the river as beautiful a view presented itself to the eye
as the latter, so long accustomed to no more beauty than
the perspective of Argyle Street, could wish to feed upon.
Such a fairyland of beauty I Uttle expected to meet with in
the very heart of our smoke-skinned metropolis ; but some
kinds of light, like certain serene minds, can endue any
object with their own beauty. It was high tide, and in
consequence the river was very full. There was not so
much as a ripple or undulation on the fa«e of the water,
but only great basins plated over with sheets of silver by
the moonlight, and now and then slightly heaving, as if

102 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
there were a soul beneath it. The basins were separated
from each other by huge groups of dark ships, whose mast-
forests occasionally intercepted and broke the moon rays.
Their perfect forms were mirrored with every detail of rope
and tackle in the surrounding smoothness, the deep shadow
they cast was here and there relieved and set off by the
bright glare of some cabin light, which flared away in radii
of earthy carnal light, contrasting strangely with the
spiritual silveriness of Nature's lamp. Indeed, the cabin
light had a very remarkable effect. The grim ships seemed
to be grinning and glaring out at each other through these
great meteor lights like wicked genii, I uneasily abiding
amidst so much calm beauty. The buildings on either
bank grouped themselves into picturesque masses of light
and shade, culminating on the left bank in the four turrets
of the Tower. Everything was hushed in silence, except
here and there the heaving up of some distant anchor, or the
beUs on board some ship, or the bark of some solitary watch
dog, till all at once from a thousand church steeples rang
out a cariUon of beUs to announce eleven. And then the
engines hissed, the paddles began to revolve, and we started
for Anglia, . . . Hamburg on Monday.' ' Kiel, August 26th, 1850.
' I have just time to dispatch another few lines to let
you know of my arrival. All that I had been led to expect
is fuUy, and more than fiUly, verified. They are veritably
a most strange and admirable people. The serene kind of
sang-froid with which everjrthing goes on exactly as usual,
though within earshot of the sound of war, is truly mar
veUous. There is not the slightest sign of enthusiasm
of any sort, without, however, which is strange enough,
the least appearance of indifference. Anyone you may
chance to talk to will evidently from preference enter
upon the subject of the war, but it is to talk of it in the
most calculating and rational of ways. There is no sort
of self-glorification ; they seem to expect their troops
(composed altogether of their brothers or sons) to fight
it out as if it was a matter of loading or unloading a ship.
Itis a piece of business which duty to the Fatherland

i85o] VISIT TO THE THEATRE OF WAR 103
requires, and the more business-like the way it is done the
better the chance of success. I feel convinced that the
only light in which the question has presented itself to
the bulk of the inhabitants is that of defence against
foreign aggression, and that the fact of the Duke being also
the King of Denmark never the least before, to their some
what slow imagination, conveyed with it the idea of their
standing in any sort of relation to Denmark. As far as
I have yet been able to judge, there does not seem to be
the slightest animosity against the Danes personally. Of
the men they talk in a most dispassionate way as good
soldiers, very fond of beef when they can get it, which,
with a true kind of John Bull commiseration, they say is not
often, as subservient and rather cringing in manner to their
superiors, which, to the sturdy yeomen of Holstein, one of
whose most marked characteristics is a strong sense of self-
respect, seems a great fault. On the whole, I should say
their feeling towards the Danes seems to be much the
same as that of John BuU about a Frenchman — a sort of
fellow whom it would do one good to see having a good
tuck-in. Of the young Danish officers, of their arrogance
and " WUlkiihr," they complain most bitterly. The
prisoners are treated with the greatest kindness. There
are only about three companies of Jagers in this place,
the army being concentrated at Rendsburg ; the Russian
fleet is visible in the distance.' To his Sister 'August 26th, 1850.
' . , . I have just returned from a visit to the German
Fleet and a cruise within safe distance of the muted Danish
and Russian dittoes. If you have a map of Schleswig-
Holstein take it out and look at it whilst I give the
following description. Kiel lies at the bottom of a deep
winding bay running nearly north and south. At the
mouth of this bay, about 8 mUes from the town, is situated
a strong fortress, Friedrichsort by name, now manned by
about one thousand men and with 40 guns to sweep the
decks of any adventurous vessel that might wish to make
better acquaintance with the interior of the bay. About

104 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
five or six English mUes beyond lies the Russo-Danish
Fleet. I started about 5 p.m. ; a morning of pouring rain
had been succeeded by a bright afternoon, that kind of
brightness which succeeds rain so well described in Tenny
son's Poet's Song : —
"When a light breeze blows from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow go over the wheat."
Very deep blue sky with very large bright white clouds
sweeping with great speed over the horizon. Well, con
ceive yourself with these advantages in a brisk little cutter
dashing gallantly through the very bluest of waves, with
the most exhUarating and champagny spray jet d'eau-
ing over you, and you will allow that the circumstances
were such as to allow one to be jolly without exactly the
right of claiming great credit for so being. But add to
aU this the fact of the entourage of the very best kind of
pretty scenery, the gay little town of Kiel with its garniture
of humble shipping behind you, and on either side beauti
fully sloping hUls covered for the most part with beech
woods, the trees a magnificent size, actuaUy with their
roots in the water {N.B., there are no tides in the Ostsee),
put in by way of seasoning, the excitement of going to look
at real fighting men; and that the acoustic part should
be provided for, know that there be the bugles of a rifle
brigade re-echoing through the woods, and then I think
you wUl confess that the sight was decidedly to be pre
ferred to that of the old white stone three-pair-up at
Berlin, afforded more variety than the Blue Room at Bath,
and was more calculated to suggest and set going, etc., than
even the garrison Argyle Street.
' The first place my AUemanee tritons took me to was
that everlasting resort of every German town, gesthetically
yclept a BeUe Vue, which being interpreted, however, into
grosser language means ein Cafe und Bier Wirthshaus.
In this case, however, the appellation was well deserved.
A little circular temple, cocked up on a height about half
way to Friedrichsort, it commands the whole length and
breadth of the bay on either side, and looks out into the
open sea beyond. In addition to the more sensual

i85o] VISIT TO THE THEATRE OF WAR 105
advantages of good beer and good coffee, it possesses a
most excellent telescope, by which I was enabled to take
an accurate survey of the Cossack monsters who, thanks
to Palmerstonian policy, are having it all their own way
in these northern seas. There were five Line of battleships
and some steam frigates ; two of the former were Danish
and, as far as my unnautical eye would allow me to judge,
very smart -looking craft. One of the Russians was a huge
beast indeed, with no less than one hundred and twenty
distinct sets of salamander bowels. I must confess it
made my Teutonic blood boU within me to see these
Siberian barbarians thus threatening our old Anglo-Saxon
hearth. However, it is no use either biling or boiling.
I console myself with the idea of a universal justice turning
the tables in the long run. As far as a mere picture goes,
it was a gallant sight. " Lordly " is a right weU-chosen
appellation, for a ship and a fleet of Line of battleships
has a most aristocratic appearance. By lowering the glass
an inch a very different sight presents itself, viz. the
German Fleet. But we must not anticipate. The tritons
having beer-ed me descended the hillside and reascended
our ship. I lit one end of a yard of 'baccy, wrapped
myself up in my plaid, and felt, as you may suppose, con
summately happy. It was now about sunset, a bright
golden cloud was lashed up into a fit of angry crying by
a rather violent squall which now came on. The blue
waves curled themselves up into white foam, and a triple
rainbow, more beautiful than anything I ever beheld,
spanned the bay of Kiel. Scudding at the rate of any
number of knots an hour, we arrived in about half that
time at the anchoring ground of Holstein's gallant little
squadron. It was anchored immediately off the mouth
of the canal which joins the Ostsee with the Eider, and so
forms the boundary line between the two Duchies. Nothing
could be more picturesque than the position, a snug little
wooded bay quite sheltered from every wind. Having
reported myself to the Commodore I was most courteously
taken over the squadron by the great man in person. It
consists of two steamers, the Bonin mounting four large
guns, and the Lowe mounting two and about half-a-dozen

io6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
gunboats, each manned by fifty men, and mounting two
huge sixty-pounders and eight swivels. With this force, plus
one more smaU steamer, the Von der Tann, they had twice
taken the offensive against the Danes since the first breaking
out of hostUities. On the first occasion, about a month
ago, the Von der Tann managed to slip out between the
Danish ships in a dense fog, and made its way to the Gulf
of Travemiinde to intercept the Danish maUs from Liibeck.
In this gulf they captured a Danish merchantman, and
towed her under the fire of the Danish men-of-war, who
were now in fuU chase, into the harbour of Liibeck. The
authorities here civiUy requested them to go to the devU.
They were obliged to comply, and out they dashed, stUl
keeping fast hold of the prize, and attempted to cut their
way through. You must bear in mind that this steamer
was not bigger than one of our Thames heavy boats, and
only mounted two guns. The game, of course, was a
desperate one, but stiU for some time they answered the
Danish broadside from the lisping lips of their two poor little
guns. A Danish steamer then bore down upon her. In
another minute she would have been blown out of the
water. To give in was out of the question, so her captain
ran her upon a sandbank and blew her up, which was a
sell for King Darius. The whole was done with such con
summate coolness that every man succeeded in escaping
in the boats and had the satisfaction of taking sights at
the Danes from the shore. The second engagement took
place about a week ago, and only about a couple of mUes
off the place where we now were. One of the largest of
the Danish steam frigates, a 40-gun ship, the Heckla, moved
in towards Friedrichsort to reconnoitre. Out went the
gunboats and the two steamers, and a very brisk cannonade
took place, which lasted a couple of hours. The gunboats
were a good bit knocked about, and one lost several men.
The steamers were shot through and through, the new paint
showed plainly where the scars were. However, the men
remained perfectly steady, and only retired after two
hours, when some more steam frigates came to the assistance
of the Heckla. To their great delight they had just
learned by the Copenhagen papers that the Heckla had

i85o] VISIT TO THE THEATRE OF WAR 107
been considerably peppered. Considering that the men
have loeen hastUy gathered together from the Merchant
Service, and have only had a couple of months' practising
in gunnery, it speaks very well for them. The distance
was about 1800 yards, and they were far beyond reach of
any assistance from the batteries of Friedrichsort. They
seemed all, both officers and men, very keen for another
tussle. ' P.S. Rendsburg, 27th August 1850. — This was con
tinued and ended here. For further news apply to
David, Anna, and Co., Newsvendors, Bath.'
To his Mother
' Headquarters of the Schleswig-Holstein
Army, Rendsburg, August 2%th, 1850.
' . . . The attitude of the people is one of the noblest
moral phenomena I have ever seen. It is strengthening
and faith-giving to a most extraordinary degree . . . the
Duke is a most glorious old feUow. Heinrich von Gagern
has put a horse at my disposal.' ' Rendsburg, August 29th, 1850.
' . . . Starting to the outposts with Gagern. Return
ing to dine with WUlisen.' 'Rendsburg, September 2nd, 1850.
' . . . I left off with the Fleet. You must now suppose
me to have had a good sleep at Kiel, to have spent a couple
of hours on the raUroad between Kiel and Rendsburg, and
to be in an omnibus leaving the station. The said station
lies about half-a-mile from the town, clear of the fortifica
tions, the old entree within the fortress, by which the
Prince of Noer effected his famous surprise, having been
discontinued since the beginning of the war. To get a
correct picture of the scene, you must fUl the station and its
alentours with volunteers just landed from Altona. They
are aU Germans, soldiers who have finished their three
years' service, have good certificates of conduct, and leave
from their respective Governments, consequently men in
the best state of discipline perfectly drUled, soldier-like
looking. They have received their uniforms, though no
arms, at Altona, are aU in the highest spirits, singing Vater-

io8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
land songs and such-like, their new uniforms and jolly fresh
faces form a striking contrast to the men returning from
the hospitals in the saUor jackets which they wore at
Idstedt, some with their arms stUl in the sling, others with
only half-healed scars. The volunteers are received by
expectant sergeants, formed into bodies and marched off.
Your humble servant enters a rickety bus and delivers his
permis d' entree, and in the course of a few minutes enters
the interminable outworks, tetes de pont, etc., of the fortress.
Rendsburg is properly composed of three distinct fortifica
tions, each of which is capable of being separately defended.
Entering the south, as you do if you arrive by railroad, you
come to the first fortification on the left bank of the Eider.
This is the largest of the three, and in it is the great " place,"
containing a huge mUitary depot of stores, etc., the Haupt-
wache, the Governor's house, and the Treasury and all
those Government offices which in a foreign country it was
thought better to include in the fortress. . . . You turn
stiU more to your right, and you see a battalion numbering
about eleven hundred men marching and take up a position
in the Square. They have just arrived from outpost duty
and are going to relieve the garrison of the town who take
their place. You now have an opportunity of comparing a
soldier in time of war with one at a Hyde Park Review.
The contrast is great, and to one looking deeper into the
nature of things (as Aristotle has it) by no means to the
advantage of the latter. No glitter and tinsel here, but a
thoroughly efficient look about everything which tells what
a regular business affair war is. Their Wappen fracks
are rather white at the elbows and evidently in thorough
good repair and carefully brushed. All the brass about
their helmets is painted black to prevent their being seen
at a distance. They are very muddy about the legs, but
their boots are of sound thick leather and well hobnaUed.
They had each a musket and short sword like those in the
French Army^a cartouche box worn in front attached to a
belt that goes round the body, forming an excellent support
to the loins instead of our absurdly heavy antedUuvian
crossbelt in addition to a knapsack and a cloak twisted into
a kind of thick rope and slung round the body obliquely

i85o] VISIT TO THE THEATRE OF WAR 109
over the right shoulder and under the left arm. They have
been bivouacking under canvas for about three weeks,
been doing patrol duty and having nightly skirmishes with
the enemy, in which they have been invariably successful.
They are in the best of spirits, have been well fed, and look
thoroughly healthy. They are now ranged in companies
and inspected by some of the officers of the staff, whose
headquarters are the Government House immediately on
your right, in front of which are being walked up and down
various chargers, from the gaily caparisoned blood mare of
the General to the muddy foam-flaked troop horse of the
orderly just ridden in with the bulletin of last night's
proceedings from some distant part of the camp. Fortifi
cation No. 2 is nothing but a conglomeration of infernally
ill-paved narrow streets, stinks too very much, and is
garrisoned by fleas. From this you emerge over two
narrow bridges to Fort No. 3, in which there are hardly any
houses except a few store warehouses for the merchantmen
who come up the Eider from the west and from the
Holstein Canal from the east. The fortifications are,
however, immensely strong, and in the present position of
affairs the most important, as just in front of the outermost
gate, on this side, branch off the two roads to Schleswig
and Eckernforde. Every\vhere the town bears the mark
of the fatal explosion. In the immediate neighbourhood
are stUl numerous ruins. My inn, for the first day or two
I was here, was minus doors and windows, every ceiling and
wall intersected with huge cracks. Every roof in the town
is spotted with new tiles marking the place where some
friendly bomb effected an entrance. As to its moral effects,
aU trace of depression is gone, and the inhabitants, as well
as the soldiers, seem to have forgotten aU about it.'
' Hamburg, September 22nd.
' . . . I have again put off my departure for twenty-four
hours on the pressing invitation on the part of the Duchess
of Augustenburg to spend the day with them and celebrate
her birthday. This look into the interieur of the Duke of
August enburg's family was all that was wanting to complete
the picture of Schleswig-Holstein's men and manners.

IIO MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
Anything more perfectly simple, unaffected, and lovable than
this menage cannot be imagined. This is the family, the
head of which has been by the intrigues of Danish diplomacy
represented as infamous in the very worst sense of the word,
and that with such consummate skill as before '48 to have
in a great measure alienated the affection of his fellow-
citizens of the Duchies. You have only to picture to your
self one of our great country noblemen's famUies, where
domestic peace within and hospitality without have been
looked upon and acted upon as the most real ideal of human
happiness, and with the exception of a difference of language
you have the exact notion of the famUy at Neu-Stettin.
The intense kindness with which I was received I shall
never forget. The sons I already knew in the bivouac, the
daughters are perfectly charming. ... I may mention that
the Duke was declared by the King of Denmark, his nephew,
vogelfrei, that is that any one might put him to death with
impunity.' 'York, September 27th, 1850.
' . . . Here I am safe and sound in Yorkshire. I stay a
day or two at Escrick . . . after this I go to meet John
[FfoUiott] and Jowett in Wales.' ' October zrd, 1850.
' . . . I could not conceive your being in such a state
of anxiety about me as (though I do not deny having
been in various scrimmages) I wrote the moment they were
over, and as soon as you could hear from others about
them. . . . About the said scrimmages, I dare say it was
very wrong to be there. At the same time I could not
possibly have attained my object of being able to testify
as an eye-witness to the moral worth of the Schleswig-
Holsteiners without having seen them myself under fire.'
[No date.]
' Nothing can be falser or more perfectly " party "
than The Times on the Duchies. There have been great
faults on both sides, especially in '48. There are also
great interests at stake on both sides and rights of equal
value, and equaUy to be respected by a foreigner. And
yet The Times tries to make us believe that the question
is a simple one and the right all on one side.'

i85o] THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE in

CHAPTER VII
LONDON. PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE. VIENNA
Ever since he had left Oxford, Morier's future had been
a subject of anxious consideration to himself, his parents,
and his friends ; for though destined from his cradle for
diplomacy, to which both heredity and disposition seemed
to point as his natural career, the unfair treatment his
father had received at the hands of Lord Palmerston and
the Foreign Office prevented any such plans being carried
out. Never, so long as Lord Palmerston continued in
office, would David Morier have consented to ask him,
in whose hands as Foreign Secretary the patronage lay,
for a nomination for his son.
Under these circumstances the Law, the Colonial Office,
and various other alternatives were in turn considered.
Writing to his son, on 15th AprU 1850, of an interview
with Sir Robert Adair,! his old chief, David Morier says : —
' . . . You were the principal topic of our conversation.
His advice was that you have patience, bide your time,
make yourself well informed on every subject connected
with public business, for it will surely tell in the end, " and
above all," added he, " let him keep this," touching his
own warm old heart as he spoke, " let him keep this
independent as you yourself have done." We had been
talking of foreign politics and I had referred to the circum
stances which made it impossible for me to ask the slightest
favour of Lord Palmerston. This wUl explain his last words.'
Chiefly through the good offices of Sir Robert Adair,
who actively bestirred himself on behdf of the son of
his old friend and colleague, Burnet Morier was eventually
» Adair, Sir Robert, b. 1763, d. 1855, diplomatist, friend of Charles
James Fox. . , j

112 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1850
successful inrobtaining a clerkship in the Educational
Department of the Privy Council Office. How high the
opinion formed of him at Oxford had been, is evidenced by
the testimonials which Temple, Jowett, Stanley, and others
wrote for him on this occasion. Temple testified that —
' I have been acquainted with him from the time that
he first entered Balliol CoUege, and had better than
ordinary opportunities of knowing both his talents and
his character. He made himself remarkable at College
for the steady perseverance with which he devoted himself
to his academical studies, in spite of his previous education
not having been adapted to the requirements of the Oxford
system. He showed thorough good sense and a very
quick appreciation of the work : and I am sure that very
few men who commenced at the point he did, when he first
came up, would have been able as he did to secure a Second
Class in the Schools. . . .'
Jowett, that —
' I have a very high opinion both of his abilities and
good principles. As a proof of the first I may mention
the fact of his obtaining a Second Class in Literis Humani-
oribus at Oxford under the greatest disadvantages of early
education. He is also an excellent French and German
scholar, both of which languages he speaks with fluency.
I think him possessed of a good deal of original ability.
No one can have been much with him without being
aware of his good sense and thorough good-nature and
right feeling. He has a knowledge of the world and tact
in dealing with others rarely found in persons of his age.'
And Stanley —
' ... He has great energy and knowledge of the
world, and his abilities and principles are such as would
enable him to turn them to great account in any work
connected with the cause of general education.'
And, lastly, the testimony of Dr. Jenkyns, the Master
of BaUiol, that—
' . . . during his residence in the College he merited
approbation no less for his general good conduct

i85i] THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE 113
and attention to his studies, than on account of his excellent
disposition and pleasing manners. . . .'
'Alfred Cujb, January 21st, 1851.
' My DEAR Father, — You wUl doubtless be as glad as
myself to hear that my fate for better or for worse is
settled. I have the honour of being a Clerk in H.M.'s
Privy CouncU, with a salary of a hundred and twenty
pounds per annum.'
Inferior as was the situation, and, from the routine of
its commonplace, official duties, little suited to his active
mind and disposition, it stUl appeared to him preferable
to a life of idleness without an object in London. More
over, he hoped that there might be some chance of its
leading to promotion in a higher range of intellectual em
ployment ; a hope, however, soon to be disappointed. ' I
loathe and detest my present occupation,' he writes, after
some experience of the office, ' which takes up too much
of my time to enable me to work to any good to myself,
while it is not of a nature which any human being with a
soul in him can possibly take an interest in. It is not a
profession, and it does not, on the other hand, leave one's
hands free.'
In the meanwhile he entered with his usual zest into
all the pleasures and interests of English society, literary
and otherwise, and with his remarkable capacity of attract
ing to himself all that was distinguished and superior, he
soon gathered around him a host of friends.
His time was chiefly divided between KneUer Hall with
Temple, Jowett and Palgrave, and London, where he had
rooms in 49 New Bond Street ; and it was here that the
bi-weekly meetings took place which afterwards developed
into the celebrated Cosmopolitan Club, of which he was
the founder. These meetings, originally arranged to
enable Prince Nicholas of Nassau, who had come over with
letters of recommendation to Morier from Roggenbach,
to meet some of the more literary and intellectual English
men of the day, were at first chiefly composed of Morier's
more intimate friends, such as Temple, Palgrave, Chichester
vol. i. h

114 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1851
Fortescue, Lingen, Arthur Russell, Cartwright, and others,
but eventuaUy grew so much in numbers, popularity,
and importance that want of space caused this brUliant
society to migrate to more spacious quarters, which were
found in the studio of Watts, another of their members.
But never did he allow either his occupations or his
amusements to interfere with the constant flow of corre
spondence which he kept up with his family, more especially
his mother, whom he never faUed to supply with graphic
accounts of all his doings.
Describing, on one occasion, a week-end spent at a
place on the Thames close to Runnymead, ' . . . where,
I believe, the first great Chartist Demonstration took
place in the reign of King John,' he says of his host,
whom he knew but little, that ' he goes up every day
per raU to suckle a golden calf, which is stabled some
where about Lombard Street, and then returns to his wife
and little place in Berks. The precise breed of the calf I
know not, but, being periodicaUy shorn, the golden egg,
which is the result (confound it ! this is a confusion of
metaphors, too late to help it now, I was smoking with
an Irishman last night), furnishes this place with aU the
luxuries which not only the heart of man, but also his
stomach and remaining senses, can desire.'
On this occasion he went over to Windsor : —
' More glorious and kinglike I never saw the old Castle
look. A bright, spring day with almost summer heat,
and the green in all its un-blas^d freshness cushioning the
pedestal from which rises that grand, burly, hit-me-if-
you-dare Round Tower. The Terrace was briUiant in the
extreme ; the band playing, and every sort of promenader
promenading — ^great horse-haired grenadiers with their
sweethearts, tightest little ensigns chaffing Windsor belles,
Eton boys in white ties rollicking, gentlemanlike and
devil-may-care, shopkeepers and gents — all mingling in
one stream, as if they were all actually " men and brothers,"
as we used to be taught to call little nigger boys, people
of like flesh and blood. It is the only place in England in
which I have seen this sort of Happy Family co-existence

i85i] THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE 115
between different classes of the community, and this under
the shadow of Royalty. . . .'
He records his return to London from ' . . . a most
pleasant stay at Nuneham, prolonged beyond the limit I
had fixed in consequence of the attraction of the place,
and the peculiar susceptibUity to attraction which I
presume that I possess in common with all large
bodies. . . . The party consisted of the Bulteels, Lord
and Lady Norreys, William Harcourt, Julian Fane, Henry
GrevUle, Chichester Fortescue, Mr, Wayland and Lady
Catherine, two brothers of Mr. Harcourt's and myself ;
Lady Waldegrave ! and Mr. George Harcourt being part of
the fixtures of the place. The latter two personages v/ere
far the most entertaining of the whole lot. I can only
describe them, their ways and their entourage, by saying
that they seem to have been intended by Nature as the
principal characters in a vaudeville d la Louis XV ; he, the
old Marquis, heir to palaces and broad acres, a genealogy
" as long as my tail," and an ungovernable temper, who
has aU his life ruled supreme over an obedient household
of former wives and younger brothers, all drilled to watch
and administer to his every whim, and at last in his old
age, with all his despotic habits and selfishness ingrained
into him, like dirt into the mechanic's palm, marrying a
young wife with a wit and will a thousand times stronger
than his own, and no disinclination to use both to the best
advantage. She, the young wife aforesaid, a widowed
" Duchesse " with immense fortune, beauty, accomplish
ments, whims without end, gigantic animal spirits, the
world-spoUed child, with every denomination of admirer
flitting about her, really fond of the old " Marquis," but
determined to stand no humbug and possessed of a laudable
ambition to prove to him that his temper is not so bad
as it appears. Place your scene in a splendid chateau
surrounded by magnificent gardens with terraces sentinelled
by grand flower vases overlooking a majestic river, throw
in a handful of subordinate characters, admirers, cowed
' Frances Braham, m. i. John James Waldegrave ; m. 2. George E., 7th
Earl Waldegrave ; m. 3. George Harcourt ; m. 4. Chichester Fortescue,
afterwards created Baron Carlingford.

ii6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1852
younger brothers taking courage since the advent of
Madame, wits, a poet, a fat phUosopher, some agreeable
and espiegle women of various ages. Now imagine the
thousand and one freaks which, with such an entourage,
would suggest themselves to Madame la Duchesse, and
the way in which they would be received by Monsieur le
Marquis, and you will really have some idea of the
plaisanteries of Nuneham during the last week. The piece
might be entitled " The Taming of the Screw " ! '
On the eve of the general election in July 1852 he was
coaching Robert Boyle ! in politics, and says : —
' This insight into the little world of an English borough
through the magnifying lens of an M.P. expecting a pos
sible ejectment is highly instructive, not to say amusing.
To see the terrible passions which agitate the breasts of
^10 householders, the feuds and the infinitesimal divisions
into which a matter of five hundred or so electors can be
parcelled out in as apparently duU and quiet a little town as
you would wish to see, leaves much the same impression on
the mind which a look through a solar microscope does at a
drop of water which one is told is identical with the clear
tasteless stuff one is in the habit of drinking. Big monsters
eating little monsters. Little monsters cutting away from
big monsters. Terrible evolutions, terrible expense of seem
ingly gigantic muscular power, but luckUy aU — pother.'
To his father, on 12th October 1852, he speaks of a visit to
his sister, ' . . . accomplished in company with Jowett. A
great treat it was to aU three, Jowett preaching the most
beautiful sermon which has ever been produced since the
invention of that machinery. ... I returned to KneUer Hall
on Tuesday in time to be present at the christening feast in
honour of Tennyson's baby, who resides at Twickenham,
and whose acquaintance I have had the enormous good
fortune to make. (Tennyson's, I mean, not the baby's.)
It was a right pleasant feast. There were poets there as
thick as blackberries, — Brownings and Taylors and Tenny-
sons and great historians, venerable HaUams, and radiant
* Hon. Robert Boyle, son of Sth Earl of Cork, Lieut.-General, b. 1809,
d. 1854, M.P. ¦

i852] THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE 117
visions of fair women. And then the Great Man himself,
diffusing genial warmth all about him, aU his usual shyness
and reserve laid aside, and his whole being given up to
honouring his guests and being honoured by them. After
the mob of guests had separated, four choice spirits gathered
themselves into an upper chamber — the Great Man himself.
Browning (the male), Palgrave, and myself — and there tiU
I a.m. was a brewing of whisky toddies, and bons mots,
and epigrammatic sentences, and a sitting in judgment
on the great works of past men's heads, and on the little
works of present men's hands. Kings and Peoples weighed
in the balance, and somehow all found wanting ! Then
came curses deep and strong on the splay-hoofed tyrant
who is trampling the fair land of our neighbours into its
native mud, and prophecies uttered at the coming struggle
between Black and White, Light and Darkness, the DevU
and St. Michael, and how Old England is the one champion
left, and what work her sons are called on to do. And
in fact, there was nothing left unsaid which ought to have
been said, and nothing said which ought not to have been
said. In a word, never four finer fellows got together,
and, having got together, never made a better use of their
time. Joking apart, however, this fellow Tennyson is a
right noble creature, almost the noblest creature (Jowett
always excepted, and he beats even him in physique) I
ever saw. He is one of those beings from whom one gets
an insight into that real Hero- World outside or inside the
crust of this sham Valet-World (a Carlylean hit, by Jove !).
But grin as you will, Excellenz, this is a real bona-fide bit
of truth. Of God and the Divine we can know nothing
whatever except what we catch reflected from God-like
men. He is to us (I don't mean you), small earth-men,
like the not-yet-risen sun, and we only become conscious
of His being and existence by those taller Hero-Men whose
higher tops already catch the rays from His glory.'
On the 23rd November 1852 he describes the lying-in
state of the Duke of WeUington : —
'Anything Uke the whirl and confusion into which
we sober Englishmen have thought fit to throw our-

ii8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1852
selves to testify our sense of respect for the great man
we buried in state last Thursday I never witnessed. For
days and nights previously there was nothing but running
to and fro organising parties of spectators, securing tickets
in bad places, and then changing them for better, and
all the busy nothingnesses which precede the final settling
down to a great ceremony of which one has no precedent.
.... First there was the lying-in-state. . . . We went
early, and so were nowise crowded. The Hall in which
the ceremony was celebrated (that of Chelsea Hospital)
was too small for its purpose, and not the proper shape,
being too narrow. The consequence was that, instead of
being in the centre, the catafalque on which the coffin
rested was at the end, giving it too much the look of a
" buffet." Far the finest part of the show was the avenue
leading up to the catafalque — ^this was lined on either side
by picked men from the Foot Guards standing with their
backs against the wall on a platform about one and a half
feet high, giving them in the uncertain light of the wax
candles a gigantic size. They stood with their arms
reversed, the mUitary expression for mourning, and ex
pressive in the highest degree. . . . Parallel to the men
on both sides of the Hall, forming thus a lane for the
spectators to pass through, and leaving the middle of the
HaU free, were two rows of gigantic (seemingly) silver
candelabra about nine feet high with large tapers in them.
They gave a proper light, — ^that is, a half sort of sombre
light not quite victorious over the darkness. At the
end of the Hall appeared a blaze of a far too theatrical
footlight sort of light from the catafalque and its orna
ments. Under a canopy magnificently ornamented with
every kind of heraldic decoration on a low catafalque lay
the coffin, the last thing almost amidst the blaze and
splendour of the ornaments which the eye could catch. It
was a rich sort of thing covered with crimson velvet with
large silver-gilt handles to it. It said, however, nothing
of Death, and nothing of the particular life of him whose
earthly shell it contained. It was at most a very hand
some piece of furniture. Officers in full uniform sat
round it. Perfect order and a most decorous attitude

1852] THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE 119
was maintained by the visitors, who passed around in
sUence, unpleasantly broken, however, now and then, by
the " Please move on, gentlemen " of the officials. For
four days and one night countless multitudes passed
through to see this pageant. ... At the end of the fourth
day came the final preparation for the last scene, and such
a sight as was presented by the whole line of march from
Apsley House to St. PaiU's for that last night will probably
not soon again be witnessed in London. One large dis
ciplined army of carpenters, got together heaven knows
how, because I can never believe they were all furnished
by London itself, plied wUlingly for hour after hour putting
up huge black scaffolding, as if preparing for some terrible
State execution, and worked by torchlight, as grim-looking
workmen as you woiUd wish to see, hammers plying,
voices calling, great bands of navvies laying down cart
loads of sand in the streets, omnibuses and cabs racing
with the cargoes just deposited by special train at each
of the raUway stations, black streams of badauds on the
footpaths, excited by the mere presence of their numbers,
idlers having nothing to do and only looking on and coarsely
uttering their jests — confusion unutterable and babel
sounds. I went to a very small party at Lady John
Russell's in the evening. We came back through it all.
I exchanged a few words with Lord John on the subject,
and I could not but smUe at the professional view in which
the subject seemed to come before him, his principal
observations being directed against the folly of the
Ministers! in putting the ceremony off so long and dis
severing the pageant so much from the feelings caUed out
immediately upon the death itself.'
On 2nd December 1852 he continues his description
of the funeral, which he witnessed from EUis's Hotel
in St. James Street : —
' . . . Perfect stiUness was observed throughout, people
speaking only in whispers. At last guns were heard in
the distance, giving notice that the procession had started.
After about half an hour's expectation the stUlness was
1 Tory.

120 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1852
broken by the distant sound of mUitary music. It was
the band of the Rifle Brigade with which the procession
opened, a beautiful band entirely composed of wind instru
ments. Certainly a more impressive opening to the
great pageant could not have been hit upon. Like a choir
of human voices, the distant trumpets and bugles chanted
forth that beautiful Sinfonia Eroica of Beethoven. I
never so keenly realised the effect of music. Not a sound
or a voice could be heard but the clear, waUing notes of
that noblest of dirges, at first very faint, then increasing
in volume tUl at last the head of the advancing column
could be seen and the measured footfalls in slowest funereal
measure keeping solemn cadence to the music could be
distinguished. Little by little the full burst of the grief
melody fiUed the air, and the black (the Rifle uniform is
almost black) disciplined mass with arms reversed and
numbering within its ranks many a gallant weather-beaten
old soldier, down whose cheeks the tears could be seen to
run, fiUed up the streets. Slowly and sUently they moved
past, then, dying off by imperceptible degrees as it had first
begun, before the last note had vanished from the ear, the
first burst of the next band (that I think of the Marines)
could already be heard in the distance. The clashing of
the two, faint and distant as both were, had something in
it inexpressively touching. It was not dis-harmony, be
cause they seemed to make themselves heard alternately,
like the rising and sinking of distant waves, and the im
pression left was that of angel choirs answering each
other somewhere far above the heavens, and not at all the
brazen language of the red - coated warriors who now
poured on. This first part of the pageant was by far the
most solemn, and indeed the only part of the whole that
thoroughly appealed to the feelings I would have wished
to have stirred within me upon the occasion. . . . When
the soldiers had aU passed the actual funeral pageant
began. ... It left no impression upon me but that of a
confused iU-arranged mass of heraldry of the tenth century,
with miserable mourning coaches of the nineteenth,
landaus with deputations, ginger-bread carriages with
Speakers and that sort of people, coroneted carriages with

1852] THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE 121
Prime Ministers, etc. The car itself was an utter faUure.
The design originaUy was, I believe, good, but the ex
ecution miserable and the actual arrangement at the last
of the drapery, laurels, etc., vUe. The great horses decked
down to their fetlocks in velvet were the only good part
about it. So little had they calculated the weight and
power of resistance downhUl which the horses could present,
that at the last moment a huge rope, to which were at
tached forty policemen, had to be fastened to it behind to
prevent its rolling forward and crushing the team. The
only touching incident left was the old war-horse and the
old groom, both apparently most deeply affected, but par
ticularly the old horse, who, I can swear, had tears in his
eyes. In two hours everything had passed. The attitude
of the people during the whole time was admirable.'
Ever since Morier had entered the Privy CouncU Office
he had been seeking some means of escape from its hated
drudgery, and had been looking about for more congenial
employment, in which course he was much encouraged by
his friends, who thoroughly realised how his talents were
being wasted.
As early as the spring of '52 an opening had seemed
to present itself. Mr. Cook, the editor of the Morning
Chronicle, had, on the suggestion of Gladstone, who knew
Morier well, made him an offer to go to Australia on behalf
of that paper to write a series of reports on those Colonies.
Temple, Jowett, and others, in whose judgment he placed
great reliance, urged him to consider a proposal which he
himself was orUy too anxious to accept, hoping as he did
that it might fit him by personal observation and by the
acquirement of information on the spot to become a useful
public servant in the Colonial Administration. He had
therefore characteristically employed the summer in pre
paring his mind for the voyage.
At this time he writes : —
' . . . I am en route for KneUer Hall, where I propose
to stay a month or so at hard work with a view to getting
my intellectual powers into something like working con
dition previous to the labours which they have before them.

122 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1852
I shall then most probably take a fustian-coat tour through
Lancashire and Yorkshire, visiting the manufacturing
districts, those great dep6ts of labour, and so on to Ireland
to John FfoUiott and Fortescue, with the same object in
view, and back by Bristol to Bath, where I presume you
wUl have arrived.'
But if the approval which his Australian scheme had
met with amongst his friends was great, greater stUl was the
disapproval which it evoked from both his parents. His
mother especially, whose failing health had obliged them
to leave England in August for a prolonged stay at Wies
baden, was miserable at the idea of such a separation from
her only son and at the prospect of his journey to the
Antipodes ; whUst his father, added to the spectacle of his
wife's grief, and his own sorrow at his son's departure, felt,
as he wrote to Lord Aberdeen, ' no little mortification ' at
his entering into an engagement ' as the paid correspondent
of a newspaper.'
In vain did Morier try to reconcile his parents to his plans.
' Whatever happens, however,' he writes, ' I do not
want to give up my plan, and I do not think that Gladstone
will, as he really is very much interested in it, and it was
by his special interference that my appointment was
settled upon. Whatever happens, then, on one thing I
have made up my mind, that is to give up the next two
years to uninterrupted hard work and to a life of the
strictest economy, if not in Australia then in England,
partly in a cottage near KneUer Hall, partly with you.'
In answer to a letter of his father's in September, depicting
the misery which the idea of the Australian journey was
causing his mother, he replies that the absence contem
plated was —
' . . . eighteen months probably, two years at the
most. . . . You cannot in any way realise to yourself, my
dearest father, my keen sensitiveness on the subject of
encouragement and discouragement. One word of en
couragement from those I love is to me the strong meat
and strong drink of the athlete.

1852] THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE 123
' Many and many a time, when my work at Oxford had
sunk me into a state of inactive despair, and neither prospect
of defeat nor of glory seemed possible to rouse me into
exertion, has one line of sympathy from my dear mother
or yourself fUled me with elasticity and life, and enabled
me to surmount with joyousness difficulties whose summits
before seemed to touch the clouds. Exactly proportional
to this is the effect produced upon me by discouragement,
whether implied or expressed, when coming from the same
quarter . . . for with my peculiar constitution (more or
less a poetic and creative one) the non-creative is the utterest
demoralisation.' His parents having eventually concurred in his
wishes, he expresses his deep gratitude to his father
that— ' my dearest mother and yourself have reconcUed your
selves to my notion about disposing of myself, and in the
real spirit of Love, smoothed by a cheerful and hopeful way
of looking at the whole thing the oiUy painful feature in
it, which is the temporary separation from those whom
every year and every fresh experience both of their love and
of the lovelessness of the rest of the world, makes me cling
to more and more. . . . There are a thousand reasons
which make me feel that a period of severe, even harsh,
discipline is absolutely necessary for me — a throwing of
myself on to myself, and upon my own resources, being
forced to do with small means, a forming of habits of
providence in small things. ... I look forward on my
return from Australia to two or three years' hard intellectual
work under, or rather with, my old friends Jowett and
Temple in some mean attic in Oxford or London, learning
for the next two years how to be parvo contentus and how
to rough it in a workman-like manner, and not with a
dUettantism orUy of a Schleswig-Holstein campaigner. '
In October he resigned his clerkship in the Privy Council
Office, and, his departure for Australia being fixed for the
following February, he spent the intervening weeks in final
preparation, and seeing the most of his friends.

124 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1852
In December he writes to Palgrave : —
' . . . You dine and sleep here on Sunday. It wiU be a
Cosmopolitan and probably the last I preside over, though
not the least, as it wiU surpass in briUiancy all former ones.
Ruskin, Layard, Stirling, Fortescue, and others dine here
to discuss the propriety of getting a BiU passed in Parlia
ment to emancipate the Turners from Chancery, a bright
suggestion of mine of which, if it eventually takes form,
I shall not be a little proud. ... I showed Francesca to
" Mary Boyle, who very highly approved of it, and has been
very keen ever since to make your acquaintance. ... I
translated a thing from Jean Paul called the ' Death
of an Angel.' . . . Froude approved of it. He dined
with me yesterday. He is vastly humanised, and is
altogether a grand fellow, and wUl become every day a
grander.' In December he started off for Wiesbaden on a parting
visit to his family, but in the meantime political changes
were taking place which seemed to hold out to him the
hopes of possible employment in Europe. Lord Palmerston,
the insuperable obstacle to his entering the Diplomatic
Service, had ceased to be Foreign Minister since the preced
ing February, and in December, Lord Aberdeen, his father's
old chief and friend, took office as Prime Minister. David
Morier, therefore, had no hesitation in writing to him —
¦ not as Prime Minister to the Crown, but simply to ask
your counsel and assistance as an old friend in a matter
which touches me deeply, the direction of my son's career
in life ' — ^to ask him for a nomination for his son in the
Diplomatic Service, for which he had originally been
intended, pointing out that ' his early familiarity with
the French and German languages, his acquaintance with
continental manners, and personal qualities, which my
supposed partiality as a father forbids me to dwell upon,
seemed to give him more than common aptitude for
becoming a really valuable acquisition to one of our
Continental Missions, and at this juncture more especially
in Germany where he had, before his employment in the
CouncU Office, opportunities of becoming personally ac-

i853] DIPLOMATIC PROSPECTS 125
quainted with several distinguished political characters
and their opinions.'
Morier himself had begged his father when applying for
an attach^ship to ask for a distinct one, viz. one at Berlin.
' My reasons for this, and which I would have you state
to My Lord, are that the fact of a University being
there, enabling me to attend lectures on the Law of Nations,
etc., added to my connections in the place, and my know
ledge of German, would enable me in the course of a year
or two to become a very useful public servant.'
His father's letter Morier himself carried to London,
and nothing could have been kinder than Lord Aberdeen's
answer ; but not being Foreign Secretary he had scruples
in interfering with the disposal of offices under the control
of that department of the Government. The situation,
moreover, was at that moment particularly delicate, owing
to the fact of Lord John RusseU, the then Foreign Secretary,
having been a Prime Minister, and of Lord Aberdeen's
being in consequence most particular in leaving the whole
and entire administration of the Foreign Office in his
hands, and of not interfering in any way whatever. Lord
John was, however, almost immediately succeeded by
Lord Clarendon, and Morier's name was placed on the list
of candidates for an attachdship, with the hopes of getting
an appointment should a vacancy occur.
' One difficulty in the way of my diplomatic prospects,'
he wrote to his father at this period, ' is happUy got over,
that namely which might have arisen from my engagement
with the Morning Chronicle.'
He had seen Cook, the editor, and had told him of his
father's application to Lord Aberdeen. Cook at once
said that he did not consider him bound by his engagement,
and behaved indeed in a most friendly and liberal manner,
promising to keep the offer open should his other aspira
tions not be fulfiUed.
In the meantime there was nothing for him to do but
to wait, an attitude irksome and galling in the extreme
to a man of his energetic nature ; and added thereto were
the bad accounts he received from Wiesbaden of his

126 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [[1853
mother's health and the death of his old nourrice, whora
he dearly loved. All this told upon his mercurial spirits,
and he feU into a state of deep depression and despondency.
' I am most distressed at the news from home,' he writes to
his father. ' . . . You must aU be in a weary, weary state.
God knows I am. It's a hard world to live in, and I do from
my heart envy you the sixty-nine years wiped off the score.'
Writing to his mother, 7th March 1853, he says of his
nurse : —
' Poor dear old creature, most fondly I loved her, and
most intimately is the memory of her intertwined with
the first awakening within me of affection. It is a great
blessing, however, to think that there is not one word or
act of unkindness to reproach oneself with, and that her
life was as happy a one as, with the capacities which God
had given her, it could possibly have been. She loved
much, and found an object to love, and was cherished in
return. God bless her.'
Another thought which preyed on his mind, was that
his friends, who had given themselves so much trouble
on his behalf, might consider their efforts wasted, and he
tells Palgrave that —
' It gives me very keen pleasure to think that you and
Temple should be occupying yourselves about me and my
plans, and that I have some friends in the world to whose
mind I am present, when I am absent from their sight.
I believe this friendship to be the one only plant to live on
and flower in the harsh atmosphere of this working-day
world, be damned to it. The world, I mean, not the
plant. ... I hope that the temporary derangement of my
plans wUl not by Temple and Co. be accounted to me for
vacUlation. I know what a weak, red-haired, vaciUating
thing they all think me, but really in the present instance
I have not been so. God knows it has been no wish of
mine to cut the Australian plan, and that I only complied
with the application to Lord Aberdeen in consequence of
my mother's illness and my father's wishes.'
To bring this term of inactivity to an end, Morier started

i853] TOUR IN GERMANY 127
on a tour through Germany, with the ulterior view of
writing a series of letters on that country ; at the same
time, as an equivalent for the consideration with which
the Morning Chronicle had treated him, undertaking, on
the footing of a private and disinterested friend, a rather
delicate mission on behalf of that paper. This was to find
a successor for their Vienna correspondent, who had just
been expelled from the country. In this he was entirely
successful, and afterwards boasted of it as ' a diplomatic
chef d' ceuvre, but alas ! there is no Blue Book into which
it will ever find its way. Within a month of the Morning
Chronicle calling Buol a liar and a blackguard, and their
correspondent being obliged to leave ignominiously, I
have established an uncommonly clever fellow, whom my
'cuteness succeeded in sifting out of this place, with privi
leges and faculties never before afforded by Government
to any correspondent of a newspaper.'
Leaving England at Easter, he gives his plans to his
mother. ' . . . I shaU stay at Bonn a fortnight or so to see
Roggenbach and Heinrich von Arnim,! ^jjgj^ ^q Wiesbaden
to you and to see Max Gagern, ^ then to Heidelberg for
H. von Gagern and Meyer,^ then to Berlin for Radowitz *
and my Berlin acquaintance, then Saxe-Coburg, where
I meet the Duke of Coburg and all the Court Party. I
should take altogether about six weeks to collect material
orally and from books, etc., and then come back here,
where I shaU take a room in the vUlage and work out my
letters with the help of Temple and the library here. The
letters I propose to write are a r^sumd of Prussian policy
since 1815. Such are in outline my plans.'
He was, however, disappointed in his hopes of finding
Roggenbach at Bonn, but mentions meeting George Bunsen,
1 Arnim, Heinrich von, b. 1798, d. 1861, German Liberal statesman and
political economist.
2 Gagern, Maximilian von, b. 1810, d. 1889, brother of Heinrich von
Gagern, member of Frankfort National Assembly, entered the Austrian
service 1854.
3 Meyer, Alexander, Liberal politician and journalist.
* Radowitz, Joseph Maria von, b. 1797, d. 1S53, Prussian general and
statesman, confidant and adviser of K. Fred. William iv.

128 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1853
' who gave me a very good dinner and called with me
on the Princess of Wied,! who received me most kindly.'
His next letter, dated Vienna, 20th AprU 1853, is ad
dressed to his father : —
' . . . I have as yet been nowhere except to the Legation,
where I liave been received with the greatest kindness and
have already dined twice, the first time sitting next to Prince
Leiningen, who spoke very pleasantly of you. Julian
Fane is also here. . . . Lady WUliam Russell is lodging in
the same hotel with me, and is most civU and kind, having
me to tea every night, when I meet the whole " Hiesige
Gesellschaft " without having to go for it further than one
pair of stairs and get back to my work by 9 p.m. Her
son, Odo, knows more about Austria than any Englishman
going.' Replying to a letter of his mother's, in which she had
alluded to the craze for table-turning, he says : —
' As regards the by-the-imposition-of-hands-to-dinner-
tables-imparted-magnetic-rotary-motion, the mania here,
I should have said, was at its height, if I did not know
that a week ago I should have predicted the same thing,
whUe it has been increasing every day since. From the
moment I entered Prussia at the Belgian frontier to this
very moment, within the walls of H.M. Legation at Vienna,
have I heard no one other subject discussed. I have not
yet seen the experiment tried, and am so sick of the whole
thing that I hardly wish to. . . . Nothing can exceed the
kindness of My Lord.^ I dine at his table five days out
of the seven, and have the entree of his box at the Opera.'
Describing the appearance of the Magyar magnates at
a State ceremony, he says : —
' They presented certainly the most splendid spectacle
which can be yielded by man clothed. The peculiar
characteristic which enables one thoroughly to admire the
Hungarian dress without any feeling of compunction is the
combination it affords of the utmost possible magnificence
which gorgeous colour and the richest jewellery can produce,
^ Sister of Prince Nicholas of Nassau. ^ Lord Westmorland.

i853] VIENNA 129
together with an essential and unmistakable manliness
and knightliness. You see at a glance that it is the dress
of a horseman, of men habitually in the saddle, hence it is
not seen to advantage except on the mounted man — ^the
tight leggings, the loose attila hanging from the left
shoulder, leaving the sword arm free and ready for work, —
these points come out only when man and beast are one.
In most instances the attila, which is the loose jacket, which
in a degenerate form you see in the Hussar uniform, is of
velvet trimmed with fur, a magnificent chain of jeweUery
connecting the two.'
In a letter of this period he tells his mother he has just
returned from Pesth, and ' Prince Esterhazy ^ (Paul as
was when Ambassador in London, and before his father's
death) sent me a very civil message to say that he desired
better acquaintance with me as a son of my father, or
rather of my mother (as it was you who had remained im
pressed on his memory, " that veery preettee ladee whom
I remember at Paris ") and the nephew of my uncles.'
Esterhazy asked him to dinner, where he was introduced
to Count Buol,^ who said he was acquainted with you,' and
the Duchesse de Sagan,^ old Walmoden, Bourqueney,* and
many others. ' ... As far as externals go, a Hungarian
dinner is (Ustinguished from others by the presence of a
Hussar, whose sword for the time being is changed into a
carving knife, and who, despite the terrible national mous
tache, when looked at more closely, and when one has got
more used to him, turns out to be very harmless and quite
tame, bringing one dishes, and whatever you ask for, like
any other serving man.'
He met Metternich at dinner soon afterwards, and thus
describes him to Palgrave : —
' In the way of antiquities the most interesting specimen
I have seen has been old Metternich, who received me
1 Esterhazy, Prince Paul, b. 1786, d. 1866, Ambassador in London, 1814-
1842 ; Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1S48.
»Buol, Karl Friedrich Graf, b. 1797, d. 1865, Austrian Minister of State,
1852-1859. ' Sagan, Duchesse de, Dorothea Duchesse de Talleyrand P6rigord.
* Bourqueney, French diplomatist and Minister at Vienna.
VOL. I. I

130 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1853
very civUly and hospitably, dining me once and receiving
me often. He is certainly a wonderful old man, considering
what a chronological curiosity he might be made into, and
gives me an idea of the wreck of a great statesman. Every
now and then he says things which, in their way, have a
deal of wisdom about them, though rather out of date. . . .
One fine bit of d propos irony, and characteristic of his
pluck and sang-froid, I have on good authority, and is worth
repeating. During the Revolution, when the mob, already
hastUy armed and after blood had been shed, came in
countless masses yeUing round the Chancery of State and
crying for the dismissal, hanging, quartering, etc. of the
hoary Minister, and executing what is caUed in this country
a cat's music, a frightened Archduke turned to Metternich
and asked in God's name what that fearful row was. The
old feUow, with a grim and rather triumphant smile,
observed, " Monseigneur, c'est ce que messieurs les
Republicains appellent la voix de Dieu." '
To the Same
' They are a curious set of people, these rich burghers
of Vienna ; and it is a curious state of society which arbit-
rarUy divides off a class like theirs, which, in point of wealth
and education, stands higher certainly than any other in
the Empire, from what chooses to call itself, par excellence.
Society. For at Vienna Society is not an affair submitted
to shifting rules, and coming under the sway of varying
dynasties, each with its own set of whims and caprices as
everywhere else, but a system subject to universal, immov
able laws, and as easily changed as those of the sun and
moon. It is just as necessary to have your passport, in
order to be admitted to Court (this applies, of course, only
to the Austrians), as it is to be admitted into the country
at all ; only, in the former case the passport is your genea
logical tree and malheur d vous if the soixante et onze quartiers
are in order, but le reste de I'arbre perdu par I'injure du
temps, as in the case of Candide's father, which, as you
remember, was also the cause of the former's incorrect
entrance into the world. The to-the-Court-admitted
Hoffahige, as they are called, form the Society, and round

i853] VIENNA 131
them is drawn a Chinese wall of custom and prejudice,
so that in the year 1853 are to be seen at Vienna the medi
aeval phenomena of two classes, an aristocratic class and
a citizen class, co-existing side by side within the waUs of
the same city, utterly unknown to each other and with
different manners, habits, and privileges, — the latter class
including RothschUd and men of that stamp, many of
them with fortunes amounting to a hundred thousand per
annum, so you may suppose there is not much love lost be
tween them. The most remarkable fact about the whole
matter is that the whole of this should have been clean
swept away for a couple of years, and as suddenly quickened
back to life again. On my observing to Princess Metter
nich, who is by way of being a great stateswoman, how
injudicious, to say the least of it, the raising of this wall of
separation was, and the bitter feeling which I had observed
amongst the excluded, of whose very existence she lived
in total ignorance, when upon her own showing it was
most necessary to raUy round the Throne every conser
vative element that could be scraped together, her deeply
philosophical answer was : " Ah ! Nos salons ne seraient
pas assez grands pour admettre la Finance." I have made
a sort of vow not to write to Jowett or Temple till I could
send them some batches of work as an earnest of my good
will at least ; but alas ! the said batches are produced
with much more difficulty than they are imagined, and so,
in the case of Jowett, I have broken my vow and written,
and shall probably do so in Temple's case, though I still
hope to send a few sheets by the same opportunity. But
it is no joke, I can tell you, writing sketchily on the utterly
complex phenomena which any modern State whatever
presents ; but when the State to be written about is in
itself an aggregation of some twenty other States, each of
which has just come through a little private revolution
and war of its own, to say nothing of what they have gone
through in the aggregate, the task is no easy one, I assure
you. What I wish to do is to give, in a small octavo volume,
a sketch of the political history of Austria from the time
of the Congress (1815) up to 1848, which, though nothing
is known of it in England, is rich in facts, and then through

132 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1853
the Revolution up to the coup d'etat of August 1851, the
rascalliest of all coups d'etat that have been done since
'48. Materials for what has been done since '48 are not
wanting, but I should not have attempted, on account of
the great scarcity oi published material for the most interest
ing part of my opusculum, namely, the portion of it descrip
tive of the genesis of the Revolution, had I not become
intimate with Andrian,! the well-known author of the
well-known book, Oestreich und dessen Zukunft, who in
'48 became the Archduke John's right-hand man, and
was sent as Ambassador from the Frankfort Diet to
England. He was one of the leading men in the movement
for constitutional reform in the ten years preceding the
Revolution, and possesses as such heaps of materials for
the history of that time, much direct as well as verbal
descriptions, which he has put at my service. God knows
whether I shall succeed in what I am about, but something
I am determined to bring forth in print before I return to
England, or show my face to what I hardly dare to hope
still continue my friends.'
Not only did he thoroughly enjoy his life in Vienna,
but he made himself so popular at the Legation that both
Lord and Lady Westmorland evinced a strong desire for
him to be attached to the Mission. Of this he was quite
aware, for he tells his father : —
' . . . Entre nous, and I don't want it to go further,
Julian Fane and Lady Westmorland, who are predominant
at the Legation here, are both very anxious to get me
attached to this Mission ; but Lord Westmorland, it seems,
is excessively difficult to move in the way of asking for
appointments, and they want to wait a bit till Odo Russell
leaves for a couple of months, probably in a fortnight,
and another hand will be much wanted.'
And again on 2nd June : —
' . . . My Lord and my Lady here have been graciously
pleased to express their appreciation of those many high
'Andrian Werburg, Victor Freiherr von, b. 1813, d. 1858, Austrian liberal
statesman.

1853] VIENNA 133
qualities both moral, intellectual, and physical, which
seem to have been stamped upon me by Nature, with a
view apparently to point me out as one of her own ready-
made diplomats. The natural result of such appreciation
with any one else would, I conceive, have been to have
written to the great man who sits in Downing Street, and
have bid him appoint me to the Mission, of which they
(My Lord and My Lady, and the latter much more than
the former) have the charge. However, it seems that My
Lord has the greatest possible aversion to ever take any
steps^of this kind, but yet the desire to have me is very
strong. ... I have boldly avowed myself a radical, but
also turned my fascinating side so as to titillate their
desire to possess me, as I should very much indeed like to
be appointed here, as there is a great field open for a
diplomatist. . . . Julian Fane is the great engine who is
anxious to have me here, and so undertook to work at My
Lord, and to ask him to get me attached here. But I
disclaimed anything of the sort, and only asked him to ask
this of his Governor, viz., that when Odo Russell, the only
man at the Mission here who really knows German, or is
worth a damn, leaves on absence, which he is going to do
soon. My Lord would employ me as Private Secretary,
and if, after a month or so, I succeeded in realising the
golden dreams respecting my diplomatic abUities, in which
all who know me indulge, then that he should report me
as such to the Foreign Office, and that you should apply,
backed up with this good character, for my definite appoint
ment. However, Julian Fane chose to have his own way,
and urged My Lord to get me appointed here. The result
of which was that My Lord sent for me, and told me how
great pleasure it would give him to have me appointed
here, and begged me to write to you, authorising you to
teU Lord Clarendon so, to say that he knew me well, liked
me weU, and that it would be a great satisfaction to him
to have me as his Attache.'
In August he was informed by his father that his
diplomatic appointment was assured, and he expresses his
great satisfaction to his mother : ' At last my fate in Ufe

134 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1853
for better for worse is settled, and the swaying to and fro,
to which it has for so many years been exposed, is put an
end to.'
On 6th September Lord Clarendon wrote to his father
to tell him that he had meant to appoint his son unpaid
Attache at Stuttgart, but that by the resignation of Lord
Boyle, a place of unpaid Attache being vacant at Vienna,
he would appoint him there.
Morier to his Mother ' September nth, 1853
' I have just received my appointment from Lord
Clarendon as Attache here. The news, I most sincerely
hope, must have caused you satisfaction and taken off your
dear blessed heart a load of anxiety about my future
prospects. ... to Lady Westmorland altogether this
appointment is due. She wrote twice most strongly to
Lord Clarendon about me, and his letter announcing my
appointment was addressed to her, and began, " Dear Lady
Westmorland, I have done your bidding, and appointed Mr.
Morier." To her, therefore, I wish you would write. . . .'
Lord Westmorland to David Morier
'September I sth, 1853
' . . . I am sure he (Burnet Morier) wiU do himself
great credit. He is very clever, well informed, and, ce
qui est tout dire, a perfect gentleman. I was very much
obliged to Lord Clarendon for paying such immediate
attention to Lady Westmorland's recommendation, as well
as mine, and she will answer him this very day to express
those feelings.' Lady Westmorland to Mrs. Morier
'Vienna, September 20th, 1853
' . . . We are all delighted to have him established here,
and he is himself so happy that it really does one good to see
the change in his spirits since his appointment. He is very
useful to Lord Westmorland from his knowledge of German
and his assiduity, and most agreeable to us all. His first
thought on learning from me that he was appointed in Lord
Boyle's place was the pleasure it would give his mother.'

1853] VIENNA

135

CHAPTER VIII
VIENNA
Morier was appointed unpaid Attach^ at Vienna on 5th
September 1853, thus entering diplomacy at the age of
twenty-seven, — ^that is six years later than the usual age,
— and with a considerable experience of life and the world
behind him. He joined his chief. Lord Westmorland, at
Olmiitz, where a meeting was taking place between the
Emperors of Austria and Russia.
To his Father 'Olmutz, September 26th, 1853
' This nomad sort of diplomatising puts me marvellously
in mind of the tales you used to regale my childhood with
of your trans-European peregrinations with Lord Aberdeen.
In fact, I am not sure whether this is not one of the very
spots where you were for some time, and something or other
happened.' To his Mother 'Vienna, October 12th, 1853
' At Olmiitz I did little else but perpetuaUy write
dispatches, and drink bottles of champagne in the interval,
H.M. paying my expenses. Twice only I was able to get
to the camp.' Amongst others he met there were
Nesselrode,! j^jj^gg RothschUd, and the Ban of Croatia,^
. . . ' of the externals of Olmiitz there was little to relate.
It is, as you know, the small capital of a smaU country,
and boasts upon ordinary occasions of little besides an Arch
bishop and a garrison ; on the present occasion, however,
it literally crawled alive with Emperors, Archdukes, Royal
1 Nesselrode, Charles Robert Count, Russian Chancellor.
2 Jella5i9.

136 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1854
Princes, Imperial Chancellors and Ambassadors, Marshals,
Jews, etc., etc. That great anakim, the Emperor of Russia,
arrived the same day I did, and aU the while he was there
the whole town was Uluminated in his honour. . . .
' P.S. — We are literaUy at work day and night, and aU to
no purpose, as hostUities ^ have begun in good earnest.'
The season in Vienna this winter was particularly
brilliant, in spite of the apprehension caused by the impend
ing Crimean War. Balls, dinners, and concerts followed
one another in rapid succession, all of which amusements
Morier entered into with vigour, passionately fond as he
was of dancing and society. The only drawback from
which he suffered was his health, for he had already begun
to be subject to those fits of rheumatic gout to which he
was all his life a victim.
His acquaintance was large and varied, and he had
many friends everywhere, amongst others Baron Ward,^
who, beginning life as a groom in Prince Lichtenstein's
stable, became the famous minister of the Duke of Parma.
The acquaintance commenced by their sitting next to
each other at dinner one night, when Morier was surprised
by his neighbour, covered with decorations and quite
unknown to him, exclaiming " It 's very 'ot ! ' From
his frequent visits to his many friends in the various parts
of the Austrian Empire he gained an insight into and a
knowledge of national life rarely acquired by a foreigner.
On 26th March 1854 he writes to his mother from
Vienna : —
' Here we have had the loss of poor Princess Metternich *
to lament. I deeply regret her, not only on the old Prince's
account, but also on my own ; for though she certainly did
not possess a reputation for general popularity, and her
manners were none of the most concUiatory, she and I
from the beginning were great friends, and though we
' Crimean War.
' Ward, Baronj b. 1809, d. 1858, groom, court favourite, and eventually
Prime Minister of Parma.
^ Metternich, Princess Melanie, nie Comtesse Zichy Ferraris, 3rd wife of
Prince Metternich.

i854] VIENNA 137
constantly had great battles, in which no quarter was
given on either side, yet we continued to the last time I
saw her, some three weeks before her death, to be on
the best possible terms. At the bottom she was a
thoroughly good-hearted woman, with much strength of
character, all the good side of which came out during
the trials she underwent in '48 and since. At an earlier
period of her career, her head had been turned by the
extraordinary position which, as the beautiful wife of
Metternich at the culminating point of the latter's power
and influence, she continued for so long to maintain when
she might well be said to have had kings of every kind,
except the Anglo-Saxon, at her feet. This, however,
had had its corrective in the events above referred to,
and certainly nothing of it was perceivable since I was
acquainted with her. She had a wonderful way of saying
what came up first, especially if she was riled, an occupa
tion which I used to find great pleasure in, from the
tremendous " rises " to which it gave rise. On such
occasions no expressions were too strong for her, as she
would be ready, according to her own testimony, to pendre,
eventrer, egorger anybody who, in however slight a degree,
might have fallen under her displeasure, though no one
who knew her ever gave her credit for the heart to hurt
a fly that might have annoyed her. Her attention and
devotion to her old husband to the last moment was touch
ing in the extreme. The commonest details of his ward
robe, despite the dreadful state of her health, she would
allow, to the last, none but herself to attend to. Her
sufferings were frightful. It was computed that the
excrescence of which she died (it was that, I believe, and
not an abscess as at first supposed) towards the end of her
life weighed 180 lb.'
On 7th April to Palgrave : —
' Could a used-up, marrowless, blasd old neo-phUosopher
like yourself feel with any portion of its body or soul
one-hundredth or even one-thousandth part of the pleasure
which receiving from it a letter, scrawl, or even a note,
afforded to an unspoUed " Natur Kind " like myself, it

138 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1854
would not go six months without writing, and when it did
write, it would not begin with the unsavoury description
of the bore it was to engage upon such an undertaking. . . .
The only privUege I have, as unpaid attach^ to Her
Majesty's Mission, is that the Queen (or rather more
properly speaking you and your co-taxees) pays for my
letters. The only way, therefore, in which my salary can
be raised is for my friends to write to me often and to
send letters as heavy as possible. ... I am very little
good, being laid up with rheumatic gout, as I told Temple
in a letter written two days since, but on the whole some
what better. I don't at all dislike my work {mirabile
dictu), as you seem to insinuate must be the case, but am
at times grievously tormented with an unclean spirit of
" Heimweh." This is my one great cause of complaint. You
little know what a pull you have over the rest of the world,
you " cads of England that live at home at ease." '
Speaking of Vienna and its society he says : —
' Their palaces, and the f^tes given in them, exhibit
the utmost possible luxe and display, but are singularly
deficient in the nobler manifestations of wealth in the
shape of works of art. Everywhere the presiding genius
is the upholsterer and the cabinetmaker, nowhere the
painter or the sculptor ; even such as have fine collections of
paintings, like Esterhazy and Liechtenstein, have banished
them to some uninhabited and seldom-visited palace in
the faubourgs. One State ball I attended, at which I was
presented to the Emperor. His manner is immensely in
his favour, combining with dignity and imperialness a
certain boyish frankness and apparent high spirits. He
chatted for five minutes just as any other young man of
twenty-two might. Du reste, I am only talking of the
manner and of the impressions left upon me. The ball
was certainly a magnificent sight, the rooms splendid, the
display of beauty great, and of precious stones, both on
men and women (for the half-eastern costumes of
Hungarians, Croatians, etc., admit of more jewellery than
even female apparel does), something quite dazzling. One
curiosity worth noticing, though hardly tasting, was the

i854] VIENNA

139

historical soup, for as nothing ever changes in Austria,
the receipts of other days come down to the present. And
so, as a certain soup was in the reign of Charles v. appointed
to be drunk at balls, it is continued to be so till now,
faithfully made after a receipt of that date. This is bona
fide and no joke. I was made aware of this too late, but
the way I came to inquire into the matter was by being
nearly knocked over by a whiff sent forth by the de
coction aforesaid, which I saw being handed about and
dutifuUy partaken of by the great officers of State.'
On the 17th April of this year was celebrated with great
pomp and magnificence the marriage of the young Emperor,
but Morier's enjoyment of the attendant festivities was
somewhat marred by a recent attack of rheumatic gout
he was only just recovering from.
' The only one of the sights I should much have cared to
see from its essentially Viennese character was the " Volks-
fest " in the Prater, but as it was a matter of walking I
could not of course be present at it. That splendid
avenue, of which you have doubtless got a lively recollec
tion, was magnificently Uluminated, garlands of painted
lamps twining themselves round the branches of every tree,
and triumphal arches of fire spanning the road at short
intervals the whole way down to the " Rondo." On either
side brUliantly-lighted booths of every description yielded
to the joUy citizen of this paternally-governed city every
enjoyment which his soul lusteth after, such as dancing,
little cakes, and beer. Something like two-thirds of the
whole population were assembled together, and the only
carriage aUowed was that of the political parents of this
large famUy, respectively aged twenty-two and sixteen, who
drove unattended, except by an equerry, in an open barouche
amid the deafening acclamation of their " Ueber Wiener." '
In June he went to the baths of Baden, near Vienna,
in hopes of curing his gout, and from there writes to his
father : —
' ... I am at work on the history of the sixteenth
century, and interested in Robertson's History of Charles v.,

140 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1854
which, though written in vUe English, somehow pleas
antly enough runs on. I am likewise much engrossed
in Guizot's Histoire de la Civilisation de I'Europe, which
seems to me a masterpiece of historical writing. ... I am
glad that you have had the opportunity of seeing Stockmar,!
who is no ordinary man, as well as the Princess of Prussia,^
who is likewise a remarkable woman.'
To his mother from the same place — 2nd July 1854 —
¦ with deep lamentation on my gradually decaying
intellect ... I think I can partly account for my present
state by the doctrine of infection. Could you see the heads
with which I bathe in the morning you would tremble for
your son. I say heads, because as yet I have no evidence
that any bodies belong to them. We sit aU of us in a pubUc
bath, immersed up to the ears (and such ears), the body is
not seen, sometimes under very favourable combinations
of light and refraction legs are perceivable that seem as if
growing immediately out of the tracheae. This abstraction
of a museum of idiotic heads from all which we have from
childhood been accustomed to associate with them, and the
floating isolation of the same in infinite space has something,
I assure you, awful about it. . . .'
Writing for his mother's birthday, on 4th December 1854,
he tells her he has been ' employed in a real bit of business
connected with those glorious feUows who are fighting out
the fate of the world in very much worn-out coats and
threadless stockings. We received Wednesday week a
telegraph ordering us to buy 20,000 sheepskin coats for
their bare backs.'
The history of the commission was as follows : —
' The telegraph arrived at 2 a.m., just as we were finishing
the courier. All it said was, " Employ agents to buy
20,000 sheepskin coats." I take it up to My Lord, who is
half asleep, and whom it dreadfully bothers. I say I shall
be up the first thing in the morning to make inquiries.
• Stockmar, Christian Friedrich Baron, b. 1787, d. 1863, friend and
adviser of K. Leopold of Belgium and the Prince Consort.
* Afterwards Empress Augusta.

LONDON. HnWAHD ASNOI.D

1854] VIENNA

141

CoUeagues, also half asleep, don't think much about the
matter. I, up at 6 a.m. in the morning, make inquiries,
and get the result which I want to get, viz. that there is
nothing to be done at Vienna itself. I report accordingly
that the only way to make effectual inquiries is to go to
Pesth and Briinn. I accordingly get leave to go down
immediately to make inquiries. These were all my in
structions. Once in the raUway, however, I feel that I am
my own master. I have the telegraph in my pocket, and
look upon it as my instructions. Before the next evening
I had made contracts at Briinn for 5000 and at Pesth for
10,000 to 12,000. I had distributed about 50 agents, like
peas out of a shovel, into every corner of Moravia, Bohemia,
Hungary, and Galicia, drawn for £2000, or rather 20,000
florins, in my own name and on my own bankers, which
I knew they would not have the pluck to refuse, though it
astonished them a bit. I was entirely successful, and have
got an official Despatch of approval from the F.O. ! In all,
I have bought 25,000 coats, beautifuUest coats, to the tune
of ;f5o,ooo, which is cheap.'
Notwithstanding all the interests, occupations, and
amusements into which he had thrown himself with his
whole heart, Morier of late had been haunted by a great
dread. His mother's health, failing for a long time, had
grown steadUy worse. Already on 13th July 1853 he had
written to Palgrave : —
' . . . My mother, I grieve deeply to say, is in no way
better, as we all hoped she would be when the summer
returned. I more than fear that for the rest of her life she
is doomed to become yearly a more hopeless cripple. With
great difficulties she has been moved to Baden-Baden to try
what its waters may do. It is a most painful state to con
template, especiaUy when you know that death lurks in the
more aggravated forms of the disease.'
Protracted cures at various German baths not having
produced any beneficial results, she and his father had
returned to Bath, and her condition was now giving rise to
considerable anxiety.

142 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1855
On 3rd February 1855, Morier writes from Vienna to her : —
' Dearest Mother, — God be praised for your recovery
from that state of intense prostration to which you had been
reduced, and the account of which in my dear father's
various letters fUled me with an agony I cannot describe to
you. I fear, however, that you are stUl in a lamentable
state of weakness, and I cannot tell you how I yearn again
to see you. ... I hope to be starting in a fortnight.'
His departure, however, was delayed, and he was fated
not to see his mother again. On 12th March 1855, David
Morier wrote from Bath : —
' My DEAREST Sisters, — You wUl at once perceive that
the hopes held out yesterday were illusory, and that I am
now bereaved of my dearest Annie, the faithfulest friend and
counsellor, the affectionatest wife that ever man was blessed
with. You too lose in her a most tender, loving sister, for
every one that belonged to me she loved as her Own kindred.
It is for my dearest Burnet that my heart grieves beyond
expression. He will be just twenty-four hours too late.
I have telegraphed for dear BUl ^ to break the sad news to
my poor boy at his landing at Dover. Burnet may possibly
call in Osnaburgh Street on his way through London to
come here. Tell him that the peaceful passage of his
darling mother into life was so like the quiet sleep of an
infant that it would be difficult to fix the precise moment,
but it was between half-pEist one and three-quarters this
afternoon, hardly more than two hours ago. All traces of
former suffering have passed away from that dear face, and
it is with difficulty I can persuade myself that what I see
is no more than the empty shrine which contained the pure,
righteous redeemed soul of her who was the joy of my
heart, the light of my eyes, and the example of all that was
excellent to our dear children from the moment they could
appreciate, for more than forty years.'
The shock of his mother's death completely overwhelmed
Morier, for not only had the ties of affection which united
mother and son been exceptionally close, but in her he
' Admiral Morier.

i855] VIENNA 143
lost one whose sympathy in all his interests, grave and
gay, moral and intellectual, had been unfaUing.
On the eve of his mother's birthday, 4th December 1855,
he wrote : —
' Dearest Father, — I cannot let this anniversary pass
by without, in thought at least, and faintly on paper,
communing with you in the remembrance of that blessed
creature whose birthday this was. For many years I
believe I can say that this was the only anniversary
that I never forgot or omitted to haUow, and it was at
this very desk, and by this very light, and in this same
room that I remember last year writing to her my last
lines of congratulation. I feel sure that this day your
thoughts, when they at times fly back earthward from
the object to which they are doubtless, if possible, clinging,
return towards me, and in the sure belief that hers wUl do so
too, I can hardly feel as if the distance that parted us were
increased, almost perhaps less, than this time twelvemonth.'
A few months later, writing for the anniversary of his
parents' wedding-day, he says : —
' Dearest Father, — This letter should reach you
upon an anniversary which must necessarily recaU to
your mind, more keenly perhaps than ever before, the
greatness of the loss with which it has pleased God to
afflict us. It is not in my power, by any words of mine,
to mitigate the sense of that loss, but I would fain have
you feel how deeply I feel for you and share your grief
on this day. I would have you think of me as close at
hand to minister to your grief. I would have you lean
on me and communicate to me your sorrow and also your
hopes. I would wish you to realise how intensely I wish
that I could, in how infinitesimally small a degree what
ever, by my sympathy and love, supply that com
munion and interchange of love which is taken from you
but for a season.'
After a long stay in England Morier returned to his
duties at Vienna, where, in December 1855, Lord West
morland was succeeded by Sir Hamilton Seymour.

144 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1856
' Nothing can exceed the pleasantness of my relation
with our new Chief,' he writes. ' ... He is good-nature
personified, and, what is more to the purpose, is good sense
personified, that is as regards the work of his Chancery,
not plaguing one about detaUs, but leaving the work to be
done by the workmen, the greatest of all blessings in a
large machine like this. . . . She has already won golden
opinions here, and the whole family are essentially to the
backbone British, so that of an evening one almost fancies
oneself back in that dear, blessed, foolish, ignorant, hot
headed, led-by-the-nose, bawling, brawling, but good-at-
the-bottom old England.'
The Crimean War then raging was the cause of all the
Chancelleries of Europe being worked at high pressure,
none more so than the English Embassy at Vienna.
' I am quite well,' he writes to his father, on 17th
January 1856, ' though overworked to a degree that even
the annals of the Vienna Chancery would find difficult to
equal. We are only three to do the work of at least six,
and the galimatias, such as we have been up to our necks
in for the last three weeks, might astonish the oldest
diplomatist.' Speaking of the ignorant public at home —
' If they go on with their stupid brawling, we may have
a fair chance of finding ourselves single-handed at war
against Europe and America.' And three weeks later —
' Thank God, Buol leaves to-morrow. Bourqueney left
two days since, and so the stream of protocols, notes
verbales, and treaties wUl set for the first time away from
this capital.' To the Same 'July sth, 1856.
' . . . I have had a visit from my brother cosmo
politan Layard just fresh from that pepper plantation,
H.M. Embassy at Constantinople. The account he gives
of the state of things there is dreadful. Lord Stratford
having bellowed himself out — no one caring any more
for his bark, which they have found out is far worse than
his bite — and our whole influence lying prostrate under
that of our blessed French Allies. All this, however.

1856] VIENNA 145
sub sigillo diplomatico. A most interesting acquaintance
has been here for the last three days, and dines with me
to-night. Sir Hugh Rose.! His accounts are interesting
in a degree far surpassing all other Crimeans I have seen
from his having had the luck, as commissary to the French
camp, of always being equally au fait of all that happened
in one camp as well as in the other.'
In October 1856 he started on a journey to Agram, the
origin of which he tells his father in a letter of 2nd October.
' Our Government want information with regard to the
Austrian military frontier, in order to obtain hints for the
proposed mUitary colonies in the Cape. I have proposed
to Sir Hamilton Seymour to let me make a tour down
and up through the frontier and draw up a report thereon.
He has good-naturedly agreed, and now I only await the
faciUties required from the K.K. Government.'
On the 5th he left Vienna by rail for Szegedin, and from
thence travelled over Temesvar, Orsova, Semlin, up the
Saave to Agram, where he arrived on 4th November, a
journey from Transylvania to the Adriatic which had
never before been made by any British official. At the
end of November he was back in Vienna, safe but not
sound, having been detained by a terribly blistered foot in
a wUd part of Hungary. The material coUected during
those three weeks was immense, and he worked hard
during the whole winter at his report, which, when it
appeared, attracted considerable attention, giving as it
did with admirable lucidity a complete description, social,
political, and mUitary of the Organisation of the MUitary
Frontier of Austria-Hungary, which, tUl then, had never
been specially described, even in Austria. The King of
Sweden, who at that time was contemplating the formation
of mUitary colonies, applied for a copy, sent him a warm
acknowledgment, and, as he knew he could not offer him a
decoration, requested his acceptance of a gold medal, which
Morier, as he himself wrote later in life, ' foolishly declined.'
This tour all through the Banat and South-east Hungary,
a country forming a perfect mosaic of Slav, Magyar,
' Afterwards created Baron Stratlmaim.
VOL. I. K

146 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1856
Roumanian, and German viUages, settled there not a
hundred years ago to repopulate the country wasted by
the Turks, awakened his interest in the highest degree,
for it was there that the great jousting matches of nation
alities, of which the Austrian Empire had been the theatre
in the years '48 and '49, had commenced. Suddenly, and
apparently at a word of command in 1848, nationality
had risen against nationality, and the war had continued
for weeks and weeks without anyone having been able to
attend to it, as Vienna and every other capital of the
Empire had been in a state of revolution at the same time.
As he passed through village after viUage eight years
after these events, the houses stUl in ruins, — most of them
were blackened walls, — Morier heard ever5rwhere the same
story : how Slavs had risen in the night against Magyar or
German, or Magyar against Slav or German, and that
without rhyme or reason the work of butchery and massacre
had begun. The war between Hungary and Croatia had
been going on at the same time as these massacres, which
were merely a byplay, and a colonel of Hussars whom
Morier met told him ' that, being on picket duty a mile
away from one of these viUages at this time, he had heard
sharp musketry fire in the middle of the night in the
direction of the village, and going up to reconnoitre had
found that the Servian half of the villagers had risen up
by stealth in the night and seized the Roumanian half,
and been employed in shooting down aU the able-bodied
men, whom they had fastened in batches to the lime trees
under which we were standing when he told me the story.
Count Nugent, a son of the Field-Marshal, who was an
A. de C. on the staff of JeUagi? (the Ban of Croatia), told me
that the first thing he saw on crossing the Croatian frontier,
in the celebrated march on Vienna in 1848, was the body
of a chUd about eight years old, hung on the arm of a large
chandelier in a church, the other arm having a dead dog
hanging from it as a pendant.'
Numberless anecdotes of this description, recounted to
Morier by eye-witnesses, impressed him with a profound
conviction that a general Slav rising would be a matter
of life and death to the Austrian Empire,

1856] THE BAN OF CROATIA 147
But he was equaUy impressed with the extreme in
gratitude with which the Croatians and South Slavonians
had been treated after the part they had taken in the
events of 1848, when under Ban Jella^i? they had marched
against the Hungarians and greatly contributed by their
timely action to the maintenance of the Hapsburg dynasty.
JeUagig was in many respects a most remarkable man.
Son of a former Ban, who had taken a great part in the
Napoleonic Wars, he had fought in his youth with much
success against the Bosnians, and had gained such influence
and popularity among his countrymen that at the beginning
of the stormy times of '48 he had, at the general request
of the Croatians, been named Ban by the Emperor, and
at the same time appointed Commander-in-Chief of the
mUitary frontier. He then developed great political
activity, and by his personal influence succeeded in oppos
ing the Slav to the Magyar element to such an extent that
the Hungarians did all in their power to get rid of this
recalcitrant governor, and with some apparent success,
for in June '48 he was, by an imperial proclamation,
superseded in his high office. Not for long, however, for
very shortly afterwards he was received with much dis
tinction at the Imperial Court, and reappointed. In the
open breach which occurred between Hungary and the
remainder of the Empire he took a most active part in
rousing the Croatians against the Magyars, and in September
crossed into Hungary with 40,000 of his frontier troops,
marched to the relief of Vienna (then held by the rebel
citizens), and, joining the imperial forces, materially
assisted in the reduction of that city. He took part in
the ensuing Hungarian campaign with varying success,
and at the end of the war returned to Agram, where he
resumed his functions of Ban and MUitary Governor.
It was here that Morier, who had first met him at
Olmiitz in 1853, found him smarting under the feelings of
mortification engendered by the non-recognition of his
many services to the imperial cause, and wrought into a
state of susceptibUity and misanthropy by the destraction
of all his hopes.
The acquaintance ripened into friendship during the

148 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1857
somewhat prolonged stay which Morier made at Agram in
the summer of 1857, with a view of learning the language
previous to undertaking a journey into the Turkish pro
vinces south of the Saave and Danube.
Writing to his father from Agram, on 15th July '57,
he says : —
' ... It is no joke learning a new language in three
weeks, and so I set to with clenched teeth and shut myself
up with old Babukie, the father of lUyrian-Servo-Croatian,
or by whatever name the South Slavic languages wUl in
future be caUed, and went at it with a wUl. I have already
got far enough to be able to translate tolerably correctly
with the assistance of grammar and dictionary. Another
ten days will give me far greater facUities, and for the
talking part of the matter I must learn that on the road.
Old Babukie is a sort of Slavonic Samuel Johnson, broad
shouldered, massive, adoring the language, and now in the
thirtieth year of parturition of a dictionary which may some
day see the light. Du reste, there is no vice in him, and a
chUd may ride him with a worsted bridle. He is proud of my
progress, and of the fact that the mad Englishman should
come all the way from England to learn lUyrian. I work
ten or twelve hours a day.'
Not orUy did he acquire the language, but he also
obtained such an insight into the political and social
condition of the country that he was enabled to write a
series of admirable letters to Sir HamUton Seymour on
the subject, of which the following gives a clear view of
the situation of Croatia and the Ban at the time : —
' I cannot but entertain the conviction that the future
historian, in testing the various causes which rendered it
possible for the House of Hapsburg once more to find an
anchoring ground for itself amidst the breakers, which
at that time seemed to threaten it with inevitable de
struction, will come to the conclusion that the main cause,
more efficient a great deal than the ascendency of the
German element, more so even than the Russian inter
vention, was the attitude assumed at the commencement

i857] THE BAN OF CROATIA 149
of the struggle by the South Slavic element, and that he
wiU further have to constater that this attitude was in
a very great measure impressed upon it by the Ban JeUagig.
Not that any positive results of extraordinary value were
obtained by the Croatian arms against those of the
Hungarians ; indeed, they were as against the latter rarely
in the ascendant, but that the service negatively rendered
by paralysing at the outset that unity of action amidst
the component parts of the Hungarian monarchy, which
would otherwise have carried everything before it, was
beyond all calculation important. Thus much for the
services rendered intra muros. To these must be added
those rendered extra muros by the keeping true to their
allegiance the army of Italy, a point gained solely by the
personal influence of the Ban. By the side of these great
results the suppression of the revolution at Prague by
Prince Windischgratz faUs far back into the shade. That
the crew so saved well know who saved them I entertain
no manner of doubt, and that it is this knowledge which
has in a great measure coloured the policy observed
personally towards the Ban, and that observed generally
towards the nation, I feel likewise convinced of. It brings
out in no very favourable light either the character of the
chivalrous monarch who at present wears the Crown of
Hapsburg, or that of the Ministers and the public opinion
which from the " bureaus " of centralised Austria rule the
fate of the various nations committed to their charge.
' To a certain class of organisations there are few things
more thoroughly distasteful than the receiving a benefit
at the hands of those they consider their inferiors. To
such, a benefit thus received is almost synonymous with
an insult. Now, in the large but anything rather than
" happy " famUy of which the Austrian Empire is com
posed, Croatia has from time immemorial been the sort
of " CindereUa." The haughty Magyar looked upon all
nationalities not Magyar settled on Hungarian soU or on
that of the various countries appendant to the Hungarian
Crown as vassals, not to say " Rayahs." The German
element in Austria, by a strange incongruity, after carefuUy
barricading itself against aU access of that inteUectual

150 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1857
cultivation and free development of thought by which,
spite its political fiascos, Protestant Germany has vindicated
its high position in Europe, is perpetually, as against all
other races its brother citizens in Austria, riding the high
horse of intellectual superiority. It has been more par
ticularly as against the Slav element that this " odious "
comparison has been most frequently made, and the
literary efforts of the lUyrian party at Agram had, as
representing the main factor in the Slav movement previous
to 1848, been a special object of ridicule to the narrow
and self-sufficient pedantry of the German bureaucracy.
Add to this that the contempt which the Austrian German
affects for the Austrian Slav is combined with the very
real fear with which the numerical superiority of the latter
inspires him (the proportion is as 2 to i — ^there being in
rough numbers about sixteen millions of Slavs in Austria,
and eight miUions of Germans) ; and lastly, take into con
sideration the democratic character whicii is inherent in
Slav institutions, and which even with their obtuseness
the higher aristocracy in Austria cannot but be uneasily
conscious of, and then some sort of appreciation can be
arrived at of the kind of feeling with which the great
services rendered by the geographical remplagants of the
old Pannonians were acknowledged amongst the ruling
classes at Vienna.
'To give a history of the various slights put personaUy
on the Ban would be foreign to my purpose. I shaU
therefore advert only to one or two circumstances.
'If ever,since the foundationof the Order of Maria Theresa,
an Austrian subject deserved the Grand Cross of the Order
by the fulfilment on the largest scale of the conditions
originally stipulated by the rules of the Order, it was the
Ban. Those rules, as is well known, recognise by prefer
ence the claims of those who have successfully achieved
some great exploit either without or in contradiction to
orders received from their superiors. Now, this latter was
achieved by the Ban upon a' scale rarely seen in history.
As an outlaw he places himself at the head of an entire
nation, declares war on his own responsibility, marches suc
cessfully into the very heart of the enemy's country, and

i857] THE BAN OF CROATIA 151
then by a brUliant manoeuvre, after a doubtful battle, comes
to the rescue of the capital of the Empire. Nevertheless, the
Chapter of the Order (on the very same day, if I am
not mistaken) awarded to Prince Windischgratz, for his
successful putting down of the 6meute at Prague, the
Grand Cross of the Order ; and to the Ban, for the services
by him rendered, the Commander's Cross only. Again,
Prince Windischgratz was named Field-Marshal, the Ban
General ; but two years later it was retrospectively stipu
lated that he should not advance towards the grade of
Field-Marshal, otherwise than if he had become General
by seniority.
' Many more instances might be adduced of this
endeavour to give the prominent place to the Generals
actuated only by mUitary and absolutist sentiments, at
the cheap cost of snubbing and putting into the back
ground those whose undoubted loyalty was yet tainted
by popular and constitutional principles. True it is, that
at the moment of the crisis the latter were those who
could render the most effectual assistance, for they alone
were enabled to oppose a living principle in the first moment
of its exuberant life by one of equal vitality. The assist
ance was accepted, — it could indeed not well be refused,
— but it was accepted d contre cceur.
' We now proceed to the far more important considera
tion of the treatment with which the nation met at the
hands of the famUy to the rescue of whose throne, at an
immense cost of life and treasure, it rushed when aU else
fled from the apparent wreck. And here I must confess
that, with every wish to make allowance for the difficulties
of the situation, it yet seems to me that a more wholesale
act of injustice, ingratitude, and bad faith, a display on
a larger scale of a mean and paltry spirit, grosser fraud,
more clumsily veUed, it would be difficult to meet with
in all the pages of history.
' For years previous to '48 the Imperial Government
had fostered the growing national spirit amongst the
Southern Slavs to oppose it to the Hungarian nationality.
The object of the party so fostered was in the main a
conservative one : it was the vindication of the right to

152 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1857
self-government, and to national development within
the framework of the united Hungarian kingdom, in
accordance with the principles embodied in the compact
solemnly entered into by Koloman on behalf of himself
and his successors. In '48 the " Petition of Rights "
granted to Croatia by the Emperor Ferdinand did little
more than give additional sanction to these principles,
and fence them round with additional guarantees. In
return for the guarantees thus given, the people of
Croatia, both civU and mUitary, raUied round the imperial
throne, and poured forth their blood like water on behalf
of the imperial cause. Of mUitary Croatia alone, with
a population little above half a mUlion, official returns
show that 11,000 corpses fatten the Italian and Hungarian
plains. ' What was their reward ? and how was the engagement
kept on the other side ?
' Not only has there been taken from them those
additional guarantees of their old liberties granted in '48,
the field works as it were hastUy thrown up in a moment
of danger to cover the approaches of the citadel, but the
ancient liberties themselves have been cut down root and
branch, the proud old citadel itself which the Magyars, in
the wildest moments of their national fever, would never
have laid hands on, was razed to the ground after having
been treacherously entered into by the supposed allies,
themselves saved from utter ruin by the desperate sortie
of the garrisons. The independent Diet, the municipal
rights, the self-administration of the counties have been
one and aU ruthlessly swept away, and in their stead has
been introduced the centralised organisatiom of the Vienna
bureaus, — if, indeed, something so chaotic as the confused
attempt to rule a people accustomed to the forms of self-
government by the wholly undrUled army of officials let
loose upon Croatia can be allowed the dignified appeUation
of organisation.
' The manner in which the change was brought about
was not wanting in a certain machiavellian craftiness
deserving of eulogium. A form of constitutional govem
ment, with very extensive popular liberties, was, as is

i857] THE BAN OF CROATIA 153
weU known, octroyed in March 1849, for the whole
Empire, and, of course, duly sworn to by His Imperial
Majesty. The very real advantages secured by this con
stitution, and the two leading ideas supposed to lie at the
bottom of it, viz. as regards the administration, the
autonomy of the commune, and as regards the national
question, the free development of the nationality on the
basis of popular representation in an Imperial Diet, satisfied
all the more enlightened amongst the Slav patriots, and
made them wiUingly forego the more extended concessions,
necessarily of a separatist tendency, which had been
granted in '48. The continuance of the provisional
dictatorship of the Ban prevented the masses, the pith and
marrow of whom it must be remembered were with arms
in their hands defending the Imperial cause in Hungary
and Italy, from too closely scrutinising the thimble-rigging
practised upon them. Into the merits or demerits of the
general constitution, granted to the Empire in '49, it is
not my purpose now to enter. That it was intended to be
seriously tested by those who put it forward, I fancy no
one would now venture to assert. The function it had to
fulfil was that of a decoy to lure back to the Imperial
standard aU the sober-minded of the liberal party, far
the largest portion of the population of the Empire, at a
moment when the fortune of the Imperial arms both in
the east and south was far from assured. The success of
the Austrian Army in Italy and of the Russo-Austrian
arms in Hungary, was the signal for throwing off the
mask, and by the Imperial rescript of December 1851
were abolished at one sweep every vestige of modern
constitutionaUsm as embodied in the constitution of '49,
the shadows of medieval constitutions which under the
form of Provisional States had continued to exist up to
'48 in the Hereditary Provinces of Austria, and the bona
fide historical constitutions which up to the same period
Hungary and its appendent Croato-Slavonian Kingdom
had for eight centuries enjoyed. Amidst the ruins there
rose up, in all the meagreness of its modern outlines, the
huge fabric of absolutism supported on bayonets and
administered by bureaus, which now for the first time

154 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1857
estabUshed its intricate uniformity over every portion of
the Austrian Empire alike.
' One of the most ingenious features in this double
operation was the avoidance of the individual homicides
which would otherwise have had to be perpetrated upon
the various corporate bodies whose liberties it was in
tended to destroy, and which, especiaUy in the case of
the Southern Slavs, could not, even at that time of universal
reaction, but have called forth one general cry of indig
nation throughout Europe. By collecting, however, the
hundred heads of the constitutional hydra into one in '49,
there was but one neck to submit to the headsman's axe in
'51. It is extraordinary with what complete success people
were imposed upon by this manoeuvre. Nobody out of
Austria and very few people in Austria have, as yet, fully
understood the port6e of the coup d'etat of '51. Both in
the country and out of it, it has been considered simply as
the annulling of the constitution of '49, and inasmuch as
every offspring of the revolutionary years was, not with
out some fairness, looked upon with a very considerable
degree of mistrust, and with more or less of the feeling
of loathing with which political as weU as other revellers
regard on the morrow the scene of their previous night's
debauch, very little regret was in general felt at the act
of cancelment. It was assumed by Europe that the
status quo ante had been returned to. Had not Austria all
along been an absolute monarchy ? What else was it
now ? Hungary, it is true, formed an exception, but then
it had rebelled, and Austria had obtained over it the rights
of a conqueror, and so the act of '51 passed off in almost
perfect sUence. Those few, however, who with calm eyes
had watched the stream of Austrian history from its
fountain-head, and the paraUel courses foUowed by the
histories of the other States of Europe, regarded it with
very different feelings. To them it was in its very essence
the most revolutionary phenomenon that had glared out
upon Europe since '89, it was the installation en permanence
of the revolution invested with the dangerous respect-
abUity of the imperial ermine. These men perceived
with the unerring instinct of kingcraft that the right

1857] THE BAN OF CROATIA 155
moment had been seized for occupying by a single move
ment the entire ground which inch by inch had been
sought to be acquired by Ferdinand ix. at the battle of the
" Weisser Berg," by Maria Theresia, by Joseph 11., by
Francis — that at one stroke had been attained that uni
versal levelling of all inequalities beneath the canopy of
the throne, which according to continental precedent is
the first sine qua non step in the inauguration of the
principles commoiUy known as those of the French Revolu
tion. ' In one day, as it were, Francis Joseph obtained the
results which Louis xiv. laboured unceasingly throughout
his long reign to arrive at, and even many of those which
the logical though unconscious disciples of the great
monarch's policy wrung out in '89. In one day ihe past
was once for all broken with, the old corporate liberties
were all abolished, the old prescriptive rights all violently
trodden under foot, the spontaneous growth of centuries,
the rich vari-formed institutions that had germed out of
nations' hearts, and moulded themselves in accordance
with nations' habits, were imperiously torn out by the
roots, and in their stead were arbitrarUy introduced not new
forms only, but new substances also.
' To use a perhaps somewhat far-fetched iUustration :
the old famUiar home landscape with its endless variety
of features, its moated castles, its manor houses, and its
homesteads, not one stone of which but was mossed over
with some historical association, was, pantomime fashion,
and as if by the stroke of a wand, made to disappear, and
in its stead the dull eyes of dull officials are enabled to
glad themselves with the symmetrical red-brick buUdings
and the mathematically parcelled-out enclosures of a
model penal colony.
' It is this heartless and unstatesmaiUike breaking
with the past, this attempt to substitute machinery for
organic grovrth, to govern from a priori principles instead
of from a posteriori experiences, which, whether the
initiative be taken by an absolute sovereign or a constitu
tional assembly, marks the difference between revolution
and reform. It is this which has justly earned for Louis xiv.

156 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1857
the title of the first sans culotte, and which justifies the
description of the Austrian coup d'etat as the installation
en permanence of the revolution.
' It is, however, only as regards Croatia that I am at
present concerned with this coup d'etat. The wholesale
juggling used with reference to the Empire was applied
with even an additional employment of the resources of
the art to this kingdom. Ignoring alike the concessions
made in '48 and the old forms of the Koloman Constitu
tion, the defenders of the coup d'etat adopt the modern
phraseology of the Hungarian propagandists, and represent
Croatia as having formed an integral part of the Hungarian
Kingdom, and its constitution as having formed an integral
portion of the Hungarian constitution. They then infer
that as the latter had been just forfeited the whole was
necessarUy lost, and if the Croatians were involved in the
common ruin, tant pis pour eux ! '
Having left Agram, Morier proceeded via Glina and Dvor
to Novi, where he crossed the frontier over the Una, then
up the right bank of the Sanna to Pridore, Banjalukee, and
Bosni Serai, where he stayed ' under the hospitable roof of
our consul, ChurchiU, great inthe annals of Kars,' and from
whence he writes to his father on 15th September 1857 • —
' I start in a day or two from here for Mostar, and thence
to Ragusa and Montenegro. I hope to be back at Vienna
about the end of October. The old Pasha here, the em
bodied picture of Punch, has been of the greatest civUity
to me. He put, in the language of the country, himself and
aU the resources of the Province at my disposition. I was
modest and told him I should be quite satisfied if he would
let me have the use of the best horse in the stable and would
organise me a mighty great hunting. The most perfect
beast I ever rode on was, in consequence, placed at my
disposal, and a great expedition after roe-deer and savage
pig, a day's journey off on the road to Constantinople, was
arranged. His son took the command of the battue, and,
though little sport was the result, still, as a study of Oriental
life, I could not have wished to have seen anything more

i857] BOSNI SERAI 157
picturesque or worthy of pen or pencU. The country is
perfectly magnificent. Bosni Serai stands at the mouth
of a deep gorge, against which it leans, looking out on to a
beautiful and richly-cultivated plain. The road to Con
stantinople lies through the gorge as precipitate and break
neck as you may well wish to see. We started in the early
morning about ninety horsemen, all the great Beys of the
country having been invited to be of the party, splendid
looking fellows, magnificently horsed with their mounted
Bashibazouks and other retainers, besides these a large
number of pedestrians with dogs. The cavalcade was
headed by a number of Chaouches, most of them Albanian,
in their white kUts, and splendidly armed. There was
besides a most wonderful band of music, the music of the
country, consisting of three gipsies, one of whom played on
two immense drums, balanced on a horse's neck, between
which he and a little dog sat. The second played a kind of
flageolet, which emitted sounds the exact counterpart of
a very bad bagpipe. The time consisted of a repetition of
bigger thumps at regular intervals on the bigger drum, and
lesser thumps at regular intervals on the lesser drum. The
flageolet broke in now and then with a voluntary, which,
however, did not seem to have any connection with the
drumming. The third gipsy acted as buffoon. He had on
a diabolical kind of black mask with a white beard. His
pleasantries, which were performed at our various halts,
were not of the choicest or most delicate kinds. He
had a wonderful way of apparently dislocating himself
and imitating the habits and noises of various animals.
Just behind Bosni Serai the road dips precipitately down
and crosses two torrents over one of your picturesque
Turkish bridges, then twisting suddenly up the yonder side
of the valley. The defUing of the cavalcade along this bit
in the morning sun, with the breaking fog rolling just off
the craggy summits of the enclosing mountains, was one of
the most picturesque sights I ever remember seeing. We
reached our camping ground in the evening; the place
selected was the castle, a very diminutive castle, consisting
of a single tower, of a Bey quelconque, high up amongst
the mountains. Immediately in front of it was pitched

158 MEMOIRS OF SiR ROBERT MORIER [1857
ours, that is the swell tent, in an adjoining field the remain
ing tents, six or seven in number. A very few touches,
with your knowledge of Eastern scenery, are enough to
make you realise the scene.
' Time, night, nearly full moon. Four huge fires. Four
whole sheep being roasted.
' Dramatis persones : Beys, Chaouches, Rayas. Tethered
horses snorting and kicking. Cross-legged turbaned old
Turks quietly chibouk-smoking and ruminating. Scullions
running to and fro, brandishing entire lambs on spits, ser
vants unpacking pack-horses, etc., grand jagged mountains
all round, with stupendous forests in immediate foreground.
' An hour after sunset we kneel down to dinner, a regular
Turkish dinner on a huge circle of bright copper, eight of
us sitting round, and hungry outposts of less swell guests
dotted about behind us. We are seated on a little plot of
very green grass, through the middle of which runs a little
rUl of water, ending in a sort of fountain at our feet. First
comes lamb, roasted whole, from which each tears what he
can. I enter into the spirit of the thing, and with great
muscular effort pull off a shoulder, securing at the same
time a handful of fat and kidney — him with bread very
good. Then a succession of all sorts of queer little dishes.
Cucumber with chopped-up meats and rich gravies, and for
the last an immense pUlaf. I ought to have mentioned,
however, that there was a preface of a good hour in which
were eaten little bits of cheese and apples about the size
of pins' heads, and in which had been drunk by messieurs
the Turks in huge libations, and by ourselves in much
smaUer quantities, tremendously strong raki. At dinner
a red wine of the country was also copiously imbibed, so
that when we got up from the table our Ottoman friends
were all more or less screwed, and some of them, particu
larly a great huge Mudir, lately destitue for shooting some
body when drunk, in a state of most complete inebriety.
A more grotesque sight than those groggy old Turks,
fraternising and swearing by the Ingliz, rollicking and
affectionate, it wUl not soon again be my good fortune to
see. At two next morning we broke up for the shooting
ground. The arrangements were bad, and only three roe-

i857] VIENNA 159
deer were shot, but we got up amongst scenery which,
for a combination of high mountains and large timber, I
never saw the like of. The return was of the same kind
as the journey thither.'
After a most interesting tour through Herzegovina and
Montenegro, he announced to his father, on loth October,
from on board a steamer off Zara, his safe return into
civUised parts. ' I have had in every way a most interest
ing journey, and never was better in my life, though some
of it was tremendously hard work.'
This expedition always remained in Morier's recoUection
as not oiUy one of the most interesting, but also one of
the pleasantest episodes of his youth. ' Happy, careless
days,' of which he was reminded in later years by one of
his then companions. Consul Zohrab, who, when congratu
lating him on the attainment of ambassadorial dignity in
1885, writes, recalling —
' . . . Old, old times, which wUl come back to memory,
and you wUl think of the old days when we were both
young, and which you said were so delightful. Do you
remember Mostar and Bona, the house with Zohrab in it,
in which you passed some days ? Do you remember how
after meals you would go to sleep, and when I asked you
something you would give most out-of-the-way replies, and
insist that you were wide awake ? Do you remember how
difficult it used to be for me to get you out of my big
fruit garden to come to those meals ? How you used
to tell me you were in Elysium picking grapes and peaches,
and could not tear yourself away ? Do you remember
our trip to Kleck, and the chaff we had as we went along
the road ? How often I think of those days, and how
bright they appear to me. But I always say, " He must
be the same, though he has gone so far above me." '
In November, Morier was back again in Vienna and
doing double work, not only in the Chancery, but also
writing reports, as, owing to the special knowledge now
acquired, the Foreign Office had instructed him to draw
up a secret Memorandum on Kleck and Sutorina, points

i6o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1857
at that time in dispute between Austria and Turkey, or
rather on the claims put forward by the former to restrict
the latter in the free use of those portions of her territory
abutting on the Adriatic. This was a matter of so intricate
and delicate a nature, touching on questions of such
far-reaching consequences as the principle of maritime
supremacy in the Adriatic, then claimed by Austria as heir
to the Republic of Venice, that Morier himself, as he wrote ^
at the time, had a strong feeling that ' a State Paper of
so wide a portee should not be the maiden effort of an unpaid
attach^, but the matured labour of " an old hand, ' ' involving,
as it did, " the interests and points d'honneur of aU maritime
nations, and therefore touching us as the cock in that
walk more nearly." '
He acquitted himself, however, of the task imposed
upon him in so satisfactory a manner that he was able to
tell his father ' as a profound secret, not to be breathed
to any living soul ' that ' my Kleck and Sutorina letters
have met with a degree of success far greater than anything
that has faUen to my share yet.'
The two journeys Morier had undertaken through the
South Slav Provinces of Austria, and through Bosnia,
Herzegovina, and Montenegro had strongly impressed
upon his mind the radical mistake committed by the
English Government, of exclusively employing as consuls,
in that part of the world, men brought up entirely in Asiatic
Turkey and the Eastern school of Diplomacy, in all the
traditions of the Constantinople Embassy, thoroughly
good Turkish scholars, but not knowing a word of any Slav
language or anything ofthe people amongst whom they lived :
on the best of terms with the Turkish officials, but holding
the Christian populations in supreme contempt — with the re
sult that their Russian coUeagues, knowing the language and
being of the same religion, had everything their own way.
Although but a very few weeks in those countries, Morier
had seen quite enough to convince him, that had they
been men capable of sympathising with the Slavs, and
understanding their language, there would be an immense
field for useful work and unrivaUed opportunities of
1 To Mr. Hammond, U.S. of the F.O., i8th November 1857.

1857] VIENNA i6i
acquiring influence, for many of the cleverer Slavs were
imbued with a deep distrust of Russia, and had no greater
desire than to find some fair-dealing Power like England
to lean against.
Here indeed, he realised, was a splendid opening for a
policy, as, after all the blood and treasure spent in the
Crimea, we had bought the right of actively intervening
as it could be done by an able ambassador, a first-rate
set of subordinates, and a clear policy directing the whole.
On his return to England he strongly urged these views
on Lord Clarendon, then Foreign Minister, and, though
meeting with no response, never lost sight of them.
Many years later, in 1875, when affairs in the East were
assuming a threatening aspect, it was entirely owing to
Morier — who, as he said, ' moved heaven and earth on his
behalf ' — that Mr. White,! then Consul at Danzig, whom
he knew to be not only one of the first Slav scholars in
Europe, but intimately acquainted with Slav politics, was
appointed Consul-General at Belgrade, a result only
obtained after eighteen months of the most strenuous
efforts, by employing every influence official, private, and
personal he could command, and by pleading his cause
in season and out of season, even at the risk, as he himself
wrote, of doing harm by ' the importunity of my advocacy.'
' Afterwards Sir W. White, H.M. Ambassador at Constantinople.

VOL. I.

i62 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1858

CHAPTER IX
BERLIN
In 1858 Morier was transferred to Berlin as paid Attach^,
at the instance of the Prince Consort.
Ever since his first visit in 1850 he had kept up the most
cordial and intimate relations with his many friends in Ger
many, and spent much time there, chiefly at Coburg and
Gotha, which under Duke Ernst, Prince Albert's elder
brother, had become centres of German liberalism and a
refuge for many Schleswig-Holsteiners like the Duke of
Augustenburg, Samwer, and others, who had been forced
to leave their country on the unhappy termination of the
campaign of 1848-1850, a campaign in which Duke Ernst
himself had taken a prominent part.
It was there, on one of these visits, that Morier first met
old Baron Stockmar, then settled at Coburg, who, as the
former afterwards wrote, ' at seventy had retained aU the
warmth and enthusiasm of youth, and who could not abide
the society of the old frondeurs and fogies, his contem
poraries, and attached himself exclusively to young men ;
he took an extraordinary fancy to me, and for the last seven
or eight years of his life I was his most trusted and in
timate friend.'
Stockmar ever after spoke of Morier as his ' adopted son,'
whilst Morier looked up to " the Baron ' as ' the noblest
and most beautiful political life which this (nineteenth)
century has seen.'
Both shared the belief in the high destinies to which
Germany was called, and the conviction that she would
eventually prove ' a light to lighten the GentUes, and to
have a fviture more beautiful than any other nation's
past.' ! 1 Morier to E. v. Stockmar.

1858] BERLIN 163
To bring about a political and intellectual union between
England and Germany was therefore as much the ideal of
the younger man's diplomatic youth as it had been the
earnest object to which the older man had dedicated his
life, and the latter soon had no greater desire than that
Morier should devote himself to carry on a task the fulfU-
ment of which he feared he himself might not live to
see. With this aim in view Stockmar insisted on his making
the personal acquaintance of Prince Albert, to whom
he presented him in the spring of 1855 3-t Buckingham
Palace. The Prince, who always afterwards took a warm
personal interest in Morier's career, soon gave him to
understand it was his wish that he should in every way
endeavour to fit himself for diplomatic work in Germany,
with particular reference to the relations between Prussia
and England, designating Berlin as his future sphere of
activity. When, therefore, in January 1858, the marriage
of Prince Frederick WUliam of Prussia with the Princess
Royal took place, a union which fulfUled as much Prince
Albert's as Stockmar's keenest political wishes, and which
for years the latter had striven to bring about, it was in
the natural sequence of events that Morier shoiUd, shortly
afterwards (20th February), be appointed there, desirous
as Prince Albert was, to have a man — ^who not only pos
sessed his confidence, but was credited with a special
knowledge of German affairs — ^within reach of the newly
married couple ; an appointment, moreover, warmly
backed by the Princess of Prussia, who had known and
liked not only Morier, but his father for many years, and
had expressed to Lord Clarendon her earnest wish that
he should be named to Berlin in order to be thrown into
the way of Prince Frederick WUliam.
It was accordingly under very favourable circumstances
that Morier joined his new post, being placed from the
first on a footing of far greater intimacy than his official
status of Attach^ warranted, with the future heir to the
Prussian throne, in whose immediate circle he found not
only Roggenbach, often credited with having been Prince
Frederick WUliam's political mentor, and Ernst von

i64 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1858
Stockmar, old Baron Stockmar's son, just appointed private
secretary to the Princess Royal, but many others of those
whom he had for years been intimately acquainted with,
and whose political views he shared.
His intercourse with Prince Frederick WiUiam and
the Princess Royal was destined to ripen into deep and
lasting friendship based' on mutual sympathy and esteem,
and he soon succeeded in gaining their confidence and
affection to such an extent as to become one of their most
trusted friends and advisers.
At that early period he already formed the high estimate
of the future Emperor Frederick's character which every
succeeding year confirmed more and more, and which
on the latter's untimely death led him to WTrite —
' that having had the great privUege of personal inter
course with His late Majesty during the long period of
thirty years, and been treated by him during all that
time with a kindness for which I cannot sufficiently ex
press my gratitude, I would fain, if I could but find
adequate language to do so, bear my humble testimony
to the character of a man so great, where the greatest have
proved themselves so small, so valiant a soldier yet so
fUled with the horror of war, so conscientious a workman
in the task of buUding up his country's glory, yet so
caUous to all personal sense of glory, so conspicuous a
figure in all the great battles of the age, yet of so stead
fast a faith in those higher national teisks which cannot
be realised on the field of battle. So fearless, patient,
gentle, and cheerful in his long death agony, — in a word,
so pre-eminently human in an age so pre-eminently one
of blood and iron — ^that the like of him may be sought for
in vain in all the pages of the world's history. . . .
' Whatever the future may bring forth, the grave at
Potsdam has just closed upon one who seemed as none
other caUed upon to dispel the war-clouds which darken
the earth, and towards the dispersion of which he yearned
with aU his heart and soul.'
That the exceptional position Morier enjoyed at Court
should make him the object of jealousies and dislike

1858] BERLIN 165
was as much to be foreseen as that his unconcealed
liberalism would excite the animosity of those who held
different political opinions. It was this which laid the
foundations of Bismarck's enmity with all its conse
quences, and of which even in those days he was to have
proof. In the early years of King WUliam's reign, when a
liberal and constitutional regime was being tried, and the
feudal party was in violent opposition and intriguing to
detach the King from his liberal Ministers, Bismarck, then
Prussian Minister at St. Petersburg, declared, on his return
from a visit to Berlin, that he had satisfied himself that
one of the most dangerous persons there was Morier, and
that the party ought to do their best to get rid of him.
It may be remarked here that it was at that time the King
that Morier had the credit of influencing in a constitutional
sense, through the Queen of Prussia, as later the Crown
Prince through the Crown Princess.
Not long' afterwards there appeared in a number of
feudal papers aU manner of dark hints and mysterious
insinuations respecting him, which were only put a stop
to by the then official organ chaUenging these papers to say
out boldly what it was they meant, upon which they all
held their peace.
A simUar episode may be related in his own words : —
' In the year 1858, when I first went to Berlin and was
a total stranger there, I chanced to meet a man who many
years before had given me German lessons, and who was
then a literary man only, unconnected with politics, and
went with him to a restaurant to taste a particular wine
which I was wishing to buy. At this restaurant there
were supping five or six noted political characters, two of
them weU-known editors of liberal newspapers, the rest
likewise political celebrities. They were aU knovm to my
German master, and I naturally enough made their acquaint
ance and sat up most part of the night with them, listen
ing to what was political conversation of the highest interest
to me. I should note that this being stUl during the
Regency, every one of these men was giving his enthusiastic

i66 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1858
support to the Regent's then liberal Ministers. From that
day to the present I have never again seen one ofthe individuals
in question}
' In the year 1865 a friend of mine came to me in a most
perturbed state, and begged me for God's sake to take care
what I was about, for he had heard in the Bismarck salon
that it was an ascertained fact that I was in the nightly
habit of drinking at pot houses with the most virulent
members of the opposition, naming some of the above,
and there could be no doubt about it, as the information
was derived from police reports ! '
Experiences of this kind tended to render his stay at
Berlin even less congenial than he already found it from the
very first. ' Berlin is the most insupportable place I ever
was in,' he writes to his father soon after his arrival there,
' after a very pleasant ten days at Gotha, and in the
Thuringian Forest,' where he had gone to shoot with the
Duke of Coburg ; and in a subsequent letter to the same,
after describing ' the ceremonies here about the King of
Portugal,* who has been married, or rather, his wife ^ has.
She is a pretty, nice little woman, whom I sat next to at
dinner last year at the Princess of Prussia's at Coblentz,
a little, shy, winning mannered, fair-haired creature, lisp
ing out pretty English, and now I am presented to her as
Queen of Portugal and wife of a man she has never seen ' ;
he goes on ; * Berlin is a dismal flat, sandy, with-many-
evU-smeUs-abounding capital ; as compared with Vienna, I
had growled much and often at the miseries of the latter
place, and up to three weeks before my departure thought
I did not like it. It was only when I announced my de
parture that I found how many friends I had, and how very
much I had struck root into the place. The Austrians are
not demonstrative, but when they like you they really do
it, and I had numerous proofs of what very good friends I
had made there without knowing it. I am well off here, as
far as my chief and colleagues are concerned.'
* This was written in 1867. 2 King Do^i Pedro.
» Queen Stephanie, b. 1837, d. 1859, daughter of Prince Karl Anton of
Hohenzollem.

1858] BERLIN 167
_ With Mr. Augustus Paget, the First Secretary of Lega
tion, he soon struck up a warm friendship. Strangely
enough, Morier's father had begun his diplomatic career
under Sir Arthur Paget, Augustus Paget's father, whom
he accompanied on his mission to the DardaneUes in 1807,
so that by a curious coincidence the two sons of the two
fathers were put, after a lapse of fifty years, in the same
relation to one another.
In July 1858 the visit of Queen Victoria and the Prince
Consort to Babelsberg took place, for which Morier had to
hurry back from Aix-la-Chapelle, where he had gone to
cure a bad attack of rheumatic gout.
' The royal visit is to last about a fortnight, and probably
aU that time I shall have to dance attendance, and be kept
at work in the Chancery, as Lord Malmesbury is coming
over too, and we shall in consequence be probably turned
into a miniature F.O.'
After a short stay in England, where he had gone to pass
the usual diplomatic examination by the Civil Service Com
missioners, of which he says, " the whole thing is a farce,
and to a man at my time of life an insult,' he was back again
at Berlin, teUing his father about ' a great concert we gave
to the Princess Royal and the rest of the Prussian Royal
FamUy. It went off very well, but was an intolerable
nuisance, as all such things are, when one is obliged to be
civU for four hours together and do honours. Oh ! how I
hate this life in perpetual " Evidence." The only change
from mechanical work is mechanical civility.'
In a doleful letter to the same, dated Christmas Day, 1858,
he talks of having had ' one disappointment after another :
the first, Rome, which I fancied myself all but sure of ; then
Paget's move, which leaves me quite alone here without a
friend, after the enjoyment of such a friendship as his;
then, Vienna has been fUled up. This is a cheerful way of
commencing a new year.'
In the early spring of 1859 the " monotony and
humdrum of our existence here, which seems to daUy
deepen deeper into a Dutch mud canal of a life,
without even the tulip beds on the banks,' . . . was

i68 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
pleasantly broken by a visit he paid to his friend Paget at
Dresden : —
' Of old acquaintances here I found first and foremost
the Madonna del Sisto, the Richard Metternichs, Austrian
Minister, Prince Wolkonsky and wife, ditto Russian, Count
and Countess Moltke, respectively father and mother to my
friend Leon Moltke, whom I lived with in one house, and
as with a brother at Vienna, but now, alas ! Danish Minister
at Madrid. The Madonna is in good preservation, and is
certainly a most wonderful picture. ... Do you know,
seeing these beautiful pictures, I almost felt as though I
stUl had a soul, and as if the infernal cypher-telegraphing
had not quite succeeded in " abrutising " me, though
very nearly.' !
In May he was enabled to return to England for a short
while, having been attached to Mr. (later Sir Henry) Elliot's
mission to Naples.'
' When I awoke at Paris this morning I had a very con
fused notion in my mind as to what the deuce had brought
me there. I have recovered, however, and am aware that
I left you yesterday with the intention of going to con
gratulate the new King of the two SicUies. Why I should
congratulate him I have not yet found out, but I suppose
we ought to be doing something in Italy, as the others are
doing so much.' *
Notwithstanding the terrific heat, which drove them to
take refuge at Castellamare, Morier much enjoyed this
journey, and ' from all the glories of his Chancery — a
splendid tessellated room with very good paintings of
Magdalens and Archdukes on the walls, and looking out
on the beautiful Naples Bay ' — tells his father : ' I stopped
two days at Rome, to have one glimpse of the Eternal City
before it is " mediatized." ... I succeeded the day before
yesterday in getting down to Paestum, and the exquisite
beauty and simplicity of those temples, after the tawdry
renaissance style of Pompeii, was the most glorious that
you can imagine. . . .'
* Morier to his father, 27th March 1859. ' Ibid., June 1859.

1859] BERLIN 169
The mission to Naples served to draw him closer to
Mr. Odo Russell, one of his coUeagues — and who since that
time became one of his most intimate friends ; his mother.
Lady WUUam RusseU, and brother, Mr. Arthur RusseU,
had long been on very friendly terms with Morier, who in
his London days had much frequented Lady WiUiam's
salon in Audley Square.
WhUst at Naples, he had been appointed first paid
attach^ at Berlin, where, as soon as Mr. Elliot's mission
terminated, he returned, but under very altered circum
stances — for in the meanwhile Lord Malmesbury had been
succeeded^ as Foreign Secretary by Lord John RusseU,
who had known Morier personally for a long while, and
fully appreciated his brUliant capacities and unrivaUed
knowledge of German affairs. From henceforth he was to
be continuaUy employed in business of the most important,
confidential, and delicate kind. Lord John never faUing to
consult him on aU the most complicated questions of
German politics, even when they did not properly belong
to the post he held at the moment. He was thus enabled
to give the fuU measure of his abUity, and soon was
regarded as one of the first authorities on aU matters
pertaining to Germany, whUst of two burning questions,
one, as it turned out, of vital importance to the
peace of Europe — the Hessian and the Schleswig-Holstein
questions — ^he, as he said himself, obtained a kind of
monopoly. At that time, Germany had reached one of the turning
points of her history.
When, after the events of 1848, the first German Parlia
ment, elected by universal suffrage and sitting in the
St. Paul's Church at Frankfurt, had offered the Imperial
crown to King Frederick William iv. of Prussia, it had been
rejected with scorn. Willing as the King would have been
to receive it from the Princes, who, according to him, alone
had the right to offer it, to accept a crown from such revolu
tionary hands appeared to him as nothing less than a dis
grace to a HohenzoUern.
The Congress of Princes, the Union of the three Kings,
1 1 8th June 1859.

170 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
the Assembly at Erfurt, had led to no result, and when
Prussia, yielding to the pressure of Austria backed by
Russia, had ignominiously capitulated at Olmiitz, on the
questions of Federal Reform, Schleswig-Holstein and Hesse,
all peculiarly identified with national aspirations, German
Unity, which a short while before had appeared almost
within reach, seemed further off than ever. The Diet was
reconstituted at Frankfurt, the German fleet, the object of
so much national enthusiasm,put up to auction, and the full
tide of reaction set in all over Germany, where at that period
the Emperor Nicholas was regarded as caUed upon by
Divine wiU to be the leader of monarchical resistance against
revolution, whUst the German national movement, owing
to the extravagance of the political views of some of its
leaders, inspired no little distrust.
' The Emperor Nicholas is at present complete master of
Europe,' Prince Albert wrote to his brother on i8th January
1851. ' Austria is only an instrument, Prussia a dupe,
France a nonentity, whUst England, whose foreign affairs
are directed by a statesman ^ devoid of all public morality,
is less than nothing.' *
A few years later, the Crimean War was to bring about a
complete change in the grouping of the European Powers,
leading first and foremost to the break up of the Holy
AUiance so laboriously re-established after the Revolution,
for bitterly had Russia resented the attitude of Austria,
who owed her so much, and had proved so faithless.
' Who are the two stupidest kings of Poland ? ' the
Emperor Nicholas is supposed to have asked the embarrassed
Austrian Envoy,' and, on being met with a constrained
sUence, to have added, ' Sobieski and I ' — an aUusion to
their both having saved Austria, and both being rewarded
with ingratitude.
After the termination of the war, France had shown more
and more signs of gravitating towards Russia — a rap
prochement viewed with much disfavour by the Cabinet of
1 Lord Palmerston.
" Herzog E. v. Coburg, Denkwiirdigkeiten, vol. li. p. ii.
¦ ' Comte Georges Esterhazy.

i859] BERLIN 171
St. James, whUst the Emperor Napoleon on his side, after
the discovery of the Orsini conspiracy hatched on English
soil, was inclined to consider that his ally placed far too
liberal an interpretation on the rights of asylum and the
laws of hospitality.
It was thus, that when the Prince of Prussia, who, since
the autumn of 1857, had provisionally replaced his brother.
King Frederick William iv., whose mind had given way,
was appointed Regent of Prussia in October 1858, he was
confronted by an absolutely altered political situation. The
Prince Regent who, since the days of the Revolution at
Berlin in 1849, had been estranged from his brother, and
imder the influence of the Princess, had developed leanings
towards liberalism, dismissed the reactionary Manteuffel
Ministry on assuming office, and caUed upon the Prince of
HohenzoUern,! known for his broad-minded, patriotic views,
to form a Cabinet, a decision enthusiastically ratified by
the people, who, at the elections shortly afterwards, returned
an overwhelming ministerial majority. For the first time
in Germany's constitutional history had liberal electors and
representatives taken a pride in belonging to the Ministerial
party. This Cabinet, known as the Ministry of the New Era,
comprised, besides Auerswald,* — a moderate liberal and
persond friend of the Prince's, and General Bonin, who
had shared his disgrace in 1854, — such weU-known names
as Bethmann-HoUweg,' Schleinitz,* Patow,* and a few
months later Count Schwerin * — ^while two of the members
of the late Ministry, Van der Heydt and Simons, were
retained in office.
In a sketch Morier drew up of the Parliamentary situation
some time later, he thus described the various groups
or ' fractions ' into which the parties of the Government
and Opposition were at that time divided.
' HohenzoUern, Prince Karl Anton.
' Auerswald, Rudolf von, b. 1795, d. 1866, Prussian statesman.
' Bethmann-HoUweg, Moritz August von, b. 1795, d. 1S77, Prussian
statesman, author of works on jurisprudence.
* Schleinitz, Alexander Graf von, b. 1807, d. 1885, Prussian statesman.
' Patow, Erasmus Robert Freiherr von, Prussian statesman.
• Schwerin, Maximilian Graf von S. Putzar, b. 1804, d. 1872, Prussian
statesman.

172 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
' The two fractions of which the present Right, i.e. the
Ministerial Majority, is composed, are those of Vincke and
Mathis. Though yielding an equal support to the Govern
ment, there is, nevertheless, a very radical difference in the
historical genesis of these two parties — a difference which
in a very marked manner is noted by the names they have
adopted. ' The fraction Vincke or that of the old Liberals (Alt
Liberalen) represents, as their name denotes, the Liberals
de la veille, the party, namely, who before the Revolution
of '48 had been steadUy endeavouring to change the old
mUitary absolutism of Prussia into a modern Constitutional
State. By a happy coincidence this party is headed by
what may be termed the nearest approach in Prussia to
a great Whig family. As far back as the close of the last
and beginning of the present century we find a Vincke (the
father of the present leader of the party), a man of good
famUy, and of considerable landed property, energetically
supporting the cause of reform in Prussia, and later on
one of the most strenuous supporters of Stein, in the war
to the knife waged by that great statesman against the
feudal institutions to which, more than to any other cause,
the catastrophe of Jena was to be attributed. During the
great period of the reorganisation of the Prussian State,
from 1810 to 1815, he stands out as one of the most remark
able of the groups of practical politicians to whom that
work owed its success, and at the same time, we find him
as a theorist contributing one of the earliest, and to this day
one of the most classical, of the Works on Constitutional
History published in Germany, viz. On the System of
Administration in Great Britain, edited by Niebuhr. Taken
in conjunction with a later work. On the Dismemberment of
Small Freeholds (Zerstiickler der Bauernhofe), in which the
Conservative elements of his system are brought promin
ently forward, we obtain a picture of as complete a con
servative Liberal as mutatis mutandis can be found in the
political repertoire of continental Europe.
' The party he, and later on his son, the present Baron
von Vincke,^ represented up to 1848 was that of the logical
' Vincke, Georg Freiherr v., b. 1811, d. 1875.

1859] BERLIN 173
carriers out of the policy of Stein, viz. the raising up out
of the pulverised remains of the old feudal State of a free
representative modern policy. Triumphant up to 1815, as
long as the national idealistic tendencies were wanted as
a weapon against Napoleon i., afterwards, in a much-
maligned minority under the bureaucratic reaction of the
latter part of Frederick WUliam iii.'s reign, the present
party in question, and the present Baron von Vincke
continuously at their head, reappear in greater force on the
political stage at the convocation of the States-General in
1847, bravely doing battle in the sense of a bona fide Parlia
mentary representative against the feudal revival attempted
to be passed off in lieu thereof, in the States-General afore
said. During the revolutionary years of '48 and '49, Baron
Vincke, true to his programme, uses the whole force of his
personal influence and his splendid talents as a debater
against the anarchical tendencies of the revolutionary
party, and then again in 1850, when the reactionary element
under the Minister Manteuffel had fairly set in, we see him
with equal manliness fighting the battle of the Constitution,
and taking his stand on the " piece of parchment " sworn
to by the King, and the two Houses created in virtue of its
attempts, against hopeless odds, to prevent the fraudulent
evasion of the principles laid down in it by the omnipotent
coalition between the feudal and bureaucratic elements —
represented by the Manteuffel- Westfalen Ministry.
' During the Russian War the splendid phUippics of Baron
Vincke against the policy of the Manteuffel Ministry
resounded throughout Europe. The principle, however,
that inspired his eloquence was not so much a regard for
the humUiating secondary part in European politics to
which Prussia was condemned by that policy, as the sense
of the impossibUity of any free development of her internal
policy, as long as she lay within the blighting influence of
the Holy AUiance.
' To describe the party in a few words. They are Con
stitutionalists from principle, firmly believing (and that
not from any prior doctrinairism, but from, amongst the
leaders at least, a very practical knowledge of the require
ments and capacities of their country) that with due allow-

174 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
ance made for difference of historical antecedents and the
like, the system of self-government as regards the admin
istrative, and that of Parliamentary representation as
regards the organic, life of the nation at large are the best
adapted to the wants of a race of Teutonic origin.
' The English Constitution, " not copied servUely, but
studied as the best specimen of the political forms into
which, under favourable circumstances, a race of German
origin wiU mould itself into," is the working model which
this party has adopted in opposition on one side to the
doctrinaire dogmatism of the French Constitutionalism
paid homage to by some of the so-caUed more advanced
political schools in Prussia, and on the other side to the
centralised perfect system of Imperial France as specially
patronised by the bureaucratic reaction.
' Very different from this is the historical origin of the
fraction Mathis. Not dating back further than the year
1850 (though the elements out of which it is composed are
to be traced back to a more remote period amongst the
rank of the Uberal and enlightened bureaucracy in anti-
reactionary times) it grew up out of the entourage of the
present Prince Regent at the time when the anti-national
policy of the Government, and the surrender at Olmiitz
of Prussia's birthright as the defender of national interests
in Germany, had driven H.R.H. into indignant opposition.
The title adopted by them of the " Old Prussian party "
denotes their opposition to the " New Prussian party," alias
party of the Kreuz-Zeitung, alias the Junker party, or
party of the Squirearchy. This opposition, however, differs
from that of the old Liberal party, not indeed in the
matter of intensity, but in the kind of force they would
desire to oppose to the " caste " and therefore anti-national
tendencies of the latter. Going back to the old days of
Prussian history, and to the Prussia of Frederick the Great,
a strong self-trusting policy on the part of the Crown, not
based on the Divine Right principle, but on the historical
relation of the HohenzoUern Dynasty to the nation, is
more than any other the goal aimed at in their programme.
As results to be obtained from this policy are in the first
place a total enfranchisement from the principles of the

1859] BERLIN 175
Holy AUiance, the assumption of a strong mUitary position
in Germany, and the using the power thus obtained for the
furtherance of protection of the national interests of
Germany at large.
' As a means to this end in the present state of the world's
history, they frankly admit the necessity of representative
institutions. But they have shown themselves inimical to
what they term Parliamentarism, and to the logical con
sequences of the system which the old Liberals have
obstinately kept in view, viz. a Government responsible to
Parliament majorities. Going quite as far as that party
in respect of the right with which they would invest the
Chambers of granting or withholding supplies, in other
matters and especially in matters of foreign policy, they
are inclined to regard the representative assembly rather
as an august forum for the record of public opinion, and
entrusted with the high privilege of giving its advice to
the Crown, than as the real depositary of the supreme
powers in the State. The theory of ministerial responsi-
bUities, and the necessary connection of the Ministry for
the time being with a Parliamentary majority, has ever been
a special bugbear to them.
' In the present Government, the fraction of Vincke, or
the old Liberal party, is represented by Count Schwerin
and Monsieur de Patow ; the Mathis fraction is represented
by Schleinitz, Bethmann-HoUweg, and Auerswald. The
more prominent names out of the Ministry, are those of
Camphausen, Albert Pourtal6s, Usedom, Griiner, etc. The
extreme Left, consisting of the remains of the Junker
majority in the last Chamber, is composed of three fractions,
respectively under the leadership of Von Blankenburg, Von
Arnim, Count Piickler (the first numbering ten members who
keep up the tradition of the once powerful party headed
by Gerlach), separated from each other by totaUy un
important shades of opinion, but united by the common
desire to get rid not of the Constitution only, but of the
reforms of the great Stein period, by which the road to
the present Constitution was so massively paved, and to
set up instead a sort of modern Gothic edifice, in which the
castes and hierarchic gradations of medieval societies should

176 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
be revived. Having arrogated to themselves of late the
exclusive title of Conservative, the name they had at first
assumed of the New Prussian Party much more correctly
describes the principles by which they are actuated, in
asmuch as the Prussia which they are desirous of calling
into existence would be composed of those elements which
the HohenzoUern Dynasty (with the one exception of the
present King) ^ has so perseveringly combated, and which
the Reform of 1806 never supposed to have finally dis
solved. The manner in which they succeeded in throwing
the respectable cloak of Conservatism over the very radical
character of the changes aimed at by them, is only to be ac
counted for by the total confusion of political ideas resulting
from the events of 1848, and by the great casuistical skiU
displayed in the conduct of the party by its able leaders.
Totally without influence in the Lower Chamber, as they
are destitute of any programme of practical legislation
which could under present circumstances be possibly
adopted, the public to which they addressed themselves
is to be found in the political coteries of so-called " good
society " of the capital, in the Squirearchy of the provinces,
and above all in that which is their familiar point d'appui,
the large majority of the Upper House, — all of them most
important factors in the political life of Prussia, and all the
more difficult to make head against, from the less tangible
form in which they appear in the Lower House, which is
after aU the real arena for political discussion, in which a
more equal distribution of parties might ensure to victories,
if gained, a more positive result.
' Between the Right and the Left, sits the Roman Catholic
fraction, — or as they, carefully repudiating this denomina
tion, call themselves, the party of the Centre. They
acknowledge the leadership of the two brothers Reichen-
sperger, and surpass all the other fractions in compactness
of organisation, and unity of purpose. Faithful to the
policy of Roman Catholic minorities in Protestant
countries, their great aim is to secure the largest amount
of autonomy, not in their religious concerns alone (which
in the perfect parity in Prussia between Catholic and Pro-
' King Frederick William iv.

i859] BERLIN 177
testant churches they could hardly hope to increase),
but in their political and social relations. To shake off
all the inconvenient supervision of the administrative
organs of a Protestant Government over their communal
municipal relations, and to secure into their own hands
the temporal as well as the spiritual power of the purely
Catholic portions of the monarchy, and an independent
political position in the districts where the religions are
mixed, such has been, as regards the internal affairs of the
country, their consistent aim. With this object in view
they naturally supported the Liberal minority in their
opposition to the bureaucratic centralisation of that
administration, and as a general rule have voted in the
same ranks as the parties now forming the majority, and
in opposition to the feudal and bureaucratic party. The
Italian question, however, has here, as elsewhere, thrown
the apple of discord amongst such and simUar unnatural
coalitions, and the fanatical sympathy of the party for the
Papal and Austrian cause in Italy has estranged them in
a great degree from the Liberal fractions who naturally
sympathise with the cause of national independence in
Italy, and have brought them on this point into close
contact with the Divine Right champions of the so-called
Conservative party.
' Standing aloof from all other fractions, and abstaining
from aU questions touching the general internal policy of
the country which they describe under the general term
of " German " questions, but when voting always doing
so in opposition, is the Polish fraction.
' The impracticable assertion of an independent national
existence, a " quasi-xepeai of the Union," and the creation
of a Polish imperium in a Prussian imperio are the objects
of this party.
' These fractions, with the independent members, termed
in Prussia " wild men " (WUde), make up the elements of
which the Lower Chamber is composed.
' I should add, in conclusion, that the few members of
the more advanced Liberal schools who have found ad
mission into the present Chambers vote, as a rule, with
the fraction Vincke.
VOL. I. M

178 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
'As regards the bureaucratic reactionaries, who played
so important a part in the Chamber under the Manteuffel
Ministry, they are hardly represented in the present
Chamber, but they go on lurking in the far more dangerous
positions in the subordinate offices of the central adminis
tration and in the higher posts of the provincial Govern
ment, from which they have but very sparingly been
cleared out.'

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 179

CHAPTER X
AN ESSAY ON THE PRESENT POLITICAL CONDITION
OF THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO THE HISTORY OF ITS CONSTI
TUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT^
The youngest and, in the matter of square mileage, the
least of the so-called Great European Powers, Prussia,
claims nevertheless no small share of attention from the
student of European politics. For although the hopes
which, both in Germany and out of it, were built upon her
future have been for a whUe shaken by the ingloriousness
which has marked her history for the last ten years, and by
her total faUure to act a part worthy of the great oppor
tunities afforded her by the convulsion of '48, yet, as the
waters of that revolutionary flood begin to subside, the
foundations upon which those hopes were buUt are seen not
only to have received no damage, but to have been extended
as well as strengthened.
The foundations are there : are the materials and the
workmen forthcoming for a superstructure that wUl be in
harmony with them ? It is not, we believe, asserting too
much to say, that upon the practical answer to this question,
which the history of the next half-century may give,
depends in a great measure the future political freedom
of Continental Europe.
For indelibly engraved upon the substratum of Prussian
history (and, of the great Continental Powers, upon that of
hers alone) are the principles of religious and intellectual
liberty ; and if those of civil liberty, in the full sense of the
term which we in England are used to attach to it, are less
distinctly legible, that respect for law, which is the first
1 N.B. — This Essay was written in 1859, when everything seemed to
promise well for the cause of Constitutional Government in Prussia.

i8o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
sine qua non condition of civil liberty, is not the less clearly
noted. The reception by Frederick WUliam i. of the Salzburg
emigrants, and the episode of the Potsdam windmill under
Frederick 11., have lived on as household words in the
European story, not because they formed exceptions to a
general rule, but because they were, in an eminent degree,
typical and representative of certain organic principles
constituting the very life of the State where those events
occurred. Yet, strange to say, the process towards the development
of free institutions in Prussia has been watched with less
interest and sympathy in England than have been accorded
to simUar phenomena exhibited on the far less congenial
soU occupied by the Latin races of Southern Europe.
This is doubtless in a great measure owing to the less
melodramatic character which attaches to the political
development of Teutonic nations, as compared with that
manifested by the races above adverted to.
To the Englishman, in the happy enjoyment of the
privUeges secured to him by his insular position, the study
of foreign politics has always been (except where his own
immediate interests, fancied or real, are concerned) more
or less of a dilettante kind. It is as a recreation rather
than as an earnest part of the day's work that he turns to
the columns of the newspaper recording the ' foreign in
telligence.' From his point of view the proclamation, for
instance, by a Spanish Junta of the Rights of Man has more
of picturesque circumstance connected with it than can
ever enliven a debate respecting the right of an individual
Israelite to sit at quarter sessions in the province of Branden
burg, or a discussion of the title by which an individual
clergyman in Back Pomerania refuses to marry parties
legally divorced by the civil tribunal. And yet it is from
materials like these, rather than from such as the former,
that the Constitutional metal which passes current in
England has been wrought out.
Another and perhaps principal cause of this indifference
is, that the course taken by the development of Prussian
institutions does not exactly coincide with the ideal of any

1859] THE HISTORY OE PRUSSIA 181
of the great political parties into which the mass of the
English public is divided.
The intertexture, in those institutions, of the democratic
element on the one hand, and of the monarchical element
on the other, is not such as to suit the taste or the prejudices
either of our 'King, Church and State ' Constitutionalist
or of our more advanced Liberals.
Thus it happens that Prussia, while weaving her Con
stitutional woof after a pattern of her own, not copied from
that of any of our schools of political design, appears to us
in so far to be guilty of a political heresy, as being orthodox
neither in her dogmas nor in her dissent from those dogmas,
— for an Englishman, in politics no less than in religion,
likes his very heterodoxy to be orthodox.
It is, however, this feature in the Constitutional history
of Prussia which, if looked at more closely, affords good
ground for hope, suggesting the notion of autonomous
grovrth instead of an imported fabrication. It gives
evidence of a living process derived from a posteriori ex
periences instead of from a priori doctrines — ^the only
method by which any political fruits of a permanent kind
have ever been matured.
A natural growing upwards of a living organism in obedi
ence to laws written in the history of the past and in the
character of the people, instead of an artificial and inorganic
mechanism imposed from above, and obeying no impulse
but that given to it by the caprices of an individual or the
stereotype traditions of a dynastic policy : such is the con
trast presented by Prussian institutions as compared with
those of the three gigantic neighbours on whose frontiers
her own abut.
To elucidate this position by tracing the connection
between the present institutions of Prussia and the great
organic changes that have preceded them is the object of
this Essay.
For this purpose the Constitutional history of Prussia
may be divided into five completed epochs, and a sixth
just entered upon and in process of elaboration.
I. Of these, the first woiUd include the period during
which, in the hands of such riUers as the Great Elector,

i82 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
Frederick WiUiam i., and Frederick 11., the sovereign
authority was, in the highest sense of the term, a creating
power, and that to the exclusion of every other creative
element in the State.
II. The second is that in which the nation, hitherto
passively receptive of the forms impressed upon it by this
plastic skill, becomes suddenly conscious of the life within
it, and begins to move and think and act for itself. The
initiation no longer comes from above, but from below, and
the work of regeneration is commenced. Deep convictions
evolved out of the heart and brain of the people became
articulate in such men as the Steins,! the Hardgnbergs,* the
Niebuhrs,' the WUhelm Humboldts,* the Vinckes, the
Scharnhorsts,^ and the Gneisenaus.* The sovereign follows
the impulse, but timidly and falteringly. The great
reforms of Stein are extorted from him by an overwhelm
ing necessity ; but that necessity once removed the spirit of
concession ceases with it, leaving the work unfinished —
a grand constitutional torso for future generations to
complete. The foundations, however, in all their length and breadth
are laid, and the radical transition from the feudal to the
modern State is fully accomplished between the years 1806
and 1812. It is a fact incalculably important both to
Prussia and the rest of Germany that this transition, which
it required a revolution like that of '89 to bring about in
France, which in Austria was painfuUy and most unsatis
factorily begun upon by the revolution of '48, and which in
Russia is being but slowly prepared at the present day, was
effected in Prussia by the nation itself at the moment of
its greatest prostration, and whilst under the demoralising
1 stein, Heinrich Friedrich Karl, Freiherr von, b. 1757, d; 1831, Prussian
statesman and reformer ; Minister of State, 1S04-1807, 1807-1808; exiled
and called to St. Petersburg by the Emperor Alexander i.
" Hardenberg, Prince, b. 1750, d. 1822, Prussian statesman ; Minister for
Foreign AflEairs, 1803-1806 ; Chancellor, 1810-1822.
3 Niebuhr, Bartold Georg, b. 1776,^1.1831, Prussian statesman and
historian. * Humboldt, Wilhelm von, b. 1767, d. 1835, Prussian statesman and
scientist. * Scharnhorst, Gebhard David, b. 1755, d. 1813, Prussian general, organ
iser of the Landwehr.
» Gneisenau, Graf Neidhart von, b. 1760, d. 1831, Prussian field-marshal,
hero of the wars of liberation.

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 183
influence of the defeat of Jena and the consequent foreign
occupation. III. The third epoch is that of the dynastic reaction
against the popular movement, from which the above reforms
had sprung. This reaction, however, assumes a very different
character under the two sovereigns, Frederick Wilhelm iii.
and Frederick WUhelm iv., during whose reigns it lasted.
Under the first of these the reaction, though apparently
exhibiting much greater hostility to the spirit of reform,
was in reality of a very negative character. It is true that
the further logical development of the Stein reforms was
systematicaUy opposed ; but that portion of them which
had been already conceded was conscientiously carried
out — ^their distinguishing characteristic, namely, their anti-
feudal animus, was faithfuUy adhered to ; and, if nothing
was done to win the applause of mere doctrinaire Constitu
tionalism, immense practical improvements in the ad
ministration were everywhere achieved.
Under the latter sovereign, while the most plausible
protestations of homage to liberal opinions were abund
antly made, the very foundations of the edifice of 1806-1812
were threatened to be undermined by the attempt, under
the banner of liberal reforms, to return, mutatis mutandis,
to the institutions of the Middle Ages.
IV. The fourth period is that of the paroxysm of 1848,
and closes with the proclamation of the present Constitu
tion by Royal Patent on the 5th of February 1850.
V. The fifth period is that of the machiavellian working,
under the Ministry Manteuffel-Westfalen, of the Constitu
tion thus patented, with the purpose of establishing, beneath
the cloak of Constitutional forms, a centralised police State,
upon the model of the French prdfet system, here and there
curiously interwoven with the medievalism above aUuded to.
VI. The sixth period has been but lately entered upon.
Auspiciously commencing with the fall of the Ministry
Manteuffel-Westfalen, and with the advent to power of the
leaders of the Constitutional Party, it holds out the prospect
of a fair trial being at length made of Constitutional institu
tions in one, at least, of the leading Continental States of
Europe.

i84 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
To enter fully into the history of these six periods would
lead far beyond the limits of this present essay, which must
be confined to a rough sketch of the features of each as they
more immediately bear upon the present political con
figuration of Prussia.
I. Of the first period, it is enough to say that everything
which could then be done to diminish the abuses of the
feudal regime, by substituting for the action of an irre
sponsible land-owning class possessed of very extensive
prescriptive rights of administration, that of an official
class directly responsible to the Head of the State, was
effected by the absolute rulers of Prussia, from the great
Elector down to Frederick 11. The power of the provincial
States, as independent organs, was once for all broken by
the former ; whUe serfdom in its crudest form of personal
servitude had in a great measure ceased when the latter
came to the throne. To substitute free colonists for a
peasantry in a state of praedial slavery was one of the
favourite objects of Frederick the Great's administration,
and wherever he could, he carried this plan into effect.
The condition of the peasantry on the domains of the Crovm
was everywhere ameliorated, and one Cabinet order followed
another to regulate in other parts of the monarchy the
relations between the owners of the soil and those adstricted
to it . The radical reform of these relations, however, namely,
the enfranchisement of the soU itself, and the admission of
its occupiers to their rights of free citizenship, did not belong
to the age in which he lived, nor did it coincide with the
task pre-eminently allotted to him in the history of
Prussia : that task was the assertion of Prussia's external
position in the European famUy, and for this purpose an
army was the indispensable requisite.
For the creation, therefore, and, when created, for the
maintenance, of the largest and most efficient fighting
machine, the natural order of things may be said to have
been inverted, the functions of the State having become
ancUlary to the army, instead of the army being subordinate
to the State.
During the second half of the last century the human
unit owing allegiance to the Prussian Crown was viewed

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 185
only as the raw material out of which the soldier was to
be fashioned, and not till it had assumed that shape was
the final cause of its existence accounted for.
The reforms of Frederick 11., great though they un
doubtedly were, were mainly directed to the accumulation
of this material with a view to its manufactured state.
No wonder, then, that they stopped far short of anything
like the assertion of abstract rights of citizenship.
After the death of Frederick the Great, the huge
machinery of which his individual genius had been the
sole motive power, and which during the last years of his
reign had been strained far beyond what the State could
bear, becoming suddenly deprived of this momentum,
coUapsed, and within a very short period its function, so
far as any good results were concerned, altogether ceased,
and in their working became wholly obstructive.
During the reign of Frederick's immediate successor,
and up to the battle of Jena, Prussia apparently moved on, or
rather stood still, in the old tracks, living upon the capital and
credit acquired under the great King, whUst in reality the old
forms were undergoing a process of rapid decomposition.
II. To understand the second period, that of the Stein-
Hardenberg reforms, a sketch of the internal state of
Prussia during this interval wUl be necessary.
The provincial States long since deprived, as before
stated, of any power of self-government, had, during
Frederick 11. 's reign ceased their functions altogether, or
where these in any way continued, they were reduced to the
mere administration of certain institutions of credit peculiar
to the different provinces, but wholly unconnected with the
exercise of any political rights.
From the exercise of such rights Frederick had, on
grounds of policy, ''carefully excluded them. To substitute
his authority for theirs was the object steadUy pursued, and
this could oiUy be effected by such drastic measures as the
total withdrawal of administrative functions from their
hands, and the substitution of what in modern phraseology
would be termed a centralized bureaucracy in their stead.
Though successful in his endeavours as regards the
administration proper, as well as the upper branches of the

i86 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
judicial administration, he had had neither the means nor
the time to effect this reform in the lower branches of the
latter, and the Courts of first instance were still everywhere
identified, under the name of ' Patrimonial Gerichte,' with
the Lordship of the Manor. Bound up with these was
likewise the whole of the internal police administration
of the country — of the country, that is, in opposition to
the towns.
This localising of justice and identification of it with
the manor {Rittergut) was an essential feature of the
feudal system, which, it must be remembered, was in
all its essential features still in force. For although during
the lifetime of Frederick 11. the de facto exercise of feudal
rights had been greatly modified by his continual super
vision and personal interference with individual abuses,
yet the de jure modification upon any large scale of those
rights would, jn that age, have been deemed an attack upon
the rights of property.
Inequality before the law of the various classes of the
community, and the sharp delimitation into distinct but
interdependent castes of the noble, the peasant, and the
burgess, and the further subdivision of these into numer
ous more or less privileged bodies, — such was the de
jure state of society in Prussia at the close of the
eighteenth and at the commencement of the nineteenth
century. The first of these classes, besides their special pre
rogatives over the second class, enjoyed great privUeges
as regards the community at large. Almost entirely freed
from taxation, they were further exempted from the forced
mUitary service of the country, while on the other hand
they had the exclusive monopoly, from cornet cies and
ensigncies, of all the upper branches of the mUitary hier
archy. As might be expected, this exemption and this
monopoly, in a State where the army was so out of pro
portion to the size of the country, were peculiarly odious.
(At Frederick's death the army was upwards of 200,000
men strong, while the population of the then Prussia was
under six millions.)
The nature of their rights and prerogatives, as regards

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 187
the second class, will best be seen by noting the condition
of the peasantry.
With the exception of the free colonies introduced by
Frederick WiUiam i. and Frederick the Great, the whole
land of Prussia (as distinct from towns and boroughs)
was owned either immediately by the Crown, as domain,
or by the nobles {i.e., Standes Herren) and Gentry {Ritter-
schaft) or by ecclesiastical corporations.
The condition of the non-owning classes on the land
thus owned was very different in the different provinces
of the monarchy, according as the historical antecedents
differed in each. It was best in that of Brandenburg,
and worst in the newly acquired fragments of the kingdom
of Poland.
The following were the features peciUiar to the former
province. The peasant, whether holding upon an hereditary
tenure (Lassitische Bauerngiiter, our copyhold) or on a
mere life tenure, equally paid his rent, if such it may be
termed, in kind, i.e. in tithes and labour, of which the
former were more or less well regulated, there being less
room for abuse in the mode of their collection.
The latter, though the amount to be yielded was also
placed under formal regulations, was practically extorted
at the arbitrary will of the Lord of the Manor.
The chUdren of such copyholders were bound to serve
for a certain number of years, three at the least {Gesinde
Dienst) on the land cultivated by the landlord. Even
after the expiration of that term the latter's permission
was required before they could take service elsewhere.
For neglect of work corporal punishment could be lawfully
inflicted, and the landlord's consent was required to enable
them to marry. When such copyholders died intestate
the landlord could bestow the copyhold on which of the
sons of the late occupier he pleased.
Such was the legal condition of the most favoured in
the peasant class — the so-called whole and half peasants
{ganze and halbe Bauern) according to the size of their
copyholds, whole copyholds running from 45 to 180 English
acres (30 to 120 Morgen) and half copyholds from 22 to 90.

i88 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
The next class, that of Cottiers and ' Boothmen '
{Kossdthen, Kot-sati in Doomsday Book, and Budner, also
found in Doomsday Book), who held but a few acres, were
naturally stiU more at the mercy of the owner of the soU.
Last and lowest were those who held no land, and who,
without the power to take their labour to the best market,
were forced to live on daily hire. They were variously
termed Einlieger and Altsitzer. Of the 88,000 male
inhabitants of the province of Brandenburg (of course
exclusive of the towns) in the year 1804 there were : —
334 Proprietors of Manors (necessarUy of noble famUies) .
14,202 Peasant copyholders of whole copyholds.
2,991 Peasant copyholders of half copyholds.
8,593 Whole Kossathen.
1,022 ^Ta// Kossathen.
10,860 Budner (they held less land than that held by a half
Cottier).
27,381 Altsitzer and Einlieger (day labourers).
When it is recollected that in addition to the power
thus legally conferred on the Lord of the Manor, the only
Court of Justice to which the peasant had access for the
redress of wrongs done him in excess of those legal powers
was attached to the manor and was presided over by the
proprietor himself or by his immediate representative,
usually a hybrid personage, half-bailiff, half-attorney, the
condition of this class of the community, even under the
most favourable conditions, will be seen to have been no
enviable one.
In the less favourably circumstanced provinces the
Lord of the Manor could, at the death of a peasant, appro
priate half his movable property, and during his lifetime
lay an unlimited claim on the whole of his labour ' from
sunrise to sunset,' the whole year round. He could also
at pleasure take away the land held by a peasant, and give
him other less fertUe in exchange.
Thus much for the owners and tillers of the soU.
The Burgess class were, on their side, fettered by the
system, in its worst forms, of guUds and corporations,
and the industry of the country was deprived of any chance

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 189
of free development by the adoption, in its most rigorous
form, of the mercantile system. As was to be expected,
prohibitive duties and the most absolute monopolies
wrought their accustomed work of stunted and unhealthy
native manufactures paid for at the price of general im
poverishment. The never-tiring personal superintendence by which
Frederick the Great had, to a certain extent, mitigated
some of the evils of systems so radically vicious degener
ated, under his two immediate successors, into a system of
government emanating from the private Cabinet of the
King, coUateral with, or rather having a controUing action
over, the ostensible Government through the Ministers of
State. Of the results of this ' CamarUla ' system a lively
picture has been preserved in the Diary kept by Gentz of
his visit to the headquarters of the Prussian Army and
Court at the commencement of the campaign of 1806.
The hopeless confusion into which'^the diplomatic negotia
tions, as weU as mUitary plans, were thrown by the reversal,
through the instrumentality of such men as the two
Lombards and Beyme, in the King's private closet, of
determinations formally arrived at by the responsible
public servants of the Crown, and the consequent total
demoralisation of the latter, are graphically presented to
us. Other contemporary evidence testifies to the like
results in the departments connected with the internal
administration. No wonder that men who possessed any
degree of self-respect refused to take office under such
conditions. Such, in very imperfect outline, is a sketch of the internal
state of Prussia when the catastrophe of Jena at last
opened the eyes of the most obstinately blind, and con
vinced even the King and Court that the only chance of
salvation lay in caUing Stein and his friends into office.
To appreciate the true character of what was done by
Stein and the school of statesmen whom he inspired and
disciplined, we must consider not oiUy what he actually
effected, but what he wished to effect. What he aimed at
was to substitute an organic whole, in its entirety, for the
inorganic machinery that had been gradually rotting ever

igo MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
since the death of Frederick the Great, and was now
happily once for all broken to pieces.
Two great principles may be traced out as those upon
which the reforms were based.
The first involved an organic change in the substance
to be administered. It may be concisely defined as sub
stitution of free, uniform citizenship in lieu of unfree,
multiform ' caste-ship.'
Only from the citizens settled upon a free soU could
emancipation from the foreign oppression be hoped for, and
before the nation could be appealed to, to make the immense
sacrifices of blood and treasures required of it, it was
necessary the freedom it was called upon to assert should
be felt by each individual member to be an inalienable
right and possession of his own, and not a mere diplomatic
or geographical abstraction.
The second principle involved an organic change in the
administration itself. By it was to be substituted for
the hierarchic exclusiveness of a bureaucracy the free
admission of the governed to a share and responsibUity
in the Government. It was in the body politic the cor
relative of the great principle asserted by Protestantism,
of the solidarity of the clergy and laity in the body
ecclesiastic. By the carrying out of the first of these principles, the
social — ^by the carrying out of the latter, the political —
enfranchisement of the nation was to be attained.
The former object was fiUly effected — ^more completely,
indeed, than in any other State of modern Europe. The
latter was but partiaUy accomplished, and it is the task
which the present Constitution, if it obtains fair play, will
have to accomplish.
By the edict of the 9th October 1807, under the modest
title of ' Statute to FacUitate the Holding and Free Use of
Real Property,' the first step towards the vindication of
the former of these principles was made ; by the various
ordinances of i8n the work was finaUy completed.
According to the provisions of this body of legislation,
the soU was once for aU enfranchised, and the castes
into which the society had been hitherto divided were

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 191
abolished. Every inhabitant of the States, no matter to
what class of society he belonged, became entitled to
acquire and hold real property. Individuals of the peasant
class could at their pleasure pursue the industrial callings
hitherto monopolised by the burgess class, and vice versa ;
nor was the possession of armorial bearings to be any
longer a legal disqualification for the pursuit of mercantile
avocations. The barriers between town and country
were thrown open. Industrial pursuits which had
strictly been limited to the waUs of the former could now
be anywhere followed, and the labour which till then had
been strictly localised could now freely migrate from
town to country and from country to town, in search of
the best market. Entails could be cut off by arrangements
come to within the famUy. Perpetual servitude in shape of
tithe or labour was made compulsorUy redeemable. Inter
ference with the personal liberty of the peasant by the land
lord in the shape of forced farm labour imposed upon the
chUdrenof the former, and of the latter's previous consent for
their marriage, was abolished, and the relations between the
owner and the tUler of the soU were placed, once for all,
upon the footing of free contract between labour and capital.
Nor did reforms on this head stop here. By the Edict
of the nth September 1811 a sweeping revolution was
effected in a large portion of the property of the country.
On ceding one-half or one-third of the lands occupied by
them, the hereditary holders of copyhold and other pro
perty burdened with perpetual servitudes became free
hold proprietors of the remaining half or two-thirds.
Dangerous and revolutionary as this extreme measure
seemed even to some of the most liberal reformers, it
turned out eminently beneficial and conservative in its
effects, by providing the country with one of the most
eminently conservative elements of modern society, — an
independent agricultural middle class. It was, moreover,
eminently promotive of the special object then in view,
that of increasing the number of those who had a real
stake in the country to defend, and consequently of those
from whom, in return for great benefits acquired, great
sacrifices could be conscientiously demanded.

192 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
The perpetual servitudes to the State were no less
sweepingly done away with than those to private indi
viduals. Among these the most burdensome had been
the supplying, even during peace time, of the whole trans
port service of the army, and the necessary forage for the
cavalry and artiUery. These burdens likewise had exclus
ively fallen on the land held by the peasant.
The personal status of the industrial classes was sub
mitted to a no less searching reform than that of the agri
cultural class, and by an ordinance of 1811 all restrictions
on the free exercise of trades, in regard to the laws pre
viously in force as to guilds, apprenticeships, and the like,
were removed.
With the passing of these measures the first of the two
principles above noted was fuUy vindicated.
With regard to the second, as before stated. Stein was
less successful, for he was here opposed by the traditional
tenacity with which the HohenzoUern dynasty have ever
clung to the assertion of their rights of absolute power.
Moreover, of those who most heartUy co-operated with
him in the first of these reforms, but few had views
sufficiently comprehensive to take in the latter. Nor, on
the other hand, was he supported to the same extent by
public opinion on this ground as he had been on the other.
Self-government is essentiaUy a matter of habit, and
the Prussian nation had contracted the habit of having
their government done for them. Good government and
not self-government had beeii the boon so earnestly
invoked, and in giving them the former Stein found that
what demand there had been for the latter was materially
diminished. To obtain payment in hard cash for the promissory
notes with reference to Provincial States, States General,
etc., issued by Frederick WUliam iii., under the war
pressure, would have required the continuance in office of
Stein for several years. His forced exile, so early as 1808,
deadened the whole movement, and the inferior capacities
whom the jealousy of Napoleon allowed to fill his place
had enough to do to carry out practically the earlier portions
of the work begun by him.

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 193
In his voluminous remains, however, we find not only
the rough sketch, but, so to say, the working models of
the edifice he had desired to raise, and, by comparing
these with those portions of the work which he actually
completed, we are enabled to estimate very correctly the
character which the whole would have borne.
As a practical statesman, and not a ' doctrinaire ' Constitu
tionalist, his method of proceeding was from the founda
tions upwards towards the roof, and not from the roof
dowmwards, as is the fashion of the latter.
Accordingly the basis on which his whole fabric was
to rest, was communal form. The Commune (Gemeinde)
autonomously administered by its self-elected officers, with
power of self-taxation for communal purposes, and with
the free right to dispose of its property, was to be the
political unit in the State. In direct opposition to the
advocates of feudal forms (as weU as the high and dry
Tories, his contemporaries, as the romantic Medievalists
of the present school) instead of a graduated social scale
{Stdndische Gliederung) fantasticaUy parcelled out within the
limits of such communes, he was desirous of having the
basis of his communal organiKition as simple and broad as
possible, and, by a minimum of qualification, of admitting
as participators both of its rights and its obligations the
largest possible number of members. ¦
Next in order above the Commune, as an administrative
district, stood the Circle. It was also to be in the main
a self-governing institution. The ' Landrath ' who presided
over its administration was to be a resident landed pro
prietor chosen by the Crown from among three names sub
mitted to it by the ' Estates ' of the Circle. The guarantee
to the Crown of his efficiency was to consist in his having
passed the State examination required, in another portion
of the Stein system, of all public servants of the Crovm.
For the institution of the ' Landrath ' which stUl forms the
keystone of the internal administration of Prussia, we have
no equivalent in English. But of the sphere of his activity
we can form some idea by combining into one the functions
of a Justice of the Peace with those of a Chairman of
Quarter Sessions, of a Chairman of a Poor Law Board, of a
VOL. I, N

194 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
Commissioner of Taxes, and a Commissioner of Lunacy
in a district averaging about 40,000 souls. He was to
receive but a small salary (the present salary of a ' Land
rath ' varies in different Circles from about £150 to £200 a
year), and the post was to be essentially one of honour.
The ' Landrath ' was a sort of middle person between the
organs of the Central and those of the Municipal Govern
ment, responsible to the former for the proper administra
tion of his district, and to the latter for the maintenance
of their rights and privUeges.
The levying of rates for local purposes, the nomination
of the various administrative officers subordinate to the
' Landrath,' the selection of candidates for that office,
and the discussion of all matters connected with the ad
ministration of the Circle were to be vested in the ' Estates '
of the Circle — ^not the old exclusive Corporations he had
been at such .pains to destroy — but bodies to be composed
in equal proportions of the resident gentry, and of repre
sentatives named by the rural Communes and the towns.
The Circle was to include promiscuously both town arid
country, the large tovms only having the privUege of form
ing a separate Circle.
Lastly came the Province. The Provincial Government
was to be essentially an organ of the Central Government,
and was in fact a miniature copy of the latter. The
President (Ober-Prasident) was surrounded by a number of
departments, each under a Regierungsrath, corresponding
to the central organs of police, of justice, of education,
of public works, of woods and forests and ecclesiastical
affairs ; and was to exercise a sort of vice-royalty, being
the organ by whom the commands of the Central Executive
were to be carried out in the Province. On the other hand,
he was to stand in constant communication with the
' Landrathe,' who had to report to him on the state of
their Circle, and, by means of the departments above named,
to exercise a constant inspection and general control over
every part of the Province. According to the principle on
which Stein's whole plan was formed, however, the sphere
of the Provincial Government was to be strictly executive.
For the passing of any legislative enactments specially

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 195
relating to the Province, or for giving validity to any
enactments other than strictly executive, emanating from
the central authority. Provincial Estates were to be pro
vided, composed upon the same principles as those which
obtained in the ' Estates ' of the ' Circle ' above described.
The whole taxation of the Province for provincial purposes
was to be imposed by this body, it being Stein's inten
tion that their legislative powers, as far as they went,
should be thoroughly bona fide. He repudiated as a most
dangerous mockery the creation of mere ' consultative '
States with no powers to enforce the resolutions come
to by them.
It was, moreover, part of his plan, in order as much as
possible to guard the interests of the governed against the
ignorance or caprice of the executive organs, to establish
by the side of the Provincial Governmerit a sort of ad
ministrative CouncU, composed of nine members elected
out of their ovm number, by the Provincial States. ^j
The personal and local knowledge of this body was to
modify the application of general measures to the peculiar
circumstances of the Province, while it would have con
siderably facUitated, on the other hand, the labours of the
responsible executive.
Such was the living organism with which Stein was
desirous of replacing the old centralized bureaucratic
machinery, where nothing was left to the judgment or
initiation of the local organs, but everything was heaped
up in hopeless arrears and confusion in the Chancelleries
of the Berlin Bureaux. Reforms like these would have
been impossible without, at the same time, a total re
organisation of the official machinery itself in the upper
branches. This reorganisation was the first thing he set
about, and with it he was completely successful.
The crovming work to this edifice was to be supplied by
States General, in which the whole nation was to take its
share in the imperial legislation, in a manner analogous to
that, which in the Provincial States, the eight fragments of
the nation shared in the provincial legislation.
This portion of his plan, however, he evidently conceived
as something distinct from the other, and only to be carried

196 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
out, when the fkst portion had been fairly organised, and
for some time in working order.
It wiU not be without some interest, and it wUl save
repetition later, if we examine what parts of this system
Stein actuaUy carried out, and what parts remained un
done. We shall arrive, moreover, by this examination at a
knowledge of the forms into which Prussian institutions
finally moulded themselves in the period between 1806 and
1815, and in which, with little real modification, they
remained, till the proclamation of the present Constitution.
With the remodeUing of the Town and Borough Corpora
tions or, in other words, with the reconstruction of the
Tovm Commune, he was perfectly successful.
It would probably be difficult to find in any other branch
of the Teutonic race, a more perfect specimen of the self-
government supposed to be peculiar to the race, than is
afforded by the corporation of Prussian towns posterior to
the Edict of the 19th November 1808.
Previous to that date, the corporate bodies both of the
larger towns, not excepting the capital, and of the smaller
boroughs exhibited all the worst features, both of the evils
peculiar to the traditions handed down from feudal times,
and of those of the centralized bureaucracy introduced by
Frederick 11. to correct the former.
The burgesses, who formed a very smaU minority of the
inhabitants, were divided into guilds, ruled by such ex
clusive laws and regulations as whoUy to hamper all in
dividual action and movement, and to render iUusory any
hopes of self-reform. The Magistrates elected by these, on
the other hand, had become wholly dependent upon the
organs of the Central Government, who under various
names such as CoUectors of Taxes, Officials of the General
Directory, Officers of the Exchequer, etc., had been per
manently established in the towns with, originaUy, powers
of supervision only. These functions, however, soon
absorbed those of the Magistracy, and in a very short time
the latter became a dead letter. When, after the death
of Frederick, the central machinery became, as before
described, paralysed, this portion of it shared the fate of the
rest, and even in a worse degree, inasmuch as towards the

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 197
close of the century it had become the custom to fill up
these places, from motives of economy, with invalided
officers. By the Edict in question, the guUds were one and all
abolished, and in their stead was introduced one equal
right of citizenship, from which no domiciled inhabitant
of the tovm could be excluded, except upon the ground of
moral disqualification. The mass of citizens thus com
posed formed the constituency out of whose members and
by whose suffrages were elected a representative body, who,
in their tum, elected the Magistrates. The members who
composed the representative body received no salary, and
those only of the Magistrates (a very limited number),
whose whole time had to be devoted to their magisterial
functions, were remunerated. These functions were strictly
restricted to the Executive. In all matters requiring
permanent administration, such as those connected with
the Church, the School, the Poor, Public Buildings, etc.,
permanent committees chosen partly from the Magistrates,
partly from the representatives, and partly from the great
body of the citizens, were the responsible administrative
organs. The members composing these committees were
chosen by the representative body and confirmed by the
Magistracy. To encourage and diffuse habits of self-government and
a knowledge of its practical detaUs, stringent regulations
were made, to prevent shirking the responsibility or trouble
of fUling these municipal offices, and the most valid excuses
were required to procure exemption ; obstinate refusal
without such valid excuse was punished by loss of the
suffrage and a levy of additional rates.
The only control over this machinery accorded to the
Government was the confirmation in their offices by the
' Landrathe ' of the Magistrates after their election by the
representatives and the selection by the Crown of the Chief
Magistrates (Ober-Biirgermeister) out of three candidates
submitted to it by the magisterial body. For many years,
however, in fact tUl the advent of the Manteuffel Ministry,
this was a mere formal process.
With the remodelling of the rural Commune, Stein was

198 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
not equally successful. He was exiled before he had had
time to overcome the immense difficulties which this reform
presented and which to this day have not been solved. As
a rule, the town corporations had all been more or less
constructed upon the same type, and the same vices being
common to all, general measures of reform could not be
applied. On the other hand, the immense differences of
every kind in the circumstances of rural communes, accord
ing as they were situated in one or the other province,
made general legislation respecting them almost impossible,
and necessitated at all events preparatory labours of a vast
kind. Moreover, Stein had against him the whole of the country
interest, for the admission of their former serfs to equal
political rights with themselves was a concession which the
latter were not likely to yield without a struggle. Using,
then, what gear he found at hand, until such a time as his
ovm could be got ready, he proceeded to the reform in the
sense above given of the institution of the Landrathe, whom
he assisted in their work of administration by provisional
Estates of the ' Circle,' composed as well as circumstances
would permit of the gentry of the district, with deputies to
represent the towns and the smaller proprietors and farmers
of the soU. With respect to the Provincial States, he could
not get the consent of the King to call them into existence,
and he was obliged to content himself with a promise that
sooner or later they should be organised. Moreover, until
he had his basis in the reformed rural Commune, he could
not proceed to their definite organisation.
He was quite otherwise successful with his reorganisation
of the official machinery. Simplification of the machine
and a total reform of the ' Status ' of the official were the
two objects he had in view. In carrying out the former,
he totaUy suppressed the secret cabinet system. The
Ministers, personally responsible to the King, deliberated
in pleno respecting general measures, under the presidency
of the Sovereign. The business they had to transact was
diminished to a minimum and divested of all superfluous
detail by the large sphere of action ascribed to the Pro
vincial Government. As a rule, only matters of principle

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 199
were to occupy the attention of the Ministers. The principle
once laid down, the local organs were responsible for the
practical application of it. For this purpose. Stein was,
of course, careful to pick out the best men he could find, to
fUl the posts of Provincial Presidents.
His reform of the personal status of the official was not
less complete — instead of a dependent class, subject to every
whim and caprice of an irresponsible camarUla, resting upon
a precarious pedestal above the rest of the community.
Stein established an independent class of public servants,
on whom he inculcated in the most earnest manner that in
becoming officials, they did not cease to be citizens, but on
the contrary formed part of the pith and marrow of the
nation, to whom they were just as responsible for their
actions, as to the Sovereign, whose livery they wore.
Their independence was secured by the principle of
immovability most rigidly enforced. According to the
organic statute regulating the public service, no servant
of the Crown could be removed from his place, except upon
the passing of a criminal sentence against him, on the
finding of a verdict in the so-called Court of Discipline
(Disciplinar Hof) instituted especiaUy for this purpose,
and in which breach of public duty had to be established
by ordinary rules of evidence.
Admission into the official ranks was open to the whole
nation — merit, as proved by public examination, being
with certificates of moral qualification, the only test
applied. With this our sketch of Stein's reforms must close.
III. We next come to the third epoch, that namely
posterior to the successful Levee de bouclier of 1813, '14,
and '15, and which has been described as the period of
reaction. It lasts dovm to the Revolution of 1848, but
passes through two distinct phases, according as each
was more immediately influenced by the different characters
of the two Sovereigns under whom it lasted.
A true picture of the first of these periods could only be
obtained by entering into the history of the German national
movement which preceded, and was instrumental to the
successive overthrows of Napoleon in the years 1814 and '15

200 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
— a task not within the Umits of this essay, but the principal
features of which must nevertheless be adverted to.
It was only as a last resource and a supreme measure
of self-preservation that the Dynasties appealed to the
national feeling, to rid the common fatherland of the
miseries of foreign occupation. The spirit so evoked
wrought the deliverance of the German soU, but it elicited
at the same time a craving for national union which, to
borrow a term from mechanics, by acting in a centripetal
direction found itself in direct antagonism to the centrifugal
action of the Dynastic principle, represented by the several
Sovereignties, into which Germany was divided, many of
whom, be it remembered, were the creations of Napoleon
for the very purpose of perpetuating that centrifugal
action. At the Congress, which was to settle accounts, not only
between the Conquerors and the Conquered, but also
those between the former themselves, which was, in a
word, to readjust the whole of the forces called into play
by the events of the preceding years, the German Dynasties
were, the German nation was not, represented. Acting
logically upon the principle of self-preservation, the former
took the oiUy course compatible with that principle — ^they
refused to ratify the engagements they had entered into
towards the latter. NaturaUy enough, incurring the
odium of the national party for this breach of promise,
it has, I think, not been sufficiently borne in mind that
any other course would have been equivalent to the
signature of their death-warrant. A centripetal and a
centrifugal force cannot actively coexist in the same body,
and where they are both present, two alternatives only
offer themselves, either they neutralise each other, or
the one getting the upper hand, the other is destroyed.
At Leipzig and during the invasion of France the centri
petal national force had been predominant — at the Congress
of Vienna, the Dynastic centrifugal force had it all its own
way. And so it ca,me to pass, that when the curtain that hung
over the diplomatic transactions of the Vienna Congress,
came to be drawn up, instead of the fulfUment of the

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 201
promises made to it of free institutions and an organic
union, the German nation beheld the stage occupied by
the dramatis persona of the Holy AUiance, and by the
machinery of the German Confederation, as remodelled
by the final Act of Congress. Under the sacred vestments
of the former, it soon recognised a mutual Insurance Society
of the Dynasties as against itself, under the intricacies of
the latter, a machine cunningly contrived, so to poise the
various forces within the frontiers of the Confederation
against each other, as permanently to neutralise all possi
bility of the development of any of them in a national
direction. That this policy was the natural one for the House
of Hapsburg, on the one side, and for the smaU Dynasties
on the other (for the latter, indeed, the only one com
patible with their continued existence) is self-evident.
That it should have been acceded to, and have found one
of its warmest advocates in the Pmssian Cabinet, is one of
those inconceivable instances, not however unfrequent in
history, where the fancied interests of Caste wholly super
sedes the real interest of nationality. By the whole of her
history, as well as by that of Germany for a century past,
but more especiaUy by the antecedents of the previous
ten years, both Prussia as a State, and the House of Hohen
zoUern as a Dynasty, had been placed, to the exclusion of
all other competition, at the head of the national and
Liberal movement in Germany, with everything to gain
by the success of those principles, and everything to lose
by departure from them.
That the internal development of Prussia became im
mediately affected by her adherence to the principles of
the Holy Alliance need hardly be stated. But the history
of the reaction, its positive history, is to be read rather in
her diplomatic transactions with the other Cabinets of
Europe and Germany, at the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle,
Laybach, and Verona, and at the Carlsbad Conferences than
in her acts at home. Here, during Frederick WUliam iii.'s
lifetime, at least, the reaction was mainly of a negative
character. He left undone what he had pledged himself
to do, but he did not take away what he had given.

202 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
The natural result of this, on the internal administration
of Prussia, was the development and consolidation of the
bureaucratic element, but, as we have already seen, the
bureaucracy thus developed and consolidated presented a
very different organism from the old machinery, condemned
as unfit for work in the memorable year 1806, and, different
also, both in the principles which gave it life and in the
practical adaptation of those principles, from any simUar
institution of either ancient or modern days.
We have seen, that it was one of Stein's first cares, to
absorb into the administration of the country all the
best and healthiest elements which he could lay his hands
upon. The body of men thus collected he succeeded in
thoroughly imbuing with his own exalted views of public
duty and self-sacrifice. The years of their apprenticeship
coincided with those of the terrible crises 1807-1812. The
first years of their activity as master workmen were
identical with the glorious period of the War of Libera
tion. In the reorganisation of the State, during the first
of these two periods by which the efforts made in the
second became possible, as well as in the direction and
impulse given to those efforts, they had become the
principal part.
With such traditions as these, then, and with tempers
thus steeled, they found themselves drifted into the re
actionary period and became, as against that reaction
and such unprincipled reactionists as Wittgenstein and
his school, the guardians and defenders of one portion,
at least, of the traditions of the Reform period. It has
been very much the fashion, as well with the so-caUed
Conservative writers of the Romantic reactionary school
as with the Constitution-mongers of 1848, to heap abuse
of every kind upon the bureaucratic institutions which
flourished in Prussia between the years 1815 and 1848,
and to ascribe to them aU the evUs of the revolutionary
years. Nothing can be more unjust or show greater
ignorance of the historical facts of the case. That the free
institutions promised by the King were not granted was
in no way their fault — ^their functions were administrative
not legislative. For this breach of contract, the King and

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 203
his engagements to the Dynastic Insurance Society were
alone to blame. For the evUs that foUowed from these
unfulfUled engagements, they could therefore in no way be
held accountable, whereas, on the other hand, all the good
that was wrought in Prussia came wholly from them. The
barest enumeration of what was thus practically accom
plished would suffice to refute the above position. The
organisation of the Public Education, the marvellous
ordering of the Finances, the development of the material
resources of the country, the even-handed administration
of Justice, and the simplification of its machinery — all
these and endless other good works proceeded from the
public spirit and self-denying labour of this Ul-paid body
of public officials, who, though consolidated into a hierarchy
in the sense that Stein was anxious to avoid, yet, to their
glory be it spoken, kept up a sense of responsibility towards
their fellow-citizens at large, rather than towards their
own order, and who, as before stated, offered the only
effective barrier to the retrograde tendencies of the narrow-
minded clique, who succeeded to office upon Hardenberg's
retirement. That their day is gone by, and that with free
institutions a centralised bureaucracy would be a mis
chievous anachronism, I should be the last to deny ; but,
nevertheless, no account of the Constitutional history of
Prussia would be correct that did not assign a fair and
honourable place to the official hierarchy that carried the
ark of the Stein and Hardenberg reforms in comparative
safety through the waters of the reactionary flood from
1815 to 1848.
Before leaving this period it is but fair to remark that
Frederick WUliam in., when his dynastic crotchets were
not touched, was eminently a just and conscientious
ruler. His ideal, if so prosaic a character ever indulged in
an ideal, would certainly have been something like what
was reaUy effected during the twenty-flve years of his
reign subsequent to 1815 : an absolute government kept
from capricious exercise of power by the harmonious
action of a well-regulated official machinery working upon
the principles of justice and equity. Frederick William iii.
is as eminently a type of the positive and prosaic

204 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
bureaucratic reformer, as his successor afterwards became
of the ideological and romantic reactionary.
To the other phase of the reaction we must now turn
our attention.
We have hitherto left unnoticed the opposition to the
reforms in question, and adverted only to the reactionary
policy of the King and his entourage, as it displayed itself
in the negative form of not carrying these out to their
logical consequences. Such opposition as there had been
was overborne by the evident necessity of the case and the
general feeling of the nation. The privUeged sufferers
had had nothing better to plead than the prescriptive
character of the rights taken from them, and under a
political sky like that which then hung over Prussia, such a
plea was not likely to be admitted to much consideration.
At the conclusion of the war, however, when men suddenly
had leisure to look about them and to ponder over and
generalise the results of the generation of convulsions
that had just come to a close, it occurred to a certain class
of minds, amidst the seeming chaos of all things around
them, to be violently struck by what seemed the unfavour
able contrast between the picturesque ruins of the past
and the bare scaffolding of the new fabric in the course of
construction. The generation that was rising had had no
practical knowledge of this old state of things, and conse
quently the feeling which took possession of them was not
so much a craving after a reality which had been actually
experienced, as a stretching forth of hands after a fantastic
mirage, in which the past was reflected through the media
of modern feeling and of unconsciously contracted modern
habits. In the beginning of the century poetry and im
agination had all been on the other side, arrayed, with
such a standard-bearer as J. J. Rousseau, under the
banner of the Rights of Man and the like, but of these,
that which could be put to practical use had long since
assumed the unpoetic shape of legislative enactment, and
what could not be so appropriated had long since fallen into
discredit. The old Deities could now boast of having the
' prestige ' of poetry and imagination back to their side, and
beheld their images raked up from beneath the ashes of

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 205
the past, and the attempt made to reinstate them on their
ancient pedestals. This phase, which in some shape or
another accompanies the establishment of every new creed,
has been generalised in Germany under the name of
Romanticism. Making its first appearance on the fields
of theology and literature, where, with such apostles as
the Schlegels, it soon became master of the ground, it
next turned to that of politics.
The true historical meaning of Romanticism has been
admirably defined in the following passage from the
remarkable essay, entitled ' Julian the Apostate, or the
Romanticist of the Throne of the Caesars,' written with
special reference to this phase of German and Prussian
History, and the relation to it of Frederick WiUiam iv.
' The historical moments at which it is possible for
Romanticism and Romanticists to make their appearance
are those epochs in which a new form of civUisation, as
yet incomplete and undeveloped, finds itself face to face
with one that has become antiquated, and in comparison
with the developed positions of which its own necessarUy
appeared stamped with a negative character. At such
boundary lines of the world's history, men, in whom
sensitiveness and imagination outweigh clear reason,
characters with more of warmth than of lucidity in their
composition, will always retrace their steps towards the old ;
and, turning from the prosaic scepticism which they see
everywhere gaining ground around them, will yearn after
the famUiar forms of their ancient faith and seek both for
themselves and for others to restore life to them. As
children of the age in which they live, however, being
more imbued with the new principles hateful to them than
they themselves are aware of, the Past, as it reproduces
itself in them and through them, is no longer the Past
in its pure and original form, but is considerably mixed
up with the new, and, consequently, beforehand, betrayed
to the latter. The faith of such persons is no longer
the genuine spontaneous faith that exercises complete
mastery over the believer, but such an one as he holds on
by, consciously and intentionaUy. The contradiction and
untruth which lie herein, though conscious of them, he

2o6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
endeavours to hide from himself by the fantastic obscurity
wherein he wraps them up. Romanticism is essentiaUy
mystical, and mystical temperaments, only, can become
Romanticists.' With the predominance of sensitiveness and imagination
peculiar to the German character, no wonder that the
romantic phase took so portentous a development in
Germany and particularly that it should have reaped
some of its most enduring fruits on the ground of politics.
We in England have had our medieval revival also,
but its attempt, in the form of Young Englandism, to
take up a permanent political position met with a very
complete faUure, and it was soon banished to its natural
sphere of theology and art.
The reverse was the case among our Teutonic kinsmen —
not that there was any affinity between the Boeotian
Squirearchy of Westphalia and Back Pomerania and the
blas6 over-refined disciples of the new school, but that by a
happy historical coincidence the former were in a position
to afford to the abstractions of the latter a concrete body
of grievances which opened up a most desirable field for
the propagandism of the new sect.
It was the union between these two elements which
resulted in the formation of the so-called ' Junker Partei.'
On the one side, the realism of the grumbling old squires
of the provinces, who regarded with daily increasing
jealousy the fellow-citizens, whose ancestors their own had
all but owned as serfs, who at Quarter Sessions would
whisper regretfully to each other of the whipping posts
and parish stocks of the days that were gone by — of the
high rate of wages — of the decrease of game, and the
consequent ruin of the country. On the other side, the
idealism of men who had never owned an acre of land in
their lives, but whose imaginations, stored with the lore
of the Middle Ages, dressed up the very prosaic grievances
of the former in the picturesque drapery of those days.
In aUiance with both, stood the high and dry Theologians
of the High Church Lutheran School, who welcomed
the new sect as the only means of luring back to the fold of
orthodoxy the strayed flocks who had so long pastm-ed

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 207
amidst the dangerous luxuriance of the schools of
philosophy. The positive political positions held at the present day
by this party were only later developed, but its origin
requires being preadverted to, and its real nature analysed,
as its influence began to be already sensibly felt during the
organisation of the Provincial States.
In fact, the whole political tendency of the party may
be epitomised in the States that were then constructed,
a tendency that may be described as the substitute of the
institution of ' States ' for the Parliamentary institutions
which the nation conceived had been promised to it.
There is a radical antagonism between Parliamentary
institutions and the institutions of ' States ' which was
probably not so clearly apparent to Stein and the reformers
of his school, as it has since become to those who have
had ten years' experience of Parliamentary life in Prussia.
This antagonism is easily deduced from the historical
origin of the two institutions.
A Parliament is the representation, for the purposes of
Imperial legislation, of a nation in its entirety. It stands
(theoretically, at least) on ground high above that occupied
by personal and corporate interests. The ' common
weal ' is essentiaUy that which it is to safeguard, and the
interests of which it is to legislate for. A normal state of
antagonism between a Parliament and the Sovereign
authority would be a reductio ad absurdum of the whole
institution. Where such an antagonism has existed in
history, it has necessarUy led to the suppression of Parlia
mentary institutions, as in France, or to their triumph,
as in England. In a word, a Parliament is in its very
essence a national institution, it is the depositary of the
national conscience, and the organ of the national will.
Exactly the reverse of all this, on the other hand, applies
to the institution of ' States.' Traced back to its historical
origin, it is found to have been in its essence of a particular
istic and exclusive character, and to have in each case
originated as a defensive association amongst any given
body of vassals owing allegiance to the same feudal lord
for the preservation intact of the privUeges conceded to

2o8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
the individual members of such association by such feudal
superior. This defensive character it in most cases changed
to an offensive one for the purpose of extorting more
enlarged privUeges. Each time that the feudal lord
wanted subsidies, the terms were raised and harder con
ditions struck. At first, limited to the holders of knightly
and ecclesiastical fiefs, another ' Estate,' that of the Town
Corporation, soon came to be added. From them, no less
than from the others, subsidies were required and privileges
given them in return. Moreover, the feudal lord was in
most cases glad to get this support against the other
' States ' and to get better terms by putting one Estate
against the other.
The privileges granted were in every case delegations of
authority, each fresh concession rendering the parties to
whom it was made more absolutely masters over the internal
economy of the territory held by them.-^ The identification
of the Courts of Justice with the ownership of the soil —
the complete loss of all the rights of freemen by the
peasantry — and all that we saw Stein successfully remov
ing, was acquired in this way.
The largest field upon which this process was exhibited
was the German Empire itself, — the great vassals of whom
the ' States ' of the Empire were originally composed, there
gradually developing into the independent Sovereignties
of which the German Confederation is at present composed.
In what direct opposition to the national tendencies this
development stands, has been before aUuded to in this
essay. A fortiori the smaUer association of States we have
specially referred to were destitute of all national char^
acter. They were there to defend their privileges in the
first place against their feudal superiors, in the next place,
against each other. Antagonism, therefore, between them
and this feudal superior (later the independent Sovereign)
was the normal condition in which they stood. It was his
business to look after the interests of the ' common weal,'
theirs to look after their owm.
1 Note. — Compare ' Territorial Herrschaft,' ' Landes Hoheit,' ' Souver-
ainitat,' the various steps by which the great vassals of the Empire
gradually developed into the independent Sovereignties of modern
Germany,

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 209
The breaking to pieces of the powers of the States was,
as we have seen, the first step taken by the great Elector
towards establishing a Prussian nationality. The pulver
ising of the fragments that remained was the means by
which Stein evoked the national movement that eventually
freed Pmssia and Germany from French domination. All
this, however, was not so clearly apprehended thirty years
ago as it is now, and when the Crown Prince of Prussia,
the present King, known for his great inteUectual capacities,
for his patronage of science and the arts, and his dislike to
the bureaucracy, set to work to remodel the institutions
of the Provincial States (as it was generally supposed upon
the Stein pattern) as a preparatory step to what was so
keenly desired, — a general representation of the whole
nation, — he had the good wishes of the great body of the
Liberal Party with him.
The decade between 1820 and 1830 was employed upon
the work of reorganising the Provincial States for the eight
provinces of which the kingdom of Prussia is composed.
A short summary of the constitution of the States of
Brandenburg wiU suffice to show upon what principles this
reconstmction was conducted. The other Constitutions
differed only in matters of detail, according to the history of
each province modified one or other of the multifarious
elements that entered into their composition, for " a strict
observance of the historical rights ' of each province was
already then announced as the principle that was to
guide the royal manufacturer in his work. The province of
Brandenburg, covering an area of 734 square miles, with
a population of above two millions, and some hundred and
fifty towns and large boroughs, is composed of three old
historical districts — ^the Kurmark (the old Electorate), the
Neumark, and the Nieder Lausitz.
In the absence of any of the great barons of the late
German Empire {Reichsunmittelbare), the so-called medi
atised princes, the States of Brandenburg were only three
in number. In those provinces, as, for instance, Silesia and
Westphalia, where these mediatised princes had landed
property, they formed a separate State by the Edict of
1st July 1823.
VOL. I, O

210 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
The three States were composed as foUows : —
I. The Kurmark: —
fhe First Estate— Voices
The Chapter of the Cathedral of Brandenburg i
Count Solms of Baruth . . . . . i
Count Hardenberg Reventlow ; Count Arnim i
Boitzenburg, voting curially . . . x
The Ritterschaft(i.e. Proprietors of Rittergiiter,
Manors)  20

Total of the First Estate ... 23
The Second Estate —
Berlin, 3 ; Brandenburg, i ; Potsdam, i . 5
I each : Salzwedel, Perleberg, Frankfurt a/0.
Prinzau, Ruppin  5
The remaining boroughs divided into five
groups, each sending a member ... 5

Total of the Second Estate . . 15
The Third Estate, composed of eight constitu
encies, being either single circles or unions
of circles  8

Total of the Third Estate. . . 8

Total of the Three Estates of the Kurmark . 46
II. The Neumark : —
The First Estate — (No Standes Herren) Ritterschaft 6
The Second Estate, grouped into constituencies as
in the Kurmark  3
The Third Estate, also as in the Kurmark . . 2

Total States of the Neumark . . 11

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 211
III. The Nieder Lausitz : —
The First Estate — Count Solms Sonnenfeld . . i
The remaining Standes Herren, voting curially . i
The Ritterschaft  5
Total of the First Estate . . 7
The Second Estate (as above) .... 4
The Third Estate (as above) .... 2
Total States of Nieder Lausitz . 13
Grand total of Members composing the Pro
vincial States of Brandenburg ... 70
The requisites for candidature in all three States were : —
I. Actual possession by inheritance or otherwise of
landed or other real property, unbroken for at least ten
years. 2. Membership of one of the three recognised Christian
Churches. 3. Completion of the thirtieth year.
4. An immaculate moral character.
Possession of a manor (Rittergut), without, however,
the necessity of gentle birth, was the qualification for
candidature in the First Estate.
As candidates for the Second Estate, only persons pos
sessed of real property within a town or borough, and
fiUing the office of magistrate in such a town or borough,
or bona fide engaged in the exercise of a trade, were eligible.
The qualification in the Third Estate consisted in the
possession of a parcel of land less than a manor (Rittergut),
farmed by the candidate himself as principal source of
revenue. The same qualifications were required for the suffrage
in each class, except that the uninterrupted possession for
ten years was dispensed with, and actual possession deemed
sufficient.

212 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
The manors were confined to those that were bona fide
such in 1804, and such as the King chose specially to
create with those attributes.^ Diminution of such property
beyond certain limits forfeited the suffrage. The most
complicated possible rules, different in each district (always
on the principle of historical adaptation), settled the
minimum quantity of land or real property with which
the possession of a vote in the other two estates was
connected. Thus constituted, those States were to meet every two
years at such a time as the King might appoint. Their
President, the so-called Marshal of the Province {Land-
marschall), was to be named out of their number by the
King, who besides named a Royal Commissary with whom
the States were to treat of all matters coming within their
cognisance. This latter functionary convoked and pro
rogued them, but could not be present at their debates,
though he might send messages to them and receive deputa
tions from them.
The sphere of their activity, except in a very limited
number of unimportant matters, was confined to discussing
such measures connected with the general administration
of the province as the King might think proper to submit
to their consideration, with a view to learning their opinion
upon them. They might also, on the other hand, recom
mend measures to the attention of the executive. In
both cases, however, an expression of opinion was the fuU
extent of their prerogative. The Sovereign might or
might not go by that opinion, and might, moreover, pass
general measures without such previous consultation. In
a word, they were consultative, not legislative.
The three States were, as a rule, to consult in common,
though even here minute regulations with regard to dress,
which decked with gold embroidery the uniforms of the
First Estate, and clothed with civic black the backs of the
other two, kept up to the eye the visible difference in the
social status of the three classes. Where questions, how
ever, affecting the special rights or privileges of any one
^ They are something under 400 in number in the whole province of
Brandenburg.

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 213
of the three were to be discussed, they met and consulted
separately according to States. The results of the separate
discussions thus held were submitted to the King, who
could settle the question according to the opinions of the
majority or the minority as he thought most advantageous.
Such in its principal features was the institution of the
Provincial Estates introduced in part payment of the
promises made to the nation in 1815.
In looking at it in the present day, one fancies to one
self that there is passing in review before one a procession
of medieval mummers, and one can with difficulty realise
it as a creation of the nineteenth century.
A very superficial glance will suffice to show how radicaUy
different was the institution, as it was actually turned out,
from what Stein had intended it to be.
The contradiction between this first offspring of the
medieval revival and the prosaic bureaucratic character of
the remaining part of Frederick WUliam iii.'s administration
would seem to militate against the account above given of
that ruler, and the principles by which he was governed.
The apparent contradiction disappears, however, when it is
remembered that, though issued by him, the Constitution
of the Provincial Estates was in reality the creation of the
Crown Prince ; and secondly, that the machinery thus
called into existence had no real power to interfere actively
with the bureaucratic machinery speciaUy patronised by
Frederick WiUiam iii. It was a parasitical plant forced
artificially over the naked masonry of the official system,
and intended to cluster gracefully about it, but unable to
afford it support or derive nourishment from it.
As was to be expected, the institution met with very
little public favour, and during the twenty odd years of
its existence it never struck root into the soU. On the
one side the persons who composed it became conscious
of the undignified position which they occupied with so
much of nominal prestige and so little of real power. The
squirearchy, who had expected a millennium of whipping
posts and parish stocks, soon became aware that they were
just as much under the tutelage of the bureaucracy as they
had been before.

214 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
On the other side, the public in general looked with no
little mistrust and misgiving on the reappearance upon the
political stage of these ghosts of days which it believed had
been in spirit as well as body long since consigned to their
grave. The most practical result was the increased impatience
for a bona fide general legislative body which should check,
once for all, this sort of fantastic impromptu, and which
the nation conceived had been promised to it in the Edicts
of 1815 and 1820.
The French Revolution of 1830 gave a fresh impulse
to this feeling, and the ten years that elapsed between that
event and the death of Frederick WiUiam iii. are marked
by its increasing intensity.
It was at its height when Frederick WiUiam iv. ascended
the throne. More than usually surrounded by the prestige
which attends a new reign, this Sovereign's connection
with the medievaUsts, and his share in the organization
of the Provincial States, seem either to have been forgotten
or not to have been appreciated as they ought. It was
known that His Majesty had aU sorts of plans fermenting
in his head for the construction of States General, and
all parties rallied round him, each fondly hoping that it
would find in him the patron of its particular specific for
the new Constitution.
Seven years were passed in anxious expectation on the
part of the nation, and in minute elaboration on that of
the Sovereign. At last, in 1847, under the name of States
General, the convocation in pleno of the eight bodies
of Provincial States took place. Great as had been the
labour bestowed upon the constitution of this body
(principaUy in the way of historical adaptation), yet no
one believed that it was intended even by the King him
self to be a permanent institution. The opinion generally
prevaUed that it was, under the dignified title of States
General, to serve the office of a Constituent Assembly,
which, in conjunction with the Sovereign, should elaborate
a bona fide parliamentary system.
On the nth April 1847 the new States General met,
and King Frederick WiUiam iv. pronounced the celebrated

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 215
speech by which he effectually destroyed the hopes the
nation had, in spite of themselves, cherished tiU then
of arriving by the round-about way of ' States ' at the
desired goal of a Parliament.
However indistinctly others may have realised to
themselves the results that would necessarily flow from
the latter institution, Frederick William iv., than whom
no Sovereign clung more tenaciously to the prerogatives of
the Crovm, clearly appreciated the difference between the
two institutions, and understood that while the former was
the natural aUy, the latter was the natural enemy, of
absolute govemment, and on this occasion he certainly
cannot be blamed for want of clearness in expressing his
opinions on the subject.
To the astonishment of even his medieval friends, His
Majesty distinctly announced that he conceived himself
in no way bound by the promises of his predecessor ; that
from his ancestors he had inherited absolute authority,
and that that authority he should bequeath undiminished
to his posterity ; above aU, that no power on earth should
ever make him change this natural relation between his
people and their Sovereign into a conventional and con
stitutional relation, or aUow ' a piece of written parchment
to be placed Uke a second providence between God in
Heaven ' (by whom he meant indirectly to allude to
himself as God's vicegerent on earth) ' and this land.'
After an eloquent invective against the tone of the
Liberal press (probably the first time that that institution
has been directly lashed from the throne), he informed
the assembled States that they were there only as the
representatives and defenders of the rights of their respective
orders, and not to represent opinions ; ' that the former
was their true historical position, whUe the latter was
an utterly ungerman notion, — ^that it could only lead to
grave and useless complications with the Crown, which by
the law of God was bound to govern according to its own
free incUnation, and which never should, as far as he
was concerned, be swayed by the verdicts of majorities.'
The effect produced by this royal confession of faith
reverberated not only through the length and breadth

2i6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
of Pmssia, but through every portion of Germany, which,
with attention strung to a painful pitch, had been watching
the result of the first meeting of the States General. The
King, who tiU then commanded the sympathies of the
large majority of the Liberal Party, found himself suddenly
standing alone with his medieval resurrectionists, and
for the first time a gulf seemed to have opened between
the Prussian people and a Sovereign of the House of
HohenzoUern.
i^- It was amidst the increasing excitement caused by these
events that the echoes of the February Revolution roUed
over Germany.
Into the events of 1848 and 1849 it is not my purpose
to enter, — they are of too exceptional a nature and too
much connected with German history not to demand a
separate study. Moreover, for the object in view the
general results of that volcanic period as embodied in the
Constitution of 1850 will suffice.
Promulgated by Royal Patent {octroye, to use the cant
Continental term) after the Constituent Assembly, convoked
in 1848, had failed of producing any practical results, the
Pmssian Constitution as it now stands is a curious monu
ment of the various Constitutional schools whose doctrines
for the last thirty years have divided the public opinion
of Europe.
It is only by a knowledge of the history of these various
schools that we obtain a key to its mechanism. RecaUing,
for instance, in its earlier articles touching the abstract
rights of Prussian citizens, the ' doctrinaire ' character
of French Constitutionalism, we recognise, on the other
hand, in the complicated Constitution of the first Chamber
many of the features peculiar to the medieval revival,
and then again stumble upon what we perceive to be
modern adaptations of our own Habeas Corpus Act and
other so-called bulwarks of the British Constitution.
On the whole, however, the Constitution of 1850 was a
fair embodiment of even the more advanced positions of
the Liberal Party. The principles upon which the Stein-
Hardenberg reforms had been based seemed to pass, as it
were, through second baptism, and with such a ' piece of

1859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 217
written parchment ' between the Sovereign and the people
it seemed as if the medieval revivalists were once for all
driven from the ground.
Unfortunately, however, the questions on which these
doctrines found themselves opposed to those of the Liberal
Party, instead of being once for aU settled by organic laws
embodied in the Constitution itself, were left, as regards
their practical solution, to the Chambers called into exist
ence by the Constitution — ^the principles only on which
they were to be solved being laid down in the ' piece of
parchment.' Thus a liberal organisation of the rural Commune was
promised (that old stumbling-block over which Stein him
self had been unable to pass in safety), together with a
liberal self-governing organisation of the ' Circle ' based
upon it.
So also the cessation of the exemption of the manors
{Rittergiiter) from the Land Tax and the withdrawal of the
rural police out of the hands of the proprietors of such
manors, these two being, in fact, the only feudal privileges
that had escaped the reforms of 1806-1811.
In the same manner the removal of religious disabil
ities, the right of association for political purposes, the
theory of ministerial responsibUity, etc., etc., were pro
claimed, subject always to special laws regulating their
practical adaptation.
With such a programme everything, of course, depended
upon the kind of Chambers on which the practical legisla
tion respecting these subjects would devolve.
On the first Chamber the reaction felt secure. It was
composed of the large landed proprietors (who with few
exceptions were devoted to the reactionary cause), of life
nominees of the Crown, and of a certain number of Ober-
biirgermeister, likewise (as will be seen later) nominated
by the Crown.
Consequently, it was to the packing of a second Chamber,
that should legislate in the sense desired, that the whole
efforts of the reaction were directed, and this properly
brings us to the fifth of the six periods into which our
subject is divided.

2i8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
The Cabinet, after the elimination from it of the few
liberal elements that for a portion of the year 1850 had
clung to it, and after the melancholy death of Count
Brandenburg, consoUdated itself, in the commencement of
the year 1851, under the presidency of Baron Manteuffel,
M. de Westfalen undertaking the Portfolio of the Interior.
The Ministry thus formed represented an alliance between
two very heterogeneous and, under normal circumstances,
two very incompatible elements : on the one side the cold
sceptical bureaucratic element, not of the Stein but of the
French prdfet school of bureaucracy ; on the other side,
the doctrinaire idealistic element of the medieval school we
have already treated of.
The common feelings that united them were an equal
execration of every shade of liberal opinion, and the
contempt of the one and the loathing of the other for the
Constitutional system they were called upon to consolidate
and inaugurate.
The problem that offered .itself to the solution of the
one may thus be worded : —
Given a Constitutional system, what means can be found
to adapt its machinery to the working of a centralised
police system that shall vest discretionary power over
every class in the State in the hands of the executive, and
yet leave the nation under the impression that these
Ministers are responsible to it, and that it is governing
itself. The problem offered to the solution of the other may
thus be worded : —
Given a parliamentary system of modern make and
buUd, by what means can it be twisted back into an in
stitution shaped upon that of the ' States,' and having
for its basis, instead of the equal citizenship of the modern
edifice, the ' graduated social scale ' {stdndische Gliederung)
of the feudal fabric.
It is self-evident that, could each of these parties, by a
stroke of legerdemain, have realised the objects they had
respectively in view, two such whoUy different edifices could
not have found room on the same piece of ground.
In the way of both, however, (and this is the real key

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 219
to the aUiance,) stood firm and soUd and deeply embedded
in the Prussian soil the cyclopean foundations of the
Stein and Hardenberg period. To clear these out of the
way was the task (and no light task) to which the united
efforts of both were directed. Towards solving the problem
in the first of the senses above indicated, a very convenient
precedent lay close at hand. The last eighteen years of
the Constitutional regime, as it had been carried out in
France, afforded down to the most minute detaUs the
working models required.
To follow in these minute detaUs the birth and growth
of the centralised police system, developed under the late
Ministry in Prussia, would be an invidious task, though by
no means an uninstructive one. I shall content myself,
however, with adverting to its principal features. The
two main principles of the Stein administration, namely,
localisation of the administration and independence of the
status of the official — were subverted, and the contrary
principles — centralisation of the administration and depen
dence of the official, were substituted in their stead.
With a view to carrying out the former principle the
nomination of the Landrathe and the Oberbiirgermeister
was transferred directly to the Crown, by which one measure
the assimUation to the French prefet system was in its
essence completed. A very liberal biU for the reorganisa
tion of the rural commune, which had passed through the
second Chamber,^ received the Royal Veto, and a pro
visional system was substituted which left the nomination
of all local officers down to the parish beadle in the hands
of the Landrathe and Oberbiirgermeister named by the
Crown. The moral dependence of the official class upon the
check strings of the Ministers was effected in a more
insidious manner.
We have seen that the principle of immovabUity, except
upon a sentence pronounced by the Disciplinary Court, had
1 It was not till the Parliament elected in 1855 that a thoroughly
servile Chamber was obtained. The first two Parliaments, that of 1S50
and that of 1853, had still many liberal elements in them, but the first
Chamber and the Royal Veto together were able practically to neutralise
every liberal measure that emanated from those assemblies.

220 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
been the expedient by which Stein had endeavoured to
secure the independence of the official class. That Court
could take cognisance only of cases of breach of public
duty or of notorious immorality disqualifying a man for
the discharge of public functions.
In direct opposition to the organic statute of 1808, in
which it is distinctly set forth that ' the State official, irre
spectively of his particular office, remains in all respects a
member of the nation and continues in the enjoyment of
all the rights and privileges of citizenship,' it was officially
announced, by various rescripts of the Minister of the
Interior, that the holding of political opinions different
from those of the Ministry for the time, or at least the
recording of such opinions by a vote adverse to the Govern
ment, would be considered a breach of official duty.
The curious line of argument by which this principle
was laid down in rescripts above alluded to may thus be
shortly summed up.
According to the Constitutional doctrines there laid
down, a Constitutional Ministry is not identified with any
political party that may be in the ascendant, but directly
with the person of the Sovereign. Any opposition to it,
therefore, though entirely within the limits laid down by
the Constitution, became by construction an offence
against the majesty of the Crown, and as such cognisable
by the Disciplinary Court.
No wonder that after five years of persevering toil
devoted to the elaboration of a system on these principles,
a servile Chamber like that of 1855 should have resulted
from the General Election in that year.
It appears strange that a system so diametrically
opposed to their received doctrines should have met with
the sanction of the medievalists,^ and on the whole it must
be admitted that this party came off second best in their
treaty of alliance with the Manteuffel Ministry.
On the other hand, if little was done in the direction
* That the younger and less political portion of the party was not a
little galled by the police supremacy established over them was evident
by the celebrated Hinckeldey-Rochow duel, in which the Minister of
Police was shot by a young guardsman deputed specially for the purpose
by a body of the more hot-headed of the ' Junker-Partei.'

i859] THE HISTORY OF PRUSSIA 221
they wished to impress upon the internal policy of the
State, they had the satisfaction of seeing everything left
undone, the accomplishment of which they most dreaded.
The equalisation of the Land Tax, the withdrawal of
the rural police from the manor, the liberal organisation
of the rural ' commune,' the introduction of civU marriage
— one and all, thanks to the union between the ministeri
alists and the medievalists, remained dead letters.
Besides this, however, almost carte blanche was given
them in a department which had always been their favourite
hobby. Ecclesiastical Affairs and Education. Here, in
the persecution of Liberal professors and in the adapta
tion of a system of Education graduated according to the
favourite principle of the social scale {stdndische Gliederung),
they could wage war d outrance against one of the most
hateful portions of the Stein reforms. Eight years of
such government might have been expected to bring
about the object desired, namely, the total discrediting once
for all of Constitutional institutions, — and, indeed, after the
elections of 1855 it almost seemed as if that result had
been gained.
From the ' piece of parchment,' torn, blotted, and
covered with erasures and contemptuous marginal notes,
even the most sanguine Constitutionalists turned away in
disgust. A sort of apathy appeared to take possession of
the nation at large, and the sense of national self-respect
seemed to be fast dying out.
These were, however, but very transitory symptoms.
The Prussians of Frederick the Great and of the War of
Liberation were a people far too healthy at the core to
be permanently affected by, after aU, so short-lived a
departure from the principles which under some form or
other had hitherto governed them.
How little on the one hand the interest taken by the
nation in its de jure institutions, and on the other its
loyalty towards the reigning dynasty, had been really
diminished, became abundantly manifest when (exactly
a year ago) the present Regent, in assuming the reins of
government, declared it to be his intention strictly to
adhere to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution of

222 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
1850. He saw rallying around him from the Rhine to the
Vistula every shade and section of the Liberal Party, that
is, the great mass of the nation, and the gulf which had
seemed to open between the House of HohenzoUern and
the Prussian people now appeared, as if by magic, to be
filled up. Every public act that has emanated from the
Prince Regent since that date has only served to confirm
this happy union between the sovereign authority and
the great body of the nation, as represented in the new
Chamber, the election to which, freed from the sinister
influences of Westfalen circulars, returned an overwhelming
Liberal majority.
The task which these men have before them is no light
one, for they have not only to carry political measures, but
to restore a moral tone to the whole political character of
the country.
The tone and temper brought by the new Chamber to
the discharge of these duties augur right well for their
ultimate success, and if the debates in the last season about
the admission of Jewish proprietors of manors to sit at the
quarter sessions of the ' Circle ' {Kreis Tage) , and about the
introduction of a law for civil marriages, had little to gratify
the taste of an epicurean in foreign politics, they gave
abundant proof of the earnest and practical spirit which
the Prussian Constitutionalists are bringing to their task.
A few more years of such legislation, and the ' piece of
parchment ' wiU have become the organic structure which
Stein would have died happy had he seen superposed upon
the foundations he so successfuUy laid down for it.

1859] BERLIN 223

CHAPTER XI
BERLIN
The year 1859 had begun under ominous auspices. During
the preceding summer, in an interview at Plombieres, the
Emperor Napoleon and Cavour had come to an agree
ment which, whUe stipulating that King Victor Emmanuel
of Sardinia should be put in possession of Lombardo-
Venetia, Parma, and Modena, had bestowed Nice and Savoy
on France as a reward for her assistance.
At the reception of the Diplomatic Corps at the TuUeries,
on New Year's Day 1859, the Emperor expressed his regret
to the Austrian Ambassador! that relations between the
French and Austrian Governments were no longer as good
as they had been, an announcement which, looked upon as
the forerunner of war, fell like a thunderbolt on Europe,
causing universal panic.
The state of affairs in Prussia at the time was depicted
by Morier in the foUowing : —
Memorandum on Prussian Ministry * — May 1859
' The first intimation of the impending European crisis
found the Prussian Cabinet both inwardly and outwardly
in a position singularly unpropitious for promptly and
effectively dealing with the political questions so unex
pectedly brought forward for discussion.
' The new Ministry, composed of the most heterogeneous
elements, hardly acquainted with each other and wholly
unfamUiar with the higher management of public affairs,
had taken office, not as an organised political party, discip
lined by a successful opposition, but as the personal friends
of a prince whose position, untU the advent of the Regency,
had necessarUy been a passive one, and were bound to each
' Baron;.Hubner. * Hohenzollern-Auerswald Ministry.

224 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
other by no more positive ties than those of a common
appreciation (the two excepted who had formed part of the
former administration) of the political rottenness to which
their predecessors had laeen in a fairway of reducingtheState,
joined to an honest desire to remedy the harm already done.
* The political capital they had at their disposal to work
the new undertaking was the popularity enjoyed by the
new Chief of the State, and the popular sympathy with
which their supposed liberal views invested them ; of the
former they gladly avaUed themselves, of the latter they
were not a little shy. In a word, the new Ministry were
a camarilla, but a camarilla composed of honest and moder
ate men, not otherwise than patriotic, and sincerely desirous
of seeing a hearty union between the ruler and the ruled,
to be brought about, however, not by a profane approxima
tion of the ruled to the steps of the throne, but by emana
tions of the Divine Right of the ruler. The Constitution
was to be recognised, and as far as possible acted upon, but
not as a right conquered by the party who had come into
power, but as a royal gift which common honesty as weU
as the dignity of the Crown required should be one de facto
as weU as de jure.
' Thus it came about that the new advisers of the Crown
found themselves, in a country where routine has ploughed
its furrow deeper than in any other, without traditions and
without a formulated political creed, occupying the seats
vacated by a Ministry whose foreign policy had been essenti
aUy one of traditional expedients, and whose internal policy
had been based on a political formula narrow in the extreme,
but on that very account in the highest degree logical and
consequent and thoroughly conscious of the end it had in
view. Placed in a state of social quarantine (for their liberal
views) by the ' salons ' in which they had hitherto moved,
yet not a little sharing with these ' salons ' in the fear of the
' Red Spectre,' and consequently repeUing rather than
courting the popular support tendered to them, the Hohen
zoUern, or as it is more commonly called, the Auerswald
Ministry, found themselves at the commencement of the
year in a position of isolation very much of their own
creation, and occupied above all things in tracing out for

1859] BERLIN 225
their own particular selves a safe pathway amid the dangers,
principally imaginary, with which in their eyes the internal
direction of affairs appeared beset. Never had Guizot's
dictum been more applicable, " Le gouvernement prussien
n'est pas un gouvernement d'initiative." Honesty and
weakness, good intentions, with distrust of themselves and
others, a wUling spirit and a weak flesh, such were their
prominent characteristics.
' It was at this juncture,that the Emperor Napoleon's New
Year's congratulations broke on the ears of peace-dreaming
Germany. ' It is an open secret, not a little worth pondering over,
that the French Government in their plans for remodelling
the map of Europe, reckoned not a little on the supposed
ambition of the Prince Regent and his Ministers and on
the co-operation they would accordingly meet with from
the youngest of the Great Powers. As far back as last
December, overtures were made to the Prussian Government
by the Emperor Napoleon, through the agency of the
Marquis Pepoli, brother-in-law to the Prince of Hohen
zollem. These overtures were of a general kind, but their
object was a common action against Austria — giving to
France freedom of action in Italy and securing to Prussia
territorial advantages in Northern Germany. These calcula
tions, however, suffered total shipwreck on the honesty
and plain dealing of the Prince Regent and his Ministers,
and a deaf ear was turned to the sirens of the Tuileries.
On the other hand, however, the formulating of a distinct
and independent German policy, determined alike to
oppose the ambitious views of the French Government
and not to become the tool of Austria's anti-liberal policy
in Italy and the imposing, if necessary, of this policy upon
the non-Prussian States of Germany, was a task beyond
their strength.'
In Germany itself, opinions on the war were greatly
divided. While in the south the population ardently
espoused the cause of Austria, and urging their respective
Governments to assemble troops on the Rhine, clamoured
to be led against the hereditary foe, in the north the feeling
VOL. I. P

226 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1859
was very different ; in Prussia, neither Schleswig-Holstein
nor Olmiitz had been forgotten, the cause of Italian
independence, moreover, inspiring no little sympathy.
Amidst these conflicting currents of opinion, the Prince
Regent and his Ministers steered a hesitating course.
Taking the line, that the ItaUan quarrels of Austria were
not German quarrels in a sense of having to be necessarUy
fought out on the Rhine, or solved by an offensive move
ment upon France, they, nevertheless, considered that
any serious defeat of Austria in Italy would endanger
the left flank of the German position, Germany being
regarded as on the defensive against attack from the west.
The entire spring and summer were therefore spent in
fitting out and mobUising the army, and after the defeats of
Austria at Magenta and Solferino the Prussian Government
were preparing to offer their armed mediation to the
belligerents, to both of whom, however, this prospect
proved equaUy unwelcome. Little as the Emperor
Napoleon desired to find himself confronted by German
armies on the Rhine, to Austria the possibUity that, after
her own defeats, Prussia, by winning brUliant victories,
might gain a supremacy which would place her once for
aU at the head of a united Germany, was even more
distasteful. To avert the threatened mediation, therefore,
both the contending parties hastened to compose their
quarrels, and in a personal interview at ViUafranca, the
two Emperors, in the space of a few hours, arranged and
signed the preliminaries of a peace, afterwards ratified at
Ziirich, by which Austria, whUe ceding Lombardy, retained
her hegemony in Italy.
The excitement caused by these events had been almost
as great in Germany as in Italy ; once more the nation
realised with deep dissatisfaction the political nonentity
it had been reduced to in Europe, and ideals of unity and
longings for consolidation, in abeyance for the last ten
years, again began to agitate men's minds. One of the
more immediate consequences was the foundation at
Frankfort of the National Verein, an association of liberal
politicians from every part of Germany and of every
shade of opinion, united in a common desire for a German

i860] BERLIN 227
Parliament and a central executive and in the common
aim of promoting national sentiment. Their activity
soon extended all over Germany and became a perfect
bugbear to the different Governments. Expelled shortly
afterwards from Frankfort by the Diet, whom the very
mention of German^Unity filled with horror, the National
Verein found a refuge at Coburg and a protector in Duke
Ernst, who warmly shared their aspirations.
Although the Emperor Napoleon's advances, so far,
had only met with rebuffs and his bribes of support to
Prussia in schemes for extending to the north, i.e. the
annexation of Schleswig-Holstein in exchange for the Rhine
Provinces, had been defeated by the known loyalty of the
Prince Regent and his advisers, the Emperor, clinging to
his doctrine of ' natural frontiers,' stUl hoped to compass
the end he had in view. As Nice and Savoy had been
the price paid for Italy's independence, so, he thought,
the Rhine Provinces might become the tribute exacted for
Germany's unity. Flattering himself that he might yet
succeed in gaining the Prince Regent's consent to his
projects of territorial revision, he, on various occasions,
with the object of unfolding his plans, sought for a personal
interview, which the Prince, firmly determined never
to connive at the absorption of an inch of German soU into
French territory, repeatedly refused. Finally, however,
desirous not to offend his powerful neighbour, he consented
to a meeting at Baden-Baden, to which, at the same time,
he hastened to invite his brother sovereigns (the Kings of
Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Wiirtemberg, Grand Dukes
of Baden, Weimar, Hesse Darmstadt, Duke of Coburg),
anxious to dissipate any feelings of distrust eis to com
binations to their prejudice, and it was thus, at their
head and acting as their spokesman, that he received
the Emperor on 14th June i860.
With how much circumspection the Prince Regent
behaved on this occasion and how fruitless the interview
proved from the Emperor's point of view, may be gauged
by the latter's jesting utterance to one of his confidants,
on his return to Paris, that ' le Prince Regent s'est conduit
vis-i-vis de moi comme une jeune fUle pudique, qui craint

\

\

228 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
les propos d'un vert galant et qui 6vite de se trouver
longtemps seule avec lui.' !
This meeting at Baden led to various important inter
changes of opinion between the confederated Sovereigns.
Morier to Lord Bloomfield 'June loth, i860.
' . . . I can now speak with authority on what passed
after Louis Napoleon's departure. On the morning of the
i8th the Prince Regent requested the Sovereigns to meet
him in a room speciaUy set apart for the purpose in the
Schloss. There were present four Kings (of Wiirtemberg,
Hanover, Bavaria, and Saxony), the Dukes of Nassau
and Coburg and the Grand Duke of Baden. Barring the
absence of any subordinates, protocolists, and the like, the
meeting had the outward and visible solemnity of a Con
ference. The parties stood grouped in a semicircle before
the Prince, who partly read, partly spoke his address to
them. The speech thus delivered I have seen in the
original, and had the opportunity of coUating with the
r^sumd given of it in the Preussische Zeitung, but unfortun
ately the Prince Regent made it a point that the text should
not be made public, and I was therefore obliged to promise
not to take a copy. The r&um^ above alluded to is on
the whole correct. The most important oimssion is when
allusion is made to the defence by Prussia of the territorial
integrity of Germany. In the Preussische Zeitung, the
territorial integrity of Germany as a whole is alone
adverted to ; in the original the integrity of the several
territories of the individual Princes is equaUy aUuded to
as an object of Prussian solicitude. The passage is a little
obscure in construction, but the sense quite clear. It
runs d peu prh thus : —
' " I consider it the first task (erste Aufgabe) of the policy
of Prussia, of her European policy as well as of her German
poUcy, to safeguard not only the territorial integrity of
the common fatherland as such, but that also of the
individual Princes." Another omission was the glorious an
niversary (18th June) upon which he (the Prince Regent) had
^ Miss M. Ellice to Lady Alice Peel, 22nd June i860.

i860] BERLIN 229
the opportunity afforded him of repeating the assurances
made in his speech from the throne at the close of the session.
' As an enunciation of future policy the speech amounts
to this. Prussia will use up her last dollar and her last
man to defend Germany against foreign aggression.
Moreover, the territorial arrangements within the con
federation are viewed by her in the light of sacred rights.
The Princekins therefore (as Carlyle calls them) need have
no fears about a diminution of their square mileage. The
Constitution of the Diet is on the other hand hateful to
her, and she wUl use her best endeavours to bring about a
reform therein, though she admits that for an organic
change the present moment is not suited. So long, however,
as the Diet as at present constituted remains unaltered,
Prussia, whUst recognising it, wiU use her best endeavour
to restrain the action of the Diet strictly within the com
petency marked out for it by its organic laws and prevent
an excession of this competency on the part of the
Dynasties in an anti-liberal sense against the Constitutional
rights of the individual states.'
Memorandum of a conversation between the Prince Regent
of Prussia and the King of Bavaria, written by the
former, 20th June i860.
The King of Bavaria who, there is no doubt, had been
commissioned to do so by the other Princes of Germany,
endeavoured yesterday to explain to me at length the
allusion, made in the King of Wiirtemberg's speech, and
in so doing he specially adverted to the three foUowing
points : —
The first had reference to the mUitary convention to be
submitted to the Diet.
[The conversation between the King and the Prince
Regent upon this point is given at great length, but does
not contain matter of such general interest as that on the
other two points — ^those of the ' National Verein ' and the
relations with Austria.
The King explains the object of the Middle States since
embodied in the project of mUitary reform drawn up by

230 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
the mUitary plenipotentiaries of the Middle States in the
Conference held at Wurzburg. The idea that lies at the
root of this project is the safeguarding of the sovereign
rights of the Middle States by withdrawing even in the case
of war the disposition of their troops from either of the
two Great Powers.
The King urges upon the Prince the giving up of his
plan for a divided command of the troops of Germany in
the event of war, which shoiUd secure to Prussia the
military command of the northern contingents of the
Confederation and to Austria that of the southern con
tingents. He proposes instead that in the case of war
three distinct armies should be formed, the Prussian, the
Austrian, and the Federal, the latter being composed of
the contingents of the German states of Germany. He
states distinctly that this is to safeguard the sovereign
rights of the latter states, who could never give up into
other hands the command of their troops. The Prince
urges the impracticability of this plan and the disunion
which would result from it. He points to the history of
the various crises in which a war seemed to impend over
Germany, and he shows that the plan which he wishes to
consecrate as part of the Federal Constitution had ever
been the one which circumstances had barred Austria and
Prussia practically to have recourse to, and he closes by
informing the King in the most positive manner that he
would not give up his plan for the divided command which
he would submit to the Diet. — M.]
The second point which the King of Bavaria had been
requested to talk over was the mode of treating the
' National Verein.' He urged upon me to oppose myself
to it with all possible energy, inasmuch as whilst it had sub
versive objects in view it assumed that it could reckon on
Prussian sympathies, and that it was in fact acting in the
Prussian sense. I requested him to give me proofs of this
assertion, and observed that if the objects of the Society
were such as he described them, the answer I had through
Count Schwerin given on the subject to the petition of
the town of Stettin would stUl apply. Moreover, I had
laid down in my speech from the throne the principles of

i860] BERLIN 231
my German policy in a manner which I conceived could
leave no one in doubt as to the uprightness {loyaute)
of my intentions. That if by energy he meant the adoption
of police measures against the Society or its members, I could
not lend myself to his desires, because by measures of this
nature I conceived that only fresh importance would be
given it. I considered that, until the Society had com
mitted acts that were against the law, or that aimed at a
subversion of existing institutions, to persecute it would
be to invest it with fictitious importance — that if it should
become guUty of such acts, I should be the first to compass
its ruin. That the persecutions of the Society in Hanover,
Saxony, etc., had elicited general reprobation — ^that in their
main features, the objects of the society were national, and
that as such, it was not safe to attack them.
I then took the opportunity to explain to the King of
Bavaria the principles which ever since my advent to the
Regency I have been determined to carry out. Having
found a Constitution I consider it my duty to conform
myself to it and not to falsify it by unnatural interpretations.
I have lived long enough in the proximity of Government
to convince myself of the evU which resulted from the
system pursued by the late Ministry. I made the above
statement to the King, and added, that it was not my inten
tion to discuss whether Constitutions as such were con
ducive to the weU-being of a nation, but only to express the
conviction that, where they did exist, the idea of making
the measures of the Government public, and of caUing the
people to a legitimate participation in the legislation, had
penetrated into all men's minds, and that in such a case, it
would be the height of danger to put oneself in contradiction
to a feeling of this nature, as such an opposition would be
equivalent to placing on a formal record the distrust of the
Sovereign towards his people. Upon this same ground of
distrust, it was my opinion, that it was a false policy to seek
the security of the throne in the limitations of the Con
stitution, whereas, according to my view, security of Govern
ment consisted in the wise alternation between tightening
and loosening the reins of Government ; that I had made up
my mind to rule in this sense, and that on this ground I had

232 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
granted a free movement in the Constitutional sense, but in
doing so, that I fuUy intended to guard against letting the
reins faU altogether out of my hands. The King interrupted
me here, and said : ' I sincerely hope that you will make no
melancholy experiences, which are ever difficult to unmake
again, and of which the history of Constitutional Govern
ments have so many examples to show.'
I replied, that I had often put this very same question
to myself, and that I had ever found a satisfactory answer
in the views I had just detaUed to him. I compared the
art of government with that of regulating the bed of the
river. For this purpose, the banks must be ameliorated and
strengthened there, where the stream threatens to overflow
and destroy them — ^but they must neither be drawn too
close to each other nor kept too far apart ; above all, the
attempt must never be made to throw a dam across the
bed, inasmuch as it would accumulate the waters and
necessarUy bring about a general inundation. The King
seemed satisfied with this simile. I added, in England the
banks had been drawn too far apart, in Hanover and in
Hesse they had been drawn too near to each other — and
that I hoped Prussia would be able to hold a mean. The
King said he thought he might be able to do the same.
The third point which was touched upon by the King
was the rapprochement between us and Austria, and he was
desirous to know, what significance was to be attached to
the aUusions to that rapprochement made by me. I answered
that of late there had been a greater unity of opinion in the
manner of seeing the great questions of politics, which had
necessarUy called forth on both sides more friendly feelings
— ^that amongst other things. Count Pourtal^ and Prince
Metternich had, in a lengthened conversation, exchanged
thoughts, and that the Count had placed in the immediate
foreground certain reforms in the internal policy of Austria,
that the answer received from Vienna had been favour
able, and that measures had been taken in the sense above
referred to, which we were justified in considering as partly
the result of our observations (Hungary, Reichsrath, etc.).
The King inquired what it was I desired, in order that a
real rapprochement might take place.

i860] BERLIN 233
I answered, Austria must cease to treat Prussia as a
parvenu, and must of her own free accord recognise her as a
Great Power and her equal. The King, ' Do you really
consider that she does not do so ? '
I replied that I could see no signs of it. Austria looks
upon Prussia as a State, which, on the first opportunity,
she would force back to the position it occupied before the
Seven Years War, and looks upon this result as the main
object of her policy. This it is, which accounts for the
perpetual opposition, which we find against everjiihing,
which raises Prussia, however little, in public opinion. The
territorial distribution settled upon for Prussia at the
Congress of Vienna had no other object in view, than to
prevent her development to the strength and concentrated
power such as, after the levee de bouclier of 1813-1815, she
had a right to expect to be raised to — as in spite of the
geographical malformation with which she was invested
Prussia continued year by year to develop, and moraUy as
well as physically to make rapid strides. Austria was fain to
find other means to weaken her. The means adopted was
the calumny that Prussia had no other idea beyond that
of uniting the territorial groups of which .she was composed
by the annexation of the intervening neighbours. Every
look, which Austria makes her neighbours take on the map,
must convince them that Prussia must tend in that direc
tion. The deduction is evident, that Austria alone can give
protection against such projects, as Austria, so she says at
least, has no such aggrandising policy — and much more
feels called upon to maintain in their integrity those terri
torial existences which Prussia hankers after.
For these doctrines, Austria has found apt scholars
amongst a number of the German Princes. This affords
the key to the enigma, that Prussia is universally regarded
as the ogre, desirous of swaUowing up the States of Germany.
The experiences of forty-five years all going to prove the
exact reverse have not sufficed to remove this prejudice —
nay, it is perhaps more inveterate now than it ever was.
I must wait and see whether my last speech from the
throne and my present attitude wiU be able to uproot it ;
but no one can blame me for feeling hurt at such pre-

234 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
conceived opinions against me. But if Austria should
cease upon every opportunity from an effort to injure us,
and caU upon the Princes of Germany to repose confidence
in us, we shall be able at once to come to terms — if not, we
shall never do so.
The King said that this point of view was exceedingly
interesting to him, and that he had hitherto been wholly
ignorant of it, and that as far as he was concerned, he never
shared it. He asked me whether what I said was my
positive conviction, which I energetically affirmed.
He then went on to say, that he certainly could not deny
that the fear of aggrandisement on the part of Prussia
lived in many heads, and that he had none of it, but that
our policy last year in the Austro-Italian question had done
us harm, and had given birth to the notion, that we were
desirous of precipitating Austria into destruction.
I answered by asking whether people had forgotten
that the Prussian army was in fuU march on the Rhine at
the time that the truce was made, and the peace of ViUa
franca concluded. I repeated to him the mUitary measures
taken on the 20th and 29th of AprU, on the 14th of June,
and the ist of July, and inquired of him when his army
was in marching order. He answered, just at the moment
when the demand for moving forward, that is the first days
of July. I answered him that Prince Frederick of Wiirtem
berg had ipsissimis verbis given me the same answer in
regard to the Wiirtemberg army, and that I was bound,
therefore, to put the question — ^how it was possible that in
AprU they coiUd aUow the cry to be raised of an immediate
march on Paris, when the German armies, with the
exception of that of Prussia, were not prepared to wage
war, even if I had been wiUing to undertake it ? If I had
mobUised my army in the month of AprU, I should have
had to march to Paris alone, whUst they remained immov
able tUl July. I had, however, other reasons for not
mobUising so soon. According to the views with which
the late Count Hatzfeldt had returned to Berlin from
Paris, the Emperor was only waiting to see in Germany a
distinct intention of war, in order, with the whole of his
force, to change the theatre of war from Italy to Germany.

i860] BERLIN 235
It became consequently my policy to allow the French to
be fairly engaged in Italy, so that at the moment, when
Germany declared war to France, we should only find in
the latter country a comparatively small portion of her
armies, and that thus our game would be made easier.
And, I continued, was not July (the date at which we had
strategically disposed our army) the moment when such a
combination became possible, if in the meantime the
Peace of VUlafranca had not come across it ? The King
gave his fuU assent. He said that the views of Count
Hatzfeldt had been whoUy unknown to him, and asked,
what then I considered the real cause of this sudden con
clusion of peace ? I answered that, for my part, I found
this cause in the ideas which I had just developed to him
in reference to the feelings entertained by Austria towards
Prussia. Prussia was on the point, at the head of her army,
and at the head of the German Confederation, to carry the
war to France, at a moment, as I had just explained, when
the chances were all in our favour. Had we been victorious,
Prussia would have come out with a heightened position in
Germany and in the world at large. It was the task and
the will of Austria to prevent this, and for this purpose the
sacrifice, even of Lombardy, did not seem too great.
The King : Do you really and truly believe this to have
been the case ? I can tell of a letter, which Napoleon
showed to Francis Joseph, which contained the expression
of your full determination never to draw the sword for
Austria. I : I have heard the same story, and not to discuss the
question as to whether it was an anecdote invented for the
purpose by Napoleon, I asked him what I was to think
of Francis Joseph, if he could believe a statement of this
sort from the mouth of his enemy, whUst his own Field-
Marshal, Prince Windischgratz, who was at that time at
Berlin, was telegraphing to him from hour to hour that
the armies were in full march on the Rhine. That
Napoleon knew this right weU, and on that account in
his peace manifesto aUeged as his motive for peace the
danger of a war on the Rhine. The sudden conclusion of
the peace made all clear — it proved that Napoleon's con-

236 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
elusions had been quite right and Francis Joseph's quite
wrong. The King was evidently very much astonished at
my answer and in the motives I alleged as having brought
about the Peace of ViUafranca. He asked me to give him
a short statement respecting the military preparations
made by Prussia, which I promised him, and which I gave
him next morning in writing.
In a later conversation, the King inquired whether I
considered that a meeting with the Emperor of Austria
was advisable, and whether, from such a meeting, I thought
that satisfactory results were to be anticipated. I replied,
that I should have no objection on my part to such a
meeting, if the Emperor Francis Joseph gave me the oppor
tunity, as it was impossible for me to take the first step
after the manifesto of Schonbrunn, which contained ex
pressions of far too injurious a nature for me — and the
impression of which the Emperor had never sought to re
move, either by diplomatic means or auf vertrautem Wege.
I took the opportunity once more to advert to the
innumerable military measures taken by Prussia and
Germany, from AprU to July of last year, to make the
ingenious character of this document clear to him.
The King replied, that he had not known that I had
taken the manifesto en mauvaise part, but that he likewise
was of opinion that the first step towards a meeting must
come from Austria. I rejoined that if a meeting were to
take place, I declared in advance that I should remain
true to my principles not to enter into any hasty alliances,
or to undertake any territorial guarantees, but to keep the
discussions respecting possible eventualities of war, in
which Prussia — not otherwise than in conjunction with
Austria and the rest of Germany — should move forward.
It seems to me as if the King were intentioned to bring
about a meeting of this kind.
{End of Memorandum.)
This meeting between the Prince Regent and the
Emperor Francis Joseph took place at Teplitz, on 25th July.
Baden-Baden, which had been the scene of so brilliant
an assembly of crowned heads, was described as follows

i860] BERLIN 237
by Morier, in a letter to his father, dated i8th September
i860. ' . . . Baden, which I had never before seen in the
season, pleased me mighty much. It is quite the place for a
diplomatist to frequent, as a more cosmopolitan company
one cannot well imagine, and many people from various
corners of the globe I had long wished to meet and to
become acquainted with I found congregated there,
amongst others Bacourt, who begged to be particularly
remembered to you. Of old acquaintances there were
Madame Kalergis,! more briUiant than ever, though
when I saw her she had been two days au fond de son lit
crying, and only got up for a couple of hours, intending
to go to bed and cry again towards the short hours of the
morning ! Then my dear friend, the beautiful grand
mother. Countess Lottum {nee Putbus), Madame Decazes
{n6e Stackelberg), old Piickler-Muskau, the Loftuses, who
have bought a house and charmingly furnished it, and
spend their yearly leave of absence there. ... Of new ac
quaintances (exclusively of the Ladies' Club, which is the
exclusive speciality of Baden) the pleasantest are the
Londonderrys amongst the Britishers, and the Due de
RicheUeu amongst the foreigners . Lady Londonderry, with
the beaux restes of extraordinary beauty, is a very pleasant
genial body — ^he, not at all otherwise than agreeable.
The Due de Richelieu full of wit and esprit and comme il
faut to boot. We had a charming petit diner d cinq, the
Londonderrys, Countess Lottum, the Due de Richelieu,
and myself. ... In the Ladies' Club (in which we men
are elected by the ladies, and of which I was made a member)
the beauties were Princess Obolensky and Countess Edmond
Pourtales, the latter quite lovely, toilettes mirobolantes.
The cocks, or rather hens, of the Club are Princess Menchikoff
and Madame Kalergis, very Russian, as you will perceive.
Coco Le Gonidec and a Comte d'Osmond, a wonderful
musician and driver of four-in-hand, having only one hand
to do both with, were the esprits remuants of the party.
Two most magnificent rooms, one caUed the salon Louis xv.,
j • NJe Nesselrode, niece of the Russian Chancellor.

238 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
finished only last year, furnished the framework of this
elegant pandemonium, and two halls and a very good
French theatre gave the extemal circumstance required,
and then the jolly heUs in the middle, with the fevered
gold-thirsting crowd under the glare of the gorgeous
candelabra, and then the beautiful wood perfume from
the Black Forest, wafted at sunset or later in the night,
seemingly fresh from the Great Bear that is resting over the
old Chateau — in fact, a righte merrie queer disreputable sort
of a place. On my arrival here I found a telegraphic dis
patch, the contents of which gave me no little pleasure, as
you may fancy, a pleasure which you will not a little share in.
It was a summons from Lord John RusseU to attend him
during the whole of his stay with the Queen in Germany,
and to repair accordingly to Coburg on the 25th instant.
As this has been totaUy unsolicited on my part, I may
consider it a feather in my cap. The Queen wiU be at
Coburg for a fortnight, so that it wiU be a good hole out
of this autumn Berlin dulness, and as, I believe. Lady
ChurchiU and Miss Bulteel accompany her, both of them
great friends of mine, it wiU be very joUy. There wiU
be, besides, the Princess Royal's Court, all of them " good
friends," and the Duke's ovra people, with whom for years
I have been " hail fellow well met," so that it wiU be a
righte jollie party. . . .
' I had the opportunity of a long talk with Lord Clarendon,
who accidentaUy came over here for a couple of days
from Wiesbaden, and I was very graciously received and
taken out for an airing by the Princess of Prussia. , . .'
The Princess of Prussia was a strong advocate of an
Anglo-Prussian Alliance, which at that time was equaUy
desired by the HohenzoUern Ministry and the Liberal
party, not only in Prussia but in the whole of Germany.
Morier to Lord Clarendon 'September i860.
' I received this morning a letter from Berlin of which,
as I think it might interest you, I venture to send you
the enclosed translation. It comes direct from head
quarters ; in fact, out of the Cabinet Intime of the Prince

i860] BERLIN 239
of HohenzoUern, and therefore contains not only perfectly
authentic information as regards the past, but exhibits
the views prevailing in those quarters with reference to
the present and the future. I cannot conceive a policy
more in accordance with ideas prevailing in England
than that described in this letter as having been acted upon
by Prussia at Teplitz — viz. non-interference with the
cause of Italian development as long as it is confined to
Italy, common action with Austria if France should
once more make this development the pretext of hostilities
against Austria. Conditions of aUiance — ^guarantees of
religious and political liberty within Austrian dominions,
withdrawal of the support hitherto given by Austria to the
reactionary policy of the Middle States.
' That our friends have had a very hard fight in carrying
the poUcy through, I need not tell you ; that they will be
surrounded by aU sorts of difficulties in further carrying
it out, there is no doubt. On the other hand, that an
energetic support on the part of the public Press in England
and of our diplomacy abroad would to an extraordinary
extent remove these difficulties, is a fact which I do not
think is sufficiently known or appreciated. The concluding
paragraph in the enclosed letter sufficiently shows this
one point at least. And to this it would be well worth while
to call attention if possible — that the Prussian Ministry
by following our advice, i.e. the advice of a British Liberal
Ministry, and making advances to Austria, has incurred
the suspicion amongst its Liberal supporters (who, n.b., are
to a man for the English alUance) of estranging England
from Prussia and throwing her into the hands of France.
{Copy of Letter)
' You know that in the meantime our ovra military organisa
tion has been completed — that we have now 262 battalions
of infantry of the Une (262,000 men), 81 reserve battalions
(Erzatzbatt. 81,000), 116 Landwehr (116 over of the ist levy,
116 of the 2nd levy) ; moreover, 2000 squadrons of Line Cavalry
(20,000), 128 of Landwehr (12,800). Of our ovra rifle guns
that have turned out completely successful, we have sent one
as a specimen and model to each of the Governments of Germany,
in proof of our being sincere and unegotistical, in our desire

240 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
to see the mUitary force of Germany bona fide strengthened.
The Ministry, as weU as the leaders of the party, who have
hitherto opposed the organisation, have agreed to its definitive
establishment upon the understanding that the BiU for equalis
ing and raising the land tax be passed in the course of next
Session. ' We fondly hope here, that England wUl not allow herself
to be misled, either by the last concession of France in Syrian
affairs, nor by the attitude of Russia, nor by the Imperial
Letter. But we are far from feeling secure that she won't, and
least of aU I. The position is clearly this, that Louis Napoleon
has, by the position taken by Prussia at Baden (and to the last
moment he hoped in vain that he would be able to carry out his
policy of the Rhine Frontier by means of a friendly arrangement),
by the meeting at Teplitz, by Lord Palmerston's speech, and the
project of coastal defences in England, received the impression
of a possible coalition growing up against him. He sees that
Russia, despite the ambition of Gortchakoff and the tenacity
with which that Minister holds to his Oriental plans, is neverthe
less not in a position to be of much use to him. His object
is to strangle in its birth this coalition (in its embryo shape).
With this object in view, as nothing can be done either at
Vienna or Berlin, he turns again to London. The great
question is, whether in London there is any desire to be made
further a fool of, and led by the nose.
' What the consequences may turn out to be, if England
aUows herself again to be caught, no man can tell.
' Our Liberals already reproach us with having caused by
the Teplitz meeting this new rapprochement between England
and France. They see, in this meeting, nothing but legiti
mist policy, and they maintain that by taking steps, mainly
at the desire of England, that we have estranged liberal England
from us. They don't observe, that owing to these circum
stances, France has changed her position, and fancy that
England is nearing France in opposition to legitimist politics.
Everything should be done to prevent England from really
altering her attitude, and letting herself be again caught.
The new confusion which would arise would then certainly
have to be paid for by us.'
On 25th September, Morier went to Coburg, where the
Queen and Prince Consort arrived with Lord John RusseU
in attendance.
' I have had a very interesting time,' he writes to his
father, on 3rd October. ' Poor George RusseU, Lord John's
private secretary, having been laid up with a severe attack
of bronchitis, I have been throwm very much with Lord

i860] BERLIN 241
John, not only officially but Ukewise non-officially. We
have had daily drives and long walks together. Yesterday,
a regular scramble across country. Dans I'intimite, he is
more pleasant than it is possible to describe, the pleasantest
chief to do business with and the pleasantest companion
to live with, an endless flow of anecdotes and a right
cheerie vein of humour of a sarcastic but not ungenial
kind running through all he says, and withal a real bona
fide Liberal from conviction and not from mere political
capital.' And of the Queen he wrote a few days later, to the same : —
' . . . On a variety of other occasions H.M. was equally
gracious to me. We made various excursions in the most
domestic fashion, nobody but the high personages, two
or three of the courtiers. Lord John and myself. On
one occasion, whilst scrambling up a steep mountain, it
coming on to rain, H.M. condescended to accept out of my
hand my umbrella (and such a bad un), and to protect her
gracious head therewith from the rain. On another occa
sion, when we went forth to hunt the savage pig, we arrived
at a spot in the forest where H.M. had in 1845, on her first
visit to Coburg, planted an oak. From this she wished a
branch to be plucked, which, having been brought to her,
she called to me and gave it to my special custody for the
rest of the day, making me responsible for its safe delivery
to her in the evening. I, of course, took tremendous care of
it, though for one moment I had no small fright in con
nection with it. A savage pig had been wounded, and I
could not resist snatching a spear, to have a stick at him,
and in the excitement of the moment the twig was dropped
and forgotten about. On returning, the fatal idea shot
across me that it was either lost or trampled upon, when
luckily I found it on the ground unscathed. Such, O
Muse ! are the mighty emotions with which a courtier's
life is convulsed.'
Many were the hours Morier spent on this occasion with
his paternal friend, old Baron Stockmar, in his house in the
Webergasse. Together they had rejoiced at the Prince
VOL. I. Q

242 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
Consort's almost miraculous escape from a carriage accident,
little guessing how soon he was to be snatched away by
illness. The royal visit lasted till 9th October, and at its conclu
sion Morier accompanied the royal party to Coblentz, where
they passed two days with the Prince Regent and the
Princess of Prussia. Amongst those assembled there were
the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden (daughter
of the Prince Regent), the Prime Minister, the Prince of
HohenzoUern, and the Foreign Minister, M. de Schleinitz,
with all of whom Lord John was enabled to exchange views
on the many questions of the day, and to work for a mutual
understanding between the two countries.
On leaving Coblentz, Morier paid several other visits on
the Rhine. At Bonn he had a long interview with Baron
Bunsen, the veteran diplomatist and life-long friend of his
family, which proved to be the last political conversation
which the then already dying statesman was fated to hold.
At Neuwied, the residence of the Prince and Princess of
Wied, he met the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of
Baden, accompanied by Roggenbach.
Morier to Lord John Russell ' November 1 860.
' Agreeably to the wish you expressed at Coblentz, that
I should give you some account of my interview with the
Grand Duke of Baden, I venture upon the following relation
of my visit to the Prince at Neuwied. I found on arrival
there that, besides my host and his wife, the only company
consisted of the Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden and
Baron Roggenbach, the Grand Duke's political bottle-holder,
an old tried friend of mine of ten years standing and a man
thoroughly deserving even of English respect, as the alpha
and omega of the movement which succeeded in untwining
the Concordat from off the body and soul of the Grand
Duchy after it had already half smothered it in its folds —
a small matter, it may be said, in a small and unimportant
country ; and small no doubt it is, if such matters are to be
measured by square mileage, but a very great matter and
an incalculable service it appears to any one acquainted

i860] BERLIN 243
with the pathology of dynasties and peoples in this by no
means unimportant portion of the world, — it was the plant
ing of the right standard in the right place, and if I were
asked generally what it is that Germany in a more general
way most required at the present moment, I should just
say the same thing — the right standard held by the right
standard bearer and displayed upon the right watch tower.
' As I had expected, it was the Grand Duke's desire to
speak d cceur ouvert on the subjects which altogether engross
his attention at present. This yearning on the part of a
Dei Gratia Sovereign to find some one with whom freely to
exchange thoughts that are highly creditable to himself and
of incalculable importance to the people he is called upon
to govern, and the extraordinary difficulty of finding such
persons, are facts well worth pondering over as curiously
characteristic of the sort of political atrophy which the
best meaning and most earnest men are reduced to by
the provincialism to which the petty prince system has
condemned Germany. With the one exception of Roggen
bach, there is not a single person in his Grand Duchy, not
one of his Ministers past or present, with whom the Grand
Duke can exchange ideas on political subjects that
are one shade removed from the daily routine of mere
administration. ' I found the Grand Duke very much preoccupied with
the conversation he had with you. He had had difficulty
in exactly explaining to you all he wished to say (a difficulty,
I may observe, arising not only from the hindrances afforded
by a foreign language, but from the individuality of the
man — in many ways to be accounted for, but with refer
ence to which one thing should be speciaUy noted, namely,
that a person in his peculiar circumstances, when he does
become possessed of liberal ideas, does so by such perfectly
different avenues and such perfectly different trains of
thought from those which are used by us, whose lungs have
been filled with free air ever since we could breathe at all,
that it is often very difficult to trace the process by which
the common goal has been attained). Notwithstanding
this difficulty, he had derived the most indescribable pleasure
from the unreserved bon vouloir with which you had entered

244 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
with him upon political subjects, and discovering that
you did not seem to share the general contempt for every
thing German which is universaUy in Germany ascribed to
English statesmen, and that you did not seem averse to
recognise as a desirable result the obtaining, if this could be
done lawfuUy and by other than revolutionary means, of
a new order of things in Germany which, whilst respect
ing existing rights, should yet afford the unity required for
the purposes of national defence and national development.
He seemed to long at some future occasion to have again
the opportunity of speaking out his views to you, and sub
mitting them thereby to the friendly test of your practical
statesmanship. ' The subject he seems to have been most desirous of
explaining to you was a plan of his according to which
Prussia, in conjunction with other of the liberal German
States, and if possible backed by England, should (on the
principle of the respectable partners in a bank caUing the
spendthrift partner to account) take some strong step to
induce Austria to make the internal reforms which seem
alone Ukely to save her from ruin. He talked at great
length on this subject, but as the plan is not the least
likely to be adopted, and falls naturaUy into the category
of pia desideria, I will not trouble you with it.
' The point of real interest was, of course, the step which
the Grand Duke, in conjunction with other of his brother
princes, is meditating to take at the Diet with a view to
prepare the way for an organic reform of the Federal
Constitution. I mentioned to you at Coblentz that some
thing of the sort was being prepared, but I had at the time
no idea that the plan was as fully matured as I was now
informed it was, or that the Grand Duke was to so great
an extent the heart and soul of the movement. The
manner and matter of the undertaking will, I hope, be made
clear to you in the enclosed Memorandum, translated from
a draft drawm up by the Grand Duke and Roggenbach,
after several interesting conversations in which His Royal
Highness did me the honour of explaining to me at full
length all his views on the subject — views which seem to
me to be singularly sensible and sober, and totaUy un-

i860] BERLIN 245
alloyed by any personal ambition or egotistical arriere
pensee — and examined and discussed the various lights
under which it was susceptible of being viewed. The
Memorandum was then drawn up with the object of
eliminating all unnecessary details, and of obtaining in
the clearest outline possible the principal political bearings
(features) of the case. It was, of course, a hurried piece of
workmanship, but I think it wiU nevertheless convey a
clearer apergu than could be derived from an accurate
reproduction of any of the lengthier memoranda. Drafts
of Constitution, etc., forming part of the actual machinery
with which the undertaking is to be worked, and which
I found necessarily full of comparatively uninteresting
minutiae. The Grand Duke kindly gave me the perusal
of the documents in question, and what I now enclose
certainly better than any of them conveys an idea of
the general bearings of the case. On one point especi
aUy the present Mem. seems to me satisfactorily to dispose
of a difficulty which, if I rightly understand you, you
suggested when we were talking this question over in its
merely abstract aspect on the boat bridge at Coblentz,
namely, how so great a revolution is to be attained by other
than revolutionary means ; how, that is, the break between
the past confederative plurality and the future unity was
to be bridged over without a solution of political continuity
in the separate existence of the several States, and with
out violence to existing rights therefore being somewhere
done, especiaUy when the tenacity of individual life more
particularly inherent in the four minor kingdoms is taken
into consideration. This difficulty, which some observation
of yours very strongly impressed upon my mind, I took the
liberty of appropriating and urging in the course of our
conversations — the basing the new Federal Constitution
upon a series of elaborate treaties between the several
States, and making the joining of the " Union " an act of
independent wiU on the part of each State, I think satis
factorily disposes of the difficulty.
' As regards the actual phase of the undertaking, it is this :
the Grand Duke of Baden has communicated his plan
confidentially to the Grand Duke of Weimar and the Duke

246 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
of Coburg, who I believe fully coincide with it, and are
ready to adopt it as their own. Before carrying it out,
however, two objects have to be gained, a preliminary
undertaking with Prussia (not so easy, I fear, as they
seem to imagine it), and which would ensure her passive
acquiescence, and the beating up of recruits among the other
Govemments to join in the step. Of the Free Towns and
the unimportant Waldeck they are certain, and reckon
with much confidence on Oldenburg and Brunswick, — this
would represent a very respectable posse comitatus.
' Of the practical results of a motion of this sort at the
Diet it is impossible at piesent to speak with any certainty.
That it would strike terror and dismay into the hearts of
most of the djmasties, the speeches of M. Borries ^ and Co.
as far back as last year are there to witness ; that it would
set loose a deep and perhaps irresistible current of pubUc
opinion in the direction indicated can hardly be doubted.
On the other hand, it would be taking the wind out of the
revolutionary sails, and by placing the movement within
the control of the natural leaders of such a movement,
the ' Magni Barones ' of a German Empire, it would afford
a far better chance of success than any democratic move
ment (in so really undemocratic a country as Germany)
could give a prospect of. What the step would really
amount to would be the raising of the right standard held
up by the right hands and displayed on the right watch
tower — which in the chaos to which all things political are
at the present moment reduced in Germany seems the
one great desideratum. It would be the setting up of the
brazen serpent in this political wilderness, to which the
chUdren of Israel might look up and live. At the same
time, the undertaking is compassed about with such vast
difficulties, there are so many prospective slips between
the cup and the lip, that it would be folly to attempt any
prophecy on the subject. Moreover, they may be such
that the whole plan may be destined to come to nothing,
though, when I left him, the Grand Duke seemed heart and
^ Borries, F. W. Graf von, b. 1802, d. 1883, Hanoverian statesman of
strong reactionary tendencies and opponent of German unity ; Minister of
State, 1851-1852, and again 1855-1862.

i860] BERLIN 247
soul in it, and perfectly determined on carrying it out.
If it should come to anything I shall have been able to
furnish you with the key to it, and it may prove interesting
to you to have had cognisance of the movement from its
embryo state. The facts I have communicated to you
have, however, I need hardly say, been confided to me
in strictest secrecy, though not without the wish that they
should be confidentially communicated to you. I do not
believe that above half a dozen persons have been made
acquainted with them, and I must therefore humbly beg
of you that you consider them as furnished strictly for your
personal knowledge only.
' I should have given you this account sooner, but I
have been laid up since my return to Berlin by a violent
attack of rheumatic gout. Things here are in a dismal
state. The Liberals are highly dissatisfied with the
Schleinitz curtain lectures to the Sardinian Cabinet ; on
the other hand, they are totally demoralised with the
promiscuous scurrility of the Times, which they persist
in considering as representing the feeling not only of the
English pubUc generally, but of Lord Palmerston in
particular. They seem to think all hope of an understand
ing with England impossible, partly from the stupidity and
weakness of their own Ministry, partly from the determined
hostility of public opinion in England, and under these
circumstances I am sorry to say that there are some of the
party who desire an alliance with France and Russia, which
should exchange the acquiescence of Prussia in Russo-French
plans in the East for a settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein
question in the north. I do not mean to say that is by
any means the view generally entertained by the Liberals,
but certainly here and there voices are heard to that effect
which would not have been so heard this time last year. It
cannot be denied that we do our best in England, the Times
at least, to throw cold water upon the party we could com
mand to a man in this country, and to strengthen the hands
of our enemies.'
'Baden Memorandum
' It is of paramount importance that Germany should de
velop out of the form of a " Confederation of States " (Staaten-

248 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
bund), such as the Federal Act and the Final Act of Vienna
constituted her, into that of a federated or " composite State "
(Bundesstaat) under a supreme federal Government.
' The word " Composite State " is that expression given by
Wheaton as the equivalent for Bundesstaat, but its use is
hardly sufficiently generaUy recognised to warrant its promis
cuous adoption. By the convenient word Bundesstaat the
Germans express a confederation like that of the United States
of America, in which the external sovereignty of the several
members is absorbed in the central organ, the internal
sovereignty only remaining intact in the several states, in contra
distinction to a confederation like that of Germany, in
which the external as well as internal sovereignty of the in
dividual members, except in very unimportant exceptions,
remains undiminished. " Federated States " seems the most
liberal rendering of the word, but even more the composition
requires formal adoption into the language.
' To obtain this object it is necessary that those functions
of the several sovereigns of Germany, the divided exercise of
which has hitherto faUed to secure the results worthy of which
a great nation, should for the future be united and concentrated
into a central organ.
' These functions may be classed under two heads, namely : —
(i) National Defence.
(2) National representation vis-d-vis of foreign countries.
Wliilst the sovereignty of the several Priaces would in principle
remain intact, the right can certainly not be denied to these
latter of delegating to what institutions or to what persons
they consider most fit for that purpose the exercise of certain
of their individual sovereign prerogatives. The reorganisa
tion of the German Confederation in this respect would there
fore remain an internal German question, and Germany could
claim, therefore, the non-intervention of Europe as not infring
ing upon the treaties of 1815.
Of England it is to be wished that she should, with reference
to Germany, represent the principle of non-intervention in the
same way that she has done so with regard to Italy.
II.
' In carrying out new federal organisation the following prin
ciples should be kept in view : —
' (i) In regard to the relation towards Austria, the present
nucleus of reciprocal rights and obligations which invests the
German Confederation as with the character of an " ever
lasting " pact would remain in their integrity.
' For the expression of this relation the most fitting form
would have to be sought for, which would probably be that
of an international alliance between Austria and the United

i86o] BERLIN 249
States of Germany (analogous to that which at a former period
existed between the cantons of Switzerland).
' (2) The remaining States of Germany would unite together
into a federated State, and would surrender to a central federal
power the exercise of the two functions above designated.
' (3) This central power would be composed, first of the Prussian
dynasty with a responsible Ministry. Second, of a representa
tion of the German nation in two Houses, in which the one would
represent the interests of the nation as a whole in the presence
of the individual interests ; whilst the other would have to
guard the interests of the separate States against the encroach
ments of the commonalty.
' (4) This representation would on the one side afford to the
individual States the guarantee that the central Government
would keep upon the terrain assigned to it, and not encroach
upon others not within its jurisdiction, which the interest
of the single States and the wishes of the population might
make it advisable should remain within control.
' On the other side it would enable the central Government
to fulfU effectuaUy the duties assigned in despite of particular
istic tendencies.
' (5) In this manner the new Constitution of Germany would
be founded upon a series of treaties between the independent
States, and a solid foundation be gained for the carrying out
of the Constitutional system.
' Those German States that would not choose to join the new
federated German State (Bundesstaat) would, in order that
the defensive power of Germany against France may not be
weakened, remain in the same confederate relation as Austria ;
that is, upon a footing of offensive and defensive alliance. This
most speciaUy refers to the probable position of Bavaria.
' Of England, it would be wished that her policy, which is
at present bent upon maintaining concord between the States
of Germany, should so far adapt itself to circumstances that,
in the event of such a union taking place under the leader
ship of Prussia, her exertions should be directed towards getting
Austria to accept the new position, and not to compromise
the peace of Europe by protests against the new order of things
in favour of the old untenable impotent federal organisation.
III.
' With reference to the way to reach these objects, and the
method to be adopted in finding this way, the following pro
positions should be more particularly kept in view : —
' (i) The initiative cannot be taken by Prussia, but should
best come from some of the smaller States, — on the other hand,
Prussia must confidentially express her opinion upon the op
portuneness of the moment at which such a step should be
taken. In so far as European relations are concerned, it would

250 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
be very desirable that England's opinion should likewise be had
upon the subject.
' (2) A confidential understanding must be arrived at with
Prussia upon the objects to be obtained, lest a great national
movement should a second time remain without results.
' (3) During the whole movement it should be kept in sight
that the defensive power of Germany against France should
never for one moment be weakened.
' (4) The first step towards carrying out any policy of this sort
would be a joint motion at the Diet by the Governments who
participated in it, somehow to the following effect : —
' That a committee be appointed for the treatment of the
question as to the organisation of the confederation to a
further development. To empower this committee, by means
of their respective representatives at Frankfort, to inquire
of the high Governments under what conditions such Govern
ments would be minded to co-operate in the creation of a
federal organisation based upon the above principles, and to
report within (say four weeks) upon the result of its opera
tion. ' (5) Upon the failure of this attempt the Governments to
consider what other step might be taken in this direction.

Lord John Russell to Morier
'Pembroke Lodge, November 12th, i860.
' . . . I have reflected a good deal on the German plans
you sent me, but am sorry to say I cannot see my way out
of the labyrinth, nor does the scheme you send me furnish
me a clue.
' The difficulty lies in the double supremacy of Austria
and Prussia. Austria supported by three or four Kinglings
will never yield to have an equal in Germany ; Prussia will
never admit a superior.
' I see no practical way of solving this difficulty at present.
But much may be done by constantly urging that Germany
ought to have an Emperor of Germany, and a Parliament
of Germany consisting of a House of Peers or Princes and a
House of Representatives.
' If such a Parliament were ever assembled, their first task
should be to choose an Emperor, leaving the diplomatic
representatives of the separate States to the choice of their
several States to keep them up or abolish them.
' If Prussia would have the goodness to agree to a fair

i860] BERLIN 251
settlement of the Italian question, Schleswig might be left
to us to mediate with Denmarlr, and the German question
would be made easier. . . .'
Morier to Lord John RusseU
'January 26ih-March yd, 1861.
' . . . The difficulties you see in the practical carrying
out of the Grand Duke of Baden's project for federal reform
are very real ones : that which you specially allude to is, I
think, now rapidly disappearing, if it has not already dis
appeared, the double supremacy of Austiia and Prussia,
the one representing after a fashion the traditional prestige
of the Empire, and ballasted with every variety of existing
privilege, dynastic and other; the other representing an
ideal, not as yet realised, and having only the gUded hope
of a better future to contrast with the imperfect, but to
many people tolerable, present. Such have hitherto un
doubtedly been the opposing forces which have checked
the development of German unity, — and Austria, with her
three or four Kinglings, and of late years with a staunch
supporter in the person of the Romanticist, now at last
gathered to his medieval ancestors, seated on the Prussian
throne, has had an easy task of it in maintaining her virtual
preponderance. The history of the last two years, how
ever, has altogether changed this relation between the
balancing forces, and Austria, since the Peace of ViUafranca,
and its immediate results upon her internal organisation,
has become, even in the eyes of the Kinglings (who are some
of them, e.g. Bavaria, already speculating on the sick's man
inheritance), whoUy impotent in regard to the internal
politics of Germany. Hence Prussia not only has the field
clear as regards the practical opposition which could be
yielded by her old rival, but {N.B., this is the re«^ meaning
of the Baden-Weimar project) she has a positive element
to work with, in the present sense of insecurity with which
the impotency of Austria inspires the smaUer States. This
sense of insecurity is rapidly becoming very like a panic,
and if it should reach this point there is no knowing what
results it may not bring about. The two principal direc
tions which the various political elements of Germany are

252 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT IMORIER [i860
being drifted into, under the influence of this panic, are on
the one hand that embodied in the Baden project, namely,
a Federal State with an hereditary head and a national
Parliament ; on the other, that of a close confederation of
the non-Prussian and Austrian d3masties inter se, necessarily
leading mutato nomine to something like a Confederation of
the Rhine under French protection, necessarily leading to
French protection I say, because without such a protection
a dynastic alliance of this kind could not hold its own
against the people governed by it. That this, at first sight,
appears to be incompatible with the virulent anti-French
and Vaterland hectoring of the Kinglings in 1859 I admit ;
but this very hectoring was more than anything else the
result of a bad conscience. They knew that their people
did not trust them, and that the popular memory had not
forgotten from what foreign manufactory the royal purple
was derived that had become the ' motley ' wear of the ci-
devant princekins. In a conversation I had in the spring
of 1859 with Prince Wittgenstein, the Duke of Nassau's
Prime Minister (the which Duke makes common cause with
the Kinglings), he openly owned to me that it was quite d
contre coeur that his Duke and himself blew the national
and anti-French trumpet so loud ; they only did so, he said,
because if they did not, the Duke's tenure of his Dukery
would not be worth twenty-four hours' purchase. About
the same period (May 1859) the King of Wiirtemberg wrote
an autograph letter to the Emperor Napoleon in which he
said nearly the same thing, adding that he and his house
could never forget what they owed to the House of
Napoleon, so that the strong language he was obliged to
hold in Germany was forced from him in the way of self-pre
servation only. This is an element of danger which it would
be unwise to overlook, and which is the more to be taken
heed of that it naturally works underground, and that if it
should gather to a head its effects will be sudden and in
appreciable, — nor must the depth of infamy which such a
policy presupposes be urged as an argument against it. I
have no wish to be too hard upon the individual Kinglings,
most of whom are insignificant enough, but the class of
statesmen who rule in these minor German Courts, the crop

i860] BERLIN 253
raised during the reactionary years, the Hassenpflugs,^ the
Borries, the Beusts,^ and the Dalwigks,^ it is impossible to
have too bad an opinion. For ten years they have used
the protectorate of Austria to secure impunity to their own
execrable misgovernment and to emasculate the national
spirit of Germany, and, this protectorate failing them, they
are ready (God forgive me if I wrong them !) to exchange
it for any contingent danger (which any sudden unfavour
able conjuncture may make an immediate and pressing
one, — for these gentlemen understand each other right
well), and against the present danger caused by the daily
increasing sense of material insecurity which the crumbling
together of the Austrian Empire engenders, the only remedy
is the intensifying and giving a practical direction to the
national feeling, the urging constantly, as you state in your
letter, that Germany should constitute herself under an
Emperor with a German Parliament. A strong agitation
in this sense, headed by the natural representatives of it, the
sovereigns of the third class States, which would take away
from it all revolutionary character, would, I feel confident,
carry everything before it, Kinglings and Ministers included,
who can no longer, as in 1850, have Austria to fall back on.
But such an agitation on the part of the sovereigns in ques
tion, and so formal a step as a proposal of the kind intended
at the Diet, are impossible except upon a previous under
standing with Prussia — and here, exactly as I foresaw and
foretold in my last letter, is the hitch. A direct negotiation
was attempted with the Prussian Cabinet on the subject,
and entrusted to the Weimar Prime Minister last November,
who came to Berlin specially for the purpose. But he only
got civil phrases, and was told that desirable as were the
results striven after, Pmssia could not enter upon the
subject tiU the pending question of the mUitary organisa
tion of the Confederation was settled ; a non sequitur, the
absurdity of which needs no commentary ! The Grand
1 Hassenpflug, Hans Daniel, b. 1794, d. 1862, Minister of State of
Electoral Hesse.
2 Beust, Friedrich Ferdinand Graf, Saxon and Austrian statesman, b. 1 809,
d. 1886 ¦ Minister of State of Saxony, 1849-1860 ; of Austria, 1866-1871.
1 Dalwigk, Karl F. Reinhart Freiherr von, b. 1809, d. 1880, Minister of
State of Hesse Darmstadt.

254 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
Duke of Baden and the Duke of Coburg, in their late visit
to BerUn, again urged with every argument in their power
the necessity of coming to an understanding, but they met
with as little success — the same generalities and civil for
mulas, the same real manque de coeur for the matter was
all they found. Assuming, then, the dangers to be such as I
describe them, I have certainly not exaggerated them, and
assuming the only remedy to be a rapid development of the
national element, we arrive at the melancholy conclusion
that the real bar to this development lies in the incredible
imbecility of the Prussian Cabinet — in the small-heartedness
of the Ministers, and (it's no use mincing the matter) the
narrow-mindedness of the Sovereign. That at a moment
like the present the rulers of three such prominent States
in the Confederation as Baden, Weimar, and Coburg should
have been found ready to make conjointly such a step
vis-d-vis of Prussia is one of those extraordinarily lucky
conjunctures which, for years past, have in succession been
placed within the reach of Prussian statesmen, and con
sistently (the only way they have been consistent) rejected
by them.'

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUITON 255

CHAPTER XII
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT IN ELECTORAL HESSE
Of aU the questions which at that time agitated Germany,
one of the most vitally important was undoubtedly the
Constitutional Conflict in Electoral Hesse, where the
Elector, his Parliament, and indeed his whole country, were
engaged in an internecine struggle, which, at one period
seriously threatening to bring about war in Germany, had
been protracted for years and years.
As early as 1847 Prince Albert had pointed out ^ to
King Frederick WiUiam iv. of Prussia the unutterable
dangers to the monarchical principle, in the existing state
of Europe, of a conflict in which the Sovereign had put
himself so flagrantly and entirely in the wrong. In 1850
the Hesse question had been on the point of bringing
about a rupture between Prussia and Austria, only averted
by the former capitulating to the latter at Olmiitz. In
i860 the Hesse conflict was as far from being solved as
ever, and still remained one of the burning questions of
the day. Memorandum on Hessian Constitution 'February 2Sth, i860,
' The conflict respecting the Constitution of Electoral
Hesse, when extricated from the formalities and im
penetrable phraseology in which every question that is
brought within the range of Dietal politics becomes involved,
affords one of the most interesting episodes of the struggle
for political liberty in which, since the commencement of
the century, the German nation has been engaged.
' It is this identification of it with interests that in some
¦" Letter of 12th December 1847, Denkwiirdigkeiten, Herzog v. Coburg,
vol. i. p. 137.

256 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
form or other are represented throughout the entire extent
of the Confederation which lends to it its special political
importance. For, however interesting an isolated con
stitutional contest in so small a state as Electoral Hesse
might be from the merely historical point of view, yet,
amidst the vast proportions which the political relations
of modern Europe have assumed, a contest of this kind
could hardly lay claim to an interest of an immediate and
practical kind.
' The parties to the present conflict, however, are, as
regards Germany at large, so to speak, of a " representative "
character, the interests they are attacking or defending
are (with the one exception of the naked absolutism of
Austria) equally objects of defence and attack, the problems
they are attempting to solve have corresponding problems
equaUy awaiting their solution, in every one of the States
of which the Confederation is composed.
' Nor is this a merely figurative mode of expression, for
in the issue of the question at present pending before the
Diet is in a very literal manner involved the settlement of
the organic relation in which for the future the Sovereigns
of the States composing the Confederation and the peoples
ruled over by them respectively, stand towards each
other.
r ' The question to be solved may thus be broadly stated : —
[ ' Can engagements entered into between a Sovereign and
his people be set aside by a verdict of the Diets based upon
a one-sided appeal of the Sovereign to the Diet ? or, in other
words, —
' Can a body composed of the Diplomatic Representa
tives of the executive organs in the several States of the
Confederation cancel, and on its ovm authority create
afresh, organic laws in the individual States.
' Looked at from the moral rather than from the
poUtical point of view, the question assumes this further
form : —
' Can the Diet claim, upon the mere abstract principle
of the Divine Right of Monarchy, the right of dispensing
a Sovereign from his oath of allegiance to a long established
Constitution ?

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 257
' Such, concisely expressed, is the question of principle
involved in the case.
' The question of fact may thus be formulated : —
' The legal basis on which the relations between Sovereign
and people in the Electorate of Hesse were founded, having
been destroyed by an act of violence committed by the
Elector through the instrumentality of certain Governments
claiming to represent the federal body, and by the formal
ratification of this act later on by the majority of the
resuscitated Diet, and a solution of continuity having
thereby arisen in the legal relations obtaining between
Sovereign and people, by what means is such a legal basis
to be re-established, and how is the intermediate state
between the past legal basis and the future legal basis to
be bridged over ?
' It is evident that in every attempt to elucidate the
facts that have led to the necessity of solving the above
difficult problem there are two sides of the question that
must be kept distinct from each other, and separately
apprehended, viz : —
' I. The relation between the Sovereign of Hesse and his
people. ' 2. The manner in which this relation is affected by the
Constitution of the Confederation of which the Sovereign
and people in question form a unit.
' The matter, however, is further complicated by the
fact that at the time of the violent intervention above
referred to, the parties so intervening were not the old
German federal body of the Treaty of Vienna, but two
distinct groups of States, of which the one under the
Hegemony of Austria claimed indeed to represent that
body, assumed therefrom the right to interfere, and the
other under the Hegemony of Prussia disputed this right.
It is true that Prussia afterwards became an accomplice,
after the act, in the judicial murder of the Hesse Con
stitution ; but, nevertheless, the difference thus originally
noted has left its impress upon the whole of the later
transactions in the case.
' A third point, therefore, in addition to the other two,
wiU require to have especial attention paid to it, viz. : —
VOL. I. R

258 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
' The relation which Austria and Prassia respectively
stood in towards the Sovereign and Constitution of Hesse
at the time of the intervention in 1850-1851.
' With every wish to obtain conciseness it will be impos
sible in the total absence of any consecutive account of the
history of this question to bring out these points in a clear
light without entering somewhat into the historical ante
cedents of the question.
' And in the first place, the attempt must be made to
appreciate clearly what were the organic laws that deter
mined the relations between the Sovereign and people in
the Electorate previous to 1850, and what was the nature
of the conflict that brought about the de facto abrogation of
those laws by the so-called " Federal Execution," and in
the next place to ascertain exactly within what limits is
restricted the competency of the Diet in questions touching
such organic laws in the individual States.
' The Constitution put out of force by the Executive
troops of Austria and Bavaria in 1850, was that generally
knovra as the Constitution of 1831, modified by certain
alterations made to it in 1848-1849.
' The great argument used by the Hesse Ministry and
their advocates against this Constitution (independently of
the imputed incompatibility of some of its articles with the
provisions of the Federal Constitution) is, that, as the off
spring of the revolutionary impulse given to Germany by
the French July Revolution, and as stiU further modified
during the revolutionary movement of 1848-1849, the
principles upon which it was based sapped the root of the
monarchical principle.
' It is worth while, therefore, to inquire in how far this
assertion is carried out by facts, — in how far, that is, the
Constitution of 1831 answers to the character of one of the
doctrinaire constitutions formed on the a priori abstractions
of the ultra-Liberal schools of modem continental Europe,
of which there are not wanting specimens in the smaller-
states of Germany, or on the contrary, in how far it is the
embodiment of certain organic principles which in some
shape or other had pre-existed in the Electorate.
' This examination will show that, far from answering

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 259
to the former description, it, in aU essential characteristics,
answers to the latter, and that on the three principal points
on which it has been so fiercely attacked — the right to refuse
taxes, the independence and autonomous action of the
tribunals, and the independent position of the servants of
the State — the Constitution of 1831 is only a more system
atised application of principles that have already been
in force in the Electorate ; and it wiU thus be seen that the
monarchical principle, such as it was understood in the
Electorate previous to 1831 (and it should be remembered
that the historical basis on which the monarchical basis
rests in Germany is identical, or nearly so, in all the States
of the Confederation), was in no essential manner modified
by the provisions of this Constitution. The absolutistic
principle, as enshrined in the formula of the "Divine Right,"
so constantly put forward in this controversy is, on the other
hand, an essentially new idea in Germany, as in a momentary
impulse of straightforwardness the great organ of the party
representing it proclaimed, when it christened it the New
Prussian Gazette, and this principle, which the whole conflict
respecting the Hesse Constitution was waged to stamp into
a federal law, is in its very essence a heritage of the revolu
tionary years.
' From a period reaching far back into the mists of medi
eval times, the absolute power of the great vassals of the
Empire (the present independent sovereigns of Germany)
over the territories held by them had been restricted by
the corporate rights of the " States," through whose instru
mentality alone they could raise supplies. Possessed of
little control over the use to which these supplies should be
put when raised, the " States " in question were invested
with the undisputed prerogative of voting or withholding
them. In Hesse, more than elsewhere, this prerogative had
been preserved intact, and the history of the fourteenth,
fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries
afford continually-recurring instances of its solemn recogni
tion on the part of the rulers pro tem.
' The independence of the tribunals was a no less sacred
principle recognised from the earliest times amongst the
organic laws of the Hessian State. It received its most

26o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
solemn consecration in the Edict of the Landgrave Frederick
in the year 1743, with reference to the " Supreme Tribunal
of Appeal " {Ober Appellations Gericht), whose constitutional
use of the rights it was thus invested with, as reconsecrated
by the Constitution of 1831, became, as the sequel wiU show,
the chief points of attack in the anti-constitutional cam
paign of the Hassenpflug Ministry. By this Edict there were
brought within the competence of the Supreme Court then
constituted, all matters touching the Rights and Preroga
tives of the Landgrave, as exercised by himself or by his
public or private servants (Beamte und Bedienten), and it
was ruled, that from the decisions of this Court as based on
Law and arrived at by the Members composing it as re
sponsible to God and their consciences only, there should
be no appeal.
' The independence of the servants of the State vis-d-vis
of the Executive, so loudly declaimed against as a revolu
tionary innovation, was only an inevitable coroUary from
the principle established in the creation of this Court. For,
the moment these public servants became responsible for
their acts to the Law, that Law became on the other side
bound to protect them in the discharge of their public
duties against the caprices of the Executive.
' Such were the broad foundations on which, from far
remote times, the liberties of the Hessian people were based.
' In the year 1816, they received a fresh recognition.
The attempt was then made to give to the antiquated
" States " that had been handed down much in statu quo
from the sixteenth century, a form more analogous to a
modern Constitution. It broke down from the impossibility
of the then Elector and the " States " coming to an agree
ment on the question of the " Domains " and Crown
property. ' In the articles, however, that had been proposed by
the Government of the Elector for the acceptation of the
" States " the principles above recorded were embodied,
and that much in the same state in which they were after
wards incorporated into the Constitution of 1831.
' In that year the work which had faUed of being accom
plished in 1816 was successfully carried out. A Constitu-

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 261
tion or body of organic laws, regulating once for aU the
relations in which all the members composing the State
of Hesse Electoral, from the Elector downwards, were to
stand in towards each other, was definitely settled upon,
in the only legal manner in which such an organic law
could be passed, viz. by the free and untrammelled consent
of the contracting parties : the Sovereign on the one part,
the constitutional Representatives of the country, i.e.
the corporations of the States, on the other.
' The Constitution thus arrived at was, as regards the
interpretation of the principles above noted, of a certainly
very liberal kind ; on the other hand, as regards the com
position of the body by which the power of the Elector
was to be balanced, it was essentially conservative.
' The Chamber of 1830 was, in reality, composed of the
old " States " of the Electorate, only with a more numerous
and bona-fide Representation of the " third " and " fourth "
Estates — of the boroughs, that is, and of the small rural
freeholders. Moreover, instead of discussing and voting
as before " curially," that is, according to the several
estates they sat in, they formed part of one Chamber in
which the votes were all equal.
' The foUowing are some of the more important of the
powers with which the Chamber was invested.
' As regards the granting of Supplies, it was provided — •
' That the States were bound to provide the necessary
means for carrying on the ordinary and extraordinary
business of the State, and that from the year 1831 no tax,
either direct or indirect, could be levied without the sanction
of the States.
' That in every writ ordering the levy of a tax, the
consent to its levy on the part of the States should be
specially recorded, and, in the absence of this record,
that no public servant could be authorised to proceed to
the levy, nor any person held bound to pay the tax.
' That, after the period for which the supplies have been
voted has come to an end, the taxes on the old estimate
might continue to be raised for a term of six months, if,
in consequence of extraordinary circumstances, either
the States could not immediately be called together, or.

262 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
if they had been dissolved before a new budget had been
voted, or, in the event of the discussion on the new budget
being prolonged beyond the term which the former budget
had been voted.
' As regards the position of the Tribunals, it was pro
vided —
' That the judicial and administrative organs should be
kept whoUy distinct and apart, and
' That in any conflict respecting the sphere of the
administration and that of the tribunals, the latter were
to decide according to the existing laws.
' As regards the position of the publie servants, it was
provided —
' That no public servant could be removed or dismissed
against his will, or have his salary diminished or withdrawn,
except in virtue of a sentence pronounced by the com
petent Court.
' Every public servant was made responsible for his
public acts, and even for an act done by the order of his
superior, if such act was against the Constitution, a state
official could be prosecuted before the tribunals by the
" States," if these were not sitting, by the permanent
Committee who represented them, when they were not
assembled. ' For the safeguarding of the Constitution, an oath, not
merely passively to observe it, but actively to maintain it,
was required of the Sovereign upon his accession before
the oath of allegiance was taken by the States — further,
the same oath had to be taken by the States, and by every
official of every grade, by the army and by every citizen
upon coming of age. Thus the whole male population of
Electoral Hesse were bound by oath to maintain the
organic law of 1830.
' Further, the right of pardon for offences committed
against the Constitution and adjudged to be such by the
supreme Court, was not accorded to the Elector. This,
it may be fairly argued, is a very direct encroachment upon
the prerogative of the Crovm ; but it is, nevertheless, not
much more than a modern adaptation of the Edict of 1743
above referred to.

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 263
' Such was the Constitution of 1830. It worked very
well for the first few years, and until the reactionary period
that followed in Germany on the liberal movement of 1830
had again fairly set in, then, on account of its very success,
it became a thorn in the side of the reactionary Governments
of the Confederation. From this period down to '48, a
struggle was carried on between the Elector and the
" States," in which, though the former was unable to
bring about a change in the Constitution itself, he succeeded
by the use of every sort of chicanery in reducing its action
to a dead letter. It was in the early years of this struggle,
that the afterwards notorious Hassenpflug (or Hessenfluch,
" The Curse of Hesse," as the popular voice designated
him) first won his spurs, and displayed his ability in the
art of bullying a Representative Assembly, and of twisting
the meaning of the plainest laws into the sense the most
opposite. Dismissed by the Elector in 1837, for some
reason not known, he successively entered the service of
the Prince of HohenzoUern, and of the King of Holland,
as Civil Governor of Luxemburg, and lastly of Prussia, where
in 1845 he accepted the post of Procureur du Roi at
Greifswald. His successor at Cassel, however, Schseffer,
had been sufficiently schooled by him in the arts in which
he excelled to keep up his system in full force up to the
year 1848.
' Reduced as the Constitution became, by this process, to
almost a shadow, yet its continuing to exist at all for the
space of eighteen years was not without great and abiding
results. All classes of society became, by the joint defence
they had been engaged in of rights that had become dead
to all, welded together into a common political existence,
and in contradistinction to almost all the other states of
Germany, the spirit of revolutionary anarchy found no
congenial elements in the Electorate. The remarkable
result was that, on the breaking out of the events of the year
'48, in Hesse alone no revolution took place ; no constituent
assembly was called together, and no organic law initiatory
of a new era was passed. The Hessian people were fully
content with the establishment de facto of the Constitution
existing de jure, and the only change brought about was a

264 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
change of Ministry, the new advisers of the Elector being
chosen from amongst men who had the confidence not of a
majority only, but of the entire Chamber.
' The new Ministry did not even proceed to the dissolution
of the Chamber, and the Hesse Constitution saUed into the
revolutionary waters of '48 with a representative assembly
elected during the period of the fierce reaction that had pre
vaUed during the preceding years.
' The only organic modification of the Constitution
during the years '48 and '49 was the promulgation of a
more extended electoral law, by no means, however, based
on universal suffrage, and of an enactment making the
Minister of War responsible for acts done by the Elector as
supreme head of the army.
' These two years were marked by the complete quiet
and order that prevaUed throughout the Electorate, and
by the loyalty and good feeling displayed both by the
Chamber and the people towards the Elector. In their
external policy the Ministry, unanimously supported by
the Chamber, were very fervent adherents to the cause of
German unity. When the Frankfort Constituent Assembly
broke down, however, a split took place in the Chamber,
the constitutional or conservative majority with the Ministry
at its head adhering as the last hope of the realisation of
this idea to the " Union " of States under Prussia known
as the Three Kings' AUiance {Drei-Konigs-Bund) .which pro
posed by means of the Constituent Assembly of Erfurt to
bring about a German " Federated State " to the exclusion
of Austria ; the democratic minority, on the other hand,
with a more correct calculation of the political chances of
the undertaking, opposing themselves to this scheme.
' Thus matters stood when on the 3rd of February 1850
a change of Ministry was announced. The date at which,
and the circumstances under which, the announcement
was made, are worth noting. Nothing had occurred to
disturb the internal tranquiUity of the Electorate. The
existing Ministry was at perfect unity with the constitu
tional majority of the Chamber, and that majority fairly
represented the country at large. The time had arrived,
however, when the conquest of Hungary by the Russian

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 265
army and by the re-conquest of her Italian Provinces by
her own army, Austria was enabled to resume her natural
position in Germany as the point d'appui for the reactionary
policy of all the smaller States. The armed revolution
in Southern Germany had been put down by the arms of
Prussia, the more invidious task of putting down the Con
stitution as legally established was reserved for Austria.
' Electoral Hesse presented the most flagrant case, for
there, with the exception of some half-dozen pupUs of
Hassenpflug, the whole country was unanimous in its
attachment to the Constitution. This, it is true, increased
the difficulties of the case, but, on the other hand, in the
event of success, it promised a victory doubly brilliant.
One man and one only was supposed to be equal to the
task, and Hassenpflug was recalled from Prussia. The
infamy of his private character almost simultaneously
became notorious by his being traduced before the Prussian
tribunals on the charge of forgery. He got away in right
time, however, and assumed his ministerial functions.
Shortly afterwards he was sentenced in contumaciam by
the Criminal Court of First Instance to fifteen years' im
prisonment and hard labour. The Superior Court later
on, it is true, reversed this sentence on a formal ground,
but left the moral certainty of his guilt untouched.
' There can be no moral doubt that the conflict brought
about by Hassenpflug formed a part of a preconceived
plan, and that the two objects he was created Minister to
obtain were, on the one hand, the separation of Hesse
from the " Union " or " Three Kings' Alliance," with a
view to assist Austria in resuscitating the defunct Diet,
and on the other, the bringing about of a state of things in
the Electorate which should enable him either of his own
power to crush the Constitution or afford an opportunity
to the resuscitated Diet to interfere by arms in the affairs
of the Electorate, and to, by a formal act, give proof to
Europe of its recovered prestige.
' The means used for compassing these objects and the
conflict resulting therefrom are well worth a few minutes'
consideration, as they probably afford a unique specimen
of their kind in the annals of constitutional history.

266 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
' The people of Hesse well knew that they were fighting
against hopeless odds, and that a recourse to arms as a last
resource was denied them on account of the overpowering
external force that could be brought to bear upon them —
the only weapon they had in their hand was the text of the
Constitution. Hassenpflug, it is evident, at first thought
that he could have recourse to the same arsenal, and, by
casuistical interpretations of that text, conquer the
Chamber and reduce the Constitution to a dead letter ; the
steadiness with which the game was played on the other
side, however, soon rendered this a hopeless task, and he
was soon forced into the most glaring violation of some of
the clearest provisions of the Act of 1830.
' The main outline of this conflict, which lasted from
the 28th of February, the date of the formation of the
Hassenpflug Ministry, to the ist of November 1850, the day
upon which the Austro-Bavarian corps of execution crossed
the Hessian frontier, must be here given.-
' The object of Hassenpflug, it must be kept in mind,
was either to reduce the Chamber to a state of servUe
dependency upon the Elector and his Government, or to
force it into a refusal of taxes and thereby bring about the
desired collision with the provisions on this subject in the
old federal Constitution. To cover this impending deficit he
proposes the immediate appropriation of 644,000 thalers,
out of a fund created for the purpose of reducing tithes, etc.
' This proposition is negatived by the Chamber on the
ground, firstly, that the appropriation of the above fund for
other purposes than those for which it was intended was
against the distinct provisions of an article in the Con
stitution ; and, secondly, that untU the budget had been
discussed, it was impossible to know what the probable
deficit was likely to be, inasmuch as until this discussion
had taken place, it could not be determined whether even,
if the items of income were likely to be less than they were
estimated at, the expenditure might not, on the other
hand, be diminished to a corresponding extent.
' This answer was returned on the 15th of March ;
immediately upon its being communicated to the Ministry
the House was adjourned to the 17th of May.

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 267
' On its reassembling, the House finds that no budget
has been prepared for them by the Government, but a
new financial proposition lies for their acceptance. In
this new proposal there is no mention of the former deficit
for the current year, but a real deficit in the last year is
announced, and the consent of the House to a loan of
760,000 thalers is asked for. This demand is met by the
same answer as the former, viz. that until the budget has
been discussed it is impossible for the Chamber to make
an extraordinary vote with reference to an unproved
deficit, and that the necessity for an examination of the
budget is rendered all the more patent by the extraordinary
discrepancy in the two statements with regard to it, put
forward in two months by the same Ministry. The House
further inquired whether the old budget was still to be
considered as under discussion, and being answered in the
affirmative, the Committee on their part, and the House on
theirs, engage to get the report and their decision on it
over before the end of June, so as to enable the Government
to continue raising the necessary taxes from the ist of
July onwards, at which date, in the absence of a new
budget according to the clear provisions of the Constitution,
the power of raising the necessary taxes would be
extinguished. ' Hassenpflug replied to this, that it was the Elector's
intention immediately to dissolve the Chamber, and that
just sufficient time would be left it to vote another pro
visional levy of taxes for six months, upon which the
dissolution would immediately follow.
' The Chamber answered that a second provisional levy
was wholly unprovided for by the Constitution, and
that such a measure would be as distinctly against its
letter as against its spirit. They again engaged them
selves, if they were aUowed to go on with the discussion
of the budget, to finish the work in the quickest space,
and to get the regular supplies voted before the resolution.
' The reply to this was immediate dissolution in the most
insulting form that the ingenuity of Hassenpflug could
suggest to him.
' He was getting near his desired goal, that of establishing

268 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
a case of refusal of taxes, and his ally, the resuscitated
Bund, was fast quickening into renewed existence, a
meeting of some of the States, under the Presidency of
Austria, having already taken place at Frankfort.
Hitherto, however, though riding roughshod over one
provision of the Constitution after another, he had taken
his stand on the paragraphs, which left, firstly, the Elector
free to choose whom he would for his Ministers, and
secondly and thirdly, those which gave him the right to
prorogue and dissolve the Chamber when he thought fit.
The ingenious Minister had met the prayer of the Chamber
to be allowed to discuss the budget by charging it with
a direct attack against the prorogation, and the right of
the Crown to dissolve !
' According to the provisions of the Constitution, when
a Chamber is adjourned or dissolved, it elects a standing
Committee whose duty it is to safeguard the rights of the
Chamber against the executive during such time as the
former is not assembled, and in the event of any extra
ordinary events occurring, which would require the
immediate action of the executive, they are made as it
were responsible for this action not being exercised
unconstitutionaUy .
' Upon the dissolution of the Chamber, Hassenpflug, in
virtue of § 95, determining the sphere of action of the
Committee, called upon it to give its consent to the
continued levy of taxes. He rested his appeal upon the
ground that the extraordinary circumstances foreseen in
the section in question had come to pass by the refusal of
the Chamber, and that the non-levy of taxes would throw
the whole machine of Govemment into inextricable con
fusion. The Committee reply that they are only, so to
speak, the lieutenant of the Chamber, and that as such,
it would be absurd for them to consider themselves as
having a more extensive power than the Chamber itself.
The latter had declared themselves incompetent under the
existing Constitution to grant a continued levy of taxes
until a budget had been laid before their consideration.
The Committee could only abide by this decision. They
could, however, to prevent as far as possible the confusion

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 269
which would result from a stoppage in the machinery for
the coUection of taxes, give their consent to the continued
levy of the indirect taxes, upon the condition that the
taxes so raised should be placed under seal in the public
Treasury, and that no disbursement should be made
untu a decision had been arrived at upon the subject.
' Consequently from the ist of July, no more direct taxes
were raised, and the indirect taxes were consigned to the
coffers of the Treasury.
' The new Chamber met on the 22nd of August.
' In the last Chamber, the Government had had one
supporter. In the present Chamber this solitary individual
had lost his seat.
' Again Hassenpflug refused to lay a budget before the
House, but this time he changed his ground, and instead of
asking for a loan, demanded, purement et simplement, the
continued levy of taxes.
' The Chamber, preparing their answer by a unanimous
vote of want of confidence, replied that there was a formal
irapossibility of entertaining the proposal, inasmuch as
the old budget and the half-finished report thereon having
died out with the last Chamber, the only cases in which the
Constitution provided the provisional levy did not exist.
This decision was taken on the 30th of August.
' They were themselves on the 2nd of September again
dissolved. ' Thus ended the first phase of the conflict, that namely
with the Chamber. Hassenpflug, so far as his object was
to conquer the Chamber and force it into a violation of the
Constitution, had totally faUed. The Chamber had kept
itself strictly within the meaning of the paragraphs of the
Constitution, which applied to the question they were called
upon to decide. They had not moved one hair's-breadth
beyond the path marked out for them by their oath to
maintain the Constitution intact. They had further, by
their readiness to get the budget discussed in an incredibly
short space of time, gone out of their way to remove all
practical difficulties from the path of a Government that
was lying at the time under a formal vote of want of con
fidence, and the head of which was a condemned felon.

270 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
' Hassenpflug, on the other hand, by his endeavours to
force the Chamber into unconstitutional acts, had
become clearly guilty of misprision of treason as provided
by the Constitution.
' The second phase of the conflict is now entered upon
with the Standing Committee and the public organs of the
State, the administrative and judicial functionaries.
¦ On the 3rd of September, the day after the dissolution,
the Standing Committee is invited to attend a Council of
Ministers with a view to the publishing of a Ministerial
rescript ordering the levy of taxes.
' This invitation, as being one to an act clearly opposed
to the fundamental law of the State, the Committee refused
to accept.
' Thereupon on the 4th of September, the Ministerial
rescript ordering the levy was published. An ingenious
device in the preamble of this rescript, well worthy of its
author, should not be left unnoticed, as thoroughly char
acterising the casuistic spirit in which the whole crusade
was carried. In § 95, the expression used for the required
intervention of the Standing Committee upon extraordinary
emergencies is the word zuziehen — to draw to — i.e. by the
section in question, and the Ministry were bound before
coming to a determination on such occasions " to draw
them," the Standing Committee — this expression, the
meaning of which was plain enough, had, moreover, on former
occasions, been distinctly ruled to have an identical meaning
with Mitwirkung or co-operation. Nevertheless, in the
preamble of the above rescript, the monstrous assertion
was made, that by the invitation of the Committee the act
" of drawing the Committee to them," provided by the
Constitution, had been fulfUled by the Ministry, and that
the validity of any act was not impaired by the refusal of
the Committee to be drawn.
' The Ministerial rescript of the 4th September was
answered on the part of the Committee by a formal protest,
and an address to the public functionaries, administrative
as well as judicial, was issued, reminding them of § 98 of
the Constitution making any levy of taxes, without the
authorisation of the Chamber, illegal. Not a single ad-

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 271
ministrative official could be got to proceed to the coUec
tion, and the Tribunals formally adhered to the order by
discontinuing the use of stamped paper.
' In his next move, Hassenpflug fairly threw off the
constitutional maskwith which he had endeavoured hitherto
to cover the real features of his measures. On the 7th of
September, without even the appearance of wishing to
consult the Committee, amidst the most profound tran
quillity, as far as the maintenance of public order was con
cerned, he proclaimed the whole Electorate in a state of
siege. It should be noted that the only state of siege pro
vided for by the Constitution is in case " of acts of violence
having been committed against private persons or property
by disorderly mobs, who have for their object the hindering
the course of justice or the action of the administrative organs."
The only persons at present moving in the matter were the
administrative organs. An important fact, connected with
the declaration of the state of siege, must be noted. In the
rescript announcing it the reference is made to the decrees
of the old defunct Diet, viz. to the celebrated resolutions
of 28th July 1832, in which the imminence of a state of
anarchy is to be met by extraordinary measures on the part
of the Government, and in case of need, by an appeal for
armed intervention on the part of the Diet.
' The Diet thus invoked was represented at Frankfort
by a minority of the States formerly belonging to the
old federal body. Hesse formed part of the " Union "
and Three Kings' Alliance under the Presidency of
Prussia, which had formerly protested against the re
suscitation of the Diet — the Hesse Chamber had in most
unanimous manner given in its adhesion to this anti-Dietal
policy, whUst Hassenpflug publicly had in the name of the
Government declared on the 7th of March, i.e. three weeks
after his nomination as Minister, that in the opinion of the
Elector and his Government " there existed no federal
organ which could in any way influence the internal affairs
of a German State or alter or suspend a Constitution, and
that it (the Hessian Government) would in every way
resist every attempt of the kind. Further, that the Govern
ment pledged themselves not to enter into any negotiations

272 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
for the creating afresh of such a federal organ without the
co-operation of the Chamber." In the face of this declara
tion, and whilst stUl belonging to the " Union," Hassenpflug
proceeded as Plenipotentiary to Frankfort, and, as seen
above, proclaimed the state of siege in virtue, not of the
former organic laws of the Confederacy as settled by the
Congress of Vienna, but of an exceptional resolution of
(1832) a former Diet, thereby proclaiming the resuscitation,
not of the Diet only, but of aU the ultra-reactionary
legislation that had disgraced the Diet during its previous
existence. ' The Standing Committee replied to the Declaration
of the state of siege by a protest against its legality, and
as regarded the presumed authority derived from Dietal
sanction, it referred to the solemn declaration made by
the Government above referred to, and took its stand upon
the principles therein put forward. They were desirous of
citing the Ministry before the Supreme Court of Appeal
on a charge of High Treason, • but the Constitution only
gave the Chamber itself the right. They drew up, therefore,
an act of accusation against them on the ground of misuse
of official power. The Supreme Court, however, ruled on a
technical ground, that until the charge of treason had been
proved, the smaUer charge of misuse of official power could
not be proceeded with — ^the conflict consequently, instead
of being decided by one great general engagement, as had
been hoped, took the form of a lengthened struggle between
the mUitary and the civil authorities. The details of the
struggle that occurred between the civU and the mUitary
authorities, interesting though they are, are too complicated
to be entered into. The mUitary themselves could not
under the Constitution be brought before the ordinary
Tribunals, but whenever a civilian got implicated in any of
the measures carried out by the mUitary authorities, he was
immediately traduced before the Tribunals, and further the
Staats Anwalt {Procureur du Roi) was made responsible for
certain acts against the Press committed by the mUitary
authorities under his sanction, and called upon by the
Upper Tribunal to account for his conduct. The Com
mander-in-Chief, General Bauer, who was an honest old

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 273
soldier, and had few ideas in his head beyond obeying the
Elector, was nevertheless completely beaten by this attitude
of the Tribunals, and the conviction he arrived at of the
total Ulegality of his proceedings. The general result of this
second phase of the conflict was, that not a single tax was
raised, and that the action of the military became paralysed
by the sentence of the Tribunals. In the meantime the
most complete tranquillity continued to reign, so that the
state of siege became daily a more glaring absurdity. The
population placed the most unbounded confidence in the
administrative and judicial organs, agreed to let the contest
be fought out on the ground of legal rights, and settled
amongst themselves with singular forbearance to abstain
from every kind of demonstration, — ^the coffee-houses were
emptied earlier than usual, and the common workpeople
entered into reciprocal engagements not to frequent public-
houses, for fear of possible excesses committed under the
double influence of political and vinous excitement.
' This tranquillity was so patent a fact that Hassenpflug,
with his usual casuistry, used it as an argument to prove
that the population were quite indifferent to the Con
stitution, and that he had oiUy to do with a handful of
lawryers and officials. Nevertheless, he began to fear that
the case of anarchy which would have to be established to
enable the intervention of the Diet might be difficult of
proof. He determined, therefore, upon the further and
ingenious step of making the Elector -fiy from his capital —
with a view to a further step in hopes of attaining the desired
end, and persuaded the Elector, accompanied by aU the
Ministry, to " fly " from Kassel to WUhelmsbad, a little
town on the extremity of the Electorate and close to Frank
fort, where, besides the advantage of the scandal he looked
to produce by the " flight," he was iramediately within
reach of the resuscitated Diet, and of the advice of its
Imperial Presidents ! The " flight " took place on the
13th September ; the place had been well selected, as it
afforded the Hesse Ministry the necessary facUity for con
certing the further steps with the Representatives of the
so-caUed Diet, and more especially with the able assistance
of Count Hartig, the Austrian Plenipotentiary.
VOL. I. s

274 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
' With this " flight " the second phase of the conflict,
that of the Government with the administrative and
judicial organs, may be said to have ended in a second total
discomfiture of Hassenpflug by the complete triumph of
the civil over the military authority.
' The third and last phase of the conflict, that with the
army, alone remains to be related.
' Once at Frankfort, or at WUhelmsbad, which was syn
onymous with it, the co-operate action with the so-called
Diet was the more easUy arranged. On the 19th of Sep
tember Hassenpflug gave in his report of the state of things in
Hesse, of which the foUowingwere the most salient points : —
' I. That a refusal to pay taxes such as that intended in
Paragraphs I. and II. of the Dietal Resolution of 28th June
1832 had been incurred by the decision of the Hesse
Chamber on the 31st of August.
' 2. That the above Resolution of the 28th of June 1832
was stUl binding.
' 3. That the rescripts of individual Governments based
upon that Resolution had the force of laws which no
Tribunal or Chambers could withstand.
' 4. That the Diet consider what measure it should take
to enforce such rescripts. This application having been
submitted to a Select Committee composed of the Repre
sentatives of Austria, Liechtenstein, and Bavaria —
' The Committee reported favourably, and on their
report a Dietal Resolution was passed to the effect that —
' I. A refusal such as that described had been incurred
by the Hesse Chamber.
' 2. That the Diet had the same power in such a case as
in one of open rebellion.
' 3. That the Hesse Government was to use all consti
tutional means to force the Chamber to comply.
' 4. That all the judicial and administrative organs were
implicitly to obey the orders of the Government.
' 5. That when the Elector had exhausted all other
means, the Diet was bound to give him the necessary
assistance to restore order !
' Armed with this authority, a new state of siege was
proclaimed, and General Haynau (a brother of the celebrated

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 275
Austrian General of the same name) was appointed Com
mander-in-chief, with far more extensive powers than
those that had been given to General Bauer. The first
stage of the siege, as seen before, had broken down from
the resistance of the Tribunals. The powers now given to
General Haynau suspended the action of the Tribunals
and subordinated them to the suprerae railitary com
mand. In a word, the Constitution was for the time being
abrogated, and that in so glaring a manner and with such
total absence of any regard for appearance, that the
officers of the Hessian army, from the highest to the lowest
(with only some dozen exceptions) — a body of men, it should
be observed, totally without a political nuance — ^became
painfully impressed with the dilemma in which they were
placed between their feeling of mUitary discipline and their
oath of allegiance to the Constitution.
' After concentrating a large body of troops in Kassel,
General Haynau appeared there in October, issuing a
number of proclamations, every one of which contained
the most flagrant violations of the Constitution. From
words he proceeded to deeds : obnoxious individuals were
thrown into prison without the shadow of legality, and
the attempt was even made to arrest the Standing Com
mittee. Nothing daunted, however, this body, supported
by the opinion and the sentences of the Supreme Court of
Appeal, boldly stood up to the General, and on the 4th
proceeded to impeach him before the Supreme Military
Tribunal of misuse of official authority and of high treason.
' This Tribunal consisted of a Major-General, a Colonel,
the Judge Advocate General, and the Attorney General.
Bound by their official oaths to administer justice accord
ing to the laws, they were not to be deterred in this
extraordinary crisis from acting up to their duty, and,
having deliberately examined the acts of accusation, they
returned a true bUl (the functions of the Tribunals were
simUar in the present case to those of a Grand Jury)
against General Haynau, and ordered the Garrison Tribunal
to proceed to place the General under accusation. This
measure could not have been carried out without bloodshed,
as a part, though a very small part (a few squadrons of

276 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
hussars under the twelve officers above adverted to) would
have stood by the General, but it brought matters to the
final crisis.
' The whole matter was referred to the Elector at
WUhelmsbad, who answered by dissolving the Supreme
MUitary Tribunal and giving more extensive orders to
Haynau. ' AU doubt, however, as to what was their line of duty
had by the sentence of their own Supreme Court been
removed from the riiinds of the Hessian officers, and on
the gth October the whole corps of officers, with the
exception of the twelve young officers above adverted to,
two hundred and forty-one in number, sent in their resigna
tion. When it is considered that the largest number of
these men were old tried soldiers, very many of them
scarred with wounds received a generation before in the
great wars of the Empire, and whose fidelity had never
once been known to faU ; and further, that the greater part
of them, with families dependent upon them, had no means
of subsistence beyond their pay — moreover, that as a body
they were traditionally without any political tendencies,
this act of theirs may well challenge comparison with any
act of an analogous kind in the great story of the struggle.
Hassenpflug had now attained (at what price need hardly
be asked) the object he desired. A state of anarchy had
been produced, — not indeed the anarchy of rebeUious mobs,
for the most complete tranquUlity continued to prevaU,
the tranquUlity of a deeply dejected population, knowing
the odds against which they were contending, and which
rendered armed resistance impossible, yet elevated with a
dignified sense of the devotion displayed on the part of
all those who had been concerned in the struggle, — but
the anarchy, or absence of government, resulting from
an executive that would give no orders but such as neither
administrative, nor judicial, nor mUitary organs could obey
without perjuring themselves.
'The execution of the so-caUed Diet had become
necessary. • On the ist of November the troops of execution, com
posed of an Austrian and a Bavarian army corps, entered

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 277
the Electorate, and simultaneously a Prussian army
crossed the frontier, — not, indeed, to safeguard the liberties
of the allied State, and who had in the late struggle for
political power in Germany naUed its colours to the
Prussian mast, but on the futUe ground of maintaining its
right of mUitary right of way. With the entrance of the
troops of execution the Constitution of 1830 was super
seded by the illegal absolute rule of the Elector exercised
by means of foreign troops. Further resistance was of
course hopeless, but punishment had to be inflicted. It
was of a simple but effectual kind. AU judges of tribunals
in any manner implicated in the late events, and all officials
who had in any marked manner contributed towards the
resistance and the relations of the above, had bodies of
troops quartered upon them, — ^these they had to board and
lodge in their own houses, and to pay a daUy sum of money
to in addition. In case of a continued refusal to act in
obedience to the orders of Hassenpflug, the number of
troops was doubled and trebled tUl either compliance was
attained or the party to be quartered on resigned his post,
which in most cases was tantaraount to beggary. A great
nuraber of the highest officials in the country, and araongst
them some of the most Ulustrious names in the country,
chose the latter alternative. It should not be forgotten
that the so-caUed Federal Commissioner who carried out
this iniquitous sentence was Count Rechberg, the present
Prime Minister of Austria, and that in many individual
cases where he had to decide on the quantum of punish
ment to be administered his decisions never leant to the
lenient side. The Standing Committee were brought to
a court-martial and sentenced to many years imprisonment
in a fortress.
' The troops of execution remained in Hesse till 1851,
and it was not tiU 1852 that the attempt was made to
recover a legal basis on which to place the relations between
the Elector and his people.
' We must now exaraine the relation which the Diet
bears to this whole question.
' That the action hitherto of the Assembly of Repre
sentatives, sitting at Frankfort in the matter, was clearly

278 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
devoid of all legal basis is sufficiently evident from what
preceded. The old Federal Diet of 1815-1820, based upon
the unanimous consent of the States forming part of the
Confederation, had by a like unanimous consent been dis
solved in 1848. Its legal reconstitution could only result
from a like unanimity. The Governments represented at
Frankfort formed a minority of those States that had been
parties to the old Constitution, and every shadow of legality
thereby disappeared. As regards the individual participa
tion of Hesse in the Assembly thus resuscitated, it has been
seen that even by the express declaration of Hassenpflug
such a participation, except with the co-operation of the
Chamber, was deprived of all the sanctions requisite for its
legality. That not only the paragraphs of the old Federal
Confederation were appealed to (which, as having once
formed part of the Public Law of Europe, might with a
certain show of plausibility have been invoked), but that
the exceptional decisions of the former Diets should after
the formal unanimous declaration of their invalidity, made
by all the Governments of the Confederation in 1848, have
been reinvested with the obligatory force of organic laws,
was an outrageous act, which, in its application to the Hesse
question, resulted, as we have seen, in the triumph of brute
force over the clearest rights. It had, however, a wider
signification than this, and was in reality a challenge thrown
down by Austria to the Unionist States — a challenge which
Pmssia refused to take up. The details of the negotiations
between the two Powers upon the subject need not be
entered into : the general result is weU seen in the agree
ment arrived at at Olmutz between Baron Manteuffel and
Prince Schwartzenberg, on the 29th of March, and was, as
regards Prussia, a surrender at discretion to Austria. The
Prussian Government had all along protested against the
right of the Frankfort Assembly to interfere in Hesse.
When the intervention actually took place they shifted
their ground, and put in the idle plea that they entered
Hesse not to dispute this right of intervention, but to safe
guard their right of military way across the Electorate.
It was easy to negotiate on such a basis, — Austria pledged
herself to respect the right of way of Prussia ; and Prussia,

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 279
on the other hand, pledged herself to offer no obstruction
to the action of the executive troops against the inhabitants
of Hesse. To save appearances a Prussian Commissary
was, in conjunction with the Austrian or Federal Commis
sary, as he was styled, to regulate matters for the Elector.
' There was now a chance for Prussia to act a part in
accordance with her natural position as the representative
of the Liberal element in Germany. Having by the
punctuation of Olmiitz virtuaUy given her consent to the
reconstituting of the Diet, she could have frankly throvm
the weight of her influence in that body in favour of the
constitutional rights of the Hessians, and, by restricting
the Diet within the strict sphere of its competency, have
recovered for the people of the Electorate those liberties,
or nearly all of them, which they had lost by her pusiUan-
imity. But, unfortunately, the triumph of Baron Man-
teuffel's policy at Olmutz had only been bought by the
secession from the councils of the Prussian Crovm of all the
patriotic elements, with the Prince of Prussia at their head,
who had up to that moment continued to stem (with little
result it is true) the spring- tide of the reaction, and to stay
the impending national disgrace. The sole power devolved
thereby on a set of men whose principles were identical
with those that had been celebrating so signal a triumph
at Kassel, and who regarded Hassenpflug as a brother of
the craft to whose superior genius they bowed. Under
these circumstances the person appointed Prussian Com
missary — a M. de Uhden — became, as might have been ex
pected, the most zealous partisan of the Hesse Ministry, and
Prussian ascendency was so far regained that, in the crusade
against the liberties of the Hesse people, the astute Pmssian
lawyer displayed far greater ability than his Austrian
coUeagues, and that it was upon his report that the Dietal
Resolution with the octroye Constitution of 1852 was based.
' By the policy which Prussia adopted subsequently to
the intervention, and to which the other Unionist States
could not help adhering, the resuscitation of the old Federal
Diet became a fait accompli. This could not, it is true, invest
past acts in their very nature iUegal with a retrospective
legaUty, — granting, however, this retrospective legality, and

28o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
assuming that the Federal Diet had at the time of the
intervention, as weU as since, been — ^together with all its
exceptional legislation — de jure in existence, the question
arises : in how far the intervention, as it was practically
carried out, was within the competency of the Diet ; and
secondly, how far the Diet is competent to restore the legal
basis it had itself destroyed. And this is the question
which at present is the one really at issue ; for neither the
present Prussian Government nor the Hessian people (so
far as can be gathered from the present provisional Hesse
Chamber, and from the addresses sent in to it from all parts
of the Electorate) dispute the binding force of the pro
visions of the old Federal Act ; but in opposition to the
Hesse Govemment and to the hitherto majority of the
Diet and the leaders of that majority, the Austrian and
the Manteuffel Govemments, the Prussian Cabinet disputes
the competency of the Diet as de facto existing.
' It would be an impossible task to analyse the arguments
that have been adduced pro and con in the numberless
promiscuous reports of the committee and official notes,
etc., drawn up on this subject during the last ten years ;
but the attempt must be made to appreciate, from an ex
amination of the paragraphs of the Federal Acts themselves,
what the nature of the Diet's jurisdiction is in the internal
matters of the Confederation, and in how far the sphere of
this jurisdiction has been exceeded in the present question.
' In the final act of the Congress of Vienna, of the 15th of
May 1820, the paragraphs aUeged by the Hesse Government
and the Frankfort Assembly of 1850 are the ist, 26th, 27th,
57th, 58th, and 6ist.
' They are as follows : —
' 3. The German Confederation is an international union
of the Princes and Free Towns of Germany for the defence
of the independence, etc. of Germany, and for the mainten
ance of external and internal tranquiUity.
' § 26. When by the rebeUious conduct of the inhabitants
the internal tranquUlity of one of the States of the Con
federation is immediately endangered and a spread of such
rebeUious movements is to be apprehended, or when an
actual rebellion has broken out and the Government of

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 281
the said State, after exhausting all constitutional and legal
means, has claimed the assistance of the Diet, it becomes
the duty of the latter to take the promptest measures for
re-establishment of order. Should in the last case that of
open rebeUion, etc. (this part of the paragraph need not be
given, as there was notoriously no open rebellion).
' § 27. The Government that has been in receipt of the
Dietal aid referred to in the above paragraph is bound to
inform the Diet of the original cause of the disturbances, and
to make a tranquilUsing report to it {beruhigende Anzeige)
of the measures taken for the definite re-establishment of a
state of legal order.
' § 56. The Statal Constitutions existing in recognised
activity can only be altered by means recognised by such
Constitutions. ' § 57. As the German Confederation, with the exception
of the Free Towns, consists of Sovereign Princes, the
Sovereign Power {die gesammte Staatsgewalt — the united
Power of the State) must in accordance with the root
principle involved herein, be united to the Head of the
State, and the Sovereign can only be tied to the co-operation
of the " States " in the exercise of certain determined
Rights {Ausiibung bestimmter Rechte).
' § 58. The Sovereign Princes united in the Confederation
cannot by any Constitution be hindered or restricted in the
fulfUment of their federal obligations.
' § 60. Where a Constitution has been guaranteed by the
Diet the several parties inay claim the mediation of the
Diet for its maintenance.
' § 61. Except in cases provided for by the guarantee
referred to in Paragraph 60, the Diet is not competent to
interfere in the constitutional arrangements of the several
States, or in the conflicts between the Princes and their
States,' as long as they do not assume the character noted
in Paragraph 26, in which case the permission of that article
and the following one (27) come into force.
' Besides these articles of the organic acts of the German
Confederation, there were two Resolutions of the Diet,
respectively dated the 28th of June 1832 and the 30th of
October 1834, — the former intended to give a more stringent

282 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
meaning to Article 57, and the latter having for its object
the creation of a Court of Arbitration for the purpose of
settling disputes that might arise on constitutional questions
between the Sovereigns and their Representative Assem
blies in the several States.
' Article 2 of the Resolution of the 28th of June 1832 was
to the following effect : —
' Since, according to the spirit of Article 57, and to that
of the deduction drawn from it in Article 58 of the final
Act, the means necessary for carrying on a Government —
able to fulfU its engagements to the Confederation, and to
the Constitution of the country — cannot be refused to a
German Sovereign by his " States," it is hereby resolved
that cases in which " States " shall either directly or in
directly make the granting of the taxes necessarUy to carry
on the Government — conditional upon the carrying out
of other wishes or proposals — shall be considered as in the
number of those cases to which Articles 25 and 26 apply.
' By Article i of the Resolution of the 30th of October
1834 it was provided, " that when a misunderstanding
arises in a State of the Confederacy between the Govern
ment and the " States " respecting the interpretation of
the Constitution, and especiaUy when there is a refusal to
grant the taxes necessary to carry on the government, and
when all constitutional means and all measures conform
able to the laws of the country have been tried to remove
the difficulty, arid have remained without result, then the
Governments of the Confederation bind themselves each
individually not to invoke the aid of the Diet untU they
shall have referred the matter to a Court of Arbitration
constituted as follows : the merabers of which are in each
case to be chosen in equal proportions by the Sovereign
and the Chambers.
' Such are in full the provisions of the Federal Acts to
which reference can be made in the present conflict.
' The conflict itself has in the foregoing pages been given
in sufficient detail to allow of each successive step in it
being tested by these stipulations of the Federal Constitu
tion, which, it must be remembered (inasmuch as they take
in the " Resolutions of 1832 and 1834, passed after the

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 283
" Final Act "), form the extremest limits within which the
competency of the Diet can be made to reside.
' This examination, even if superficially done, will suffice
to show, on the one hand, the total inapplicability of any
one of the articles in question to the present case ; and on
the other, the gross manner in which most of the distinct
provisions, or some of them, have been broken through.
' The cases in which the intervention of the Diet can be
claimed, according to the provisions of the " Final Act "
(Articles 26 and 27), are manifestly those, and those only, in
which public tranquUlity is threatened — they are mere corol
laries to Article i, which states one of the objects of the
Confederation to be the maintenance of internal order. As
has been abundantly seen from the above, the public tran
quillity was never for one raoraent jeopardised, and there
was notoriously no prospect of the disturbance of public
order. The cases provided for in Articles 26 and 27 not
having occurred, it was clear that Article 61 was the one
that ruled in the case — consequently it was the exceptional
resolution of the 28th June 1832 that was appealed to ;
but here again the special case provided for had not
occurred : there was no refusal of taxes either directly or
indirectly " with a view to carrying out, as against the
Government, other wishes or proposals." The Hesse
Ministry had no proposals they wished to force upon the
Governraent ; they were not as the Chambers in 1832, against
which the resolution was passed, bent on increasing their
privileges, but solely on the defence of those they had.
The Ministry had forced the Chamber, not into a refusal of
taxes, but into a position where they could not vote them
without the clearest infringement of the clearest provisions
of the Constitution.
' If the Resolution of 1832 was binding, that of 1831 was
a posteriori binding. The former had plainly gone far
beyond the sense of the articles of the " Final Act," and
the latter was meant to modify the trop de zele. To declare
a refusal of taxes by a Representative Assembly as at
once a case of rebellion appeared, in 1832, too strong even
to the Frankfort Representatives, and the via media of a
Court of Arbitration was proposed — to which both parties

284 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
might appeal. If any part of the Federal legislation then,
according to Hassenpflug's theory, applied to the case,
it was this ; but this even did not apply, because no
attempt had been made to set aside the difficulty by the
legal or constitutional means provided by the Constitution.
' After the execution had once been obtained, however,
the Articles 26 and 27, and the Resolution of 1832, were
carefuUy kept in the background by the Hesse Ministry
and in the Diet by Austria, and the paragraphs laid stress
upon, as rendering the intervention of the Diet necessary,
were the 57th and 58th of the " Final Aet," which provide
that the Sovereign Power is concentrated in the Head of
the State, and that a Sovereign Prince can only be tied to
the co-operation of the " States " in the exercise of certain
demanded rights ; and further, that he cannot be restricted
by any Chamber in the fulfUment of his federal obligations,
and with which it is maintained that the provisions of
the Constitution of 1831 are incompatible.
By, however, attacking the Constitution itself the
particular question seemed to have been overlooked, thus
admitting that the ground of the intervention that there
remained — the only basis upon which they could hope
to stand in so doing — was not a rebellion against the con
stituted authorities (the only ground aUowed by the
Federal Act), but the pulling dovra of an existing Con
stitution. ' The above wiU suffice to prove the entire iUegality of
the proceedings of the Frankfort Assembly up to the
time when it was eaUed upon to decide what steps should
be taken for restoring the legal order respecting which
Paragraph 27 requires that after an intervention a
" tranquillising report " should be made.
' The examination of the question as to how far the
provisions of the Constitution of 1831 are incompatible
with those of the " Final Act " need not be entered into
on the present occasion, inasmuch as until the Diet has
adopted the recommendation of the present Prussian
Government, to return to that Constitution with the
elimination of such incompatible promises, the question
will not be mooted. It will be sufficient to confine our-

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 285
selves to what has been hitherto done by the Diet, as weU
as to what has been left undone.
' It was in March 1852 that the Austrian and Prussian
Commissaries gave in their report on the Hesse question
to the Diet, and that the Assembly was called upon to
come to a decision on the subject.
' Granting aU the charges against the Constitution of
1831 to have been valid, the provisions of the " Final
Act " were clear as to what was to be done under the
circumstances. The Constitution still existed de jure,
and its organic laws contained the necessary power, for
its revision distinctly laid down the rule that no existing
Constitution could be altered except by means provided
for within such Constitution and Paragraph 57, the rule
that such revision could only take place by the means thus
afforded by the Constitution.
' The course, therefore, for the Diet to adopt was clearly
marked out for it. Its duty was to invite the Elector,
in conjunction with the " States " as then constituted,
to revise the Constitution on those points in which it was
evidently at variance with the provision of the Federal
Act. That this revision — with the overpowering moral
influence which the now unanimously recognised Diet
could bring to bear upon it, and with the recovery of a
legal standing which the country would have attained by
this recognition of their right to revise — ^would have been
carried out, cannot for one moment admit of a doubt.
' Instead of this, by the Dietal Resolution of the
27th March 1852, the Constitution of 1831 was put out
of operation — the Elector was empowered to publish as a
law a draft of Constitution, and a new electoral law
prepared by Hassenpflug and the Federal Commissioners.
' The draft of Constitution so revised was to be sub
mitted to the Diet, and the Diet was then to guarantee
it. ' The Chambers (for the new law created two Chambers),
called together on the electoral law thus octroyd, were to
eome to an agreement as to the definite establishment of
the draft of Constitution into a permanent and organic
law, and until such agreement was eome to, the Con-

286 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
stitution was to have provisional force. It is evident that
by giving the above powers to the Elector the Diet had
far exceeded its competency ; but nevertheless, with a
people less determined upon maintaining its liberties an
agreement of the sort might have been come to, the new
Constitution would have been a fait accompli, and the fatal
precedent have been established of the Frankfort Diet
undoing existing Constitutions and creating new ones at
its pleasure.
' The new Chambers, however, though elected upon a
law so exclusive and limited in its nature that the Federal
Commissioners themselves were obliged to confess that,
if the Elector could not get docile Chambers upon such
a basis, the fault must lie with him, refused altogether to
come to an agreement with the Elector upon the draft
of the Constitution which it should be observed en passant
not content with remaining the provision of the Constitution
of 1831, supposed to be incompatible with the Federal Act,
subverted in toto the organic laws which had existed in
the Electorate previous to 1851.
' Thereupon the Elector, having made upon his ovm
authority what revisions he thought fit, submitted the Act
so revised in 1855 to the Diet, and requested the Dietal
guarantee to it. Austria was ready to vote this guar
antee, but this even to a Manteuffel Ministry seemed too
glaringly to overstep the competency of the Diet, and the
Prussian Cabinet having brought the Austrian to its view
of the case, the two Powers officiously requested the Hesse
Govemment to withdraw its motion and to try once more
to come to an agreement with the octroy^ Chambers.
' Upon this Hassenpflug, by an organic change in the
whole " Communal Constitution " of the country, altered
in toto the electoral basis of the Chambers as octroyM by the
Diet, and that in such a manner as to eliminate as much as
possible all the educated classes from the suffrage.
' With these new Chambers a fresh series of negotiations
were entered upon. Only the second Chamber was affected
by the new electoral law. The upper Chamber, necessarUy
restricted to a very few members, though also in opposition
to the Elector and his Govemment, have not taken up the

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 287
same high ground as the other, and have aUowed themselves
in a great measure to be separated from the constitutional
cause by a selfish regard for certain feudal privUeges which
they thereby hoped to recover.
' These Chambers, no less than the last, were determined
to uphold the liberties of the people of the Electorate, but,
wearied out with the length of the struggle and seeing no
quarter from whence hope could come, and plainly conscious
that the state of material misery to which the country was
reduced by the prolonged state of anarchy to which it was
reduced, they attempted a compromise with the Govern
ment. The misery to which the people of Hesse have been
reduced by the despotism of the Hassenpflug Ministry has
become a byword throughout Germany. Industry, com
merce, and agriculture are in a state of total prostration,
and the population is rapidly decreasing. According to
the maxims of the Hassenpflug school, however, this is a
desirable result. Schaeffer, who succeeded Hassenpflug as
Prime Minister in 1837, and who, being on a public occasion
taunted with the misery to which the country was reduced,
replied, "It is a good thing, and the people ought to be
grateful to the Elector for it, as it will bring them to a
knowledge of their sins ! " They took the draft of the
Constitution, adopted some of its provisions, and substituted
for others their own emendations. In this form the Con
stitution was returned to the Hesse Govemment for pre
sentation to the Diet, — ^the Chambers, however, placing
foimally on record that their assent was given to the Act
en bloc as received by them ; consequently, that any fresh
alterations made by the Elector would cancel their consent
to the whole document.
' The Elector, not deterred by this, proceeded to the total
revision of the draft, removed almost all the emendations
made by the Chambers, and supplemented their plans by his
ovra ; and then, without further consulting the Chambers,
submitted it to the Diet as the agreement come to on the sub
ject between himself and his " States." This took place in
July 1858, and the Diet referred the matter to a Committee.
The report of the Committee was given in July 1859. This
remarkable document (which has not been published) had

288 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
at least the merit of taking up new ground, and of intro
ducing an element of originality into a question which
seemed worn threadbare. Wholly ignoring the fact that
the Chamber consulted upon the matter was elected upon
an electoral basis, totaUy different from that octroy^ by
the Diet, and that therefore, even from the Dietal point of
view, these assemblies had no valid force, they took the
emendations voted by the Chambers and those put in by
the Elector as representing the views respectively of the
Sovereign and his people, and, constituting themselves as
the arbiters between the two (for which, according to the
Acts of the Confederation, they were whoUy incompetent),
proceeded to a selection of articles from the two sets ; and
having thus got together a completely new draft of Con
stitution, they recommended the Diet, after obtaining the
consent of the Elector to this " medley," to authorise him
to " octroyer " it in the Electorate without further consult
ing the Chambers, and when thus octroye to place it under
the guarantee of the Diet.
' There is not the shadow of a doubt that, had the
Manteuffel Ministry stiU been in power, this proposition,
which had the assent of Austria, would have likewise had
that of Prussia, and that by this means a Constitution
essentiaUy manufactured at Frankfort would have been,
without any authority derived from the organic laws of the
Confederation, forced upon the people of the Electorate.
' With the access to power of the present Liberal Cabinet
at Berlin, however, a new hope had davmed upon the
Hessian Constitutionalists. The Ministers now at the
helm of affairs in Prussia were for the most part the very
men who had seceded from the councUs of the Prussian
Crown upon this very Hessian question at the time of its
fatal turn at Olmiitz. They were in honour bound, as far
as possible, to undo the work of their predecessors. True,
however, to the programme adopted by the Prince Regent,
not violently to break (at least during his brother's lifetime)
with the past, the Prussian Ministry, instead of entering
a protest, as they would have been quite justified in doing,
against the work of the poUtical antagonists whom they
had at last driven from power, abstained from entering into

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 289
the question of competency involved in the Dietal Resolu
tion of '52, and took their ground upon the practical merits
of the question, but did not the less on that account arrive
at the only solution of the case conformable to law and
right, viz. a retum to the Constitution of 1832, as the
point de depart.
' The Prussian Memorandum of the 30th of October
1859, after describing the total failure of all attempts
hitherto made to restore a legal basis for the question,
and laying stress upon the expression used in the Resolution
of the 28th March 1852, to the effect that the Constitution
of 1831 " was placed out of operation," which, it contended,
only implied a suspension of it, and not an abrogation of it,
announced that according to the views of the Berlin Cabinet
the only principle upon which a way out of the difficulties
with which the case was beset could be found, was a rein
tegration in its full force of the Constitution of 1831, and
its then revision on such points as might be found incom
patible with the provisions of the Final Act, n.b. not with
the exceptional resolutions of later years.
' The Prussian Plenipotentiary at Frankfort gave a vote
to this effect on the 13th of November of that year.
' The effect produced by this attitude of Prussia (inde
pendently of the salutary influence it exercised upon public
opinion in Germany) was that the Representative Assembly
in Hesse voted by a large majority an address to the Elector,
which he of course refused even to receive, pra5ing for a
restoration of the Constitution of '31, and thereby declaring
their own incompetency, and further, that the Diet rejected
the Report of their Committee, and appointed a new one to
consider the matter of which the Representatives of Austria
and Prussia formed a part.
' This new Committee is at present engaged in drawing
up their Report, which wiU in a few days be presented to
the Diet.
' Such is a succinct account of the " Hesse Conflict "
from its first origin up to the present day. Amidst many
conclusions to which a study of it necessarily leads one,
the most inevitable one is this : that the central organ of
a Confederation composed exclusively of the Diplomatic
VOL. I. T

290 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860
Representatives of Cabinets, and uncontrolled by the
action of a Representative Assembly, necessarily degener
ates into a secret dynastic society in a state of chronic con
spiracy against the liberties of the several States forming
part of the Confederation, and that, however Uberal the
organic laws of those individual States may be, they ean
never protect themselves against theeombined action of
a central organ so constituted.
' No wonder that towards the obtaining in some form
or other of a Representative Assembly at Frankfort, the
whole efforts of the national party in Germany are directed.'
In connection with this memorandum, Morier was led to
take what he himself described as the wisest step in his
diplomatic career. Lord John RusseU, who, as Morier
wrote, " never could keep his finger out of any international
pie," was so struck with the report and the solutions pointed
out as those which might lead to an arrangement, that a
confidential letter from him arrived one day to Lord Bloom
field, instructing him to send Morier to Cassel, there to
place himself in communication with the rebeUious Parlia
ment, and to advise them to endeavour to come to a com
promise with the Elector on the Constitutional basis he had
suggested. Morier at once asked Lord Bloomfield to tele
graph the impossibility of his accepting such a mission, and
to point out its uselessness and compromising character-
nobody being more fuUy persuaded than he was, what an
unjustifiable interference in the internal affairs of a foreign
State such a proceeding would have been.
It was left to the Baden Government, of which, since
30th AprU 1861, Roggenbach had been Prime Minister,
to take the first decisive steps towards the reestablish
ment of the Constitutional Rights of Hesse. On the
4th of July 1861, Roggenbach caused the Baden Repre
sentative, R. von Mohl,! to move a resolution in the Frank
fort Diet, which, couched in forceful language and strongly
animadverting on the state of legal anarchy into which
Hesse had sunk, called upon the Elector to reintegrate
the legal basis of the Constitution of 1831.
* Eminent Professor of International Law at Heidelberg.

i860] HESSIAN CONSTITUTION 291
This action of the Baden Government was received with
unaUoyed approval by the German nation, with deep
indignation by the Elector and his advisers, whose only
answer was a curt refusal. The Prussian Government
more or less ralUed to the Baden point of view, and in a
feeble way proposed to the Diet on Sth March 1862, in
conjunction with Austria, a platonic declaration : that the
legal basis of 1831 was to be reconstituted, without, however,
pointing out either ways or means, which, as Roggenbach
remarked, left the question not much nearer solution than
it was before. Fortunately at this juncture the Elector
saw fit grossly to insult General von WiUisen, who had been
sent to him as special Envoy by King William, which led
to Prussia's threatening armed intervention, and obtaining
in this manner the re-establishment of the Constitution of
1831, on the electoral basis of the law of 1849. The conflict
thus terminated.
After the war of 1866, Electoral Hesse was annexed by
Prussia.

292 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [i860

CHAPTER XIII
BERLIN. LETTERS TO LAYARD ON THE SITUATION
On his return from Berlin, in the autumn of i860, Morier
was laid up with a sharp attack of rheumatic gout. Writing
to his father on 28th November, he says : ' I am taking
very great care of myself, not going out at night, eating
meat only every other day, drinking nothing but water,
and, in every way, leading a miserable and disconsolate
life.' At the same time he was grieving over the impend
ing departure of Lord and Lady Bloomfield, in whom he
lost ' two warm friends, who made life pleasant to me.'
Lord Bloomfield had been appointed Ambassador at
Vienna, being succeeded at Berlin by Lord Augustus Loftus.
In December, Morier spent a fortnight at Pririkenau,
the Duke of Augustenburg's place.
' It was an experiment not unaccompanied with risk, but
it turned out most satisfactorUy. The change of air set
me up most wonderfuUy in spite of the cold. ... On the
third day I went out shooting for a couple of hours, and
on the fifth I was out a whole day. . . . We sat down
forty-eight to dinner every day, a very good band and a
first-rate pianist engaged for the fortnight afforded us
dancing and concerts alternately, so the time was spent
right merrily. The Princesses, the Duke's daughters, two
of them at least, are old friends of mine from Holstein days.
They are quite English in their ways, and, being in a sort
of way an invalid, I was immensely petted, which I very
much like. The daughter-in-law, the Hereditary Prince's
wife, a geborene Hohenlohe, and our Queen's niece, is likewise
pleasant and cheery and very pretty. ... I was a coq en pate,
to the extreme disgust of the stiff, bowing and scraping
forty-two Prussians, who made up the rest of the party.'!
^ Morier to his father, 23rd December i860.

y.r

--^^W%^ ^V^,a.^la^«.««?0^^<;^

LONDON"; BDVtfAMU .AJIWOX.U

i86i] BERLIN 293
The first week of the New Year he was shooting with the
Duke of Coburg at Gotha : —
' The shooting we got was very good, but the cold beyond
anything I ever felt — 19° below zero Rdaumur. The coach
man that drove my sledge had to be taken straight off his
box to hospital, his legs being hopelessly frost-bitten — two
other coachmen likewise. The King's! funeral, which I
luckily had not to attend, has had no end of victims — one
general ^ (old Gerlach, the villain) dead, two or three more
dying, and no end of common soldiers with their legs and
arms amputated.' ^ And a few days later, ' Anything more
dismal than Berlin is now you cannot imagine . . . the
whole place in deepest mourning for the King and seeing
nobody, and tUl yesterday all the theatres shut, and to-day
a great thaw, so that the skating even is over.' *
In March, Lord Breadalbane arrived at Berlin, with the
mission of investing the new King with the Garter.
' We have two missions here, the Garter and our own. I
have every sort of thing to do, politicaUy, sociaUy, and
garterially. I am dining at the King's and the Prince
Royal's and dispatching messengers and writing private
letters on most critical business all in one breath . . . the
ceremony comes off to-morrow. Being short of hands.
Garter King-at-Arms has pressed me into the service, and
I am to do page and carry the book of statutes.'
The ' critical business ' mentioned here referred to an
unpleasant incident which at that tirae had led to much
angry recrimination, and threatened to bring about a
serious estrangement between England and Prussia. Aris
ing from the most trivial cause, a dispute about a seat in a
railway carriage between a Captain Macdonald and the
railway authorities, in which both parties, the former by
his ignorance of the language, the law, and the customs
of the country, the latter by their harsh and arbitrary
' Frederick William iv., 2nd January 1861.
' Gerlach, Leopold von, b. 1790, d. i860, Prussian General, head of
reactionary camarilla under Frederick William iv. (See Correspondence
with Bismarck.)
8 To his father, i6th January 1861.
* To the same, 22nd January.

294 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1861
behaviour, had placed themselves in the wrong, this affair,
which ought to have been terminated by an expression of
regret and the acceptance of an apology, had been allowed
to drag on for months, and to give rise to violent newspaper
polemics, a Blue Book, and finally to heated discussions in
the Parliaments of both countries. Lord John Russell,
always temperate and conciliatory, had, from the first,
tried to smooth matters over : not so Lord Palmerston,
who, aUowing himself to be carried away by his violent
anti-German feelings, delivered a speech, in the House of
Commons, of such arrogant aggressiveness that even Vincke,
the Liberal leader and strong advocate of an Anglo-Prussian
understanding, had been moved to sharp retort in the Prus
sian Chamber, whilst Baron Schleinitz, the Foreign Minister,
declared on the same occasion that ' the impression pro
duced by Lord Palmerston's words was most painful and
lamentable,' and that ' without underrating the value of an
understanding with England, I may say that Prussia, thank
God, need not in any way sacrifice her independence for
the friendship of any Power.'
Simultaneously with these proceedings there appeared
a studiedly insulting leading article on the subject in The
Times, which, adding fuel to the flame, goaded into greater
vehemence the indignation already existing at Berlin.
The incessant attacks by The Times on Prussia and every
thing Prussian were a source of deep concern at that time
to all those whose hopes were based on a mutual good under
standing between the two countries. Morier never failed
to report in alraost every letter home the growing alienation
engendered by the contemptuous and insulting tone adopted
by the leading English journal towards'Germany, while to
the Prince Consort the subject was one*of the gravest dis
quietude. So serious did the matter become, that when,
a few months later. Lord Clarendon was sent to represent
the Queen at the Coronation of the King of Pmssia at
Konigsberg in Germany, he felt himself impelled to inform
the Queen ' of the enormous and wanton mischief done by
the articles in The Times'
' The mischief,' he wrote a few days later, ' is incalcul-

i86i] BERLIN 295
able that aU the recent articles have done us with a people
that ask no, better than to be our friends, and who are
indignant that we should meddle with their affairs for no
other purpose than insult.'
Finally, in consideration of the damage done to . the
Crovra Princess's position, materially affected by these
attacks. Lord Clarendon suggested that 'the Queen should
call Lord Palmerston's attention to the subject. After
the intervention of the latter, generally credited with having
been the instigator of these articles, the tone of The Times
somewhat improved.
Although absorbed by the widening claims of his profes
sion, and throwing himself with ardour into aU the political
and social questions of the country in which his duties lay,
Morier had never faUed to keep in touch with aU his home
interests, not only by an indefatigable correspondence with
his father and his many friends, but also by frequent visits
to England. One he paid in the summer of 1861 was to
prove an eventful epoch in his Ufe.
For some years past, ever since the void his mother's death
had created, his mind had been preoccupied with thoughts of
marriage. I perceive that I have arrived at that age, not in
years only, but in the history of my mental and spiritual de
velopment, at which I must either dry up into a selfish, cold-
hearted, self-indulgent man of the world or retremper my
whole existence in the only well which can furnish the restor
ing power — that of the home affections,' he had vwitten to
his father in March i860. ' I need not tell you aU that a
home can give. . . . Holding marriage as the most sacred
thing in life, and as a matter which most certainly decides
the whole ascending or descending tendency of one's inner
most soul, I am totally unable to reconcile myself to a
marriage of convenance. ... I have come to the conclu
sion that I must either marry according as I find a being
who will fulfil the higher demands upon my future wife, or
must once for all give up the whole idea.'
High as were his ideals, he was nevertheless fortunate
enough to realise them to the uttermost. In August 1861
he became engaged to Alice, second daughter of Lieutenant-

296 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1861
General Jonathan and Lady Alice Peel,! y^^hom he had met
at the house of his old friend. Lady Waldegrave, and their
marriage took place shortly afterwards on 26th September at
Twickenham. Chichester Fortescue, afterwards to become
Lady Waldegrave's fourth husband, acted as his best man,
and Jowett hurried back from a holiday in Scotland to
figure amongst the officiating clergy.
Her father, younger brother of the great Sir Robert Peel,
and himself Secretary of State for War in 1858 and again
in 1866, had been thus described by the Prince Consort to
Baron Stockmar — ' His likeness to his deceased brother
in manner, in his way of thinking, and in patriotic feeling, is
quite touching : he is a pearl in the Ministry, for he is fear
less, and holds the service of the Crovm to be his first duty.'
And her mother. Lady Alice, had been the great friend, not
only of Princess Lieven, but of Guizot, Thiers, and other
Statesmen. Mrs. Morier had from her childhood, therefore,
been brought up amongst people of high political interests
and in the most brUliant society of both London and Paris,
and was thus eminently fitted by taste as weU as by early
associations to take her place by her husband's side in
foreign capitals, to become the centre of every circle she
frequented, and the delightful hostess as which she still
lives in the memory of many.
This marriage inaugurated for both a period of unaUoyed
happiness, which was to last until his death, thirty-two
years later — and her wise counsels, practical wisdom, and
independent judgment proved a very real help and support
to him throughout his career.
After a short honeymoon spent at Holnicote, Sir Thomas
Acland'splace in Somersetshire, Morier returned to his postat
Berlin, accompanied by his wife, paying a visit to the Grand
Duke and Duchess of Baden at Karlsruhe on their way.
Morier to Earl Russell
'Carlsruhe, November 6th, 1861.
' I have paid, or rather I am in the aet of pajing, my
visit to the Grand Duke of Baden and to my friend Roggen
bach, his Libero-Conservative Prime Minister, and I have
^ Daughter of ist Marquess of Ailsa.

i86i] BERLIN 297
found them hard at work upon the German plans, of which
in their embryo state I sent you, at the Grand Duke's
request, a sketch last year. I arrived just in time to be
initiated in the preparations they are making for definitely
launching their project into official waters, it being the
intention of the Grand Ducal Government to address within
ten days or a fortnight a circular dispatch to its Repre
sentatives in Germany (for communication to the Govern
ments to which they are accredited) containing the outlines
of a scheme for the reorganisation of the Federal Constitu
tion identical with that which I sent to you. The only
change in the programme is that the comraunication is to
be made in the above form instead of assuming the shape of
a motion at the Diet. It seemed to them, on second
thoughts, hardly deUcate to caU upon an assembly to dis
cuss a resolution involving its own arret de mort, and, more
over, the form now proposed, by involving the necessity
of an answer of some sort from the several Governments,
will have the desirable effect of forcing the latter to define
their several positions wifh reference to the German ques
tion. If the step about to be taken by the Grand Duke
were an isolated one, it would probably remain sufficiently
barren in results, and would not amount to more than the
recording in official black and white of " pious desires "
long known to be entertained by the Grand Ducal Cabinet.
The importance which attaches to it arises from the fact
that it is taken with the knowledge and connivance of the
Prussian Government, strange as this may sound. You
may remember that in my last year's letter I told you that
this connivance formed a sine qua non condition of the
putting into execution of the scheme. You may also recol
lect the cold reception which the feelers put forth officially
at Berlin last winter met with, as well as the alraost hostile
attitude assumed by Schleinitz towards the Gerraan party
in the Prussian Charabers. That in the teeth of these
experiences and of the raarked reactionary language of the
King at Konigsberg, so complete a conversion should have
taken place as that implied in sanctioning the step
now proposed by Baden, and in expressing readiness to
accept all the consequences of this step, seemed to me, at

298 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1861
first, almost incredible. The riddle is, however, of easier
solution when the motives for this apparent contradiction
are known. In the first place, the favourable reception
which the present project met with was immediate at the
hands of the King, when His Majesty was away from his
Ministers and braced by sea-bathing at Ostend. It was then
that the Grand Duke and Roggenbach worked upon him.
Now, as you know. King William's political instincts are
often better than his Ulogical applicatioi^ of them would
lead one to infer, and in this instance I really believe that he
was personally moved warmly to take up the present scheme
from a feeling of its political expediency and of the false
position from which it would extricate him. In the next
place it was Bernstorff ! and not Schleinitz who had to be
consulted in the matter, and it was Bernstorff before he
had fairly got into his Berlin assiette, and before he had been
submitted to the numbing influence of the Berlin Foreign
Office. The Grand Duke, who had lately had several inter
views with him, told me that the predominating feeling
with which he had returned from England, was that of the
sorry figure cut politically by Germans abroad, and that
for the present, at least, all his thoughts seemed to
be bent on remedying this evil. Far more powerfully,
however, even than these moral influences seem to have
been the motives suggested by the present difficulties of
the political situation in Prussia. King and Ministry are
seriously alarmed at the growing discontent of the Liberal
party, and at the prospect of a very considerable addition
to the more advanced sections of it in the ensuing elections ;
as a temporary measure a little reaction is indulged in, and
speeches of the Konigsberg raanner have been given vent to,
but the King, it appears, has grown fully alive to the fact
that this will not suffice really to meet the danger, nor the
so-called policy of la main libre any longer suffice for the
exigencies of the times, and that he must at length commit
Prussia to some line of action or other in the German ques
tion or run the risk of finding hiraself vis-d-vis of an un-
* Bernstorff, Albrecht Graf von, b. 1809, d. 1874, Prussian statesman
and diplomatist ; Prussian Minister in London, 1854-1861 ; Minister for
Foreign Affairs, 1861-1862 ; Ambassador in London, 1862-1S74.

i86i] BERLIN 299
manageable Chamber at a time when, for his army reforms,
and with a prospect of a loan of ten mUlions for the fleet,
he most requires a well-disposed money-lending Assembly.
The apparently easy step of acquiescing in the proposal
of Baden to discuss a plan of federal reform more or less
conformable to the wishes of the expected majority in the
new Chamber, seems the readiest way of acquiring the
desired position vis-d-vis of that majority without, on the
other hand, binding the Government to a policy of initiative,
the policy always the most hateful to a Prussian administra
tion. These, as far as I could gather from the Grand Duke
and Roggenbach, are, roughly sketched, the motives which
have led to the unexpected acquiescence of the Prussian
Cabinet in the Baden scheme. Whatever the motives may
be, however, the fact is an undoubted one that at present
(the Prussian ministry are quite the people to hark back at
the last hour) there is a complete understanding between
the two Cabinets as to the present being the right moment
to take the step, as well as to the details of the proposals to
be made — and solemn assurances have been given that the
King's Government wUl stand fast by the Grand Duke's
Government whatever be the consequences. That these
pourparlers have taken place between the two is, of course,
a profound secret between the King and his Ministers
on the one hand and the Duke and Roggenbach on the
other, and it would be inconceivably damaging to the
scheme were it prematurely to come out.
' As regards the details of the scheme itself, the Grand
Duke was very anxious that you should be put in possession
of them, and as soon as the draft of the circular is definitely
redige, I am to have a copy of it, which I will forward directly
to you, so that you wUl have the earliest possible informa
tion of the document itself.
' In the meantirae, he gave me the perusal of the draft
in its present (and most probably its definite) form, from
which I extract the following six points as constituting the
charpente of the scheme.
' I. A central Government with monarchical power exer
cised aecording to constitutional principles, wielding the
Executive in the name of the United States.

300 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1861
' 2. Exclusive competence of this Government in all
executive functions appertaining to national defence and
representation of the nation vis-d-vis of foreign countries.
' 3. By the side of this central Government a national
representation in two Chambers — the one representing the
Governments, the other the populations of the several
States. ' 4. The business of this central Government to be carried
on by a Minister responsible to this national Representa
tion. ' 5. The maintenance between the United States so con
stituted and such of the German Governments as are un
able to submit themselves to this central authority of the
international rights and obligations as laid dovm in the
existing federal treaties.
' 6. AU portions of the existing federal territory to remain
for the future, also the territorial constituents of the
German Confederation.
' The last two paragraphs have special reference to the
intended relation of the new Federal State (Bundesstaat) to
Austria, and possibly to Bavaria. The offensive and defen
sive alliance in all its main features which constitutes the
present Confederation is to remain intact, only instead of
continuing between the present mob of States, it is to exist
between two or at the most three large and powerful in
dividuals. The circular makes no mention of the Prussian
Dynasty as that proposed for the future head of the Union,
but the copies sent to Vienna and Berlin are to be enclosed
in covering dispatches in which this is distinctly enunciated.
The draft of the dispatch to Berlin had not yet been written,
but that to Vienna had, and was shovra to me. It was
couched in the most friendly and considerate form, entreat
ing the Imperial Government not to refuse to join in the
discussion of this most vital question. It urged the immin
ence of the danger incurred by allowing it to remain the
monopoly of the agitating classes, and by according to the
latter the vantage-ground of a good cause, it shows the
impossibUity of any other solution, and adduces the reasons
why Austria with her geographical position, such as it is, and
four-fifths of her population not German, cannot aspire to

i86i] BERLIN 301
the post which Prussia alone ean ffil, and it points out in
a strong Ught the immense advantages that would accrue
to the Austrian Empire in being leagued by the present
offensive and defensive obligations of the Confederation to
a mighty Power like the new United States.
' I should not be clearly representing the views of the
Grand Duke and his Ministers, were I to say that either of
them were sanguine as to any immediate practical results
from the step they are about to take, even if Prussia should
tum out to be much more keen in the matter than there is
any likelihood of her being. But the end which they do
hope to compass is analogous to that attained by Cavour
when he deposited the Italian Question upon the green cloth
of the Congress table at Paris. It is the simple but very
important step of raising the question of German Unity to
the dignity of a political question, of removing it from the
society of pamphleteers, demagogues and more or less dis
reputable societies to the more respectable and select coterie
of statesmen and politicians, and the forcing the Govern
ments of Germany and Europe generaUy to recognise it as
such. I am inclined to think, even if Prussia at the last
moment withdraws (a possibility which they do not lose
sight of), the circular wiU be dispatched aU the same, and
the result intended attained.'
Before the close of this year England was to be plunged
into mourning by a most unforeseen catastrophe, the death
of the Prince Consort at the early age of forty-one. If to the
widowed Queen the loss was that of 'Husband, Father, Lover,
Master, Friend, Adviser, and Guide,' ^ as, in the first days of
her bereavement, she wrote to his oldest and dearest friend.
Baron Stockmar — to the nation the loss was equaUy great.
At one of the most crucial moments of the world's history,
with changes taking place all round, with unknovm forces
and new ideas everywhere coming to the fore, the country
was suddenly deprived of the guidance of the Sovereign's
' permanent Minister,' whose knowledge, unerring sagacity,
and discreet advice had helped so materiaUy to shape a
successful line of conduct, and who had wrung, even from
^ Martin's Life of Prince Consort, vol. v.

302 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1862
his detractors, the unwilling admission that — ' In him we
have had as true an Englishman as the most patriotic
native of these islands ... at no period has our foreign
policy been less subject to the imputation of subservience to
foreign interests and relations than during the last twenty
years.' ^
Owing to the deep mourning for the Prince Consort the
members of the British mission in BerUn spent a very quiet
year. Morier's residence at his post was only broken by a
visit to Wiesbaden in May for a cure, and by a stay at
Coburg, whither he was again summoned in September by
Lord RusseU, who had gone there as Minister in attendance
on the Queen during Her Majesty's visit to the home of her
late husband.
But if quiet from a social point of view, Berlin was in
a state of political activity caused by the Constitutional
struggle in the thioes of which Prussia was then labouring.
King WiUiam, who as Regent had shovra Liberal tendencies,
had, since the death of his brother (King Frederick WUliam),
developed more and more reactionary ideas, and his exposi
tion of the Divine Right of Kings during the Coronation
ceremonies at Konigsberg had met with general dissent
from aU Liberals. His scheme, too, for Army Reform,
on which his whole soul was bent, was strongly opposed by
the Chamber of Representatives, and indeed by the whole
country, and eventuaUy led to the ending of the so-called
' New Era.'
The Prince of HohenzoUern, though he had practically
withdrawn from the conduct of affairs, stUl nominaUy
remained at the head of the Cabinet, but the retirement of
the Liberal Ministers, Auerswald, Schwerin, Count Piickler,
Patow, and Bernuth left Van der Heydt and Roon * as the
leading spirits in it. But this Ministry was also doomed to
faUure, and in September 1862, Bismarck (then Minister
in Paris) was called in by the King and charged with forming
a Cabinet.From this date a total change came over the scene, the
first evidences of which were soon to be perceived in the
1 Times Article, i6th December 1861.
' Roon, Albrecht v., b. 1803, d. 1879, Field-Marshal.

1863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 303
domain of foreign policy. At the beginning of January
1863, a revolution had broken out in Poland, and Prussia,
who had up till now under the Liberal regime followed a
pro-English and anti-Russian line of policy, hastened to
send General Alvensleben to the Emperor Alexander to
assure him of her help and support, and followed up these
assurances by mobilising half her army (four army corps out
of nine) on the Polish frontier.
The following series of private letters written by Morier
to his old friend of Cosmopolitan Club days, Layard, at
this time Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, depict the
situation : — ' Berlin, March i,th, 1863.
' . . . I would like nothing better than to give you a
faithful picture of the state of things here, from a somewhat
more general point of view than that necessarily taken in
an official correspondence ; and could I but skilfully select
from the many facts and impressions which my long
acquaintance with this country places at my disposal the
right materials for the purpose, my task would be an easy
one. But it is in this selection that lies the difficulty. I
find it very hard to sift lasting facts from ephemeral gossip,
or to marshal the passing crowd in anything like historical
perspective. It is easy to record official data, as they suc
cessively come up for registration, but to step beyond this,
and group these in the order of their true historical signi
ficance, is a very different thing. I wUl try, however, not
to be too ambitious, and, as you ask only for an unofficial
twaddle, I wUl just garrulously run on whither my pen may
take me, remembering ' que le mieux est I'ennemi du bien,'
and that a bad sketch actuaUy executed is better than a fine
painting only imagined.
' The dramatis personce, from whose relations to each other
must be evolved the plot of the serious and somewhat
heavy piece being acted here, are the King, Bismarck,
and the Chamber. If I can throw light on these three, I
may perhaps add, something to your stock of information.
' It is an error to look upon the King, as I see The Times
does, in the light of a mere tool in the hands of the feudal
party, or as a medievalist enthusiast for the principles of

304 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
the Holy Alliance. This is to confound him with his late
brother, which is a radical mistake. In theory, and as far
as a cramped and undeveloped intellect like his is capable
of generalising and seizing first principles, the King's
tendencies, as regards foreign politics at least, are, though
certainly not what we should call Liberal, nevertheless, in a
direction opposed to those of the Holy Alliance. The great
event of his life, his breach with his brother, and his retire
ment to Coblentz after the Olmiitz episode, was too in
timately connected with the question of Russian suzerainty
over Germany, not to leave a lasting impression on his mind,
and so, during the Crimean War, he worked heart and soul
with those who were countermining the attempts of the
feudal party to urge King Frederick WUliam into active
co-operation with Russia. It is true that since Konigsberg
he has broken with much of his former life, but not, I think,
on questions like these. Hence the story generaUyput about
with reference to the Convention, viz. that the King had
rushed into it for political purposes, and had drawn Bismarck
reluctantly into it after it was done, might have been satis
factorUy refuted on a priori grounds. I have, however,
very reliable data to show that the exact reverse of this was
the case. You wUl remember that the week before last
there were rumours very generaUy accredited of Bismarck's
resignation. I was told so positively, and on such high
authority, that he had done so, that, being in charge, I felt
bound to telegraph to the Foreign Office that these rumours
were based on good authority. The whole thing eame to
nothing, but I gave myself great' pains to ascertain what
had reaUy taken place, and I believe the following to be a
correct account. The King, when he first saw the Con
vention as forwarded to Berlin from St. Petersburg by
General Alvensleben, was strongly impressed with the
feeling that it bore the character of a political aUiance, or at
least that it was capable of being interpreted as such, where
as all he wanted was a mUitary arrangement pur et simple.
He was, however, talked out of this view by Bismarck, but
when the scandal caused in England and France by the
Convention became known at Berlin, he naturally returned
to his first impression, and a serious misunderstanding

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 305
between him and his Miiuster undoubtedly existed in the
early part of the week before last. Whether an actual
resignation on the part of Bismarck took place I have not
been able to ascertain with certainty, but I believe on
Monday, 23rd February, he did place in the hands of the
King a memorandum of some sort on the actual state of
affairs, in which, directly or indirectly, he put his resignation
as aneventuality to be taken into His Majesty's consideration.
His great readiness to back out of the whole thing, and his
clever invention of the non-ratification dodge in respect to
an agreement never intended to be ratified, and in its very
form not admitting of ratification, got over present diffi
culties. The King's political sagacity had had a triumph
over the Minister's, and His Majesty, as was natural on such
an occasion, being put into good humour with himself,
extended this good humour to his adviser. The attacks in
the Charaber, as was to be expected, strengthened Bismarck
instead of weakening him, and he has come out of the
Polish complication with a fresh lease of power. It remains,
however, a fact that in the first part of the week before last
he was for the first time since he came into office fairly
shaken in his saddle ; and, in connection with this, another
fact, for which I can positively vouch, is worth noting,
namely, that simultaneously with these events (on or about
the 23rd ult.) Manteuffel (the ex-Minister President, not the
General) wrote a letter in which he explained at length the
reasons why he could not at present take office. To whom
the letter was written, and what had called it forth, my in
formant (an intimate friend of many years' standing on
whom I can absolutely rely) would not tell me, but he had
seen and read the actual letter.
'To return, however, to the King. Not only absence
of political sympathy with Russia, but the presence of a
real feeling of pique against Austria, keeps hira from Holy
AUiance phantasies. He has never forgiven the Schon
brunn manifesto, and he is constantly alive to the feeling
that Austria wishes to treat Prussia as a vassal of the
Holy Roman Empire, and refuse her that parity of rank
in the Confederation which, not unjustly, he considers her
due. On both points he diametrically differs from tbe
VOL. L u

3o6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
late King, his brother. Frederick WUliam iv. was fairly
cowed by the Emperor Nicholas, and worshipped him as
the incarnation of the law of cosmic order, and destroyer
of the powers of Darkness and Anarchy. The Emperor
of Austria, on the other hand, he fondly looked upon in
his political opium dreams as the possible head of a future
readjusted German Empire, and on more than one occasion
expressed to his intimates (the Niebuhrs and Gerlachs of
other days) the pleasure it would give him to aet as cup
bearer at his Coronation.
' These, you see, are radical differences between the two
Sovereigns, and it would be a great error to confound
the two. It is, of course, comparatively easy to say what
the King is not. To buUd up synthetically what he is
is a more difficult operation. A few facts not generaUy
known may, however, help us to do so. First of aU, for
the greater portion of his life he did not believe that he
would ever be King. Being nearly of the same age with
his brother, it had become a sort of fixed idea that he would
never come to the throne, and he had habituated himself
to look upon his son as the next King of Prussia. Up
to 1848 he had never seriously thought of educating him
self politically for the contingency of his accession. He
cared for little beyond soldiering, and what political ideas
he had were the stereotype absolutist mUitary notions
of the HohenzoUern school, such as they are religiously
taught in all the cadet establishments of the kingdom.
The substratum of his character, therefore, i.e. his natural
temperament and his antecedents up to '48, were essentially
cast in a narrow and absolutist mould. With the events
of '48, however, and the great probability of an abdication
of the late King, and with his flight to England, there
began a necessary course of political education for which
his intellectual capacities did not well fit him. The dirt
Prussia had to eat in 1850 (with his true and fine feeling
for the honour of his country) so far gave the definitive
direction to this education that it effectuaUy estranged
him from his former associates and from the medieval
entourage of his brother, with whom from a social necessity
he had hitherto forgathered. In his retirement at Coblenz

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 307
the Princess of Prussia did her best to instU Liberal
principles into him, and he was put through a course of
Liberal instruction. The Liberals, however, with whom
he associated were not men of a stamp to take any real
or powerful hold upon him. Schleinitz and Auerswald,
his great intimates of that period, are milk-and-water
politicians of a school to whom the Germans apply a rarely
good proverb, " Wasch mir den Pelz, aber mach mich
nicht nass." {Wash me, but don't wet me !)
' He did, however, honestly try to make unto himself a
new political creed which should be Liberal and yet fit in
somehow with his own instincts and with what, for forty
years, had grown with his grovrth.
' I am in possession of a very curious document (or rather
a copy of it), a memorandum which he drew up himself
when Prince Regent, of a conversation he had in i860
with the King of Bavaria, just after his meeting with
Napoleon iii. at Baden, and after the Conference he had
held with his brother Sovereigns of Germany. It is very
characteristic, and gives, I think, a key to his character,
and to a great deal that has since happened, and I will
therefore give you the following extract from it.'!
'Berlin, March loth, 1863.
' To resume my letter of the 3rd instant. The following
is the extract from the King's (Prince Regent's) private
memorandum of his conversation with the King of Bavaria
in the spring of i860.
' " I then took the opportunity to explain to the King
of Bavaria the principles which ever since my advent
to the Regency I have been determined to carry out.
I said that, having found a Constitution, I considered it
my duty to conform to it, and not to falsify it by unnatural
interpretations. I had lived long enough in the proximity
of Government to convince myself of the evil which resulted
from the system pursued by the late Ministry " (namely,
the Manteuffel-Westfalen Administration). " I added that
it was not my intention to discuss whether Constitutions
as such were conducive to the well-being of nations, but
' Ibid., p. 231.

3o8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
only to express the conviction that where they did exist
the idea of making the measures of the Government public,
and of calling the people to a legitimate participation in
the legislation, had penetrated into all men's minds, and
that in all such a case it was the height of imprudence
to put oneself in contradiction to this feeling, as an opposi
tion of this kind would be equivalent to placing on formal
record the distrust of the Sovereign towards his people.
In relation to this same question of distrust, it was in my
opinion a false policy to seek the security of the Throne
in the limitations of the Constitution, — whereas, according
to my view, security of government consisted in the wise
alternative between the tightening and loosening the reins
of government (!!!). I added that I had made up my mind
to rule in this sense, and that on this ground I had granted
a freer movement in the constitutional sense, but in doing
so that I fully intended to guard against letting the reins
fall altogether out of my hands." The King of Bavaria
here interrupted me and said : I sincerely hope you wUl
make no melancholy experiences, which are ever difficult
to unmake, and of which the history of constitutional
government has so many examples to show.
' " I replied that I had often put this very same question
to myself, and that I had ever found a satisfactory answer
in the views which I had just detailed to him. I compared
the art of governing with that of regulating the bed of a
river. For this purpose the banks must be ameliorated
and strengthened there where the stream threatens to
overflow and destroy them, but they must neither be drawn
too close to each other nor kept too far apart ; above all, the
attempt must not be made to throw a dam across the river's
bed, as this would necessarUy accumulate the waters and
bring about a general inundation. The King of Bavaria
seemed weU satisfied with this metaphor (! ! !). I added
that in England the banks had been dravm too wide apart,
whilst in Hanover and Hesse they had been drawn too
close to each other, and that I hoped that in Prussia I should
be able to hold a mean between the two. The King said he
thought he might be able to do so."
' The bit of daylight which the above throws upon the

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 309
motive principles of the King's political activity is, I think,
very conducive to a right understanding of his character,
and explains much that has happened since. One's first
impulse is, of course, to burst out laughing and to say, " Oh,
ye gods, that the destinies of nations should be committed
to the charge of such royal Dogberrys as these ! " but I think
that a more careful examination leads to a less cynical con-
elusion. It must be remembered, in the first place, that
there is no Ministerial inspiration in the memorandum in
question. The Prince Regent went to Baden to meet
Napoleon unaccompanied by any Minister. His conversa
tions with the Emperor, and afterwards with the Kings and
Princes of Germany, and with their spokesman, the King of
Bavaria, were perfectly spontaneous. He had not even a
private secretary with him, and he not only wrote the
notes of these conversations himself, but himself copied them
out clear. Consequently, what we do get at are the bona
fide convictions of the individual such as during the years
iramediately preceding his advent to power he had painfully
hammered out for himself from the two incongruous sets of
materials adverted to in my former letter, namely, the narrow
and pedantic traditions of a Prussian General, who had
turned the meridian of life without ever expecting to be
more than a Prussian General ; and a new set of ideas which
the accident of his being thrown into opposition in 1850,
and the conviction which since 1848 he had arrived at, that
he would be King, had forced him, not otherwise than
against the grain, to master and to fit in for better or for
worse with his former prejudices. That the opinions so
formulated have become, as it were, stereotyped into a kind
of political dogma, I have had more than one opportunity
of assuring myself, as on several other occasions I have
learnt that in private conversations he has repeated the
same opinions almost ipsissimis verbis. Hence the general
psychological result, to which I think an unprejudiced
consideration of the memorandum leads one, exactly tallies
with what I have been repeatedly told by persons who
intimately know the King, is that which speciaUy character
ises him,'iiamely, a very sound judgment where the subject-
matter lies fairly within the grasp of his comprehension, and

310 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
a total helplessness of judgment where the subject-matter
lies outside the circle of this grasp. This is a very common
phejiomenon, but one which I think is often not sufficiently
taken into consideration. It is the old story of the briga
dier making a bad general of division, the attorney a bad
lawyer, the lawyer a bad judge. In the first part of the
above extract, where the King (or rather the Prince Regent)
records his personal experience of the Manteuffel Ministry,
with the acts of which he was very thoroughly acquainted,
and which had eome to his cognisance in the shape of con
crete phenomena, his judgment is eminently sound, and
he exactly hits the central vice of the system, namely, the
falsifying of the Constitution by false interpretations. When
he leaves this ground and tries to formulate an abstract
theory of govemment, he immediately runs into the ab
surdities of the tightening and loosening rein theory, and
the metaphor of the " river's bed," ete. Of course, the
above would not suffice to establish his claim to the sound
judgment I claim for him in the limited sense adverted to,
though it would be all-sufficient to establish his claim to the
folly of the more unlimited kind, and corroborative evidence
as regards the former is therefore wanted : this I think is
fairly afforded by his conduct both at Baden and at Teplitz,
but more especiaUy at Baden. I received at the time the
most detailed information from eye and ear-witnesses of all
he said and did on those occasions, and certainly it fully
justifies the claim I put in for him. In the delicate ins and
outs of the situation at Baden, in his peculiar relation to the
tempter of the Tuileries on the one side and his jealous and
frightened crowned confederates on the other, he never
once stumbled or behaved otherwise than as a King and a
gentleman. By one of these said crowned confederates
who was present at the various meetings, and who is not
prejudiced in his favour, I was told that the Prince Regent
never once showed the least embarrassment, whereas the
Emperor Napoleon on several occasions, and especially at
first, did so very much. He was sure of the ground on
which he moved, he had no doubts or misgivings as to what
was the Une of his political conduct, and so he acted cor
rectly with perfect ease. He showed the same tact at

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 311
TepUtz, and if what I stated in my last letter is correct (and
I have no doubt it is), he showed the same right judgment
in being the first Prussian to see the tendencies and follies
of the Russian Convention. Besides the above proofs I
have the testimony of a man of extraordinary good judg
ment, who is no admirer of his, and who has had a great
many opportunities of seeing his Minutes on questions of
administrative detail, and who assures me that he is often
quite dumbfounded at the remarkable sense and clearness of
the decisions evidenced by these Minutes, and the contrast
they afford to the blunderings and confusions exhibited
by the same hand in the higher walks of " Executive "art.
' What I have above said wUl, I think, be found very
compatible with a peculiarity which he has in common with
other men in high office, namely, great impatience of the
society or advice of men inteUectuaUy gifted.
' This must finish my sketch of the psychological character
of His Majesty as far as I have been able to acquaint myself
with it.' ' Berlin, /w/c ^rd, 1863.
' I paused in my sketch of King WiUiam in the hopes that
I should be able to coUect more data respecting him, and
by their assistance be enabled to find some point of view
from which the King of 1863 could be harmonised with the
Prince Regent of 1858, but I have not succeeded in doing
so. I cannot reconcile the King's personal acts during the
last year with the idea of the man which the memorandum
of i860, of which I sent you an extract, had suggested to
me, and I must therefore give up my attempts at psycho
logical photography, and content myself with putting to
gether what facts I know, and leave you to draw your own
inferences. ' These facts I must, moreover, dot down together pro
miscuously, or I shaU never bring these letters to a close.
' A very important one is the effect that was produced
upon him by the attempt on his life in 1861. It acted in
this way. From one end of Prussia to another the danger
he had incurred caUed forth a true and loudly expressed
feeling of loyalty. The personal popularity he stiU enjoyed
(for the unpopularity of his quasi-Liberal Ministry which

312 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
had been steadily increasing had not yet reached the King),
combined with the large reserve fund of loyalty to the
reigning house which still exists in Prussia, and with the
demonstrative bonhomie of the German character, resulted
in a national display of sympathy with what had nearly been
a victim, and of execration against what had nearly been
a regicide, which ought to have convinced His Majesty that
sounder monarchical state of public feeling no Sovereign
need wish for than that prevailing in Prussia in the summer
of 1861.
' When, however, a few months later, the General Elec
tions took place, the same crowds which had flocked tb
make demonstrations of loyalty eagerly collected to return
the opposition members. Never before had so large a
proportion of the electors participated in the elections,
and never before had such unanimity prevailed in framing
a comraon progrararae to embrace the various shades of
the Liberal Party, the point of agreement being a common
determination to resist the imposition by unfair means of
the King's particular hobby, the reorganisation of the
Army. ' Now, the only fair, and at the same time the only true,
inference to be drawn from these two demonstrations was
that a great progress had been attained in the political
education of the people, and that they had learnt to dis
tinguish clearly between their general duty of loyalty and
their special duty as citizens of contending for their manifest
rights without regarding persons, and no better proof could
be given that they had clearly apprehended that these were
compatible duties, not necessarily clashing, and both of
which they were ready to attend to. This was an iramense
step, when we consider that it was a German people that had
learnt this lesson, — for with them there is far greater danger
than elsewhere of a false personal sentiment influencing
political actions.
' Unfortunately, the inference drawn by the King and his
personal advisers (of whom I will talk later, a distinct class,
however, from his public advisers) was exactly the reverse.
Nothing would induce him to believe that the people
who had expressed their loyalty in summer were identical

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 313
with those who recorded their votes against his own partic
ular policy in the autumn. All the instincts of absolutism
revolted against admitting the unwelcome truth that the
same man who, with voice broken with emotion, had re
turned thanks to the Almighty for the preservation of the
King's life, could deliberately use his political privUeges
to thwart the same King's personal wishes. In the royal
code, loyalty and obedience were inseparable ideas, — and
obedience, strange as the theory sounds in our ears, implied
the using of the franchise to further what was known to be
the will of the Sovereign pro tem.
' Hence there rooted itself in the King's mind the con
viction, never afterwards to be eradicated, that the popula
tion of Prussia was composed of two bodies, — an immense
majority who had unmistakably expressed their loyalty on
the occasion of the attempt upon his life, and who con
sequently approved of everything he might be inclined to
originate and carry out, and a small minority who voted
at the elections, and who by showing their opposition to
his wishes had clearly proved themselves capable of every
revolutionary crime, and must necessarily have abstained
from participating in the loyal demonstrations of the pre
ceding months and this in spite of the hundreds of thou
sands of electors who had registered their votes, and who
included in their numbers almost the entire wealth, and
certainly aU the inteUigence, of the country.
' That this idea did permanently establish itself in the
King's mind I have abundant data to prove ; moreover,
in a celebrated interview which he had with a deputation
of the clergy shortly after the elections of 1861, His
Majesty, with an abundance of royal sobs and tears, did
amply testify to this strange haUucination. It has guided.
all his acts since, and is an id/e fixe.
' Immediately in connection with these two events came
the " Divine Right " burlesque, enacted on the occasion
of the Coronation in October '61. The extraordinary
tomfooleries connected with that event you doubtless re
member, — they proved satisfactorUy that what had been
believed to be a mere personal aberration of Frederick
WiUiam iv. was " in the blood," and extended itself to the

314 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
supposed sober-minded and simple-mannered soldier who
inherited his crown.
'The General Election and the Coronation, which feU
almost simultaneously in the autumn of 1861, inaugurated
the campaign between Divine Right and Constitutional
Government which is being fought out now, and before
I can speak of Bismarck to any purpose I must give a
sketch of the principal events in this campaign which I
perceive is stUl misunderstood in England. Before doing
so, however, let me briefly resume what we have got at
with reference to the King.
' We started with him as a not over-intelligent soldier
brought up in all the narrow associations of the Prussian
mUitary school. He is considered honest and straight
forward, and quite incapable of the sophistries of his brother,
whose artistical and poetical temperament he is deficient
in. Those who know him well, however, describe him,
even at this early period, as impatient of contradiction
and arbitrary, — all unite in considering him as essentially
obstinate. ' At an important period of his life he is thrown, or rather
suddenly jerked, out of all the habits and ways of thought
in whicii he has hitherto lived. He comes to spend a con
siderable time in England, and is necessarUy, on his retum
to Prussia, surrounded by men occupied with a quasi-
opposition to Govemment. These people, more courtiers
than politicians, doctrinaires rather than men tried in the
fire of real party strife, spend their leisure in fashioning
constitutional schemes and teaching him constitutional
lessons, the real burden of which is, that he can be a con
stitutional King and yet give up nothing of his absolute
power. At last the day comes when he has to act, and
he makes a very fair beginning : he has learnt his lessons,
and can repeat them off quite pat, — nay, I verily believe
that in repeating them he fancies he is speaking his own
sentiments. I do not doubt that the memorandum to
which I have referred was written by him in the firm belief
that those were his own self-elicited opinions ; the popul
arity, into an immense share of which he suddenly comes,
is peculiarly pleasant to him, and for a brief whUe every-

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 315
thing appears couleur de rose. In the early portion of his
Regency he seldom takes the initiative, but aUows his
Ministers almost entirely to aet for themselves. On almost
all the points of internal policy which characterise the
Liberal school to which his Ministers belong, and which
especially distinguishes them from the feuded party, he
is either indifferent or shares the view of his Ministers, —
civil marriage, extension of the land tax to the exempted
manors, detachment of the rural police from seignorial
jurisdiction, reform of the administration of the rural
Circles in an anti-feudal spirit, and many other similar
measures, all have in him, if not a warm supporter,
at least an unprejudiced approver. On all these questions
the teachers of the last few years had found a blank on
which it was easy for them to write their own characters.
Nor on the ground of German and foreign polities (winter
of '58 to '59) is there yet anything which ean estrange
him from the coterie of his political friends and the great
bulk of the nation. Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein were
the two questions connected with the defeat of Olmutz,
that great day of Prussian humUiation, which had rankled
so poisonously in his mind and thrown him into open
opposition to his brother. They were the only German
questions then open, and on both of them he shared the
views of the Liberal Party. Austria was then at the
height of her prestige, and stood erect with unbroken
power, the champion of reaction and the walled city of
refuge to the minor dynasties. She was lukewarm in
the Schleswig-Holstein question, and in the Hesse question
the warm patron and supporter of the Elector against his
people. The popular feelings, therefore, in reference to
both these questions were coincident with the strong
sense of " rancune " which the Prince Regent bore to Austria
for the days of Olmiitz. Out of Germany, closer alliance
with England seemed marked out as his personal wish
not less strongly than it was the national desire. Every
thing, therefore, in 1858 seemed gomg on prosperously.
The general elections had yielded a large majority of the
so-called " Old Liberal " or Constitutional party, equally
opposed to the democrats or radicals and to the feudals ;

3i6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
at the head of this majority stood Vincke, and to this party
three of the most prominent members of the new Cabinet
nominaUybelonged, namely, Prince HohenzoUern, Auerswald,
and Schleinitz. I say nominaUy, because none of these
men had really taken a part in the Parliamentary life of
the party, and belonged to it rather by abstract doctrine
and social ties than by the companionship of common
warfare. Moreover, true to Prussian tradition, they
from the first associated themselves immediately with the
Crown, and repudiated the idea of close connection with
the Parliamentary party. The majority, therefore, though
at the first apparently very much identified with the
Cabinet, never came to stand to it in the relation of a
Government majority. They stood to it more in the
relation of a chorus in a Greek play, criticising the acts
of the " dramatis personae," — mostly approving, but some
times censuring, and always lecturing, always, however, as a
body foreign to and not in any way identified with the actors.
' Such were some of the leading features of the most
prosperous time of the present Sovereign's reign, — every
thing, as I said before, appeared in the autumn of 1858
couleur de rose. But in the events at this early date there
were not wanting forebodings of a change. In the cele
brated programme which he published on assuming the
Regency, the Regent had declared that it was " not his
intention to break violently with the past, but only to
grasp the future with an ameliorating hand." This,
which Wcis taken at the time as a mere phrase, had a deep
signification attached to it, and was in reality the record
of the Prince's determination not to enter on a course of
radical reform (the only reform that could be of any good),
and indeed not to depart from the absolute principles which
had guided his brother. To carry out this programme he
retained in office two of his brother's Ministers — Simeon,
the Minister of Justice, a mere tool of Manteuffel ; and
Van der Heydt, the Minister of Commerce, a man of no
smaU official capacity, but utterly without principle, and
loving his portfolio for its own sake. Besides these two,
he kept in office the President of the Police, Zedlitz, a man
thoroughly identified with all the worse parts of the previou s

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 317
reactionary system, an ardent worshipper of police auto
cracy, and deeply versed in the arts of petty persecution
and intrigue, in which a system of this kind lives and moves
and has its being. The Liberal Ministers remonstrated
strongly against these " beaux restes," but did not make
the stand against them which they ought to have made,
and which then the Prince Regent could not have resisted.
On the same principle of not breaking with the past, all,
or nearly all, of the leading spirits of the former regime
were kept in their places, and as the natural result in a
country bureaucraticaUy governed like Prussia, a consider
able disharmony in the administrative machine was the
consequence. Comparative freedom having been restored
to the Press, the complaints against this state of things
naturally became loud, and the result, with the King's
peculiar temperament, was to make him obstinately stand
by his reactionary protegfe, and look upon resistance
to the wishes of his Liberal Ministers and to the
clamour of public opinion as an act of piety to his
brother, and of assertion of his own independence and
wUl. Another result was that by this means a class of
persons obtained constant access to him whose detailed
knowledge of local affairs contrasted with the inexperi
ence of his Liberal advisers, who were new to business, in
a manner unfavourable to the latter. Now, this kind of
knowledge, especially the gossip of the President of Police,
and his morning reports of what had taken place in the
town overnight, was exactly of a kind in which the King
delighted, and those who could furnish it naturally became
favourites, — for the King hates general principles and
loves the detaUs of common life. Another class of persons
came into daUy contact with him who were unconnected
with his political advisers properly so called, and those
were the merabers of the Military Cabinet, headed by
General Manteuffel (a cousin of the Minister). These
people are one and all reactionaries of the worst type, and,
under cover of talking mere mUitary details, they soon
began to exercise a strong influence over the King (or Prince
Regent, as he then was), and so out of these two classes
there sprang up that body of personal advisers above

3i8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
alluded to, whose influence runs in an occult stream side
by side with that of the public advisers, to the great
detriment of the public service.
' It was amidst this apparent prosperity — but this real
weakness — ^that the Italian War broke out, and that the
Cabinet of Berlin was called upon to take some definite
line of policy, which could not faU, whatever might be
its direction, to be pregnant with important results to
the general political interests of Europe.
'With reference to the then position of the Prussian
Cabinet I will quote a passage from a memorandum I wrote
upon the subject at the time (May 1859), because it records
the impression left upon me then and there, and when I had
tolerably frequent intercourse with some of the leading men
of the Cabinet or their immediate entourage . It is, moreover,
amusing to eaU up the contemporaneous impression pro
duced by a Ministry which the contrast of later Ministries
has accustomed one to describe as par excellence the Liberal
Ministry.^ ' The above is in reality a digression, as we are stiU immedi
ately concerned with the King, but it is not altogether out
of place in bringing out two facts clearly, — one, of the con
temptible impression which a contemporaneous watching
of the so-called Liberal Ministers left on an unbiassed
spectator; the other, the honesty of the King's foreign
policy. ' I had at this time (the spring of 1859) considerable
opportunities of knowing from day to day what went on,
in consequence of the presence at Berlin of the Duke of
Coburg, with whom I am on very intimate terms, and who
at that time was on the best footing with the Prince Regent.
I cannot go into details respecting the Prince Regent's policy
at the commencement and during the duration of the
Italian War, but I can record my conviction founded on
very intimate knowledge that it was perfectly straight
forward and honest, and that nothing could be more
utterly unfair than the reproach of double-dealing which
the Austrian Government afterwards east upon it, or more
treacherous than the attempt made by the French Govern-
• Ibid., page 264, "Morier on Prussian Ministry."

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 319
ment to give this reproach the colouring of probabiUty.
The Prince Regent from the first marked out the line of
policy he conceived that his German obligations imposed
upon him, and he stuck to it, although sorely tempted to
deviate from it. This line was the following : not to con
sider the Italian quarrels of Austria German quarrels in
such a sense as to cause them to be fought out ab initio on
the Rhine (which was what Austria wanted) ; but, on the
other hand, to regard any serious defeat of Austria in Italy,
or anything that should seriously endanger her position in
the Quadrilateral, as a danger to the left flank of the German
position, Germany being considered as on the defensive
against an attack from the West. Now, the entire spring
and summer of 1859 were spent by the King in preparing
against this eventuality ; he mobilised the Prussian Army,
and strained every nerve to get the various contingents of
the Federal Army into fighting order, and to arrive at
something like unity of plan and organisation in the military
apparatus of the Confederation, meeting the while with
every possible difficulty and thwarted by every sort of mean
jealousy on the part of Austria, no less than of the smaller
States. He did at last succeed in getting a formidable
military power and fighting order, and the result was . . .
the Peace of ViUafranca. Now, I am not going to examine
whether this was a right or a wrong policy, but what I wish
to impress upon you is that, morally speaking, the King
deserves credit for the way in which he carried it out, —
because he did so amidst such obloquy, and whilst his
advisers were disagreed amongst each other as to the course
to be followed, and divided into two camps, each giving
contradictory advice, in a direction opposed to the Prince
Regent's own views — one set being aU for a great immediate
coup against France in the German sense, and with a view
to putting Prussia at the head of Germany as the Spada
de Germania ; the other set for a great " coup " against
Austria, on the theory of crushing a rival when he is down,
and in contemplation of the solidarity of Italian and
Prussian interests and the applicability of the Cavour
method to Pmssia. An additional merit, which cannot be
denied to the Prince in his resistance to the latter project,

320 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
was the strong personal feeling of "rancune " against Austria,
in recoUection of Olmutz, to which I have often aUuded,
and which many episodes in the negotiations now carried on
between the Berlin and Vienna Cabinets tended to increase.
All his personal feelings he, however, did most thoroughly
subordinate to what he conceived was his duty as a great
German Power, and he should get the full credit of this.
' The Peace of ViUafranca resulting in a great European
war having once more been fought out without Prussia
bearing a share in it, and with obloquy cast upon her for
having selfishly stood aloof, the excitement of great angers
with no deeds for them to be quenched in, and the totaUy
new political combinations, both European and German,
brought about by these events, aU acted powerfuUy in
politicaUy demoralising the Prince Regent. He was con
scious of having acted honestly and of having been wil
fuUy misunderstood. The divided counsels of his advisers
had afforded him no support in time of need, and now a new
set of political ideas, noisily claiming to be heard, were loudly
proclaimed and acted upon in Italy, and re-echoed in
Germany, — ideas which, aecording to his old creed, were the
worst of heresies, and which had no place in the new creed
which had been taught him. There was no one at hand of
sufficient calibre, or with the knowledge and foresight that
could harmonise these disharmonies to him, and show him
a path along which he could with safety and honour tread.
Amidst this chaos and confusion of ideas there was one
peculiar kind of chaos and confusion, which the Prince
Regent was peculiarly fitted to appreciate and reorganise,
and this was the military confusion of the defensive appar
atus of the Confederation and the shortcomings of his own
military organisation.
' I told you in a former letter that in practical questions
the King has a remarkable quick and sound judgment.
PersonaUy superintending as he did the whole business of
the mobUisation of the Prussian Army, and carrying on
the negotiations for the joint action of his army with the
federal contingents of the other German States, he became
aware to their fuU extent of all the radical defects with
which in every portion of it this double apparatus abounded.

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 321
and he set himself most seriously to work to remedy, if
possible, these defects. The reorganisation of the Prussian
Army and the reconstruction of the military constitution of
the Confederation became the all-engrossing objects of his
thoughts. Puzzled and faltering in his political views and
with reference to the line which he should adopt in presence
of the new combinations, he saw clearly where the old
systems had in practice broken dowm, and set to work to
remedy these defects, thinking that the military machinery
couldbeseparately mended without organic political changes.
' Pari passu with the labour he had thus entered on,
eame the great anti-Divine Right changes in Italy. That a
German princekin should have been deeply affected by
the fate of the Dukes of Modena and Parma, that a King of
Hanover or Wiirtemberg should have broken out into a
cold sweat at the tidings of Garibaldi's entrance into Naples,
was natural ; that a King of Prussia's sympathies on the
other hand should have shunted themselves off to this side
of the rails, and should not have felt themselves rather
attracted towards the part played in Italy by Victor Em
manuel, shows that the ties of caste are in some organisa
tions stronger than all else besides. Certain it is, that in
all Europe no Sovereign (not even Lord Normanby!) more
genuinely hated, despised and abhorred Victor Emmanuel
and Cavour than did and does King WUliam of Prussia.
Exactly, however, in proportion as this effect was being
produced on the Ruler, the Ruled began to appreciate the
fuU and true bearings of the new birth of Italy, and a true
and genuine sympathy for the Italian nation began to
spread through Prussia and the north of Germany. The
natural result was that the King began to believe the daUy
reiterated croakings of his feudal entourage that Liberal
and revolutionary ideas were one and the same, and that
the Liberal measures which he stUl patronised were but the
top of the inclined plane infaUibly leading into chaos of all
things human and divine like that existing in Italy.
' The resolution passed in the Lower Chamber in 1861,
recommending the Government to recognise the Kingdom
1 Former British Ambassador in Paris, known for his strong Conserva
tive sentiments.
VOL. I. X

322 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
of Italy, contributed more than anything else to estrange
the King from aU sympathy with Liberal plans of reform
in Germany.
' In the meantime, the want of success which attended
all the measures of his Ministers tended not unnaturally
to exasperate him with them, though in a great measure
this want of success was owing to his own thwarting of
them. To concUiate the Upper House, as weU as the King,
these measures were only half Liberal, which led to endless
bickerings with the Lower Chamber, without satisfying
the Upper. Measure after measure painfuUy passed in the
Lower Chamber was thrown out by the Upper, and legisla
tion was brought to a complete standstiU.
' To make matters worse, two occurrences almost simul
taneously contributed to render the Ministry most un
popular. One was the discovery of some gross police
scandals under Manteuffel, but in which the actual President
of Police, Zedlitz, was implicated ; the other was the dis
missal of the most constitutional of the Ministers, General
Bonin, the War Minister, for opposing the King's plan for
the reorganisation of the Army and the substitution in his
place of General Roon, a mUitary bureaucrat, ready to
do the King's bidding in all matters great or smaU.
' In reference to the first, the King protected Zedlitz
through thick and thin, and the Ministry most foolishly,
on the principle of maintaining the King's authority, aided
and abetted him. In the ease of Bonin, though sharing
his views, they aUowed him to be sacrificed without making
common cause with him.
' Little by little the detaUs of the King's plan for the
reorganisation of the Army became known, and a very
general opposition to it on various important points simul
taneously took possession of the public mind. To these
points I shaU refer later — for the present it is sufficient to
say that this opposition exasperated the King to the highest
degree. Opposition is what he hates. He had hated the
feudals because they had opposed him as Prince of Prussia,
and he had taken to the Liberals, because they at first went
with him. He could not understand that it was he who
had changed.

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 323
' On the other hand, the Liberal Ministers fell into the
fatal mistake of using the mUitary organisation as a means
of pushing the King onwards in their sense on other ques
tions. Though opposed to some of the principal points of
the reorganisation in the bottom of their hearts, they
offered to do their best to pass it, if the King would but
remain true to his Liberal programme. Everything now
tended to centre round this question. How it gradually, like
the fat kine in Pharaoh's dream, ate up all the other ques
tions, and became a question of constitutional life and
death to Prussia, how it broke the neek of one Minister
after the other tUl it got into the hands of Bismarck, where
it remains as unsolved as ever, must form the subject of
another letter. In the present letter I have endeavoured
to show you something of the King's relation to the politics
of Prussia since his accession to power. The two facts to
be borne in mind are the way in which constitutional lessons
gradually wore off, till the ancient Adam was once more
there in his integrity, how in default of any other creed the
Divine Right creed gradually became the only one which his
mind was capable of grasping, and secondly, how his plan
for the reorganisation of the Army became the one absorb
ing object of his policy, driving everything else into the
background and possessing him with the sort of intensity
with which the Reformation may have possessed a
Luther. ' In corroboration of which, I will in conclusion mention
two facts. The first, that he told a person this spring,
who repeated it to me, that were his brother to come to life
again, he would kneel before him and ask his forgiveness
for having by earlier acts of his administration so misjudged
him. ' The second fact is his constantly repeating and his
having moreover written in a letter of which I have seen a
copy, that he would rather abdicate than give up one man
or one week's service of his reorganisation.
' Let us, however, in conclusion not forget that in his
foreign policy, and especially in relation to his German
relations, he has never acted otherwise than as an honest
man and a gentleman. . . .'

324 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863

' Berlin, August ^rd, 1863.
' I announced in my last letter that the present one would
be devoted to the history of the reorganisation of the Army
and its expansion into the constitutional conflict which
at so inopportune a moment has stricken dovra Prussia
with paralysis. I must beg you to remember that in this
military question lie the Alpha and Omega of this present
struggle, and that by its solution alone can vitality be
once more restored to the palsied limbs and the " arise
and walk " sound in the cripple's ears. Moreover, it is
not a question that admits of being patched up and its
solution deferred to more propitious opportunities. The
time for this is gone by. Two radical principles respectively
co-extensive with absolute government on the one side
and constitutional government on the other stand facing
each other, and between them no " transaction," as a
Frenchman would say, is possible. If the one principle
triumphs, the other is vanquished, and vice versa. "Let
the military question be solved as the King and Bismarck
desire, and Prussia falls out of the ranks of Constitutional
States and returns to the category of " enlightened des
potisms." Let it be solved as the country and the Chamber
wish, and Prussia exchanges her formal Constitutionalism
for a bona fide popular Govemment.
' This is not understood in England, and is not clearly
apprehended even here, except by the few heads that have
kept cool, while others have been heating in the turmoil.
The combatants on the side of the Government have con
sciously and purposely sought to withdraw attention
from the concrete difficulty by inscribing on their standard
the abstract principle of " Personal " versus " Parlia
mentary " Government. The optimism and " wash me
but don't wet me " of the ConstitutionaUsts have refused
to see the radical importance of the principles at stake,
and their leaders have preached accommodation and
compromise where these terms were synonymous with
defeat. The clearer thinkers amongst the party of Pro
gress and the correct instinct of the nation have, on the

i863]-^ LETTERS TO LAYARD 325
other hand, seized the true bearings of the question. The
King likewise. Both are equally determined not to yield,
and >t^refore, as I said before, when the one, whichever it
may be, goes to the wall, the victory of the other wiU be
a decisive victory.
' At the risk, therefore, of being tedious (some detail
wiU be unavoidable) I must enter fully into the question.
' Let us first clear the ground by getting rid once for all
of our English notion on the subject. We are in the
exceptional position of a great Power recruiting its army
solely by voluntary enlistment. Hence the Army with
us is a matter of estimates only. So many men, so much
money. So much money, so many men. By the votes
so taken, nobody's ulterior rights are interfered with. As
between the men engaged into or dismissed from the
Service and the authorities that engaged or dismissed them,
the question is one of private contract only. The burden
added or removed is placed upon or taken from the
shoulders of the taxpayers by their natural Representatives
in Parliament assembled, and there the matter ends. The
organisation, or rather " formation " (to use the technical
term employed in French and German to distinguish
between the mere tactical distribution of troops and the
organisation or general constitution of military force) of
the men once voted remains in theory, at least, the pre
rogative of the Crown.
' Not so where conscription exists, i.e. where the
miUtary apparatus of a country has to be furnished by its
citizens in kind as well as in money. Here the question,
instead of being one of estimates only, becomes one touching
the personal status of each individual citizen, and therefore
involving allsorts of ulterior considerations . It is plain, there
fore, that the action of the Legislature cannot be restricted
to the mere sums voted for the maintenance of the Army,
but must extend to the modes under which the personal
service has to be rendered ; it has to deal with a blood tax
as well as a money tax, and if the essence of a constitu
tional form of Government is that the Sovereign cannot
impose taxes upon the nation without the latter's consent,
it is self-evident that this canon must be appUed to taxes

326 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
levied in kind as well as to those levied in money. This
seems so plain as to render the stating of it apparently
superfluous, and yet it is the non-appreciation of this
obvious truth in Prussia which has led to aU the present
mischief, and there is the less excuse for this, inasmuch
as other continental Constitutions as, e.g., Belgium, have
had to go over the same ground, always resulting in the
distinction being arrived at which is noted by the above
terms of " formation " and organisation, i.e. the tactical
distribution and arrangement of the troops committed by
the nation to the Sovereign has remained the prerogative
of the Crovra ; the constitution of the Army, i.e. the larger
principles ruling the conditions under which the citizens
are to serve the term of their service, the laws under which
they are placed, whether mUitary or civil, the proportion
between the peace and the war establishment, etc., have
been determined by the Legislature.
' It is, however, fair to state as regards Prussia that the
very peculiar origin of that State which may be described
as having been shaped out of a standing army by the
plastic skiU of its former rulers, does so far stamp an
exceptional character upon it, that it is not to be wondered
at if its actual Sovereign should be more mindfiU, in regard
to his relations towards his army, of the past traditions
of his House, than of the requirements of modern political
ethics. ' Having laid dovra these general principles, let us test
them by what has gone on here.
' In German political phraseology the Sovereign figures
in a double capacity. He is " Kriegsherr," i.e. Supreme
Head of the military forces, and he is " Landesherr," i.e.
Supreme Head of the State. The first of these functions
he exercises in virtue of his prerogative, the latter he exer
cises in conjunction with, that is, under the control of, his
ParUament. Now, freed from all extraneous matters, the
question at issue between King William and his subjects
resolves itself into this — Is the organisation of the Army, in
its wider sense, involving the amount and the conditions of
the personal service to be rendered by the individual
citizen, as weU as the sum total of mUitary services, to be

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 327
rendered by the State, to be ordered by the wiU of the
Sovereign as " Kriegsherr," i.e. Head of the Army, or
is it to be settled by him as " Landesherr," i.e. Head of
the State, and as such in conjunction with other branches
of the Legislature ? Is the nation to have or not to have
a voice in the imposition of the blood tax paid by itself ?
' This, I repeat, is the real point at issue. Not, indeed,
that it has been officially formulated in this manner by
the Cabinet in its corporate capacity, though individual
Ministers have said as much, but that the Cabinet has
attempted by crooked ways to apply the principle in
practice. The reproach to which they are justly obnoxious
is their not having from the commencement had the honesty
to place the question on this, its true issue. They have
acted on the principle of the organisation of the Army, in
its most extended sense, being a prerogative of the Crown,
by sanctioning the caUing into life of a new constitution
of the Army without Parliament being consulted, and they
have gone so far as to ride rough-shod over the budget
rights of the Lower House, when by their exercise, the new
organisation was jeopardised ; but, on the other hand, as
a makeshift, and to get a pretext for putting the Chamber
into the wrong, they have brought in a Bill for the retro
spective legalising of the organisation, giving out at the
same time that nothing would induce the Crown to agree
to less than was contained in the Bill, and that, if therefore
it were rejected, the reorganisation would be maintained
just the same.
' The stand, therefore, made by the Chamber against that
portion of the budget, which represents the extra cost en
tailed by the reorgarusation, is a stand made for the right
of the nation to have a voice in the imposition of the taxes
on bone, sinew, and blood furnished by it in kind.
' I want you to keep this in mind as a key to what I shall
now relate.
' The organisation of the Army with which Prussia entered
upon her constitutional existence dates back to the year
1814. The new chart of liberties left the old conditions
of service untouched, and, untU i860, the two systems went
on peacefully side by side, apparently weU suiting each other.

328 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
Let us note at the threshold of our inquiry, that the demand
for a radical reform of the system of 1814, which should
revolutionise the principles on which it was built, came not
from the Parliament created by the Constitution but from
the Crown.
' The peculiarity of the mUitary system inaugurated by
the law of 3rd September 1814 consists in this — that whilst
it laid a military burden upon the Prussian people such as
no nation had ever before borne, it did so to the great joy
and contentment of the people so burdened, and that, whilst
this law was promulgated as the legislative act of an absolute
Ruler, it was, nevertheless, a great popular measure passed,
as it were, by public acclamation in the hour of national
triumph. That which is the most remarkable feature about
the matter is, that though called into life under such excep
tional circumstances, it has not diminished in popularity
during the long period that has elapsed since.
' The principle on which the law of 1814 is based is not
like that in force in other continental states, that every
able-bodied Prussian citizen fit to carry arms shoiUd
be liable to mUitary service, but that every such citizen
should actually serve. By this provision three main features
of the Prussian national character were done justice to :
its patriotism, which may be said to be a new feature
evoked by the great war of liberation, but destined to re
main henceforth a very prominent one ; its love of military
glory, the tradition of the days of the great HohenzoUern
Rulers, and lastly, its democratic tendencies, to which we
have already adverted.
' Such being the dominating principle of the law of 1814,
let us briefly review the manner of its application.
' For nineteen years, i.e. from his twentieth to his thirty-
ninth year, every Prussian citizen fit to carry arms was to
be an enroUed soldier. The first five of these nineteen years
{i.e. from his twentieth to his twenty-fifth year) he formed
part of the standing army. The next seven years {i.e. from
his twenty-fifth to his thirty-second year) he formed part of
the First Levy of Landwehr. The last seven years {i.e. from
thirty-two to thirty-nine) he formed part of the Second
Levy of the Landwehr.

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 329
' Of the five years in the standing army, however, the law
of 1814 ordained that the three first only should actually
be spent under arms ; for the last two the soldier was dis
missed intothe Reserve to his home and civUian occupations.
The service of the Landwehr was of a light kind in time of
peace, the men only being eaUed out for a few days' yearly
drUl. On the other hand, in time of war, the Landwehr of
the First Levy was placed upon a perfect equality with the
standing army, and, from the fact of its containing all the
men in the real prime of life, i.e. from twenty-five to thirty-
two, the Landwehr of the First Levy as constituted in 1814
was de facto the strong arm that should defend Prussia's
Right and Might. The Landwehr of the Second Levy was
only to be employed within the frontiers for defensive
purposes, the garrisoning of fortresses, etc. The only
privilege allowed was in favour of education. Such persons
as had passed the higher examinations at the Public
Gymnasium, and who went to the expense of clothing and
equipping themselves, serving three years instead of five
in the standing army, i.e. one year actively and two years
in the Reserve.
' The Army organised on this principle was of course
based on the population of 1814, and its framework was so
laid down that the men actually under arms, i.e. those
serving the three first years of their term in the standing
army, should include the great bulk of the able-bodied popu
lation between the ages of twenty ^nd twenty-three. To
provide, however, for supernumeraries, a system was origin
ally started of Landwehr recruits, so that those who were
nottrained in the standing armyshould receive their mUitary
education in the Landwehr. A certain margin for the in
crease of the population and for the raising or diminishing
of the standing army was thus left without encroaching
on the principle of universal service, and the law of
1814 distinctly laid down that the strength of the standing
army should be determined by the actual circumstances
of the State. An important modification was in conse
quence introduced into the system soon after its commence
ment, by the discontinuance of the practice of Landwehr
recruits.

330 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
' Such were the principal features of the organisation
of 1814, with regard to which let us speciaUy note, that
whilst the bulk of the population gladly served their term
in the standing army, the really popular institution was
the Landwehr of the First Levy. The men who composed
it had returned to their avocations as citizens, and only
met at stated intervals to renew, in the spirit of old com
panionship, their old warlike exercises. As of equal rank,
however, with the Army, and with the consciousness that in
time of war the brunt of fighting would fall upon them,
they were fiUed with a strong sense of their own importance,
and with what wiU probably be to an Englishman an in
comprehensible idealism, the feeling that military service is
the highest duty which can devolve upon the citizen. This
esprit de corps animating the Landwehr is especiaUy strong
in the body of Landwehr officers. A distinct corporation
from the officers of the standing army, they have felt them
selves not to be a separate caste with no sympathies with
the nation at large, but on the contrary immediately bound
up with it. To the fulfilment of their duties as soldiers they
brought the free spirit of the citizen, and to their daily
avocations as citizens they brought the habits of order,
obedience, and command of the soldier, plus the reasonable
pride confirmed by uniform and epaulettes. When to all
this we add the tradition that to the breaking to pieces of the
Regular Army at Jena Prussia owed her overthrow, whilst to
the Landwehr of 1813 and 1814 she owed her new birth, it is
not to be wondered at that the institution of the Landwehr
assumed a sort of sacred character in the eyes of Prussia.
It was hardly an exaggeration for one of its apologists, in
discussing the question last session, to describe it as the con
stitutional bulwark of Prussia in her preconstitutional days.
' It was, on the other hand, natural enough that the
officers of the standing army, brought up, as it were, from
their cradles in military colleges (Cadetten-Hauser), one
and all the veriest hot-beds of the narrowest spirit of caste,
should look upon the Landwehr with jealousy and an Ul-
merited contempt, and should above all lust after the strong
thews and sinews of the three first classes, viz. the men
between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-eight. For a

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 331
long while, therefore, in military circles the Landwehr had
been looked upon with an evil eye.
' I have one more fact to note, and that is, that although
the readiness of the Landwehr to fight cannot be doubted
by any one who saw Prussia in 1850 and 1859, their being
called from their avocations for other than fighting purposes,
such as mere military demonstrations of a political nature,
where no fighting is intended, was a source of considerable
irritation. Whenever, however, the Prussian army is
placed on a war footing (or mobilised, as it is here termed),
the Landwehr has to be caUed out. In 1850, they were
kept under arms for several months and marched and
countermarched through a hard winter solely that Baron
Manteuffel should be able to say " that a strong man can
courageously give way." Again in 1859, they were called
out, also to return to their homes with unfleshed swords.
Now there ean be no doubt, that the calling out of the
cream of the working population for mere political display
is an evil of vast magnitude, and generally felt as such.
The remedies to be applied, however, are very different, as
prescribed by the military theorists or by the Landwehr
men. The one says, " Let us make our demonstrations with
a larger standing army." The other says, " Don't make
demonstrations. Don't draw your sword until you want
it, but when you have drawn it, then verily strike your
adversary with it."
' Such then in general outline was the organisation of the
Prussian Army in i860. The idea of an entire reform of
this system had long occupied the King's thoughts. It
was in i860, however, after the experiences he had made
during the mobilisation of the Army in 1859, that his own
plans for the reorganisation were matured.
' Now as I was at Berlin during the whole of i860, and
an unbiassed listener to what was said on all sides, I
consider myself a fair judge of what then took place and
of what was public feeling with regard to a change of system
at that time. Party passion has since risen so high, that
both sides would probably deny the truth of my assertions,
without however my feeling any misgivings respecting
their truth on that account.

332 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
' The King in i860 was stiU very popular. The Chamber
w^as the same that had been elected in 1858, and therefore
predominantly a Ministerial Chamber. Tme it is, that it
was getting dissatisfied with the Ministry, but, as the only
alternative was a reactionary Cabinet, it was ready to go
a very long way to keep it in power. The idea of a re
organisation of the Army was, moreover, popular. There
was a general wish to see the military power of Prussia in
creased. To make Prussia de facto the Sword of Germany,
preparatory to her becoming it de jure, coincided with
the German aspirations of the country and the Chamber.
Moreover, there were three reforms ardently desired.
' The first was the removal of the injustice caused by
the yearly levy not including the whole able-bodied male
population fit to carry arms. We have seen that the institu
tion of the Landwehr recruits had been discontinued, whilst
the actual framework of the Army remained based on the
estimate of the population in 1814. The population had
since increased from about thirteen to seventeen miUions ;
consequently though by law every Prussian was bound to
serve, yet with every exemption which could possibly be
devised there remained yearly nearly a third of the popula
tion who were not caUed upon to serve. This was plainly
an immense injustice to those who did, and was, moreover,
the destruction of the principle which alone gave vitality
to the entire system.
' Secondly, there was a strong prejudice against the three
years' actual presence under arms, the country generally,
and with it high military authorities, being of opinion,
that under such a system as that in force, two years of
actual drill were quite as efficient as three, and that the
tax of three years out of every citizen's life was a larger
proportion of the sinew of the country than it could afford
to apply to unproductive employment.
' I cannot enter into the arguments pro and eon urged
in this question, but I must guard against the usual judg
ment passed by foreigners and especially by Englishmen.
The latter accustomed to a minimum of ten years' service,
and well knowing that it is only in the third and fourth
year that our recruits become efficient soldiers, dismiss

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 333
at once the idea of a two years' service as absurd ; but this
is taking the question away from its true issue. It is
the arguing as if the point to be determined were the
comparative efficiency between the systems represented
by a small professional army on the one hand and the
training of an entire nation to arms on the other. In the
former case it is evident that neither two nor indeed three
years will suffice to induce on average human nature
the mechanical perfection which we associate with the
idea of a professional soldier, but the question has never
in Prussia been put upon this ground. All parties here
are for the maintenance of a " nation in arms " principle.
The standing army is described in the law of 1814 as the
" mUitary training school of the nation " ; and the point
to be decided is whether such training as is required to
render every able-bodied citizen capable of serving as a
soldier if required can be given in two years, or whether
three are necessary. Very high military authorities
maintain that all that can be taught can be taught in two
years, that as long as he is being taught, the Prussian
citizen soldier is weU content and does his work well,
but that when he has done learning, i.e. in his third year,
he gets discontented, and takes to thinking of his civil
career, and is no longer a useful member of his country.
The great argument used in favour of the two years is
that the system was practically carried out for twenty
years from 1830 to 1850, the men being dismissed after
two years' training, and that the men so turned out were
quite equal to those drilled for three years. This may,
or may not, be the ease, but it is evident that if omnium
consensu (and on this point everybody is agreed) the
system of universal service is to be continued, or rather
re-established, the oiUy way of preventing the Army
Estimates from slipping altogether away from the control
of Parliament, is — for the Parliament to have a control
over the term of service actually passed under arms.
' Thirdly, there was a general wish that the Landwehr,
or at least the older classes of it containing the married
men and heads of families, should be eased from the labours
imposed on them by mere military demonstrations.

334 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
' Such then was the constitution of the Chamber, and
such the feeUng of the country when the King's plan
for the reorganisation of the Army was made known to
his Parliament. A more favourable opportunity could
hardly have been chosen for a change, as it was not likely
that a Chamber would again be found so ready to go to
the utmost limit of concession. One condition to a satis
factory arrangement, however, faUed, and that was that both
parties should be agreed upon the cardinal point — ^that the
question was one that could be solved oiUy by mutual
co-operation. This condition was wanting as regards the
King. He considered that the matter was one with which
in reality he alone was concerned. He looked upon it
as an immense concession that the proposed change should
be invested with the form of a Parliament Bill, and that
the least that could be given in return for this concession
was the immediate granting of all he asked. The only
point on which he admitted that he required the consent
of Parliament was for altering the length of service in
the standing army and the two levies of the Landwehr.
This had been fixed by Law and could therefore only be
altered by Law, but this was a very different thing from'
submitting the whole charpente of his Army to the
approval or disapproval of his Parliament. The law of
1814 gave him the services of the whole able-bodied
population for three years absolutely, for nineteen years
contingently, and he could do with this " material "
what he liked, if he only had money enough. Moreover,
the Chamber was bound to give the money, if the Minister
of Finance could show where the money was to be got and
if the King was of opinion that it was bona fide required
for the Army (this is word for word the reasoning of one
of General Roon's speeches). The Judge as to what was
required for the Army was the King as " Kriegsherr."
This was constitutional law in Prussia. All of which,
of course, is very well in theory (if at least " Right " prove
equal to " Might "), on the two points that a law is required
to alter the term of service and that money is required
to keep up a larger force. These two points remain in
the hands of the Chamber and give it the key of the posi-

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 335
tion, so long as the battle is fought out within the limits
of the Constitution. Hence the necessity of extra con
stitutional means, and of a Minister who would have re
course to these means.
' I have purposely named the measure the King's
measure, not only because it has been thus described by
himself, but because it has also been so described by his
Ministers, and because the possibUity of its being so named
at once reveals the true source of the confusion of principles
from which all the present mischief has arisen. If the re
organisation of the Army had been an act which the King
could have performed of himself, i.e. in virtue of his
prerogative, it necessarUy feU under the category of such
acts as he could perform in his capacity as Kriegsherr or
Head of the Army, and this, and this only, can be meant
when the act is described as his in contradistinction to
its being the aet of his Ministry ; but the moment a Minis
terial BUl was brought into effect for this purpose, the
admission was made that the proposed reorganisation
was an act which the King could only carry out when acting
as Landesherr, i.e. in conjunction with his Parliament.
' The Liberal Ministers in i860 started correctly. They
brought into the Lower House a detaUed Bill reconstitu
ting the entire organisation of the Prussian Army, and asked
for the additional money required for giving effect to this
BiU. ' The BiU so presented was something very different to
what the country wanted. It proposed to increase the
military burden borne by the individual citizen and by
the State at large, to a whoUy unexpected extent, and did
not offer any equivalent, or at least nothing which the
country considered equivalent. It proposed to extend
the five years' service in the standing army to eight, and
far from proposing a reduction in the term actuaUy spent
under arms, it kept the three years intact for the infantry,
and proposed to extend the service of the cavalry and
artiUery to four years. It did away with the distinction
of the First and Second Levies of the Landwehr, and de
graded the whole Landwehr force to the position of the
Second Levy, by ordaining that.it should only be used for

336 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
defensive purposes, thereby forfeiting its characteristic
property of equality with the Line.
' The Bill from the first to the last line was the work, not
of the Constitutional Ministry who introduced it, but of the
King and his military Cabinet. I have mentioned in a
former letter that General Bonin, the original War Minister
of the Liberal Cabinet, had been dismissed because he
opposed the King's plans, and that General Roon, a military
bureaucrat, had been chosen by the King in his stead. The
first great error of the Cabinet was not making common
cause with Bonin, as it is weU knovra they thoroughly
disapproved of the measure. Their apology is that the
King was so set upon the plan that to thwart him in refer
ence to it was to doom the Liberal Ministry and to bring a
reactionary Cabinet into power.
' As soon as the provisions of the Bill were knovra in the
country, the greatest possible opposition everywhere be
came manifest. In the Chamber it was referred to a Com
mittee which at once rejected it as inadmissible, and drew
up a draft of a BUl in its stead representing the extreme
limit to which it was supposed the country was ready
to go.
' According to the proposals of the Committee, the five
years' service in the standing army was to be extended to
six (instead of the eight proposed by the Government
measure), but the actual service under arms was to be
reduced for the infantry to two years ; the cavalry and
artillery were still to serve three years. The distinction
between the two Levies was still to be kept up, the service
in the First Levy being, however, reduced to six years. If
we compare the two systems we shall see that the latter,
whilst making the concession of one year (and that an
important one, viz. the service of men twenty-six years
old) to the military party, thereby largely strengthening
the standing army, nevertheless kept all the three principles
above described as the desiderata of the country safe and
unscathed. ' Let us, to appreciate the real differences between the
plans proposed (which stiU mutatis mutandis represents
what the King wishes on the one hand and the

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 337
country on the other), roughly put a few numbers
together. ' The recruits actuaUy levied in 1858 (the last normal
year, the Army having been put on a war footing in 1859)
amounted to about 40,000. The number of men fit for
service who, for want of room, could not be levied was
something under 20,000. 40,000 x 3 wiU give, when added
to the permanent staff of officers, non-commissioned officers,
etc., the standing peace army, i.e. the men actuaUy under
arms with no reserve called in, i.e. 40,000 x 3 = 120,000
-H 30,000 (the permanent staff) = 150,000 men. The same
number x 5 gives the war establishment of the standing
army, i.e. 5 times 40,000 is 200,000 -f- 30,000 is 230,000.
' Hence, roughly stated, under the old system the peace
establishment of the standing army of Prussia was 150,000 —
the war establishment of the standing array (without
recourse being had to the Landwehr) was 230,000
men. ' The plan proposed by the Committee would have raised
yearly 60,000 men for two years' service, leaving the peace
establishment nearly the same, i.e. twice 60,000 -\- 30,000 is
150,000, twice sixty being the same as three times forty.
On the other hand, the war establishment would have been
enormously increased, viz. 60,000 x 6 -1- 30,000, i.e. 390,000,
thereby fulfiUing aU the desiderata of the country, viz. equal
levying, two years' service, a comparatively sraall increase
in the estimates, the Landwehr of the first Levy retained
in its position of equality with the Line, but a very much
larger standing army for the purposes of mere demonstra
tions. ' The Government plan, on the other hand, proposed
an increase in the peace establishment shovra by the
foUowing numbers: 60,000x34-30,000 = 210,000 men, in
the war estabhshment represented by 6o,oioo x 8 -h 30,000,
i.e. 510,000 !
' These numbers are only quite rough, no aUowance
is made for the longer service of the cavalry and artiUery
than the infantry. The 30,000 men of the permanent staff
is a large proportion for the smaller army — a smaU propor
tion for the larger army, etc., but they are quite correct
VOL. I. Y

338 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
enough to show in broad outlines in what consists the differ
ence between the various plans proposed.
' No one the least acquainted with public opinion in
Prussia in i860 wiU pass another verdict than that the
King's plan was from its cradle condemned, and never had
a chance of being accepted by the country except by the
use of violent measures.
' As soon as the Committee had finished their report
condemning the Government plan and recommending their
own, the Government withdrew their Bill. The motive
assigned was that, the Upper House having thrown out a BiU
for the extension of the Land Tax, the passing of which was
required for the financial side of the reorganisation question,
the said question required reconsidering in its financial
parts. The Government, therefore, preferred to apply only
for a temporary additional grant to maintain the increased
state of mUitary efficiency required by the Prussian Army
in view of the then state of Europe. The real motive was
the certainty which the Government had acquired that their
measure would be thrown out, and that by their own
Chamber, and that the BUl proposed by the Committee would
be passed. This is self-evident to any one who will take
the trouble of even superficially acquainting himself with
what then took place, but I have in addition to this the
curious testimony of a man immediately connected with the
Government who told me exactly what the course would be,
and the motives for this course, before the Bill was withdrawn !
Yet, in spite of all this, the present Government supporters
persist in maintaining that the Government Bill would have
passed in i860, and that the whole agitation got up against
it is a Red Republican and anarchical, etc., opposition, an
afterthought of the Radicals, who got into ParUament at
the last election.
' The withdrawal of the measure with the knowledge that
the King and his new War Minister, Roon, would neverthe
less carry it out, and their remaining in office under such
conditions was the inauguration by the Liberal Ministry
of that miserable policy of subserviency which gradually
led them to the ignominious position they have since per
manently occupied. The Chamber, on the other hand, did

i863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 339
not act much better. It was, as we have seen, beyond all
things anxious to avoid an open breach with the Ministry,
and therefore much too readily availed itself of the com
promise afforded it by the withdrawal of the Bill, and
granted at once the extraordinary grant of nine mUlions in
addition to the ordinary military Budget for the purpose,
as the Bill was worded, " provisionally to keep up the state
of imlitary preparation " ! Knowing the sort of people
high in mUitary office, it ought to have laid down very
definite conditions as to the use to which this money was to
be put. It is, however, only fair to say, that by the mouth
of its leaders, it did directly guard against this extraordinary
vote being considered as an acquiescence in the principle
of the BUl that had been withdrawn.
' With the extraordinary grant of money so obtained, the
mUitary department at once set to work to carry out the
definite reorganisation of the Army upon the basis of the
Bill withdrawn. An entire new military apparatus of a
permanent kind was called into life. One hundred and mne
new battalions of infantry, ten new regiments of cavalry,
were created with a permanent staff of commissioned and
non-commissioned officers, andeverything else to correspond,
all on the basis of the extermination of the whole system of
the Landwehr and the increased term of service in the
standing army.
' The Liberal Ministers saw the new banners consecrated,
the reorganisation with great pomp officially promulgated
and — ^said nothing !
' In order to make quite plain what are the real merits of
the question at issue, I have unfortunately gone to such
length that I must condense what foUows into the shortest
space. ' The Session of i860 was followed by that of 1861, which
was the last the then Parliament had to sit (we have
triennial ParUaments here), the General Elections were to
fall in the autumn of 1861.
' It was of course expected that the Ministry would bring
in the BiU they had withdrawn the year before, and explain
the measure of the reorganisation by the hypothesis that
this measure was what they supposed the country wished

340 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
for, and which in the present Session Parliament would give
its sanction to. Instead of this, no BiU was brought in, and
in the Budget presented to the House, extraordinary ex
pense incurred by the reorganisation was entered in the
ordinary expenditure of the military department, and asked
for as part of the current expenses of the country.
* This of course was the moment when the Chamber
should have made its stand, but, unfortunately, half
measures again prevailed. Instead of refusing the money
asked for, the Chamber contented itself with severing it
out of the ordinary Budget, making an extraordinary
grant of it and — n.b. — reducing the amount.
' The extraordinary grant so reduced was voted and given
to the Government under the express condition, however,
that if the Government intended to maintain the reorganisa
tion they stood bound to bring in a BUl to that effect
next Session.
' It was under these circumstances that the General
Election in the autumn of the year 1861 took place. The
country was thoroughly angry with the subserviency and
what appeared the trickery of the Ministry, and highly
displeased with the weakness shown by the Chamber.
The result was that a new Chamber was returned pledged
against the reorganisation. We have seen the effect of
this feeling of the country upon the King. The new
Chamber met in January 1862, and upon a comparatively
uiumportant point the Ministry was at once beaten by a
large majority.
' The cry of anarchy, revolution, attack on the King's
prerogative was then raised by all the Government organs,
the Chamber, not three months old, was dissolved ! and the
country appealed to to decide, not on the real issue above
given, i.e. whether the nation had or not a voice in the
imposition of its blood tax, but on the abstract principle
as to whether for the future the King or the Parliament
was to govern in Prussia ! The Liberal portion of the
Ministry, after dissolving the Chamber, sent in their resig
nation, which was accepted, and their places were fUled by
unknown bureaucrats, whose whole idea of the Ministerial
office was implicit obedience to the King's wUl. Of the

1863] LETTERS TO LAYARD 341
old Ministry there remained, as the quasi-Premier, Van der
Heydt, the last representative of the Manteuffel Cabinet,
Roon, the great agent of the reorganisation, and Bernstorff,
who had oiUy lately joined the Ministry, and who only had
a voice in foreign affairs, not earing for, or pretending to
know anything about, internal matters. I should mention
that in the short Session that preceded the dissolution, a
short emendatory BUl altering the Law of 1814, in so
far as the term of service in the standing army was con
cerned, and extending that term to seven years, was
introduced into the Upper House and at once carried,
almost unaiumously, by that august Assembly.
' In spite of every kind of Ulegal means to influence
elections and to get a docUe Chamber, the very same
Chamber was returned that had just been dismissed. When
it reassembled it stood face to face with a Ministry hostile
to every shade of Liberalism, and who counted only ten
supporters in the House.'

342 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863

CHAPTER XIV
BERLIN
The deplorable state of affairs caused by the constitutional
struggle was, as Morier wrote to Lord John Russell on
7th February 1863, ' ripening slowly to a crisis which
may be attended with very fearfvU consequences. The
devUish sophistries which endeavour to prove that the
Government have a standing ground for their acts in the
Constitution, and which six months ago were only timidly
put forward in semi-official papers, have now become
political dogmas which the King, the Ministry, and their
feudal supporters fanaticaUy adhere to as saving truths.
In proportion as this judicial blindness has gathered over
the eyes of those in authority, the people has, by the
continuance of the conflict, opened its eyes to the real
stakes at issue, i.e. whether or not its representatives have
a right to control the expenditure of its own money, the
Bismarckian theory crudely laying down that the Crown
has an equal right with the representative Chamber to vote
the public expenditure and that, untU the two can agree,
the Government has the right to expend what money it
pleases. Under these circumstances the situation has cer
tainly been " cleared," as Bismarck has it, but it is a clear
ance which exhibits the Dynasty and the country at deadly
strife on the vital question of Absolutism or Constitutional
Government and a formula, the simplicity of which has
forced many, who six months ago would have shuddered
at the thought, to ask themselves whether it is possible
to hope for free institutions under a Dynasty grown grey
in the tenets of mUitary despotism.'
Under these circumstances it became the aim of the
Liberal party in the interests of the Dynasty to dis-identify
the Crown Prince, whose constitutional views were weU

1863] BERLIN 343
known, from the policy of his father. Hitherto the Crown
Prince's attitude had been purely negative, attending,
it is true, the Councils, but taking no part in them ; but
on 5th June 1863, at Danzig, in replying to an address
from the Liberal Burgomaster, he openly dissociated
himself from the acts of the Ministry by expressing his
regret at the ' variance which has occurred between the
Government and the people which has occasioned me no
small degree of surprise.'
This incident was exploited to the utmost by Bismarck,
who for some time had been doing his best to sow discord
between the King on one hand and the Crown Prince
and Crown Princess and their entourage on the other.
' Every kind of calumny was spread,' wrote Morier,
a few years afterwards, referring to this incident, ' respecting
the persons supposed to be the Prince's friends. Spies
were placed over him in the shape of aides-de-camp
and chamberlains, conversations were distorted and
imagined tiU the Danzig episode brought matters to a
climax and very nearly led to the transfer of the Prince
to a fortress.'
It was afterwards maintained by Bismarck that the
Crown Prince had at this time been acting under Morier's
influence, but the latter ' never once saw him {i.e. the
Crown Prince) or had any kind of comraunication with
him at the time before or after the Danzig episode,' as
he wrote later. Indeed, it transpires from correspondence
between him and E. von Stockmar (son of Baron Stockmar),
that they both disapproved of the Crown Prince's speech.
An article in The Times of 6th June, commenting on
this incident and containing certain revelations about the
Crown Prince and Princess's correspondence, created a
great sensation throughout Germany. As Morier had
been accused by Bismarck of inspiring the Crown Prince's
speech at Danzig, so the paternity of The Times article was
attributed to E. von Stockmar.
' There is a devil of a row about The Times article,' the
latter wrote to Morier on 4th July 1863, ' concerning the
Crown Prince's correspondence with his father, and of which

344 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
they, that is the Ministers, suppose me to be the author.
I am as innocent as a newborn babe. Can you give me a
clue ? It might possibly be useful to know whence the article
came. They swear it cannot be of English growth, because
there are eontinentalisms in it.'
A few days after this, on 9th July, E. von Stockmar
announced the death of his father to Morier, to whom
this loss, though long expected, was very great, foUowing
so soon, as it did, on that of the Prince Consort. More
than ever did he regard the Anglo-German Alliance,
always the dream of his political existence, as a labour of
love ; and the remembrance of having co-operated with
two such men as the Prince Consort and Baron Stockmar
made him consider it a sacred duty to carry out the legacy
which he conceived they had bequeathed him.
All the affection which Morier had given to the father,
he now transferred to the son, of whom, on his death in
1886, he wrote to Jowett : —
' Stockmar's loss is irreparable. He and you were the
two friends of my life. Now only one remains. I had
become verwachsen (grown together) with him by an un
clouded intercourse of friendship for thirty-two years, as I
have with you by one of forty years. It is a portion of
myself which dies with him, for we had all our thoughts and
sympathies and much most important work in common.'
E. von Stockmar, soon after his father's death, was
obliged to resign his position of secretary to the Crown
Princess, on account of Ul-health.
' I am an orange squeezed out,' he wrote to Morier
on that occasion ; ' but this, my dearest friend, ought in
no manner to affect you. You are stUl full of juice and
vigour, and what you considered our common task will
still remain the same grand thing, " wurdig des Schweisses
der Edlen." Its fulffiment does not at all depend upon
a poor little molecule like myself. It is difficult for the
molecule to imagine that its absence would be felt by
anybody. But the poor molecule would certainly become
much poorer stUl, if it should be ordained that it was to
be deprived of the great comfort it has always derived from

1863] BERLIN 345
its relations to a certain big fat molecule to which it is so
gratefuUy attached, and to harmonise with which was one
of its few pleasures. This would be a serious loss indeed.'
In Germany, Federal Reform continued to occupy all
men's minds ; for, by universal consent, the Diet had en
tirely broken dovra, having proved worthless as a defensive
association, whilst in interfering in the internal affairs
of the smaUer States it had done much harm. Political
consolidation was the goal aimed at by aU, but in the
attainment two totally antagonistic principles that had
long agitated the public mind of Germany sought for
mastery. The adherents of the one and the other were
known in Germany as the party of Great Germany (Gross
Deutsch) and the party of Little Germany (Klein Deutsch).
They had both of them, so far, got the same object in view,
that they equally desired a reconstruction of the German
Confederation with a view to intensifying its powers of
offence and defence. They both agreed in considering
that this result was alone to be obtained by substituting
organic stmcture for the actual inorganic mechanism,
but they differed in this, that the Great-Germany party
believed that this was compatible with the retention of the
two Great Powers of the Confederation within the organic
body to be reconstructed, and the Little-Germany party
held this to be impossible. The latter's doctrine, i.e. a
centralised confederacy with external rights of Sovereignty
merged into one Head, the internal rights remaining intact,
that Head to be Pmssia as the only bona fide German
Great Power, was that of the National Liberal party all
over Germany, and the scheme of the Grand Duke of
Baden and Roggenbach to which they had been vainly
trying to gain Prussian adhesion since i860. Their en
deavours had faUed, and as Prussia, hopelessly immersed
in reaction and constitutional straggles, could apparently
no longer be counted upon, even such earnest Liberals as
the Duke of Coburg now turned their eyes towards Austria.
It is generaUy beUeved that it was at the Duke's instigation
that the Emperor Francis Joseph, rather to the general
surprise, invited the Sovereigns of Germany to an Assembly

346 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
at Frankfort in August 1863, to deliberate on the question
of Liberal reform. Morier to Earl Russell
'Berlin, August Sth, 1863.
' The summons of the Emperor of Austria to his German
peers to meet him in solemn conference at Frankfort is,
at the present juncture of affairs and in the present temper
of men's minds in Germany, a step of such vast importance,
that I cannot but think that any authentic information
on the subject must be interesting to you, and I therefore
make no scruple in writing to tell you what I learnt last
night on undoubted authority, viz. that the King of Prussia
has distinctly refused to attend the meeting. It appears that
the proposal was made by the Emperor to the King verbally
at Gastein. It took the King completely by surprise —
and he seems at first to have not altogether rejected the
idea. In a later interview, however (having, I presume,
in the meantime talked the matter over with Bismarck),
he rejected the proposal absolutely, and stated at length
all his reasons for so doing. I infer from what was told
me that the King and Bismarck, both of them, felt con
vinced that the refusal of Prassia would at once quash
the whole scheme, and that Austria could never get on
with it in the face of such a refusal. They were, there
fore, very much surprised by the announcement that a
circular autograph letter, dated 31st July {i.e. before the
Gastein interview), had been despatched by the Emperor
to his brethren inviting them to Frankfort ; the trans
mitting despatches, however, in which the Austrian repre
sentatives at the German Courts are instructed as to the
delivery of these autograph letters, being dated 4th August
{i.e. after the Gastein interview). These dates are worth
noticing, as they prove the determination to take the step
whether Prassia said yes or no, and at the same time
the desire to come to a previous agreement if possible.
' As may be supposed, the King and Bismarck are
making very wTy faces at the position in which they now
find themselves placed.
' It is worth remarking and very characteristic of the
present state of things in Prussia, that the Kreuz-Zeitung,

i863] BERLIN 347
which has always preached union between Austria and
Prassia and the joint action and personal forgathering
of the Sovereigns of Germany (alwrays, of course, with a
view to direct that action against Liberal tendencies),
is the most dead set against the Austrian proposal, and
that the Liberal papers, though preaching caution, are
evidently rather for than against the plan.
' I do not expect any practical results from the meeting
in regard to Federal Reform, as on this point the radical
differences between North and South are so great, but
such a meeting at such a moment might be tumed to
the most stupendous uses directly in regard to Prussia,
indirectly in regard to France.'
In September, Morier was sent for to Coburg to attend
upon the Queen. Morier to Earl Russell
' Coburg, September 6th, 1863.
' Upon the Queen's arrival at Rosenau I received a sum
mons from General Grey! ^q attend upon Her Majesty, and
on my arrival here on the 27th ult. I learnt to my very
great satisfaction that I had been sent for with your know
ledge and approval.
' It appears that Her Majesty was desirous to have some
one at hand to whom she could refer for any technical
knowledge she might require in connection with German
political questions.
' Her Majesty spoke to me on the following subjects : —
' I. The state of Prussia with special reference to the posi
tion of the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess. I gave Her
Majesty all the information I was possessed of, and ventured
to hint that any appearance of interference on our part
would be prejudicial to the interests of Their Royal High
nesses, as the idea that the Crown Prince was being prompted
from over the water would materiaUy diminish in the eyes,
even of the Liberal party, the value of his opposition to the
present regime. I also adverted to the mischief that had
been caused by the publication in The Times of facts con
nected with His Royal Highness's doings previous to the
' Private Secretary to Queen Victoria.

348 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
Danzig episode, which were entirely unknown to the
Prussian public. Her^Majesty told me that she had never
been able to discover how the indiscretion took place.
' 2. On the Schleswig-Holstein question. You are fvUly
aware of my views on this subject, so I need not refer to
them here. They are, I believe, for all purposes of practical
application exactly identical with yours. I thoroughly
deprecate resort to a federal execution as the greatest of
foUies. The present case of Germany against Denmark is
one of an international nature. To use a federal instrument
to obtain redress for an international grievance, or rather
to enforce the fulfUment of international engagements, is to
give the Danes a perfect right to treat the federal as an
international weapon. The only possible treatment of the
question at present is for the Great Powers to look at the
difficulties with indifferent eyes, and to insist upon Denmark
doing what she has engaged to do. It was the way pointed
out in your despatch, and the British public will only awake
to the folly of not having supported you with every nerve
at their disposition, when some fine morning they find war
imminent, a French army on the Rhine, and a blockade
of Hamburgh and the Baltic ports.
' 3. On the all-engrossing topic of the Austrian plans
for Federal Reform. Now with every sympathy enlisted
on the side of regenerated Austria, and with every antipathy
intensified by personal hatred against Bismarck, moreover
with the strongest desire for a united Germany, I have been
unable to come to any other conclusion than that the Aus
trian plan is totaUy unfeasible, and that with many plausible
sides to it, it not only does not offer to the German nation
what the latter desires, but something diametrically opposed
to its wishes. The faUacy into which Englishmen are likely
to faU in judging of the project, is to suppose that because
Austria is bona fide engaged in Liberal reforms whilst every
thing Prussian stinks of absolutism and reaction, what
Austria proposes must have a Liberal tendency, what Prussia
considers her interest must have a contrary tendency. The
fact which is ignored is, that what the whole German popula
tion of Austria, i.e. the great Liberal lever of the Empire,
desires is something radically different from what the

1863] BERLIN 349
national party in non-Austrian Germany, that is the great
Liberal lever in the North, desires. The one honestly looks
upon every Austrian interest as a bona fide German interest,
and their notion of federal reform is some plan that shall
identify German interests with specific Austrian interests.
They wish for a strong Power at their backs upon which
they ean rely to support them in Italy and defend them
in the East. The national party in the North refuse to
identify German interests with specific Austrian interests
and regard their standing surety for the inviolability of the
German territories of Austria as the fulfilment of their
engagements towards her. What they ardently desire is
the creation of some organ for the expression of the national
wUl and some means for the enforcing of this will — a National
Assembly, and an Executive responsible to this National
Assembly ; this is the goal towards which the national party
is straining every nerve. A realisation of this project is the
last thing the Liberals of Austria would desire, for in such
an Assembly the Austrian element would be swamped, and
the Assembly would always have German interests before
them en premiere ligne. The natural allies of Austria in
Germany are the Cabinets, and she would therefore never
consent to enter into a German Bundesstaat in which the
Sovereigns of the individual States would have to bow their
heads before the representatives of the nation as a whole.
' Now, if we examine the Austrian project, we shall find
that it proposes to change the present defensive association
of the Confederation for a body united for offence as well
defence. The vital functions of such a body are those
connected with its foreign relations — Peace and War. In
the complicated machinery proposed for the new union,
where does the exercise of this sovereign prerogative lie ?
In the organ representing the national will, i.e. the Assembly
of Delegates, or in that representing the Sovereigns ? It is
placed in the Bundesrath or Federal CouncU — the body
identical with the present ordinary assembly of the Diet,
in which Austria can always secure a majority, i.e. an
Assembly composed of the diplomatic representatives of
the Cabinets who, it is proposed, shall decide by a simple
majority whether Germany shall engage in a foreign war

350 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
unconnected with the defence of her territories. This is the
keystone of the entire project, it is that which recommends
it to every patriotic Austrian and makes it inadmissible by
every North German who belongs to the national party.
No modification of the plan in the sense of the latter is there
fore conceivable other than one which would so radically
alter it as to make it totally inacceptable to the former.
The Duke of Coburg, who did his best to paint the present
projeet as a stepping-stone to something different, was
obliged to admit that Austria never would consent to place
the decision of peace or war {i.e. the foreign relations) out of
the hands of the Sovereign into those of the national repre
sentatives. * The experience, therefore, of the last month has only
confirmed the conviction to which I have since eome —
that there are but two kinds of reform possible, and that
any attempt at a compromise between the two can only
result in a political lusus natures. Either a bona fide
reform of the present federal Constitution in the way of
making it de facto what it is de jure — a great international
defensive association, a radical reconstitution of its worth
less military apparatus, so as to make the noli me tangere
very visible to the trans-Rhenan eyes, and a reducing of
the Constitution to its purely international character by
the elimination of all the abominable federal machinery
invented for the purpose of checking the growth of Liberal
institutions in the several States — OR, a complete tabula
rasa of the present system and the substitution in its place
of a strong North and Middle German centralised Con
federacy with an elective or hereditary head — a national
Parliament — and a responsible Ministry.
' This is a Revolution, however, and not a Reform, and
one for which the nation is not ripe, and which depends
on conditions at present not the least likely to be fulfUled,
and it seems to me therefore a hundred pities that Austria
and Prussia cannot be got to work peacefuUy in the direc
tion of the former reform.
' The Queen desired me to draw a memorandum for her
in whicii the features of the present Federal Constitution
should be intelligibly laid down and the proposed reforms

1863] BERLIN 351
also described with explanations of the terms Bundesstaat,
Staatenbund, Engerer Rath, Plenum, etc. I enclose a
copy on constitutional grounds, and also because it may
not be altogether useless to you to have a general apergu
of a question likely to occupy publie attention for some
time to come. I have carefully avoided the expression
of individual opinion, and have, as the Germans state,
only placed on record objective facts. In my conversation
with Her Majesty, however, I stated at length what I have
now attempted concisely to relate to you.'

Present Constitution of the Germanic Confederation September 1863.
The existing Federal Constitution is laid dovra in two acts :
' The German Federal Act of the Sth June 1815 ' and the
' Final Act of Vienna of the 15th May 1820.' The Union
created by these Treaties is what in German is termed a
' Staatenbund,' that is, an International AUiance between
equal and independent States, whose rights of internal as well
as of external Sovereignty remain intact, except in so far as they
are limited by the objects of the Union. These objects are
defined in the second paragraph of the ' Federal Act ' to be —
the maintenance of the external and internal security of
Germany, and of the independence and inviolability of the
individual German States.
Hence the essential features of the present Confederation
are those of a Defensive Association. This Association, it is true,
is invested with the right of declaring war, but paragraph
35 of the ' Final Act,' in which this right is recorded,
distinctly lays dovra that it is to be exercised for defensive
purposes only, and paragraphs 36 and 37 lay down — that if
a member of the Confederation should provoke a quarrel
with a foreign State, the Confederation is to judge of the
justice of the quarrel, and should the wrong lie on the side of
the Federal State, take part by force if necessary against the
latter. As regards the wars in which the members of the
Union may become involved in connection with their North
German Provinces, they only come under the cognisance of
the Confederation when danger to federal territory is to be
apprehended (paragraphs 46, 47 of the ' Final Act').
It results from the above that the extemal character of the
present Confederation is purely negative. The vast federal
territories stretch across the centre of Europe powerless for
attack, powerful — ^if at least their military constitution ¦were re-
formed — for defence,

352 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
In fulfUment of the internal objects of the Union its members
bound themselves not to make war against each other, but
to submit their differences to federal arbitration, and for the
maintenance of the internal peace of the Confederation various
other provisions were enacted.
It should be noted, however, in regard to these internal
functions that there is a marked difference between the Federal
Act of 1815 and the Final Act of 1820. Both, it is true, safe
guard the independence of the several States, and lay down
the principle that the Federal Power cannot interfere directly
with the internal concerns of these States, but the Act of 1815
associates with this theory of State independence certain
general principles of a Liberal kind apparently intended to
secure to aU members of the Union alike a certain minimum
standard of political freedom. Thus paragraph 13 guarantees
to the several States representative institutions (Landstande),
paragraph 16 provides for religious toleration and for the
removal of Jewish disabUities, paragraph 18 hints at the
liberty of the Press.
The Act of 1820, on the contrary, though it does not cancel
the above provisions, confines their application within the
narrowest limits. Besides a great many articles tending
to establish a very effective system of supervision and repres
sion on the part of the federal authority over any revolu
tionary tendencies that might show themselves in the Con
federation, paragraph 57 distinctly stipulates that inasmuch
as, with the unimportant exception of the Free Towns, the
monarchical form of Government is that established in the
Confederation, it shall not be lawful for any State to modify
its constitution in a manner detrimental to the prerogative of
the Sovereign in whose hands the full ani U'ndivided power shall
continue to reside. 'Da der Deutsche Bund mit Ausnahme
der freien Stadte aus Souverainen Fiirsten besteht, so muss
die gesammte Staatsgewalt in dem Oberhaupte des Staats
vereinigt bleiben' — a stipulation equivalent to a permanent
disqualification of any bona fide form of Constitutional Govern
ment. In the Act of 1815, we stUl catch the echoes of the great
popular movement which Won the victories of the War of
Liberation ; in the Act of 1820, we are aware that the full tide
of reaction has set in.
From the above it results that as regards the internal
concerns of the Confederation its actual constitution on the
one hand guarantees representative institutions, but restricts
them on the other hand in such a manner as to prevent them
interfering, except in a very limited manner, with the absolute
power of the Sovereigns. Neither the one stipulation nor
the other has been observed. For thirty years after the
signature of the Federal Act no representative institutions

i863] BERLIN 353
had been established either in Austria or Prussia. Within
the last fifteen years Constitutions, theoretically at least en
croaching upon the prerogatives of the Sovereign, have been
established in all the States of Germany.
The conduct of the affairs of the Confederation was pro
vided for by Paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the Federal
Act. A Diet {Bundestag), composed of the representatives of the
thirty-eight States then forming part of the Confederation,
was to be permanently assembled at Frankfort, under the
presidency of Austria. Their manner of voting was to be
determined by the nature of the subject upon which they
were called upon to decide. For the current business of the
Confederation they were to vote in the ordinary assembly,
termed the Engerer Rath. In this council the thirty-eight States
were so classed as to have seventeen votes, the kingdoms
and the Middle States each having one, whilst the lesser States
were collected into groups, each of which exercised a collective
vote. For matters of graver import, especially such as in
volved the creation or alteration of any permanent federal
institutions, the representatives voted in the Plenary Assembly
{das Plenum). Here the votes were so distributed that each
of the thirty-eight States should have at least one ; on the
other hand, to restore the balance between the larger and
smaller States, the kingdoms each had four votes, the grand
Duchies each thiee, and so on — the total number amounting
to sixty-nine. A majority of two-thirds was required in the
Plenum to pass a measure of the kind above described. But if
the measure were one affecting the fundamental constitution
of the Confederation it could only be passed by a unanimity.
Any radical change, therefore, in the Acts of 1815 and 1820
can be prevented by the veto in the Plenum of one State, —
of Waldeck, for instance, or Liechtenstein.
If the Federal Constitution above described be examined,
as well in its original structure as in the modifications which
successive federal decisions have brought about, it will be
found to suffer from two radical defects — the one having re
ference to its external, the other to its internal functions.
In regard to the former, the militarj' object required for the
primary object of the Union, namely, the maintenance of
its external security, is admitted omnium consensu to be worth
less ; and in regard to the latter the supposed guarantee of
State independence has degenerated into an oppressive
machinery for arresting the growth of free institutions, and into
what had been satirically described as a mutual insurance
society for the absolute prerogatives of the rulers.
There, where the federal power should have been strong,
it has proved itself weak, and where it should have remained
weak it has grown to an unhealthy strength.
VOL. I. Z

354 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
By the two provisions : firstly, that during peace the
contingents of the various States should not be amalgamated
into organic bodies, and that this should only be done when
the casus belli had arisen ; secondly, that upon a declaration
of war the entire army of the Union, including the armies of
Austria and Prussia, should be placed under one Commander-
in-chief, to be elected by the Diet, whose orders he was to obey,
and who could bring him before a court-martial in case of
disobedience, a system was created which could not fail at
the moment of danger to throw the whole mUitary apparatus
of the Confederation into hopeless confusion.
By a series of feudal decrees passed between 1830 and 1840
a fatal power over the constitutional liberties of the individual
States has been acquired, as evinced by the federal suppression
of the Hesse Constitution in 1850. On both these points, there
fore, the present Constitution calls loudly for radical reform.
Proposals of Reform of the Federal Constitution
There are two systems, radically differing the one from the
other, towards one or other of which every plan of federal
I reform has a natural tendency to gravitate. The one aims
at the improvement of the existing organisation with a view
to making it more effectually fulfil the present objects of the
Union. The other proposes to substitute for the present or
ganisation one wholly different and with a totaUy new set
of objects. One desires to maintain the Staatenbund, — that is,
the international character of the present Union; the other
desires to substitute for the Staatenbund the Bundesstaat, — that
is, a centralised confederacy in which the external sovereignty
of the several States shall be merged into one common head,
whilst their internal sovereignty, though remaining theoretic
ally intact, shaU be modified by the organic institutions to be
given to the new federal body. What direction the first of
these two reforms would have to take is evident from the vices
described in the foregoing paragraph as those inherent in the
present system. A radical reconstitution of the military
constitution of the Confederation, and the clearing away of all
that portion of the federal mechanism which has been invented
to check the free development of Liberal institutions in the
several States, would be the objects to be effected.
The direction, on the other hand, which a reform in the sense
of a Bundesstaat would have to take is indicated by the defini
tion above given of the nature of such a body. There are, of
course, a great variety of schemes for carrying out such a re
form, but they all agree in certain cardinal points to which
alone any attention need be paid. The idea from which they
aU start is that a real organic unity is alone attainable by the
subordination of all the parts to one central head, and the
problem to be solved is how to effect this subordination with-

i863] BERLIN 355
out making the several subordinated States bondmen to the
presiding State. This it is proposed to effect by parliamentary
institutions — a National Assembly elected directly from the
entire area of the Union would represent the nation as a whole
and safeguard its common interests; an Upper House, com
posed of the Sovereigns and the mediatised Princes, would
represent and safeguard the interests of the several States.
The executive would be vested in the hands of an hereditary
or elective president selected from amongst the Sovereigns of
the Union, who would exercise his authority by means of a
Ministry responsible to the National Parliament. The functions
of the National Parliament and of the central executive would
be absolute as regards the foreign relations of the Union,
strictly limited by the fundamental laws of the same as regards
the internal affairs of the several States. The several armies
would be merged into one common army, the command-in-
chief of which would be vested in the president. The diplo
matic representation of the individual States would cease and
be merged in the diplomatic representation of the supreme
Head of the Union. Such a Union looked at from without,
a political body one and indivisible; looked at from within,
the individual sovereignties which exist at present would
stUl be discernible.
Such a Union, it is clear, could not comprehend within it
two great European Powers, stiU less a State whose centre of
gravity lies outside of Germany and more than three-quarters
of which is composed of non-German elements; and conse
quently the Bundesstaat thereby presupposes the non-inclusion
of Austria within the Union, and as a natural consequence
regards Prussia as having the natural claim to the presidency.
A national German Parliament in which the federal provinces
of Austria should not be included, with a responsible Ministry
and the presidency hereditary in the House of HohenzoUern,
such is, or rather was tiU lately, the programme of the national
party and its recognised organ, the National Verein, in non-
Austrian Germany. It should be observed, however, the
national party do not regard the non-inclusion of Austria
in the Bundesstaat to be created as identical with her exclusion
from the Confederation. AU the international ties which
now bind the members of the Confederation together the
nationaUsts desire to see continued in fuU force between the
new Union and Austria, or any other State that might not
join the Union ; for voluntary adhesion to the Bundesstaat is
part of the doctrine of the national party — a permanent de
fensive alliance, reciprocal guarantee of their territorial posses
sions, everything, in short, that can be accomplished by the
closest union between sovereign States would be the future
connecting links between Austria and Germany ; and by these,
it is argued, Austria would be an infinite gainer, acquiring

356 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
for aU the defensive purposes of the present Confederation
a strong and mighty aUy instead of the disjointed and power
less group of States who now constitute her aUies.
From the above it wUl be seen that the characteristics of a
Bundesstaat lie in the central executive lodged in the one hand,
and in the representative assembly, the true centre of gravity
— that is, the real political power — lying in the latter. Whereas,
in a Staatenbund, what federal power there is is invested in the
hands of a diplomatic body representing only the Cabinets,
i.e., the Sovereigns of the Union.
If the doctrine of the Bundesstaat be criticaUy examined
its strong side wUl be seen to be that it is theoreticaUy self-
complete ; logically, its weak side, that is, practical application,
is beset with difficulties at present, at least, insurmountable.
The theory that the external sovereignty of the individual
States may be merged into one, and that the internal
sovereignty may yet remain intact, is more specious than
correct. The analogy to which reference used always to be
made was that of the United States, where the most absolute
State sovereignty was found compatible with the centralisa
tion of the extemal (power) sovereignty ; but the present
American War has proved that this was a favourable accident,
owing to temporary causes rather than a permanent character
istic, — ^when a strong exercise of the central power became
necessary the internal sovereignty of the A. U.S. was necessarily
sacrificed. In a country like Europe it is hardly possible to
conceive that this should not be the normal state, and there
fore a realisation of a Bundesstaat in Germany could hardly
faU to result in the de facto mediatisation of the present German
Sovereigns of Germany, and in their being reduced to the
position of great barons. It can scarcely be looked upon as
probable that so radical a change can take place without some
great catastrophe from without, or some great revolution from
within. Moreover, it is a faUacy to suppose, as the more
sanguine portion of the national party does, that the opposi
tion to an amalgamation of this kind lies only in the Sovereigns.
The particularism {der Particularismus) which would have to
be surmounted Ues deep rooted in the sub-soil of German
society ; it is stUl very strong in Prussia, all powerful in Bavaria,
and more or less in the other States, the very small ones
excepted, and it therefore cannot be said that the nation at
large is yet ripe for such a change. In addition to which in
ternal difficulties, there is the determined hostility to any
plan of the sort on the part of Austria, now all-powerful
in the well-earned success of her Liberal regeneration.
The Austrian plan submitted to the Frankfort Congress may
be considered as an attempt to effect a compromise between
the systems of the Staatenbund and the Bundesstaat. It
proposes to replace the present single organ of the Confederacy,

i863] BERLIN

357

namely, the Federal Diet, by four new organs : an executive
lodged not in the hands of a single president, but in a directory
composed of the six Sovereigns ; a Federal Council composed
of the diplomatic representatives of the Sovereigns of the Con
federation—the Engerer Rath of the present Diet under a new
name ; a legislative Assembly composed of delegates from
the Parliaments of the several States ; and an assembly
(Fiirsten- Versammlung) of the Sovereigns of the Confedera
tion. From what have been before defined to be the distinctive
attributes of the Staatenbund and the Bundesstaat, it is ap
parent that this plan borrows from the Bundesstaat the ex
ecutive and representative organs, and retains frora the
Staatenbund the diplomatic representation in the Bundesrath,
and the personal representation of the Sovereigns in the
Fiirsten-Versammlung. The test to be applied to ascertain
ing which of the two forms it most approaches, is to see in
which oi these four bodies the centre of gravity — that is, the
real political power — Ues. For internal matters there seems to
be a preponderance of power on the side of the representative
element ; but for all the important external functions of the
Union, the decided preponderance lies in the Bundesrath, —
that is, the body representing not the nation at large, but the
Sovereigns of the individual States. In the decision of the
question of peace and war (and it must be remembered that the
proposed union would no longer be a mere defensive associa
tion, but a body united for offence as weU as defence) the
issue is not committed to the hands of those who represent
the tax-paying portion of the nation, but is left to the decision
of a majority representing the Cabinets of the Sovereigns.
For the most important functions, therefore, that such
a Confederation could exercise, the attributes of the Staaten
bund have been retained.
That this programme does not in any way satisfy the wishes
of the national party is self-evident, as in most of its funda
mental principles it is diametrically opposed to their leading
doctrines ; but there is, nevertheless, a difference of opinion as
to the poUcy to be observed respecting it, the most sanguine
and less doctrinaire members looking at its acceptance as a
stepping-stone to something more in accordance with their
wishes and as the initiation of a peaceful revolution that must
lead ultimately to the desired goal. The less sanguine and more
dogmatic examine the plan on its own merits, and, finding
it other than they wish, refuse to embark in a ship chartered
to sail in one direction in the hope that adverse winds may
compel it to saU in the adverse direction.!
WhUst all these attempts at Federal Reform were taking
place, the constitutional conflict on Army re-organisation
'¦ Coburg, 5th September 1863.

358 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
was being waged at Berlin with ever increasing bitterness.
This was regarded with much anxiety both by Queen
Victoria and Lord RusseU, on account of the position and
future prospects of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess,
and their earnest wish was that a compromise should
be arrived at ; they therefore entrusted Morier with
the delicate task of trying to ascertain whether there
was any possibility of so desirable a result being
achieved. Morier to Earl Russell
' Berlin, November 14th, 1863.
' It is only this week that the M.P.'s have arrived at
Berlin, and I have therefore only within the last day or
two had the opportunity of seeing any of them, and hint
ing how desirable you thought it that an arrangement
should be come to between the House of Deputies and
the Govemment. I have been obliged to be extraordinarily
cautious, as this is the metropolis of calumnies and Ues,
and were the least suspicion to get about that I had been
talking politics with any of the opposition, the Kreuz-
Zeitung would at once have a leading article stating that
I was furnishing the King's enemies with Orsini bombs
manufactured at Woolwich.
' I have spoken to two members of the left Centre, or
quasi-moderate party of the Opposition, which now numbers
a hundred members, and which, if a basis of arrangement
could be found to which it could adhere, would certainly
be able in conjunction with the Right of the House and
stragglers to secure a majority. That this body sincerely
and ardently desires reconcUiation is as certain as that
it entirely despairs of it. Having stated confidentially
to my informant (an old friend of mine on whose discretion
I could implicitly rely) what your views were, he said he
would teU me equaUy confidentiaUy what was going on
amongst the leading men of his party.
¦ I. They were to a man convinced that unless a reconcUia
tion could be effected at once the gravest possible dangers
threatened the country.
' 2. Strenuous exertions had been made for some weeks

i863] BERLIN 359
past in very influential quarters to determine them to
leave nothing untried that could bring about such a recon
ciliation. These quarters were such as it went most against
their personal wishes in any way to run counter to (I have
reason to believe from other information that has reached
me that those quarters are respectively the Queen of Prussia
and the Grand Duke of Baden).
' 3. They had therefore, without previous concert, arrived
at Berlin with an olive branch in the hand.
' 4. The King's speech, however, had cut away the ground
from under their feet. A compromise was alone possible on
the basis of the House yielding on the material question,
i.e. granting the King the money he has already UlegaUy
spent on his re-organisation and more to go on with, tUl a
definite law for the re-orgaiusation has been passed, with
a large concession on the part of the House with regard to
that law, and the Government yielding on the constitutional
question, i.e. admitting the right to vote the supplies and
binding itself for the future not to spend money that had
been refused by the House.
' In the King's speech (and there is no sort of hope of
H.M. taking back an iota of what he has said) both points
are prejudged and placed outside the boundary lines of
negotiation. He claims for his re-organisation the char
acter of a permanent institution, derived from a prescrip
tion of three years' iUegal existence, and wiU therefore not
admit of its being any further treated as an open ques
tion, and he decides the constitutional question in a sense
opposed to what the most moderate of his old Liberal
advisers (Schwerin and company) deemed the shibboleth
of constitutional govemment, by declaring that he will
not sanction a refusal on the part of the Commons of any
item of expenditure necessary to the maintenance of his
re-organisation, thereby publicly proclaiming the mon
strous doctrine just put forward by the Kreuz-Zeitung,
that the King and the Upper House have an equal voice
with the Lower in voting the suppUes ! The one penny
worth of bread in aU this quantity of Divine Right sack
being the proposal of a law that shall consecrate this principle,
but guard against too great an abuse of its application by

36o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
certain indefinite Umits to the right of spending a Budget
not voted.
' To give me exactly what his views and those of his.
friends were, he aUowed me to perase a paper (which I
have reason to believe was to be submitted to the Queen,
or the influential quarter) containing the basis upon which
alone they considered an arrangement possible.
' I have extracted from it the foUowing : — In return
for the House voting the military Budget the Govemment
to give the following equivalents : —
' I. Admission of the right of the House to refuse suppUes.
' 2. The effectual supervision of the expenditure by
placing the auditing of the accounts in some sort
of organic connection with the House.
'3. A Liberal reorganisation of the administrative ma
chinery and of the local govemment.
' 4. A Law of Ministerial Responsibility.
' 5. A reform of the Upper House.
'6. The two years' service for the infantry.
' The sixth point, however, my informant said he thought
might be waived, as practicaUy two years was the utmost
ever enforced, and that there would never be money
enough forthcoming to carry out both the increased re
cruiting and the fuU three years.
' As regards the reform of the Upper House (which
sounds to our ears a very Radical measure), it must be
remembered that it is not in reality a House of Peers
(not above one-third at the most being Peers), but a recent
article of manufacture, for the most part composed of
Government nominees and the representatives of groups
of small squires and petty nobility who have no kind of
business there, but would do very weU in the Lower
Chamber. This reform is a sine qua non condition of
constitutional government, as is proved by the fact of a
total standstiU in the legislative machinery during the three
years of the Liberal Ministry, from the Upper House throw
ing out measure after measure brought in by that Ministry,
and passed by the Lower House.
' I cannot therefore, you see, hold out to you, from

1863] BERLIN 361
what I have as yet seen and heard, any hopes of the
wished-for reconciliation being come to. The fact most
characteristic of the present situation is, that the temper
of the Opposition, as far as yet I have been able to judge
of it, is depressed and full of forebodings of evils which
they would fain avert, whilst that of the governmental
and feudal clique is insolent, overbearing, and fuU of hope
for the future.
' It is incredible how deep seated is stiU the feeling of
loyalty to the Crovra, and how intense is the actual feeling
of pain caused even to men of very advanced opinions
by having been branded by the King's own lips as illoyal
subjects. Their depressed feeUng, however, is but only
too likely to give place to uncontrollable passion if the
present system of adding insult to injury is continued
much longer, and though there is undoubtedly at present
a strong and general wish for accommodation (as proved
by a tacit agreement not to vote an address which could
not but at once have brought on a general battle), ten
days of Bismarckian buU-baiting wiU certainly put an
end to it. The feudals are absurdly flushed with their
victory of 37 seats, and believe that the next election
wUl give them a majority ! The only person who could
preserve the country from the impending catastrophe is
the King. But what I have ascertained of H.M.'s present
temper gives me no kind of hope in that quarter. He
sees things alternately couleur de rose or through the
medium of violent passion, in which he declares that the
sword is the only solution of the question. He is in perfect
good humour with himself and his Minis,ters. He is con
vinced that his 37 seats, for obtaining which he takes
the credit to hiraself, are the nest-egg that shaU secure
to him in future obedient majorities.
' He has become the mere tool of a wicked and unscrapu-
lous faction, whose passions he has lashed himself up,
contrary to all HohenzoUern precedent, to share, whilst
he religiously believes that he is God's vice-regent, and that
he is fulfUling the Almighty's commands.'

362 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863

CHAPTER XV
SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN
By the death of King Frederick vii., the last male descen
dant of the elder line of the House of Oldenburg, on 15th
November 1863, the long-threatened crisis in the Schleswig-
Holstein question suddenly became acute.
Of aU the humUiations which Prussia, and with her the
German nation, had had to undergo as a consequence of
the political events of which the Convention of Olmiitz —
that record of national impotence — ^had been the outward
and visible sign, this humUiation had been . the deepest ;
for it is hardly possible to conceive a more ignominious
part than that which the German nation had then been
forced to play by its rulers.
In the war between Denmark and the Duchies, 1848-1850,
Germany had participated first as a beUigerent, identified
with the cause of the latter ; afterwards as a neutral, friendly
to that cause ; lastly as an armed mediator, ready to restore
by force the authority of the King-Duke, — and the German
troops who had entered the country as liberators had
remained as gaolers to hand over the inhabitants of the
Duchies to their oppressors. Little wonder, then, that the
nation bowed its head with shame, and all the more as this
result had been brought about by internal dissensions.
Threatened and pressed on all sides, Prussia had given
way. Stockmar wrote on 14th May 1850 : —
' It is unbelievable, and yet I cannot doubt it, that in
BerUn, in order to avoid a war, they wiU appeal to the great
Powers, to a European congress, and there submit this German
question to the decision of foreign countries. They have
reaUy_ taken steps in this sense. . . . The demands which
Austria makes upon Prussia, the threats which it allows itself
to employ, are suggested by Russia. Austria tries, by carry
ing out the wishes of Russia in German affairs, to discharge

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 363
the obligation under which it laid itself to that Power for the
help afforded it in Hungary.' !
Of aU the Powers, Russia, at that time omnipotent in
Europe, was the one most interested in the integrity of the
Danish monarchy. The Radical dream of a Scandinavian
Union had ever been her bugbear, and she thought that,
with a Denmark weakened by the loss of the Duchies, such
an eventuality would become more possible ; moreover she
saw, and rightly saw, in the Schleswig-Holstein question
the seed of German unity, the prevention of which she had
openly declared to be a European necessity.^ Russia it
was, therefore, who took the leading part in deciding on
the fate of Schleswig-Holstein. Of French support she
was already secure, and of English assistance she was now
assured by an unforeseen contingency. At that time the
English Government had allowed itself to become involved
in serious European complications, owing to Lord Palmer
ston's hasty action in regard to what is known as the Don
Pacifico affair. In honour of this Gibraltar Jew, resident
in Athens, whose house and property had been destroyed
by a mob of Orthodox Christians, Lord Palmerston had
ordered Admiral Parker and fifteen ships of the Medi
terranean Fleet to Salamis, and laid an embargo on Greek
merchantmen. Russia and France had both protested
strongly against this step, and Lord Palmerston, finding
himself in unexpected difficulties, sought some means of
escape, and found it in the extreme desire of the Emperor
Nicholas for the integrity of the Danish monarchy. The
rights of Schleswig-Holstein were therefore unhesitatingly
sacrificed by him to effect a compromise.
The Don Pacifico affair enabled Lord Palmerston to
obtain one of his greatest oratorical triumphs in the House
of Commons, but this success would hardly have been possible
had not a secret bargain with Count Brunnow, the Russian
Ambassador, assured him of immunity from the results of
his action.
' The poor Schleswigers have to pay for everything,' the
Prince Consort wrote to his brother, the Duke of Coburg, after
1 Stockmar's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 415.
" Nesselrode's Circular Dispatch, 1851.

364 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
the signature of the London Protocol, 9th August 1850, — ' even
for the sins of our Angel of Foreign Affairs [Lord Palmerston],
who has bought back with the Protocol the lost friendship
of Russia and France at the expense of Germany, and so has
settled the Greek business. Germany only gets her deserts if
she is despised abroad, but woe to them whose fault it is.' !
By this Protocol, signed by Russia, France, Sweden, and
Denmark, the alteration in the law of succession had been
agreed upon, for had matters been aUowed to take their
natural course the Landgravine Charlotte of Hesse, sister
of King Christian vii., would have become Queen of Den
mark on the death of the last male descendant in the direct
line, whilst the Duke of Augustenburg, the representative of
the male Une, would have succeeded as Duke of Schleswig-
Holstein. To obviate this contingency, and the conse
quent severance of the Duchies from the monarchy, became
therefore the first care of these Powers, and the succession
was settled between the Emperor Nicholas, as chief of the
Gottorp line, and Frederick vii., as representing the royal
line. Their first consideration had been to exclude all the
Princes of the House of Augustenburg, and, with one excep
tion, those of the House of Gliicksburg, which they did
under pretext that their participation in the so-caUed
RebeUion of '48 had invalidated their claims. After various
Princes of the House of Oldenburg had been considered,
and on various grounds rejected, the choice of the two
Sovereigns fell on Prince Christian of Gliicksburg, the hus
band of Princess Louise, the Landgravine Charlotte's
daughter. It was arranged that the claims of her brother.
Prince Frederick of Hesse, were to be passed over in her
favour, on condition of her transferring her rights to her
husband and his male descendants, who were thus
to become Kings of Denmark and Duke of Schleswig-
Holstein. Prince Christian had, in the war of 1848, given
his aUegiance to the King of Denmark, thereby gaining in
a high measure the approbation of both Sovereigns, and had
thus proved the solitary exception to the ban of rebeldom
under which the other members of his House had fallen.
In order to give the stamp of legality to this arbitrary
arrangement by which alone the integrity of the Danish
' Denkwiirdigkeiten, Herzog E. v. Coburg, vol, i. p. 460.

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 365
monarchy could be maintained, the King of Denmark had
agreed to settle the pretensions of the female lines, the
Emperor of Russia to waive the Gottorp rights, and the King
of Prassia undertaken to obtain from the Duke of Augusten
burg, on the plea of European interests, the renunciation of
his rights ; Bismarck, then Prassian Minister to the Diet
of Frankfort, being charged with the latter negotiation.
The whole of the Duke's property had been confiscated
in the war of '48 ; his consequent poverty was now used
as a lever to obtain from him the required submission,
and he eventuaUy sold his claims for a sum of money
representing little more than half the value of his estates.
But his son, Duke Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein,! never
was a party to this transaction, and in 1859 actually lodged
a protest against it in Copenhagen.
The results of all these protracted negotiations were
embodied in the Treaty of London, signed on 8th May 1852,
by the five Great Powers and the two Northern Kingdoms.
Bunsen, the Prussian Minister in London, who had refused
to append his signature to the first Protocol, which he had
stigmatised as " a work of injustice or folly," was on this
occasion obliged to do so by the express order of his
Sovereign, King Frederick WiUiam iv. ; but he recorded
his conviction that the Treaty " was as much a necessity
for Europe as it was a humiliation for Germany."
The Treaty was based on the foUowing terms : Germany
gave up the political union between the Duchies ; Denmark
gave up the incorporation of Schleswig into Denmark,
engaging neither to incorporate nor to take steps towards
incorporating the Duchy into the Kingdom ; and by thus
sacrificing on a common altar the two principles of Schles-
wig-Holsteinism and Eider-Danism, the conflict between
which caused the war, it was hoped that peace would once
more be restored to the country.
The King of Denmark was reinstated in his sovereign
rights over Holstein, and obtained the adherence of Austria
and Prussia to the London Protocol, i.e. the recognition
of the altered law of succession.
' Frederick, Duke of Augustenburg, b. 1829, d. 1880, father of the
German Empress.

366 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
Thus the statecraft of Cabinets had thought once for
all to settle this question in arbitrary disregard of the
rights of those nearest in succession, of the Duchies, and
of Germany ; but with prophetic foresight old Baron
Stockmar said to Samwer in the summer of 1854 : " Were
I as sure of the fulffiment of aU my wishes as I am that in
its time the Treaty of London wUl faU to pieces of itself,
I should rest content."
That the enthusiasm of a great nation for the liberties
of Schleswig-Holstein, and the sympathies of her thirty
Sovereign Princes for the hereditary rights of the Augusten
burg family should have led to such sorry results was indeed
a mortification to Germany ; but on the other hand,
Denmark was not much better pleased. The Eider-
Dane party, who had remained predominant, saw with
dismay that by this treaty its aims, namely, the incorporation
of Schleswig and, at the death of Frederick vii., the Scan
dinavian union, with Copenhagen as its capital, were as
much thwarted as were those of the Duchies themselves.
Moreover, the prospect of a Prince of German descent
and language as their future Sovereign was so unpopular
with the Danes as to cause the Government to delay for a
year presenting the new Law of Succession to the Riksdag,
On the conclusion of the treaty the federal troops of
Austria and Prussia, who had occupied the Duchies since
the war, were withdravra, and the country once more
handed over to the Danish authorities.
Frederick vii., a weak and immoral character, already
divorced from two wives, was completely under the dominion
of his former mistress, Christine Rasmussen, ex-dressmaker
and baUet dancer, whom he had morganaticaUy married
and ennobled under the title of Countess Danner. This
lady's ambition caused her to ally herself with the Eider-
Dane party who remained paramount in the Government
¦in spite of frequent changes of Ministry, and the King
consequently became the obedient tool of this party.
It was not surprising, therefore, that, as soon as the
Danish troops had re-occupied the Duchies, the trium
phant Danish democracy should have begun a relentless
persecution of all persons who had taken any part in the

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 367
so-caUed insurrection. Of floggings and incarcerations
there was no end, especiaUy in Schleswig, the connection
with the German Diet affording to Holstein a certain
amount of protection which was denied to her more un
happy sister Duchy.
This reign of terror, and the fact that the provisional
Constitutions elaborated in 1855 had never been laid
before the States of the Duchies, constituted such
flagrant violations of the treaty that the Duchies were
driven to protest ; protests, however, which in the then
state of Europe found but faint response. The Crimean
War, with its preceding and following events, allowed of
little heed to be paid to their complaints. In Prussia, the
only power likely to champion their cause, the reactionary
Manteuffel Ministry, authors of the Olmutz convention,
whoUy responsible for the existing state of affairs, turned
no favourable ear to clamours for constitutional Uberties.
So openly, however, did Denmark disregard her treaty
obligations that in 1856 Prussia and Austria half-heartedly
protested at Copenhagen, whilst in 1858 the Diet had been
moved to threaten Denmark with a federal execution.
Real hope for the amelioration of their lot only began to
gleam on the Duchies with the advent of the Prince Regent
of Prassia and the Ministry of the New Era who had always
been openly favourable to their cause.
The foUowing is a memorandum written by Morier in
the spring of i860, on a forthcoming Debate in the Prussian
House of Representatives on the Schleswig - Holstein
question : —
' A petition having for its object " To call upon the
Government for an inquiry as to whether the conditions
agreed to in the negotiations with the Danish Government
of the years 1851 and 1852 in respect of the Duchy of
Schleswig have been fulfiUed, and if not fiUffiled to solicit
the Government to take the necessary measures to obtain
their fulffiment," comes on for discussion next week in the
House of Representatives.
' A question more pregnant with important consequences,
both as regards the external policy of Prussia in particular
and that of the German Confederation at large, could hardly

368 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
at the present moment have been brought before the Forum
of the only popular assembly deserving the name in
Germany. Hitherto the negotiations respecting the fulffi
ment on the part of Denmark of the engagements entered
into by the Danish Government towards the Confederation
have been restricted to the Duchies of Holstein and Lauen-
burg. This restriction of the question to territories forming
integral portions of the Confederation has necessarUy con
fined it within the limits of a German question, a home ques
tion in fact, with which the other members of the European
famUy were only indirectly concerned.
' On the other hand, the engagements taken by Denmark
towards the Confederation as regards the Duchy of Schles
wig, though not less clear and binding in their nature than
those taken as regards the other two Duchies, have neces
sarily assumed the nature of an international compact, and
any mccisures taken by the Confederation to obtain the
fulffiment of those engagements with respect to a country
not forming part of the Confederation must, from an equal
necessity, assume an international character.
' Probably reckoning upon this fact and on the proverbial
incapacity of the Gerraan Diet to carry on any foreign policy
of its own, trusting withal to the sympathy which in the
former phases of the conflict Denmark has received from
other European Powers, the Danish Cabinet has been at
little pains to keep up even the appearance of a fulffiment
of these engagements, and it is unfortunately a notorious
fact that none of the guarantees given to Gerraany to
respect the German nationality in Schleswig, to place the
two races in that Duchy upon a footing of equality, and to
keep intact all the bonds not of a political nature which
united that Duchy to Holstein, have been respected by
Denmark. ' The patriotic spirit which undoubtedly characterised
the struggle of the Danish monarchy against the Con
federation in 1848 has, as is too generally the case where
different races are brought into forced political contact,
manifested itself since the peace in a spirit of systematic
hostUity against the German element in a Duchy which,
from the point of view taken by the political party in power

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 369
at Copenhagen, is, or at least must eventually become, a
Danish dependency, and the energy and passion which
when opposed to an overpowering antagonist could not but
command (independently of the political merits of the
question) admiration and sympathy, have, since they have
been directed against a weak and comparatively helpless
minority, degenerated into a persecution for which the
Danish Cabinet can hardly claim on the part of Europe the
sympathy which was before bestowed upon it.
' This persecution which has of late, at the time of and
since the meeting of the Schleswig " States " at Flensburg,
assumed a more violent form, has excited throughout
Germany a strong feeling of resentment against the Danish
Government and of sympathy for the sufferers, and the
petition about to be discussed in the Prussian Chamber is
the expression of this feeling.
' As the petitioners have wisely limited themselves to a
solicitation of an inquiry as to the bare and literal fulffiment
of engagements solemnly entered into by the Danish
Cabinet, there can be no doubt as to the position which
the Governraent wUl assume toward the petitioners.
' I wUl now content myself with saying that the present
Government, if it were even less determined than it
undoubtedly is, to make good, as far as it lies within its
power, the shortcomings of its predecessors in matters
touching the honour of Germany at large, could not, except
at the price of forfeiting its own position in Prussia, and
the position of Prussia in Germany, do otherwise than follow
the lead which, there is no doubt, wUl be given to it by the
Chamber in the forthcoming debate.
' Of the two legacies, which were left by the Manteuffel
Ministry to that of the Prince of HohenzoUern, the Hesse
question and the Schleswig-Holstein question, the former
could not be settled in a manner conformable to the political
principles of the new Cabinet without the evident risk,
whilst conciliating the sympathies of the people of Germany,
of estranging from the Prussian Govemment the Dynasties
and Govemments of Germany ; in the latter question,
Prussia, in calling upon Denmark to fulfil her engagements,
wUl carry with her the Govemments as well as the people,
VOL. L 2 A

370 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
and it is not too much to say that the present question is
perhaps the only one upon which a real entente cordiale can
be expected between all the different elements of which the
Confederation is composed.
' I should add that the feeling excited in Germany is
much intensified by the conviction, very universally held,
that the Danish Government could hardly venture so openly
to reckon on impunity if it was not assured of assistance on
the part of the French Government, and that this conviction
is increased by the language of the Ministerial Press in
Denmark.' From the time of his first visit to Germany in 1850, and
ever since his experiences on the battlefields of Schleswig-
Holstein, Morier had taken a deep interest in the fate of
the Duchies. His close acquaintanceship with most of the
principal Schleswig-Holsteiners and intimate knowledge
of Germany enabled him, better than most, to form a
correct opinion of this intricate subject, and to gauge the
depth of German national feeling. Moreover, as he wrote
to Lord Derby many years later,! he was seized at times
' by a kind of fierce burning eagerness which appears to be
like a force extemal to myself, and which fastens on to some
particular subject, leaving others untouched, but which,
when once aroused, enables me, by a kind of second sight,
to see quite clearly beforehand where a mismanaged question
will land us. I had this almost to the extent of mania in
regard to the Schleswig-Holstein question, and it made me
endeavour by every possible, and impossible means, for the
three years preceding 1863, to prevent the catastrophe
which came upon us, and from which we have never re
covered, when we left Denmark in the lurch. I had, it is
trae, the satisfactionj though a poor one, that Lord John
Russell had the generosity on two occasions to say before
a mixed company, " If we had only taken Morier's advice
and seen through his eyes, the Schleswig-Holstein question
would have been settled before Frederick vii.'s death," i.e.
before it had become the starting-point of a new Europe
built up on blood and iron.'
* 19th November 1884.

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 371
Morier was well aware, as he often reiterated, that
English foreign policy was but the echo of English public
opinion, and that no English statesman would ever have
the courage to ran counter to popular prejudice, however
erroneous he might think it. The fanatical manner in
which the English Press, with but little knowledge of the
subject, had taken the Danish side of the quarrel caused
him therefore much anxiety. An article in The Times in
this sense induced him to write to Dasent, the assistant
editor, with whom he was personaUy acquainted, the follow
ing letter, dated Sth May i860 : — ' Berlin, May ith, i860.
' I endeavoured in a few hurried lines to wake you up to
the danger to the common cause, which wiU arise from the
English Press, and especially The Times, getting once more
upon its unfortunate Danish hobby-horse and running amuck
against the national policy and national sympathies involved
in the Schleswig-Holstein question throughout the length and
breadth of Germany.
' I think that you (second person plural including all parties
whose business it is to guide public opinion in England)
cannot sufficiently lay stress upon the large simple principles
upon which alone a successful resistance against the policy
of the Sphinx of the TuUeries can be looked for ; that cold
impassive marble can alone be put into a state of fusion by
the living fire of the national principle. This sounds very
exalti and sentimental, but it is not the lesser truth for its
being proclaimed on the housetops and at the corners of the
streets. England has recognised this as regards Italy, and the
instinct that guided her is every day vindicating its truth,
and Lord John deserves weU of his country for having carried
out this idea and helped to carry it out in Italy. The split
between Louis Napoleon and Sardinia or the King of Italy,
or whatever it is to be called, is daily growing more evident,
and the mission of Lamoricibre and the organisation of an armed
reactionary power in Italy that shall keep Cavour in check
are, as you must have ere this guessed in England, as much
the results of inspiration from the Seine, as the votes in Savoy
and Nice. . . . Frankenstein is frightened at the thews and
sinews of the great hairy man he has called into existence.
The organisation of an Italian nationality is, however, for a
successful resistance of Napoleonic ideas as nothing compared
with the imperative necessity of Germany being united by the
only bond which can unite her, that of national Bewusstsein.
To run amuck against this, therefore, is the most suicidal act
which England can be capable of, unless indeed our legitimate

372 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER 1863
policy is an aUiance d tout prix with Napoleon for ever and
ever Amen.
' Why can England find sympathy for the wars of oppressed
Venetians and Lombards and none for oppressed Germans ?
Why is it a noble sentiment to feel the touch of kith and kin
on the Po and mere dreaming sentimentality to feel the same
on the Eider ? The difference consists in this, I shall be answered,
that Denmark is a small state and Austria was a large one ; but
am I to submit to being kicked and trampled upon by a man
because he is smaller than myself ? Is not the shame for a power
ful race like the German all the greater ? I am a big feUow, but
if a very smaU man (with big friends, N.B., at his elbow) comes
up to me in Regent Street and spits in my face and punches me
in the stomach, surely I shaU not be considered as doing a very
ungenerous action if I give him in charge of a policeman ; and
this is the exact case in point. Denmark is the aggressor, the
aggressor in 1848 when, a few weeks after the Sovereign had
sworn at his Coronation an oath to keep the Duchies ever united,
a mob forced him to decree the disunion and the inclusion of
Schleswig into Denmark ; the aggressor in its daUy acts since
1852, when, by the infamous policy of Manteuffel and Schwar-
zenberg, she had obtained the disunion of the Duchies and en
gaged herself, as the minimum, by a solemn convention not to
incorporate Schleswig and to respect and yield equal protection
to the German nationality. Her whole policy since then has
consisted in the most ruthless attacks upon that nationality,
and in a series of measures resulting in a state of things only
differing from incorporation in the name. It is the sense of the
impotence of Germany to remedy such patent evils, to obtain
redress against such grievous wrongs, to enforce the fulfUment
of such plain obligations against a pigmy like Denmark, which
brings the hot blood into the cheek of every German who
has stiU the commonest sense of shame and honour left, when
ever the name of Schleswig-Holstein is whispered. Not but
that Germany could finish the matter off in twenty-four hours
with Denmark, if it was with the pigmy alone that she had
to deal. The pigmy would then soon come to its senses and
fulfil to the letter its engagements and take off its hat and say :
Sir, it was altogether by mistake that I spat in your face and
punched you in the stomach. It is the humiliating feeling that
she cannot hold her own against the big friends at the pigmy's
elbow, that through the miserable policy of her rulers and the
stereot5T)ing of dynastic Sonderinteressen, her voice is as nothing
in the counsels of Europe, and that anything like a common
action, if it is only to vindicate the barest fulfilment of the most
patent obligations, is met by a hue and cry aU over Europe
against the autonomous action of a political body which by
the solemn edicts of the Congress of Vienna v/as doomed to
a mere negative existence and to everlasting immovabiUty.

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 373
Russia may have a policy, France may have a policy, even Prussia
and Austria may have a policy, but you, Germans, are not to
have a policy, the admission of this principle would create an
overpowering power in the centre of Europe which would
certainly preserve the peace of the world and keep once and for
all France and Russia within their limits, but it would disturb
the balance of power. This is the song to the burden of whose
tune Schleswig-Holstein have for the last ten years been luUed
in the arms of Danish gensdarmes. That we, i.e. The Times,
should, and, at this particular moment to boot, join in this hue
and cry, is a fact quite inconceivable to me.
' The Times article is based upon such a total misappre
hension of what is really going on in Germany and of the rela
tions which Prussia stands in towards Germany and Prussia versus
Prussia, that it takes one's breath away to thin,k what this ignor
ance in so influential a quarter at such a time may lead to. It
talks of the sympathy which she ought to bestow upon herself.
Why, good God ! what is to become of Prussia if she is not
to consider Germany in the same light as herself, and if she
is to keep her sympathy for the loose disjointed straggling
territories surrounded by her impossible frontier ? It is on
account of this very sympathy with herself, that she is bound
to identify her interests and embrace with her sympathy
those other German lands that are her only allies. Again,
the article in question talks about Prussia's meddling in her
neighbour's affairs, thus taking the view that Holstein, an
integral portion of Germany, is a neighbour, i.e. a stranger.
Why, is not the whole drift of this argument to drive Prussia
into taking up a line of pure Prussian policy, i.e. an abandon
ing of her German policy, from which alone, is again and again
reiterated, the only hope is to be derived of a barrier being
raised against France ? Surely The Times cannot wish to
recommend in i860 the policy which disgraced Prussia in
1804-1805 ? Such a policy can only lead to one result, the
arrondissement of Prussia within Germany at the price of a
confederation of the Rhine States. Preserve England from
being the first to point out such a road Again the article
talks of a menace to Denmark. In this century of New Year
Day congratulations, it is rather too absurd to call a menace
the adhesion given in by the Minister of the Crown to a petition
asking for an inquiry as to whether the stipulations of a con
vention have been fulfilled.
' Again, when the article talks of what would be Prussia's
best allies in a contest with France, including Denmark under
the term, is The Times so grossly ignorant of European politics
as not to know that in every European struggle Denmark
has always and always been on the side of France, and that
her official papers are daUy preaching making common cause
with France in an attack on the Rhine ? The case is different

374 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER '[1863
with Sweden, but it is equaUy weU knovra that Sweden does not
stand on a common line with Denmark on the Schleswig-
Holstein question.
'Then the notion of the present Ministry engaging in a
" sentimental quarrel " with Denmark is so gorgeously ridicu
lous that if the matter were not so serious one might laugh
oneself into an appetite. The HohenzoUern Ministrya senti
mental one — oh, good God ! oil la sentimentality ira-t-elle
se nicher ? Prosaic, honest mediocrities, who wish nothing
more than to do their duty in that state of life to which it has
pleased God to call them, but who find their task a well-nigh
hopeless one. They know that sooner or later they must
drift into the battle of the giants, and believe me, whatever
you hear to the contrary, they are bent on no selfish and particu
laristic ends, but wish to fight for and with Germany, and they
cannot therefore separate themselves from a German cause. If
not in Germany, where are Prussia's allies ? She must stand and
faU with Germany, and if the struggle is to come, better, far better,
for her that it should overtake her whilst bona fide carrying
out a national policy and at the head of Germany heartily
supporting her in such a policy, than in some doubtful personal
quarrel, when dynastic jealousies would be sure to put her
conduct in a false and odious light. Let The Times run amuck,
but don't let it fancy that it is running against the Prussian
Ministry ; it is running it against aU that is best and patriotic
in Germany, aU that goes to bed at night and wakes up in the
morning with the one idea of an Anglo-German alliance. I
have seen the impression produced on many of the leaders of
this party by The Times leader, and my heart has sunk within
me.'
Morier to Lord John Russell
(Letter begun 26th January, ended 'ird March, 1861)
' The plan you suggest of a reasonable arrangement
respecting Holstein between the contending parties them
selves and of an English mediation in respect to Schleswig
is certainly the most natural one, and that which would
have the best chance of success if the fanaticism and ignor
ance of English public opinion upon the subject allowed of
our mediation being undertaken upon a tolerably fair
basis. The immediate bar to such a scheme, however, lies
in the imbecUity of the present Prussian Cabinet and
the impossibility of their taking a simple and straight
forward course in any question whatever. By their last
step in the matter at Frankfort they have succeeded in

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 375
winning the applause of their worst enemies in Germany,
the Beusts and their friends, and in incurring the censure
of what should be their natural allies, the national and
Liberal party. They are, of course, furious with the latter
and accuse them of the grossest inconsistency in having
constantly urged the taking up of the Schleswig-Holstein
question with a strong hand, and now that the Government
has taken a step forward, in universaUy disapproving this
step. But the national party (the more sensible amongst
its leaders, I should rather say) are in the right, and the
Govemment are in the wrong. The step just taken by the
latter merely intensifies the quarrel and makes a European
hubbub without bringing the question one step nearer to
its real issue. That issue is so simple, and the real question
at stake between the two countries is so plain, that it has
required all the bungling of which German statesmen alone
are capable to keep it so long veiled from the face of Europe.
Whether it is politic to attempt to bring the question to its
issue now, or indeed to bring it to an issue at aU, is of course
a distinct matter, but merely to aggravate the sore without
being able to apply the remedies which alone could cure it,
all sensible men, outside the Ministerial circles, who really
care about the matter, feel to be the gravest of mistakes.
What the question really at issue is — what every German
with any sense for the honour of his nation has not only a
right but is bound to feel for it, what in other words an
Englishman in the same position would undoubtedly feel
and not less undoubtedly endeavour to shape into acts (and
this, I think, is the only fair test which we can use, when
treating such questions abstractly), has never, that I know
of, been fairly submitted to the consideration of H.M.
Government, and has certainly never been admitted to a
hearing by the English public.
' Now as being the only question which really separates
the healthy, honest Liberalism of England from the healthy,
honest Liberalism of Germany, it seems to me of such very
real importance that it should be viewed from this point
of view, that I cannot refrain from carrying myself back
in fancy to one of our walks round the Coburg Fortress, and
indulging in the privUege you then accorded me of speak-

376 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
ing a cceur ouvert on the otherwise in all respectable society
tabooed questions of German politics.
' The real cause of the false position in which the Prussian
Government stands with reference to the question, and the
origin of nine-tenths of the prevailing unclearness about the
matter, are to be found in the fact of the former Prussian
Government, on Divine Right and reactionary principles,
the present Government from timidity, want of savoir
faire, and the hopeless endeavour to reconcUiate irrecon-
cUable things, having never honestly admitted to them
selves or to the world at large that the true point of
gravitation in the whole question lies in Schleswig and not
in Holstein. They have all along worked for the Holstein
end of the question and through the interminable tom
fooleries of Dietal rescripts, protocols, and the like, trusting to
Providence to be able to smuggle in the Schleswig grievance
tant mieux que mal amidst the dirty linen of the federal
clothes-basket — a mode of procedure soraewhat analogous
to the attempt to drive in a wedge by the big end ! The
consequence has been that the whole contest has been turn
ing round and round upon wholly irrelevant points, and that
both parties are now just exactly where they were ten years
ago. The late step taken at Frankfort is a glaring instance
of a continuance in this wrong path, and this is what the
national party have the right instinct to feel — ^tUl Prussia
can fairly join issue on the merits of the question from its
Scffieswig side, it is folly on her part to move forward. She
cannot at present join issue on that ground, because (i) with
out a fleet and without a maritime ally to supply that
deficiency, she can never bring a war with Denmark to a
decisive end, which alone would admit of a solution of the
matter ; (2) because with the present King and with his
present Cabinet, she wiU never be able openly and honestly
to proclaim to herself and to the world the treachery of
which the late King and his Government were guUty
towards the Duchies in 1850, in the recognition of which
treachery, and in the duty of making it good to the Duchies,
is involved the question of the point d'honneur for Germany.
' Of the engagements taken by the King of Denmark
towards Prussia and the Confederation we hear much — of

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 377
the engagements taken by Prussia and Germany towards
the Duchies we hear nothing, and yet it is on the latter that
the whole question rests — ^whUst they are just as formal,
just as distinct, and just as binding as the former, not dating
back into medieval times, and get-at-able orUy by the light
of antiquarian inquiry as The Times writers do vainly talk,
but entered into immediately before those taken by the
King of Denmark, standing in direct and organic connection
with them.
' What these engagements are and how binding upon the
national conscience I think I can show in a very few
sentences. Previous to March 1848, the Union of the two
TiMohies inter se, and their political separatiori fromDenmark,
was established beyond a doubt. It was the fundamental
law of their political existence, and recognised as such by
the present King equally with his predecessor, when upon
his accession to the throne he took the usual oath which con
tained the formula, " That the Duchies should remain for
ever undivided " {ungedeelt), and that they owed their
allegiance to him as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein and not
as King of Denmark {nicht als einem Konige zu Ddnemark) .
What this union meant, practically, is soon enough stated.
It meant municipal autonomy and integrity of the national
element. Disunion meant loss of raunicipal autonomy and
systematic treading under foot of the national element.
That this union did so exist dejure and de facto is sufficiently
proved by the fact of the Eider party having for years
previous to '48 been organised upon the basis of destroying
this union and incorporating Schleswig in Denmark. The
dissolution of this union and the incorporation of Schleswig
into the monarchy in March 1848 was the cause of the war
waged between the Duchies assisted by the German con
federates on the one hand and Denmark on the other.
Were the Duchies justified or not in waging war against
their legitimate sovereign {N.B. waged in the most legiti
mate way a war could be waged, viz. in the name of the
Duke of Schleswig-Holstein against the King of Denmark)
after that Sovereign had in the most pubUc manner struck
a death-blow at the fundamental rights of their Constitu
tion ? This is a question to which it seems to me there can

378 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
be but one answer in England. But it was this original
character stamped upon the matter that operated in so
disastrous a manner upon it, as regards the action of
Prussia — for a principle of this kind was the thing the most
abhorrent to the Divine Right feeUng of King Frederick
WUUam IV., who finding himself forced, by the pressure of
circumstances, to support the cause of the Duchies, tried
to quiet his conscience by an act towards the cause he sup
ported and by compromising the honour of his army. His
secret instructions to Marshal Wrangel not in any way
to bring matters to extremity and not to attack the Danes,
if he could by any means avoid it, are now matters of public
notoriety. Hence of all the absurd misconceptions on the
matter, that of King Frederick WUliam iv. having been
influenced in his conduct by motives of ambition or by the
wish to annex the Duchies to Prussia is perhaps the most
glaringly untenable.
' That Prussia and the German Confederation, inde
pendently of the international right of every independent
state to side with either party to a civU war, a fortiori in a
war between two really independent states joined to each
other by a personal union only, were bound to defend the
right of union which the federal state of Holstein had with
Schleswig, a reference to the status quo agreed upon be
tween Christian vm. and the Confederation in 1846 would
suffice to prove.
' The war entered upon under these auspices was brought
to a close, re infecta, as regards Prussia and Germany, by the
Peace of Berlin of 1850, a peace pure and simple, in which
all the political positions asserted by the beUigerent parties,
such as they existed previous to the war, were reserved, and
were to form the subject of future negotiations. The legiti
mate nature of the struggle now carried on single-handed
by the two Duchies against Denmark was formally recog
nised by Prussia — and this struggle went on tiU the close
of the year 1850.
' With the close of that year set in the fuU tide of the
reactionary movement in Berlin and Vienna. The Prussian
Cabinet received at Olmiitz the mot d'ordre from the
Emperor Nicholas to treat the Schleswig-Holstein question

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 379
as a rebellion of liege subjects against their lawful sovereign
— and an Austro-Prussian army of execution was marched
to Altona to re-establish the authority of that sovereign
in his Duchies.
' Upon the circumstances attending this measure
depends the view we are to take of the subject.
' It is therefore necessary clearly to apprehend what
the relative positions of the various parties at this con
juncture were. The Schleswig-Holsteiners, governed by
a Lord-Lieutenancy acting in the name of the Duke and
up to that moment recognised as the legitimate authority
by Prussia and the great body of the German States, are
in actual mUitary possession of the whole of Holstein
and of an important portion of South Schleswig — the
key to their position being the fortress of Rendsburg,
the northern portion of which is situated in Schleswig.
From this position the Danish forces are unable to expel
them, and the approaching winter, if accompanied with
the ordinary amount of frost, promises to give to the
army of the United Duchies a very decided advantage
over the Danish Army, the strength of whose position
consists in its being protected by extensive bogs passable
at every point when frozen over (these are aU facts per
sonally known to me, as I was in the country in September
of that year and went over all the positions occupied by
the Schleswig-Holstein troops). The object for which they
are in arms is not to throw off the authority of their legiti
mate sovereign, but solely to maintain a corporate union
they have an undoubted right to and which has been de jure
destroyed by the formal act incorporating the Duchy of
Schleswig into the Danish Kingdora.
' The King of Denmark, unable to reconquer the army
opposed to him, and having tried in vain to obtain assist
ance elsewhere, invokes that of Prussia and Austria as
Representatives of the German Confederation, on the plea
of the necessity of restoring order in the federal state of
Holstein. Having, as before stated, received their instruc
tions from the Emperor Nicholas, the then patron saint
of so-called "European order," these two Powers set an
army of 50,000 men in motion and send their Commissioners,

38o MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
Count Mensdorff, our Coblentz acquaintance, and General
Thiimen, with a summons to the Lieutenancy to lay'down
their arms. Even at this culminating period of the
reaction, however, the scandal of appearing on the scene
of action as allies of the King of Denmark would have
been too great — and consequently the character in which
the intervening Powers notified their arrival was that of
armed mediators who were bound to see that hostilities
ceased, but who at the same time were prepared to assert
there and then by force, if need be, all the rights and
privileges of the Duchies vis-d-vis of Denmark. It was not
till a distinct written engagement to that effect and a
promise that the intervening Powers would protect " the
old-established relation founded upon Right between
Schleswig and Holstein {das alt herkommlich berechtigte
Verhdltniss zwischen Holstein und Schleswig) had been
given by the Commissioners to the Lieutenancy, in other
words, by Germany to the Duchies, that the latter obeyed
the summons and disbanded their army, thereby at once
restoring to Denmark that portion of the southern part of
Schleswig which they had occupied — Holstein remaining
in the occupation of the federal troops until a definite
regulation of the pending questions was settled between
Denmark and the Confederation, the evacuation being
made conditional upon this definite agreement being come
to. The form which this definite agreement took was the
Convention (Vereinbarung) of 1851-1852, the provisions of
which you have admitted to be pending in honour of
Denmark. The form was the worst possible that could have
been chosen, as it was framed upon the principle of the
absolute and divine right of monarchy, and stood thereby
in direct contradiction to the vital principle upon which
the whole contest had turned, that of the right of a people
to maintain their undoubted privileges by the force of
arms. This was the cause of the engagements taken by
the King of Denmark having been allowed to assume
the shape of a declaration of the sovereign wUl, instead of
that binding contract between himself and his German
subjects enforced by the armed mediators — a quibble,
now adroitly used by the Danish Cabinet to deny the

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 381
Sovereign having taken any engagements at all — ^the
fallacy of which, however, immediately appears disposed of,
when the circumstance is kept in view that whatever the
from of the engagement, the " sanction " by which it (
was enforced was the occupation of Holstein — being the
fulffiment of the engagement as the condition of its
evacuation. ' This side of the question, which the Danish Govern
ment has carefully misrepresented, is not, however, that
to which I particularly wish to call attention, but the
relation which this Convention bears to the engagement
entered into by the Commissioners to the Lieutenancy,
i.e. by Germany to the Duchies. As seen above, the Com
missioners describe themselves generally as there to secure
once and for all the just rights and privileges of the Duchies
and specially to safeguard the old-established relation
between the two. On the strength of this assurance the
Duchies laid down their arms and the King Duke recovered
his authority. The Convention of 1852 is by way of being
the redemption of this pledge. It, however, distinctly
yields to Denmark the point of the historical union between
the two Duchies, and endeavours to set up instead a state
of things totally incapable of being practically carried
out, i.e. a conglomeration of four states independent of
each other with representative institutions and out of aU
organic connection with each other — a state of things
which could offiy lead to the chronic anarchy which has
since resulted and to the perfectly logical conclusion of
the ultra-Danish party to have done, once for all, with
Germany and to buy the full incorporation of Schleswig
into Denmark, at the price of the total abandonment of
the German Duchies.
' I am quite sure that the term the " old-established
relation between the Duchies " is capable of every sort of
interpretation, and that the actual organic union, such
as it existed during the period of the Lieutenancy, was not
in existence previous to the breaking out of hostUities
in 1848, therefore that the mediating Powers did not
actuaUy bind themselves to maintain this organic union.
But most undoubtedly what they did bind themselves to

382 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
do, what every inhabitant of the Duchies and every German
out of the Duchies considered at the time that they
had undertaken to do, was to secure that sort of corporate
connection (necessarUy of a political nature) between
the Duchies which would have secured Schleswig against
the incorporating policy of Denmark. This they not
only did^o^ do, but hy formally yieldi-ng the point of the
political union they rendered such a corporate union
impossible, and acted in direct opposition to the spirit
of the engagements they had taken. The rights they had
bound themselves to safeguard were constitutional rights,
the Convention was a " Divine Right " Convention — ^the
old, old story ! And so the intervening Powers broke
their plighted faith and made the Confederation and the
German people parties to this act of treachery.
' In the meantime, of the minimum supposed to have
been obtained from Denmark not one iota has been ful
fiUed by that Kingdom, every one of the promises made
in the Convention of '5i-'52 has been broken, and now
the Danish Cabinet goes so far as to repudiate altogether
having entered into any engagements whatever. This is
the humiliating state of things, in presence of which the
Liberal party in Germany find themselves — and that they
should wish to get out of it is, to say the least of it, natural.
What they feel about the matter is this, that the non-fulfil
ment of her engagements by Denmark gives them a right
to return to the status quo ante and to insist on the corporate
connection between the Duchies, according to the spirit
of the promises made to the Duchies by the federal Com
mission in 1850. What, however, they would consider
a perfectly fair compromise would be the acceptance of
the English proposal in '48, the incorporation of the German
part of Schleswig into Holstein, of the Danish part into
Denmark, with the fullest possible municipal autonomy
and equality of rights to the two bodies so formed. This
was announced by Vincke in his great speech on the question
last year, which he considered as the natural solution, and
has been over and over again repeated to me by the leaders
of the party as that which they consider the only possible
exodus out of the difficulty.

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 383
' It is a great nuisance and an intolerable political bore
that it should be so, but it's no use by the pooh-poohing
system to try and fancy that it may be better for Europe
that Denmark should be treated as the enfant gate of the
European family, and Germany as the big awkward boy
who, whatever he does, is always to be snubbed and put in
the corner, but then this should be done openly, and Europe,
and above all others, England, should fairly look at the
facts in the face and see that her policy is a policy of " pet
ting " and not a policy which leads to justice, and not to
say that it is the big boy who stole the apples whUst they
can actuaUy be seen bulging out in the little boy's pocket !
We have, that is the Press in England have, never done
this. They have all along made themselves the violent and
undiscriminating partisans of Denmark. There has not
been published one article or one letter in The Times inwhich
I could not point out the grossest misstatement and the
most chUdish blunders. This is a mode of discussion which
even towards a political enemy is disloyal enough, but when
used towards one's friends, what is one to think of it ? The
party in Germany, whom we have so systematically held
up to contempt and ridicule, which has stuck fast to the
English aUiance through good report and evil report, and
which, though having no brUliant victories to record, can
fairly claim to have at last broken the neck of the anti-
English Holy Alliance system, how has public opinion in
England treated this party on the only question upon
which we could have been of real service to them ? Can
anything be more insolently inconsistent than the demands
made of that party by The Times in the name of the English
people — You German Liberals side with the Italians against
the Austrians in Italy on the plea of nationality and the
right of a people to govern itself, but with the Danes in
Scffieswig against the German nationality and the right of a
people to manage its own affairs on the plea — ^that it bores
us,the Editors of The Times, to death to enter into a question
which we have not got the time to get up ? Be strong-
minded, and take up an imposing attitude in Europe, but
leave the Schleswigers, whose rights you have guaranteed,
to their fate, and uffiess you mean to incur our sovereign

384 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
displeasure, don't exact of the King of Denmark that he
should keep his engagements, because (this is the usual line
of argument) we destroyed the Danish fleet at the com
mencement of the century. Living as I do here in rela
tions with the men who are the working bees of this party, I
have been made most painfffily conscious of the mischief
done by this sort of arrogant pooh-poohing peculiar to the
English Press on questions they don't understand, and I
have had better occasions than most people to judge of
its excessive ungenerosity. As far as my very humble
sphere of activity goes, I have endeavoured by every
means in my power to keep up the feeling of solidarity
between their interests and ours ; but under the tremen
dous fire from our own batteries, which has been for
months kept up on this, to the honour of Germany, so
vital question, this has been no grateful task.
' Nothing can be more modest than that which this party
asks at our hands. It is merely that we should cease from
being partisans, and that we should condescend to look
fairly at both sides of the question, as in common with
yourself the party I allude to, many of them at least, look
upon an English mediation as the natural solution of the
question, and desire nothing more heartily. Under these
circumstances the one spot of light that has appeared in
the darkness, the one fact that has done raore than every
thing else to keep up the gradually-disappearing good
feeling in the ranks of the party towards England, has been
the publication of the despatch in which you enter into the
question of the engagements taken by Denmark, and admit
that they are binding at least in honour. It is impossible for
me to exaggerate the amount of good which this despatch
has caused in the way of keeping up the good under
standing between England and the Liberal party in this
country.' It was Count Bernstorff, the Prussian Foreign Minister,
who was doing all he could to avert war, and who had
made the confidential suggestion to Morier to the effect
that Schleswig should be divided according to nationalities
—the Danes being incorporated with Denmark and the

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 385
Germans with Holstein — a suggestion which, had it been
acted on, would have brought matters to a successful issue,
and which had been Lord Palmerston's original proposal in
1848. Count Bernstorff dared not suggest this officiaUy or
publicly, for fear of the effect on public opinion in Germany
in the event of the English Government rejecting it.
Neither could Morier mention the proposal to his then
chief. Sir Andrew Buchanan, on account of the latter's
strong Danish proclivities, but he thus conveyed it to Lord
John Russell, who would gladly have accepted it, but Lord
Palmerston and the rest of the Cabinet were colour-blind,
and refused to look at it.^
During the visit of Queen Victoria to Coburg in the
autumn of 1862, when Lord Russell was Minister in attend
ance, and Morier acting as his secretary, the celebrated
despatch, dated 24th September of that year, was drafted,
which offered mediation to the contending parties.
Earl Russell's Despatch September 24th.
It appears from the accounts received from various quarters
that the correspondence between Austria, Prussia, and Denmark,
which it was asserted would lead to a settlement of the dis
pute so long subsisting between Germany and Denmark in
regard to the obligations of Denmark in the affairs of
Holstein, Lauenburg, Schleswig, and the common Constitution
of the Danish Monarchy, has grown more and more bitter.
The longer the lapse of time, and the further the negotiation is
carried, the wider is the space which separates the two parties,
and the stronger the language which they use towards each other.
Upon considering, with pain and regret, this unsatisfactory
aspect of the affair, and contemplating the unfavourable results
which may be expected from further direct communications
between Powers so adverse in their opinions. Her Majesty
has directed that you should be furnished with instructions
wffich may, it is hoped, tend to the long-desired settlement.
In framing these instructions it is advisable to throw out
of the calculation, in the first place, those matters upon which
controversy may be said to be exhausted.
The first of these matters relates to the question whether
any taxes can be imposed, or any laws enacted, in Holstein or
Lauenburg without the express consent of the representatives of
those Duchies, 1 Morier to Jowett, 1884.
VOL, I, 2 B

386 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
This question has been resolved in the negative by the
German Confederation, of which the Duchies of Holstein and
Lauenburg are members.
Another question which need not be further discussed is
the Constitution of 1855.
It is clear that whether a representation according to
numbers of the kingdom, as weU as the Duchies, be a good or a
bad Constitution, yet, not having been accepted by the Duchies,
the Constitution of 1855 has no force in Holstein, Lauenburg,
or Schleswig.
Neither is it necessary to discuss the rights of Denmark
in reference to her Rigsraad. It is quite clear that Denmark
can legislate for herself, and impose taxes to be levied upon
her ovra people, without the consent of Holstein, Lauenburg,
or Schleswig.
Two questions of great importance remain. The first re
gards the Duchy of Schleswig ; the second, the common Con
stitution of the Monarchy.
Schleswig was formerly in a position altogether anomalous.
Unconnected with the German Confederation, it was yet
connected with Holstein, which formed part of that Confedera
tion. Later arrangements have dissolved this inconvenient
tie, and Schleswig is at present only connected with Holstein
by non-political relations affecting the two communities.
There are, however, relations between Germany and Den
mark in respect to Schleswig which have given rise to the present
controversy. The obligations of honour contracted by Denmark towards
Schleswig, and imparted to the German Confederation as such
by the King of Denmark in 1852, chiefly regard two points.
The first of these is the Royal promise that Schleswig shall
not be incorporated with Denmark. The second is, in sub
stance, an engagement that the Germans in Schleswig shall
be treated on an equal footing with persons of Danish or any
other nationality.
The grievances of which Germany complains as violations
of these promises are thus summed up in the recent Prussian
note of the 22nd of August : —
' The systematic destruction of national and neighbourly
connection between Schleswig and Holstein ; the disregard of
the determination concerning the University of Kiel ; the fiUing
of the Duchy of Schleswig with Danish officials in the Adminis
tration, with Danish clergy in church and school, as well as the
whole spirit of the Administration in this Duchy ; finally, the
violation of aU actual and practical relations by the maintenance
of the language Edict, are matters of fact which are notoriously
public, and of which the evidence is in the hand of every one.'
For all practical purposes, it would be vain to attempt a
constant supervision by Germany of the nomination to civil

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 387
offices of Danish of&cials in Schleswig, or the administration
in church and school by Danish Ministers of religion. Such
superintendence would lead to a constant renewal of quarrels,
and a perpetuity of iU-will.
The best mode, therefore, of remedying these evUs for the
present, and of preventing complaints for the future, is to
grant a complete autonomy to Schleswig, aUow the Diet of
Schleswig fairly to treat, and independently to decide, upon
questions affecting their university, their churches and schools,
the language to be used where the Danish population pre
vaUs, where the Germans preponderate, and where the races
are mixed.
I come lastly to the question of the Constitution, the most
entangled and the most embarrassing question of all those
in discussion.
Treaties, protocols, and despatches afford us little light
upon this subject, and the glimmering rays which they do
afford tend rather to lead us astray than to guide us right.
For what could be more destructive of all union, all efficiency,
aU strength, and, indeed, of all independence, than to lay
dovwi as an absolute rule that no law should be passed, and no
Budget sanctioned unless the four States of the Monarchy
all concurred ? What would Austria say if she were asked to
accept a Constitution which should paralyse the action of the
Reichsrath at Vienna till separate Diets in Hungary, in Galicia,
and in Venetia should have adopted the same law or sanc
tioned the same Budget ? How would Prussia herself bear
an absolute veto on the proceedings of her Parliament given
to the Diet of Posen ?
If such a Constitution must lead to an early and decisive
rupture, let us consider whether each portion might not have
its due independent movement without clogging the wheels
of the whole machine. For instance, if the sums required for
the navy were represented by 90, of which Denmark were to
furnish 60, and the other States 30, Denmark might vote, and
apply her contingent of 60, independently of the vote of the
other three portions.
' There is only one objection to be made to this sugges
tion which deserves consideration.
' If the 1,600,000 people of Denmark were taxed to pay
the army and navy, and the 50,000 of Lauenburg were to
refuse any grant for these purposes, a hardship would be suffered
by the inhabitants of the kingdom when compared with the
situation of the King-Duke's subjects in Lauenburg.
' The remedy for this inequality is to be found in a pro
posal for a normal Budget, to be laid before the Rigsraad, and
before the Diets of Holstein, Lauenburg, and Schleswig for their
consent. ' It is obvious that the Government of an independent

388 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
kingdom like Denmark must, for the maintenance of that in
dependence, require a certain amount of expenditure for the
CivU List of the Sovereign, for the Diplomatic Service, for the
Army and Navy of the State.
' Let this be reckoned as economicaUy as possible ; for the
least amount of royal dignity ; for the most frugal establish
ments of profound peace.
' Obtain that sum from the four Representative Bodies.
Confide its distribution to a CouncU of State formed, two-thirds
of Danes and one-third of Germans. Let the votes of this
CouncU be taken in public, and accounts of the expendi
ture published yearly.
' The normal Budget to be voted in gross for ten years.
The distribution or expenditure to be voted yearly.
' Extraordinary expenses beyond the normal Budget to be
voted freely by the Kingdom and the three Duchies separately.
' The suggestions I have made may be summed up in a
few words : —
' I. Holstein and Lauenburg to have aU that the German
Confederation ask for them.
' 2. Schleswig to have the power of self-government, and
not to be represented in the Rigsraad.
' 3. A normal Budget to be agreed upon by Denmark,
Holstein, Lauenburg, and Schleswig.
' 4. Any extraordinary expenses to be submitted to the
Rigsraad, and to the separate Diets of Holstein, Lauenburg,
and Schleswig.'
The part which Morier played in this matter was described
by him in a letter to Jowett many years later : —
' . . . I was the moral author, when attending Lord
John Russell as private secretary at Coburg, of the cele
brated Despatch proposing mediation on terms which,
if accepted, would have prevented the international
deadlock, which three years later forced on that series
of great European wars, from the consequences of which
we are still suffering. An episode, known hardly to any
one, notes one of the practically most important acts of
my diplomatic life. Count Bernstorff was then Prussian
Foreign Minister. He was a man who had great confidence
in me and was in the habit of speaking to me in the most
confidential manner. He had made up his mind to reject
Lord John RusseU's proposal, but consulted me before
doing so (remember 1 was orUy a paid attach^). I placed
the matter in a light which led him to change his mind and

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 389
to accept Lord John Russell's proposal, my main argument
being that, as it was certain Denmark would refuse it,
Prussia would obtain gratis the creditable position of having
done her best to solve the question in a fair and equitable
manner involving considerable sacrifices. You may ask,
why I wished to give this advantage to Prussia ? My
object was a very simple one. In suggesting Lord John
RusseU's mediation, which I never expected would be
accepted, I wished to give Her Majesty's Govemment
the means of withdrawing on legitimate grounds from the
obligations of the Treaty of London, which would have
obliged us to go to war in the event of the death of the
then King of Denmark, if Germany, not recognising the
right to succession of the present King,! .(.j^g creation of
the Treaty of London, which the Diet ^ unless it had
ratified that Treaty before the death of the late King,*
could not legally do. What I saw, and so far as I know
no one else saw, was that however effete the Diet had
become, and however hostUe the then Governments of
the great States of the Confederation were to the Liberal
ideas associated with the vindication of the Rights of
Schleswig-Holstein, there was growing up day by day
a popular force which on the death of King Frederick
would certainly break forth on such a scale that the Govern
ments would be compeUed to jield to it and place them
selves on the legal basis occupied by the Diet in the matter.
My wish had therefore been that Lord John Russell, in
the event of one party agreeing to the proposal and the
other not, should declare, that having failed to obtain
the constitutional basis presupposed by the Treaty of
London, Great Britain withdrew from obligations which
would involve the violation of constitutional rights that
the other parties of the Treaty had refused to call into
existence.J Lord John Russell saw this ; the rest of the
Cabinet pooh-poohed it, with the result that we returned
to the status quo ante and that when the casus foederis
arose, we abandoned like curs the country, whose resist
ance to aU compromise had been solely and entirely based
1 Christian ix. " The Diet had not recognised the Treaty of London,
" Frederick vu.

390 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
on the belief that we should keep faith with her and acknow
ledge the sacredness of our Treaty Engagements. With
the abandonment of Denmark began that decadence of
our position and prestige in Europe which has landed us
in the quantite nSgligeable of Prince Bismarck.'
Lord RusseU's temperate and impartial proposals met
with hearty approval from the majority of the European
Cabinets, who recognised in them the only means of getting
rid, for once and aU, of the Schleswig-Holstein question,
which was what they all ardently desired. Russia and
France adhered to them ; the Austrian Minister, Count
Rechberg, judged them favourably ; Bismarck, who had
just taken up the reins of office, in a despatch of 27th
October to Count Bernstorff, novv Prussian Minister in
London, expressed the opinion that ' the four points of
Lord John RusseU's despatch might form an acceptable
basis for a solution ' ; the only two dissentients being the
Danish Cabinet and English public opinion. The latter
clamorously condemned them on the ground of their being
ill-timed, uncalled-for, and meddlesome, and that they
opened up the whole question which, it maintained, had
gone to sleep and was likely to remain in that state ! Also,
that they were a general departure from the traditional
policy of Great Britain which, it urged, consisted in indis
criminately backing up Denmark.
' The Danish Cabinet felt the pulse of Printing House
Square, returned an uncourteous answer to the Govern
ment which had steadily befriended it, and the intermin
able dispute entered upon a fresh lease of existence.' !
The' time was singularly unpropitious for combined
action amongst the Powers ; Prussia was in the throes of
a life and death constitutional struggle ; Austria, menaced
with Hungarian troubles and heavy deficits ; Russia
with the Polish insurrection ; whUst the diplomatic campaign
of the Westem Powers, in conjunction with Austria against
Russia, and the possibUity of a French attack on Prussia,
threatened at any moment to bring about a general Euro-
' The Pano-German Conflict, by Morie;:.

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 391
pean conflagration. Encouraged by these complications,
the Danish Govemment, not content with refusing the
offer of mediation, went a step further and, pressed by
the Eider Dane party, issued Royal Letters-Patent on
30th March 1863, announcing the project of a common
constitution practicaUy incorporating Schleswig and thereby
virtuaUy abrogating her Treaty obligations. This act
could only be considered as a direct provocation to Ger
many and the Treaty Powers, of so flagrant a nature,
that even Prince Christian of Glucksburg, the eventual
successor to the throne, was moved to protest.!
The summer was spent in endless negotiations and use
less remonstrances, but the Danish Cabinet stuck to their
point, the more so, as on 23rd July Lord Palmerston had
made a speech in the House of Commons, which was
looked upon by them as a direct encouragement. ' . . . I
am satisfied,' he had said, ' with aU reasonable men in
Europe, including those in France and Russia, in desiring
that the independence, the integrity, and the rights of
Denmark may be maintained. We are convinced — I am
convinced, at least — that if any violent attempt were
made to overthrow those rights and interfere with that
independence, those who made the attempt would find in
the result, that it would not be Denmark alone with which
they would have to contend.'
As Morier, commenting on this speech, observed : —
' Lord Palmerston's Schleswig-Holstein speech has pro
duced aU the effect which the most determined well-wisher
to European disquiet could desire, laming the action of
those who, like Austria, desire, even by threats if necessary,
to force a settlement of the question on the basis of 1851 —
to the leaving intact of the London Protocol and strengthen
the hands of those who preach that the only thing to be
done is to remain quiet for the present, only declaring the
engagement of 1851 as broken and the Protocol of 1852
as no longer binding, and the leaving therefore everjrthing
on the basis of 1846. Such are the results of people talk
ing of what they don't understand.'
1 Ward to Earl Russell, Sth May 1S63.

392 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
After Lord Palmerston's speech, nobody at Copenhagen,
nor indeed in Europe, doubted any longer but that in the
event of hostilities, EngUsh help would be forthcoming,
and the Danish Govemment resolved not to be deterred
by the prospect of war, which in fact they now rather
welcomed, from taking any measures they might choose.
They therefore continued the framing of their Constitution,
which was passed in the RUcsraad on 13th of November.
On the same day, HaU, the Prime Minister, hurried to
obtain the Royal signature, but found the King too ill to
be able to sign. Two days later, Frederick vii., last King
of Denmark and Duke of Schleswig-Holstein in the direct
line, was dead.

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 393

CHAPTER XVI
SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN — Continued
' Were we not blessed with a fan share of national self-
complacency we might chance at times to feel no slight
misgivings respecting the soundness of our " Popular
Views " upon foreign questions. We consider it a national
privUege to talk freely upon the concerns of the whole world,
but we do not always remember that this privUege involves
the corresponding duty of understanding, or at least trying
to understand, the subjects we discuss. On the contrary,
we claim the right to have an opinion and to pass a judg
ment, and that not diffidently, but boisterously, on ques
tions which we not seldom ostentatiously declare that we
cannot take the trouble to comprehend. This is a very
grave and a very real evU, for the expression of public
opiruon on what to us seems indifferent subjects, and which
therefore, in our ears may sound but as the tinkling of a
cymbal, may, and often does, shape itself across the seas
into solid political fact, influencing the counsels of princes
and determining the policy of statesmen.
' Upon no question has the vice here adverted to been
so prominently exhibited as on that touching the relations
between the Kingdom of Denmark and the Duchies of
Schleswig-Holstein. For fifteen years the English press,
with but few exceptions, has gone on hysterically pro
nouncing the question to be uninteUigible, and yet sitting
in judgment upon it. The practical results of this mode
of treatment are highly characteristic, and should serve as
an example and a warning, for they have drifted us to the
very opposite point to that which we desired to reach.'
Such were the opening paragraphs of a pamphlet entitled.
The Dano-German Conflict and Lord Russell's Despatch of

394 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
2^th September 1862, written by Morier at the instigation
of Lord RusseU. Very few people were in the secret of the
authorship, a secret which was at first jealously kept, but
which eventuaUy became known. Its object was to change
the current of English public opinion and to vindicate
Lord RusseU's proposals, convinced as Morier was that
' ignorance, and ignorance offiy, caused the mistake into
which public opinion fell when it last year condemned the
policy of our Foreign Secretary.'!
It was an exposition of the whole Schleswig-Holstein
question, treated in a lucid and masterly manner.
' Your pampffiet wUl be useful in explaining what the
real merits of the case are, and in checking any support
to Denmark in matters in which she is decidedly in the
wrong,' wrote Layard, then Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs ; whUst General Grey, to whom Morier had sent
a copy, writing from Osborne on 23rd December 1863,
said : —
' I had already got a copy of the pamphlet, and had been
so much struck by the clear and just view it seemed to me to
take of the question, that I had already obtained and dis
seminated to Ministers and others upwards of two dozen
copies of it. Nothing can be more conclusive than your
statement of the case.'
One very important effect of this publication should
be recorded. An amendment moved by Kinglake, to a -^
vote of censure on the Government in February 1864, '
resulted in a vote of confidence, and Kinglake's entire
speech, as he himself told Morier many years later, had
been built up out of the pampffiet which had been sent to
him ad hoc a few days before the motion.
The pamphlet, however, was destined to have a most
disastrous effect upon the career of its author.
' For eight years,' so Morier wrote to Stockmar," 'I was
boycotted by the Foreign Office for the pamphlet on Schles
wig-Holstein, published in 1863. The legend which the
Foreign Office, from the Foreign Secretary downwards,
firmly believed in, was that the pampffiet, though professing
' • Dano-German Conflict,' by Morier.
^ Morier to Stockmar, 30th October 1884.

1863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 395
to defend Lord RusseU's views, was really an act of
treachery towards him, and written to curry favour with
the Crown Princess and as a tool of the Augustenburgers.
Now, you know as weU as I do that the Crown Princess
knew nothing whatever about it, and was much puzzled
to discover who had written it. I coffid, of course, have at
once cleared myself by showing the letter in which Lord
Russell had urged me to write the pampffiet, and that in
which he heartily thanked me for it. But, at the very
moment the pampffiet became known, the scene had en
tirely changed, and Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston
were the two Ministers who were for going to war with
Germany. Under these circumstances Lord Russell, as
patron of the pampffiet, would have been placed in a most
absurd position, for though the future historian woffid be
perfectly able to reconcUe the two attitudes as logical — ^the
one before the King of Denmark's death, the other after the
King's death — the contemporary politician could offiy have
seen an absurd contradiction. Lord Russell had been a
true friend to me, and I therefore resolved to suffer any
thing rather than put him in a false position, and there
fore held my tongue, and never broached the matter even
to him. But after seven years I coffid stand it no longer,
and therefore, in 1870, just before Lord Clarendon's
death, I placed the case before Lord Russell, together with
a fffil statement of all the circumstances connected with the
genesis of the pamphlet, and asked his permission to lay it
before Lord Clarendon, which he, of course, in a very warm
letter of acknowledgment, at once did. This statement I
have shown to every succeeding Foreign Minister, and so
in high official quarters the legend has been destroyed,
but the old Foreign Office virus remains, and I am thwarted
by it at every turn.'
Small wonder, then, that he bitterly wrote : —
' . . . The devoting myself to one idea of this kind
(the Anglo-German Alliance) is the very worst thing pro-
fessionaUy which a man can do. One is considered un
homme a idle fixe, and marked out as that most dangerous
of individuals, a zealous pubUc servant, I have on many

396 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1863
occasions, as in the Scffieswig-Holstein question, when I
thought good might be done, grievously compromised
myself personaUy and injured myself professionally.' !
King Frederick vii. had died on the 15th November ; on
the i6th his successor. Christian ix., was proclaimed King
of the United Danish Monarchy, the Hereditary Prince of
Augustenburg at the same time issuing a proclamation
in which, in virtue of the abdication of his father, Duke
Christian, in Ms favour, he assumed the government of the
Duchies as Duke Frederick vm. of Scffieswig-Holstein, and
caUed upon the German Diet, which had never recognised
the Treaty of London, to uphold him in his hereditary
rights. In Holstein, where ffis famUy was well known and
had many adherents, he was received with enthusiasm;
but in Schleswig, where hopes were stUl directed towards
the new monarch at Copenhagen, the attitude was one of
anxious expectation as to the outcome of events in the
Danish capital.
Gladly would Christian ix. have fulffiled the hopes of his
German subjects, the justice of whose claims he had openly
admitted, but he was placed in a terrible position. Himself
a German, it was almost impossible for him to run counter
to the loudly expressed wishes of the Damsh nation, who
clamorously demanded the sanction of the new Constitution.
With a seething mob at the palace gates, a mob whose
passions the Eider-Danes had for years sought to inflame ;
pressed by Hall, the Prime Minister, with scarcely veUed
threats as to the consequences of his refusal, the King
gave way, and on i8th November signed the Constitution.
As soon as the news reached the Duchies the effect
was electrical. Schleswig now joined Holstein in unanimous
adherence to Duke Frederick ; the majority of the officials
refused to take the oath of aUegiance to King Christian,
and Danish administration ceased where there were no
Danish troops to enforce it.
But this effect was not confined to the Duchies alone.
WhatjMorier with unerring instinct had long foretold
did not fail to come to pass. A great wave of patriotic
» Morier to Sir H. Ponsonby, 22nd May 1871,

i863] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 397
enthusiasm for the rights of the Duchies swept over Germany;
nor was this confined to the people only, for the Sovereign
Princes took the side of the Duke of Augustenburg, and
even some of the most reactionary Governments, finding
it impossible to swim against the strong national current,
were obliged to place themselves at the head of the move
ment. Rulers and raled. Conservatives and Democrats,
Catholics and Protestants, men of the most divergent
views throughout Germany, aU joined issue m the common
cause. The Grand Duke of Baden, and Roggenbach,
always at the head of aU Liberal aspirations, immediately
authorised the Baden representative in the Diet to take
over the interests of the Duchies ; the Bavarians demanded
that their King should place himself at the head of an
army for the purpose of installing Duke Frederick in his
Duchies ; the Prassian House of Representatives declared
by 261 votes against 63 that the honour and interests
of Germany caUed for his recognition.
Now, aU depended on the attitude of the Governments
of the two great German Powers, Austria and Prussia ;
but both of them were signatories to the Treaty of London,
neither of them was animated with enthusiasm for the
national German cause.
Bismarck had always been adverse to the rights of the
Duchies. He had, from the ffist, openly declared that it
was not in the interests of Prussia to wage war for Schleswig-
Holstein, nor to create another Grand Duke, who, from the
fear of Prussia's annexationist desires, might vote against
her in the Diet. A member of the Junker Party and
a representative of Great Prussiandom, whose tenets, in
contradistinction to Great Germandom and S^mall German-
dom, were the absorption into Prussia by conquest or other
means of as much of Germany as could possibly be acquired,
and nothing more, he had told Schleinitz that he was perfectly
ready to conquer Schleswig-Holstein for Prassia, but
not for the Augustenburger,! and in November had gone
so far as to say : —
' I wiU stick to the London Treaty. If I am outvoted
' Jansen and Samwer, Schleswig-Holsteins Befreiung, p. 117.

398 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
I shaU leave the Diet, — Denmark is to me a more valuable
aUy than the German States.' !
His line of policy was : first, the conquest of Schleswig-
Holstein for Prassia ; second, the retention of the Duchies
by Denmark ; third, as a last alternative only, the acknow
ledgment of Duke Frederick. As the first eventuality
seemed at that time beyond possibility, Bismarck had been,
ever since the 15th November, anxiously bent on assuring
the Duchies to Denmark. Added to political considera
tions were personal motives : Duke Frederick's strictly
constitutional views, his pronounced Liberal entourage,
and the warm friendship which, since university days at
Bonn, had united him to the Crovra Prince of Prassia, were
all so many reasons for rendering him an object of dislike
to the reactionary statesman..
But if in Bismarck the Duke had a strong opponent,
in the Royal Family of Prussia as well in the Liberal party
he found warm aUies. The Crown Prince and Crown
Princess were his devoted friends to the last, as also
Queen Augusta ; while King William had always been so
firmly convinced of the justice of his claims and of the
rights of Schleswig-Holstein, that it required all Bismarck's
sophistries and influence over the mind of his Sovereign
to induce him to alter his views. To this, more than to
any other reason, was due the vacillating policy of Prussia
during the ensuing months, and the fate of the Duchies
was only decided upon when at last King WiUiam gave
in to his aU-powerful Minister.
Events now followed one another in rapid succession.
The crossing of the Eider on ist February 1864 by the
aUied Prussians and Austrians, who had now taken matters
into their own hands ; the short and decisive campaign
which resulted in the occupation of Scffieswig by Prussia,
and of Holstein by Austria ; the long and indecisive con
ference in London ; the protracted negotiations in which
the rights of the Duke of Augustenburg and of the Duchies
were used as pawns in the game alternately by Prussia
and Austria, until finaUy the question of Scffieswig-Holstein
^ Jansen and Samwer, Schleswig-Holsteins Befreiung, p. 117.

I864J SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 399
became merged in the larger issue of the struggle for
supremacy in Germany between these two Powers, aU this
is now so much a matter of history as to require no
recapitulation. The Schleswig-Holstein question was the direct cause of
three great wars, — ^those of 1864, 1866, and 1870 ; indirectly
of a fourth.
p Lord Kimberley, then Lord Wodehouse, had at the
eleventh hour been charged with a mission to the Prassian
and Danish Governments to try and induce thejn to come
to an agreement, a mission for which neither his knowledge
of the subject nor his diplomatic talents in any way fitted
him. As an instance of the former it transpired, from a
conversation on 14th December 1863 with Mr. Ward
(Consul-General at Hamburg), that he was not even aware
of the fact that the Schleswig-Holstein officials had refused
to take the oath of allegiance to King Christian ; ! as to the
latter, they had, during his mission to Russia in 1856-58,
been thus characterised by Gortschakoff —
' Milord Wodehouse est un jeune homme qui, je ne doute
pas, s'entend parfaitement en affaires agricoles, mais qui
ne sail rien du metier de diplomate. C'est flatteur pour nous
qu'on nous I' envoie pour apprendre son A. B. C, et je peux
me vanter de lui avoir donne quelques legons ' —
a dictum which was to adhere to him ever after like a
Nessus' shirt. Had he, however, possessed the. genius
oi a Talleyrand there would have been but little likeli
hood of his mission proving a success at that late stage
of the proceedings. The one palpable result with which
he returned from BerUn was a violent dislike to Morier,
whose opinions were in direct contradistinction to his own,
and whose pamphlet on Schleswig-Holstein he believed
to have been written in the interests of the Court against
the Govemment. Though his eyes were eventuaUy opened
by Lord GranviUe as to the true story of the writing of the
pamphlet, his iU-feeling against Morier persisted.
' You know. Lord Kimberley has always been an enemy
of mine,' wrote the latter to Jowett on Christmas Eve,
> Jansen and Samwer, Schleswig-Holsteins Befreiung, p. 156.

400 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORlER [1864
1880 ; ' he has twice done me deep wrong, and prevented
my appointment to important posts.'
When Morier was British Minister in Portugal, single-
handed and in the teeth of incredible difficulties he drafted,
negotiated,and signed the Lourengo Marques Treaty, which,
by giving egress to the Boers and ingress to British troops via
Delagoa Bay, would have undone the injustice inflicted on
the former in persistently preventing them from obtaining
access to their natural and only harbour, and have obtained
for England a military hold over them which would have
rendered me war of 1899-1902, with aU its loss of blood
and treasure, an impossibility. This Treaty, in May 1881,
after three years of incessant toU was within sight of ratifica
tion. It had been passed by a large majority in the Lower
House of the Portuguese Cortes, an unquestionable ma
jority for it in the Upper had been secured, when suddenly
Morier was ordered by telegraph to drop it. This order
was owing to the opposition of the Colonial Office, where
Lord Kimberley was at that time enthroned as Colonial
Secretary. The old animus had remained, and the Treaty
was consigned to the waste-paper basket.
Now that the Schleswig-Holstein question was nearing
its solution, the British Cabinet suddenly developed a
feverish activity. Notes, despatches, remonstrances,
advice, and recriminations flooded the Chancelleries of
Europe ; but as this energy assumed a purely literary
form, and as there were no indications that any of these
proposals would be backed by armed force, they evoked in
general but scant recognition, — from Bismarck the scathing
comment that he ' had wasted several years of his political
life by the belief that England was a great nation.'
The breakdown of English policy was complete ; the
causes leading to such lamentable failure were analysed
by Morier in the following letter to Lady Salisbury,! a very
clever woman of great inteUectual gifts and singular fascina
tion, a long-standing friend of Mrs. Morier's, with whom
since his marriage he had kept up a constant political
correspondence. > Mary, second daughter of 5th Earl De la Warr, m. (i) 2nd Marquess
of Salisbury ; (2) 1870, 15th Earl of Derby.

i864] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 401

'Berlin, March isth, 1864.
' . . . Living abroad and occupied exclusively with foreign
politics, I know, of course, Uttle of what is going on at home,
but I feel very sure that whatever home reforms are really
necessary wiU be accomplished sooner or later, no matter
who sits on the Ministerial benches. Our foreign policy,
on the other hand, requires immediate and radical reform.
The process which in every other department of human
affairs aU thinking men admit has become mor# and more
necessary, to vrit, that of reconsidering first principles, has,
in regard to the system on which our foreign relations should
be carried on, become of immediate and paramountnecessity.
No EngUshman in England can feel on this point with the
keenness or see with the correctness of vision which an
EngUshman can who lives abroad, in contact with the
machinery by which our foreign relations are worked.
You can form no conception of the intricacy of the poUtical
gymnastics which an EngUsh diplomatist has to go
through in his attempt to vmdicate the wisdom and con
sistency of the foreign policy of his country, or perhaps,
more correctly speakmg, of the public opinion of which
that policy is but the echo. If Italy be the subject of
conversation he must be able to explain to the Divine
Right statesmen and courtiers whom he meets at drawing-
rooms and levees, the grounds on which England has
adopted the principle that, in the international poUty,
communities have the same right of self-destination wffich
in our own polity we have vindicated for individuals.
That Parma and Modena and Naples and Tuscany had
an inaUenable right to turn out their dynasties and amal
gamate themselves into a common state, and that any
coalition under the name of Holy AUiance or the Uke
which should interfere with this right is to be held an
accursed thing. On the other hand if, in some modest
beer garden, he chance to be conversmg with a Liberal, and
Germany be the subject of conversation, he must be able
to explain that, in the eyes of England, the one sacred
thing is a treaty, that international contracts are the
inspired writings of man political, that any departure from
VOL. I. 2 c

402 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
their letter or spirit is the one unpardonable sin, and that
a community whose fate has once been sealed (whether
with or without its consent) by the ipse dixit of a congress
or conference has no appeal and must consider its destinies
as irrevocably fixed. If political morality be the subject
touched upon, he must be able to show that the principle
of free discussion has led us to consider everything con
nected with politics in the light of open questions, that we
can make no exception to the general principle in favour
of the mueh-vexed question of tyrannicide, and that it is
therefore consistent with our political ethics that a member
of the Government should open up a branch post office
for Mazzini's correspondence. On the other hand, he must
be able to work himself up to the proper pitch of moral
indignation if the subject talked of should be the sharp
practice of an exiled Prince, who seUs his heritage for a
mess of pottage, knowing the deed of sale to be invaUd,
and he must be able to demonstrate that, according to
English ethics, this is an act of such moral turpitude, that
it not only destroys the actor's claim to consideration,
but infects his whole family, whether they were consentmg
parties or not to the crime, and bars their claim to make
good any rights they may otherwise have had.
' I am not, as you wUl perceive, going to make any treason
able revelations respecting what the Foreign Office has
been about. It is our entire system of dealing with foreign
nations, as borne witness to by statesmen of all parties, and
stUl more by the leading organs of the Press, with which I
am so heartily dissatisfied. I believe aU our hack statesmen,
no matter of what party, woffid have brought us in tffis
unfortunate Dano-German conflict to much the same kind
of inglorious pass to which we have come. My theory
is something to the following effect : In every field of
human thought and human action there is one persistent
phenomenon by which, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, we are met, to wit, that owing to the immense pace
at wffich we live, two distinct generations, which at a slower
rate of Ufe woffid have foUowed each other, are co-existent,
the older as it were overlapping the younger, which two
generations are as totally incapable of understanding each

1864] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 403
other as if they were inhabitants of different planets. I
am, of course, using the term generation in a figurative
sense as representing not the actual human crop supposed
to grow to maturity every thirty years, but the crop of
ideas and systematised experiences which in a specific
manner belongs to each successive human crop. The
entire phraseology and terminology, no matter on what
subject, whether theology, politics, or social questions, of
men under forty, is unintelligible to men of sixty, a larger
proportion of the men under forty, of course, belonging to
the generation of the men of sixty (though by no means
as much as they themselves fancy — it is a very instructive
phenomenon to watch how constantly younger men in trying
to fight their contemporaries with the weapons of ortho
doxy are caught out using weapons stolen from their
adversaries' arsenal). You know better than any one to
what an extent tffis is the case in regard to theology, and
how impassible is the barrier which separates those who
can read Renan and see in him one side at least of the
truth, from those to whom such a work is the very incarna
tion of blasphemy.
' Most fortunately for us this phenomenon is, as regards
England, least perceivable in the matter of politics — our
own politics are the one thing in the world we seem
thorougUy to understand, and on this field the two genera
tions (though even here I don't believe they really understand
each other) have established a sort of lingua franca by
which they can at least communicate with each other, and
work on for the comraon good without flying at each other's
throats. On the other hand, in that not unimportant portion
of Europe, which lies outside the United Kingdom, it is on
the field of politics that the antagonism of the two genera
tions is to be found in its acutest form, and that the process
of transformation, consequent upon the overlapped genera
tion getting the better of the overlapping generation, is the
most rapidly going on. In England there are a thousand
different questions, the first principles of which we are
occupied in reconsidering. Abroad, in Italy, Germany,
Russia, Scandinavia (in France the business is a subject of
Imperial monopoly), this reconsideration of first principles

404 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
is exclusively confined to politics. Into what new forms
the process may ffitimately cause Europe to settle down,
no human being can at present tell. Those who are the
most contributing to force her out of her old grooves, the
overlapped generation themselves, don't know. They are
working in a great measure in the dark — foUowing more or
less blindly instincts which they woffid find it hard to give
an account of. The tffinkers alone, in each State, can
amidst the apparent chaos see the operations of certain
general laws, and give an approximately correct guess
respecting the direction in which the whole body is moving ;
but, as a rffie, they are doctrinaires, and as such, see offiy a
part of the truth, and even when they get hold of the correct
law seldom know how to gauge the strength of counter
acting influences and disturbing causes. It is offiy when
by some rare accident the thinker and the statesman have
coalesced in the same individual, when the gifts of Prospero
and Ariel, the student's knowledge of the laws by which
the elements are governed and the practical knowledge
of the arts by which these elements may be made subser
vient to a given purpose, are united in the same person, that
the tremendous power of the principles at work in the
overlapped generation is made manifest. Within the last
sixteen years two men, and two offiy, have combined the
double set of qualifications — ^the Emperor Napoleon and
Cavour — and behold the resffits !
' Now to apply my theory to our own foreign policy.
Since the days of George Canning, our foreign policy has
been essentially in the hands of men belonging to the over
lapping generation, the Foreign Office with its pecffiiar
traditions belonging exclusively to it. Those statesmen
who have a tour de role filled the post of Foreign Minister
have all belonged to it, and none more than Lord Palmer
ston. The fact that a more correct appreciation of Italian
affairs has forced itself upon them than the generation can
as a rffie lay claim to, has been owing to the accident of
Italian politics having assumed a melodramatic form
which has interested the public, and given birth to men of
the Garibaldi stamp, who have supplied the popular craving
for hero-worship, and also to the other accident of our

i864] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 405
having had a man of the overlapped generation in the person
of Sir James Hudson at Turin. This is, however, the excep
tion which proves the rffie, and how much of an exception
it is, is best seen by reading the speeches and written
apologies of the defenders of Italy in and out of Parliament,
which exhibit in an extraordinary degree the real ignor
ance of Englishmen respecting the great changes which are
going on in European society. Nowhere have I been
able to detect a knowledge of the specific ffineteenth
century laws at work, but everywhere the most far-fetched
and most absurd attempts at drawing parallels between
what was going on and the events of our own constitutional
and parliamentary history !
' Now, in seeking for a general or ffist principle which
shoffid rffie our foreign policy, I think that the first fact
to be realised is that England stands outside the cycle of
organic changes now going on in Europe. Here and there
an enthusiastic Junior Lord of the Admiralty may work
himself up into a blind admiration of an exiled patriot, and
in a sort of confused way believe that the triumphal re
entry of such a man, laurel-crowned, into his native capital
woffid tend to the glory and advantage of England, but
looked at soberly, every one, I think, must admit that, to
use a very convenient French word, there is no real soli
darity of political interests between ourselves, and any of
the great political parties contending for the soul of Europe.
There may be any amount of sympathy, but there are no
common interests, in the sense that the victory or defeat
of the one or other party would affect our well-being in
any appreciable degree. We are not in any sense bound
lip with any political body now struggling on the Continent
in the sense that in Elizabeth's time we were bound up
with the Protestants of the Continent. There was then a
perfect solidarity of interests, that is — any serious check
received by the Protestant interest in Germany or the
Netherlands was a real perU to us, and vice versa. Now
this kind of solidarity does exist between political parties
on the Continent. A revolution in Paris or an insur
rectionary movement on the Danube vibrates through all
Europe, but if the Bourbons were to-morrow to be reinstated

4o6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
in Italy and the Holy Alliance to stand up once more armed
cap-a-pie, or if, on the other hand, republics were proclaimed
everywhere, we shoffid certaiffiy remain perfectly im
passive — not one more Radical or one less Tory woffid be
returned to Parliament, and we shoffid go on moving for
ward at our own rate of motion, or standing still or slidmg
back, just as if the victories gained or the defeats incurred
had been by the Taepings or Imperialists of China. With
regard to the other great principle at work in the trans
formation of European society, that of nationality, we
are still more without any real point of contact (the case
of Ireland being totally exceptional, and when examined
closely having no real analogy to any existing state of
things in continental Europe). When we talk of ourselves
as Englishmen it is always synonymous in our minds with
talking of ourselves as inhabitants of the United Kingdom,
and we are totally incapable of realising either the ideal
craving of people of the same race to coalesce into a great
and powerfffi community or the thousand practical wants
of modern days such a coalition can alone satisfy. Had we
remained a Heptarchy we shoffid know more on the subject.
' The next fact that requires to be realised is that the
organic changes going on are very real changes, and that
the parties concerned, both the attacking and defending
forces, are very much in earnest, and that it is chUdish to
throw mere words at them and entreat them in God's
name to be quiet.
' When these two facts are realised and admitted I
think the deduction which naturally follows is that it is
no business of ours to step across the channel and enter
the lists on the one side or the other — ^that standing as it
were on vantage-ground above the two parties it is no
business of ours either to assist or retard the work of
transformation going on — ^that it is not our vocation to
compete with the Emperor Napoleon in his professional
pursuits as surgeon accoucheur to the ideas of the ffine
teenth century or, on the other hand, to put ourselves forward
as the champions of the status quo, and to spend our capital
in maintaining the arrangements made at the Congress
of Vienna as if they were the fmal forms into which Europe

i864] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 407
was to be moulded. I know that there are a great many
people who would not admit this deduction. That many
of our statesmen believe that the latter would be a right
way of disposing of our surplus capital, and that, had we
inherited the spirit of our forefathers, we should have gone
to war rather than see Austria stripped of Lombardy and
France enriched by Savoy and Nice, whilst others again
would have had England espouse the cause of Hungary
and Poland and Italy and wage war against Austria and
Prussia in the cause of the " good time coming." I believe
myself both these courses would have been wrong policy,
but either of them would at least have been a policy,
logically defensible and leading to practicable results.
The party of the overlapping generation and the party
of the overlapped are real and very powerful parties, and
to espouse the cause of the one or the other is to have
warm friends and powerful allies. That which I think is ^
totaUy unfeasible is what we have already tried to do,
viz. to side with neither party but yet to remain active,
trying to carry out certain objects of our own by alter
nately encouraging and reviling first the one party and
then the other. I do not know anything more contemptible
than the exhibition we made of ourselves by the national
expressions of exaggerated triumph at the unification of
Italy and the national expression of impotent rage at the
price paid for that unification by the cession of Savoy
and Nice. Italy could not get free alone — she required
assistance, and paid for that assistance. If the unification
was matter of national rejoicing it was chUdish to be
angry at the price paid for it, if the one thing to be dreaded
was the aggrandisement of France, it was childish to rejoice
at the cause which produced that effect. This is one of
the hundred instances in which within the last few years
the total absence of the power of grasping the realities of
foreign politics which characterises English public opinion
and its echo, our foreign policy, has manifested itself. j'
' If once public opinion fairly seizes the principle that *^
to effect any practical purpose in Europe and to avoid a
repetition of the reiterated fiascos of late years it would be
necessary for England to embark her fortunes definitely

4o8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
either with the Holy Alliance or with the party of the
rectffiers of the European map, it wiU (from the total
impossibility of getting British taxpayers to adopt either
course) come logicaUy and by a sound process of reasoning
to the conclusion which vaguely and not upon any definite
principle it has already more than half come to, viz.
that non-intervention is the true policy for England, and
I this brings me to the point of my long letter, to wit, that
: the task which will devolve upon any Ministry that desires
jto'merit well of the country wiU be to follow a poUcy of
i systematic non-intervention based on a definite principle,
'instead of the unsystematic policy which, proclaiming in
theory that it wUl not intervene, does practically meddle
I in every question, now on one principle now on another
the most opposed to it. Dignified, intelligent non-inter
vention versus undignified, unintelligent non-intervention,
that is the change we require, and for this purpose it is
I absolutely necessary that our Foreign Minister should belong
I to the overlapped generation — that is, should be thoroughly
I able to grasp and comprehend the organic changes out of
I whose sphere it would be his duty to keep England. . . .'
Though the question of Schleswig-Holstein was now
practically removed from the sphere of English diplomatic
action, Morier did not fail to keep Lord RusseU informed
of all the subsequent negotiations concerning the Duchies,
as indeed of all matters pertaining to Prussian politics,
more especially the constitutional struggle still being waged,
in spite of attention having been diverted from it by the
war. Morier to Earl Russell
' Berlin, November 12th, 1864.
' Having been detained longer than I expected at Bonn,
I was unable to prosecute my journey to Carlsruhe as I
had intended. I regret this the more as from a despatch
from Lord A. Loftus, a copy of which passed through
Berlin under flying seal yesterday, I perceive that rumours
are again rife of intrigues between Louis Napoleon and
the Middle German States. As regards Lord A. Loftus's
despatch, however, my long experience of German Middle

i864] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 409
States statesmen has taught me that, like~certam plain
middle-aged women, they delight in nothing so much as to
talk with pretended indignation of attacks supposed to have
been made upon their virtue. That Louis Napoleon should
have been ready to intrigue with the Middle States lies
in the very nature of the relations between the two, but
that he shoffid pick out for this purpose a person likely
indignantly to repel the overture is not on the face of it
probable. Moreover, at the present moment I am very
much inclined to believe that his game is to encourage
Bismarck in his annexation policy. On one point in Lord
A. Loftus's despatch I think I can with certainty say he
is wrong, viz. that an overture was made by the King
of Prussia for an interview with the Emperor Napoleon.
I am aU but certain that the contrary was the case, that
the Emperor gave a hint that he would Uke to meet the
King, and that this hint was not taken by the latter.
' I had upon my return to Berlin some long and inter
esting conversations both with the Crown Prince and Crown
Princess. To my very great satisfaction I found that the
supposed briUiancy of Bismarck's successes during the
last four months had altogether failed to produce
any impression upon them, except the deep disgust which
weU-ordered minds feel at successfffi vUlainy. They
have neither of them swerved for one instant either in the
Scffieswig-Holstein question or in the Constitutional
question from the attitude they took up from the very
commencement, the treating of the former as one in which
Prussia's honour and interest required her to play a purely
unselfish part,and to seek her indemnity in the moral prestige
which the undoing of the resffits which had flowed from
her perfidy in 1850 woffid clothe her with ; the identifjing,
as regards the latter, the interests of the Crown with the
constitutional rights of the people. To replace the
Duchies where they were when disarmed by the troops
of Prussia and Austria, to make them the arbiters of their
own destiny, and to look for any advantages that might
accrue to Prussia and Germany by a more intimate mUitary
connection between the Duchies and Prussia solely to a
free compact that might be entered into by the Duchies

410 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
as a Sovereign body, such is the plain and straightforward
programme that has all along stood like a dead wall against
the cynical sopffistries of Bismarck. The determination,
on the other hand, to resist, as was done at Danzig, any
fresh step towards the subversion of the Constitution has
been equally well known to the latter, and I have reason to
believe that this knowledge more than ansTthing else has
tended to paralyse ffis action in this direction.
' That in the atmosphere in which they are compelled
to live these two young people should have thus remained
unscathed is no small merit to them. Now that Stockmar
is gone, there is' not a single person in their entourage who
is not a devoted Bismarckian, and the two men more
immediately brought into daily and business contact with
the Prince are, I have reason to know, Bismarck's creatures,
body and soffi. LuckUy these Divine Grace Knights have
on many occasions overdone their part, and have said words
and done acts personaUy wounding which have left a whole
some sting behind them. Nevertheless this isolation is
terribly trying, and trudging along the long, long lane, the
feet get sore and the heart gets heavy, however much the
belief is entertained that a " turning " must come at last.
' I have not yet seen a sufficient number of people to
speak with certainty as to the prospects of the next meeting
of Parliament, but one thing is quite clear, and that is that
Bismarck has totally faUed in his threat of being within
six months of the ist of February last the most popffiar
man in Germany ! With the exception of some few of the
old Liberals and of the ultra-Radicals, the former of whom
have kept up a portion of the foolish vertigo which for a
short time after Duppel was more or less general, the latter
of whom were from the beginffing averse to the war as
supposed to be connected with the legitimate rights of the
Prince of Augustenburg, and who are therefore pleased
with Bismarck's annexation plans, with these two excep
tions parties are just where they were this time last year,
the great body of the Liberal party staunch to the Con
stitution looking upon Bismarck as a kind of Strafford
whom they will fight with what weapons they can. Beyond
another undignified petty word-war, however, like that of

i864] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 411
the last two sessions, I do not expect any resffit. The
feeling of the country is not uffiike that wffich prevailed
in England about the time of the Rye House Plot ; the
best men, like the then Lords RusseU and Essex, convinced
that armed resistance would be justifiable in the abstract,
but not practically justifiable uffiess with a far greater
prospect of success than that visible at present ; the great
body of the people thorougffiy discontented, but osciUating
between their discontent and the fears occasioned by the
recent recollections of the misfortunes resffiting from the
revolutionary movements of 1848. Another session and
another prorogation without result one way or another
seem to me, therefore, the most probable contingencies.
There is, moreover, one thing to be borne in mind in regard
to the present struggle, which is, that however broken the
Constitution has been in letter and in spirit, on the one
radical point of levying taxes the privUeges of Parliament
have not yet been tampered with. The Crown has the
right of levying all taxes that have once been imposed,
untU these shall have been repealed, though it has not got
the right of spending the money so levied without consent
of Parliament. Not a farthing has therefore been as yet
illegally taken out of the pockets of the nation. The tug
wffi come when a new tax has to be imposed. Tffis coffid
not be attempted without a formal abrogation of the
Constitution, and for this Bismarck has certaiffiy (for the
present at least) not got the courage. The Prussian
finances are, moreover, in so flourishing a state that there
wUl be no practical necessity to do this for some time
to come.' Morier to Earl Russell
'Berlin, November i^th, 1864.
' In September last, that is at the very time that Bismarck
made his curious confession to Sir Andrew Buchanan to
the effect that annexation had been the object, but that he
had in vain attempted to debauch the King and the Crown
Prince, he expressed ffis readiness to see an agent of the
Prince of Augustenburg, a desire which was at once acceded
to. With this gentleman he had a long and friendly inter-

412 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
view, in which after discussing many matters in a general
way, and very sensibly and moderately, he stated that
immediately on his return from Biarritz he woffid be ready
to see him again and to enter into regffiar pourparlers
with him. Accordingly on his return from France, tffis
gentleman waited upon him, but instead of the former
friendliness and urbaffity found him once more the sneer
ing sic volo sic jubeo Bismarck of European notoriety ; he
avoided entering into any of the questions which he had
promised to discuss with ffim, and dismissed him with a
statement to the effect that he might have again occasion
to see him, or he might not, that it might be in a few weeks,
or it might be in many months hence. This, therefore,
is the present state of the relations between Prussia and the
person whose rights Prussia acknowledged at the conference
and used as a pretext for her further action.
' Upon the exact correctness of the above you may
implicitly rely. The foUowing is conjecture, based however
upon the statement of persons most likely to be informed
on what is taking place. According to these Bismarck is
more bent than ever upon his plan of annexation. He does
not despair of debauching the King, and he thinks that the
Crown Prince, now without any advisers of any brains or
power, will be unable to stand his isolation, and must give
in. He is not afraid of Count Mensdorff, and thinks that
the sop with reference to the Treaty between Austria and
the ZoUverein will suffice to keep Austria quiet.
' He has no idea, however, of going straight to his point,
and feels more reliance than ever on his system of pro
crastination. His immediate objects, therefore, are the
getting rid of the federal troops out of Holstein and of the
administration of that Duchy by Federal Officers, the latter
being the really important step, as it insures the administra
tion coming nominally into Austro-Prussian, but really
into Prussian hands. According to the last reliable informa
tion I had respecting Austria, Count Mensdorff had not as
yet determmed on any policy in regard to the question of
the removal of the Federal Troops, but the idea entertained
by the Austrian Charge d' Affaires here, was that Austria
equally with Prussia woffid take steps for the exodus of the

i864] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 413
Federal Troops and administrators from Holstein, but that
there was this difference between the two as regards the
modus operandi. That Bismarck wished to do it on the
sic volo sic jubeo principle, i.e. by threats, whereas Austria
wished that it shoffid be done by a vote of the Diet itself,
to which shoffid be appended some declaration respecting
the question of succession which shoffid pledge the two
great Powers to the principle that the Duchies were to pass
over sooner or later into the hands of the legal possessor,
whoever he might be.
' Whether these are the present views of the Austrian
Cabinet or merely an echo of what Rechberg's views were,
and whether Kirolyi, who arrived Wednesday, has brought
anything definite from Vienna, I cannot tell, as I have
been laid up with gout all these days, but such were the
Austrian views (mild enough in all conscience) a week
ago, and before Mensdorff had come to any formal
determination. * I wiU now say a few words on what I learn is the
state of matters in the Duchies.
' In Holstein there is a strong feeling of exasperation
against Prussia, and it is all they can do to keep civil
words, on their tongues. Even there, however, there is
an annexationist party composed exclusively of the small
feudal party who at the time were for the maintenance of
the " nexus " with Denmark. The object of these men
is twofold — they want a personal union with Prassia, which
woffid guarantee them their old rights and privUeges, and
what they aim at, therefore, is a step simUar to that taken
by Lauenburg, ergo shelter from a Liberal Constitution
and a Liberal Sovereign ; secondly, the loaves and fishes
which, with Prussia's poverty in great and old famUies,
are sure to fall to persons of good family.
' Karl Plessen, who is the only one of the number who
has the qualities of a statesman is, I understand, for
unconditional annexation, which would make the Ducffies
integral portions of the Prussian monarchy.
' These people, however, are a mere handfffi, whose
names can be counted on a man's fingers. There is besides
them a goodly number of the gentry, however, who are

414 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1864
for the Prince of Augustenburg, but who are coquetting
with Bismarck in hopes of getting pressure put on the
Prince of Augustenburg, and thereby a revocation of his
Liberal Constitution.
' The overwhelming majority of the Duchy, however,
is for autonomy under the Augustenburgs, and is ex
asperated to a high degree against the policy pursued by
Bismarck. ' The case of Scffieswig is somewhat different. There
the feeUng is predominantly one of alleviation from the
system carried on by the Danes, and of gratitude at this
being over once for aU (I speak, of course, offiy of the
German population. I have no reliable data respectmg
the feeling in the north of Schleswig). It was on the
Schleswigers (on the Holsteiners only by ricochet) that the
real hardship of the Danish rule had faUen, and therefore
this feeUng is very natural, but there are other reasons
for the greater friendliness there exhibited towards
Prassia. First, great tact and skUl have been displayed
in the administration of the Duchy by Prussia (Austria
having hardly meddled with it and her Commissioner
having been hardly an3rthing but a lay figure). Wffilst
keeping the reins in the hands of a few upper officials,
pure-bred Prussians (the headman, Zedlitz, an able tool of
Bismarck's), they have distributed all over the country
ScUeswigers and Holsteiners, who in the days of trouble
in 1850, '51, and '52 had taken refuge in Prussia,
and been admitted to State emplojmient there. These
people were, of course, treated by the country as martyrs
returned from martjnrdom, whilst on the other hand they
brought with them a very natural sense of gratitude
towards their benefactors and much of the esprit de corps
contracted during their ten years' service as a portion of
the Prussian bureaucracy. Secondly, and this is a point
to be noted, neither in Scffieswig nor in Holstein was there
at the time of Frederick vii.'s death any personal feeling
of attachment for the Augustenburg family. The old
Duke's very questionable transactions at Frankfort in
the matter of his domains and the engagements he entered
into had been very iU taken by the Duchies, and he himself

1864J SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 415
had not even in 1848 and 1850 been a popular person.
It was offiy as representing their own rights that they
clung to those of the Augustenburg family. Now, under
the federal rule in Holstein, the Prince of Augustenburg
has been able to make himself personally very thoroughly
known in that Duchy, and possessing to a high degree the
special characteristics of a Schleswig-Holsteiner, he has
become personally immensely popular. Into Schleswig
he has, of course, not been aUowed to penetrate, and is
therefore hardly known there, and this constitutes a
further difference between the two Duchies. But, neverthe
less, there is not the remotest doubt that in Scffieswig as
weU as in Holstein the great overwhelming majority of
the population are for union with Holstein, autonomy,
and the Prince of Augustenburg.
' Bismarck, however, knowmg this difference of feeling
in regard to Prussia in the two Duchies, and believing this
to be owing solely to the fact of the Prussian adramistration
of Schleswig, is at present bent a tout prix on getting the
Holstein admiffistration into his hands.
' The despatch in which Bismarck promises to Austria
that Prassia wiU admit of a clause in the renewed treaty
between Austria and the Zollverein, to the effect that the
two parties wffi within the next twelve years negotiate
for the entrance of Austria into the ZoUverein, has caused
the most violent displeasure to the Free Trade party in
Prussia, and most justly.
' Quite apart frora aU political considerations, this is a
most fatal step on the part of Prussia, or rather it would
be a most fatal step if such a clause were to be introduced
into the treaty, which is, however, very uffiikely, as a treaty
of Commerce requires the sanction of the Chamber, and
such an article the Chamber wiU never sanction.
' Bismarck's organs say that such a promise means
nothing, as Prassia has only thereby expressed a hope
which it lies in her power should never be realised {N.B.
a good specimen of Bismarckian morality). They entirely
ignore, however, what the practical operation of such a
hope would be, and it is to this I would caU your attention,
as it is a point which in England we don't half sufficiently

4i6 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1865
see, even so effiightened a paper as the Economist having
two years ago advocated the commercial union of the
ZoUverein and Austria.
' It is this : if Austria can be once got to see that all
hope of union with the Zollverein is vain, that the latter
is embarked on a career which must with increasing
velocity lead towards Free Trade, she wiU in self-defence
be forced to look about her and establish a freer inter
course with us, with France, with Italy, and aU other
trading communities, and so be dragged nolens volens in
a Free Trade direction.
' If, on the other hand, she believes she can force an
entrance into the Zollverein, she wiU never let go the
idea that such a union would give the bodies so united an
area of so vast an expanse to build up a protectionist
waU. This is the dream which it was of the utmost
importance should be once for aU banished out of Austrian
heads, and to meet a momentary political exigency, and
in perfect bad faith, Bismarck has stereotyped this
dream at the very moment it was fast dissolving into thin
air. ' That one clause in the Treaty of 1853 gave to Bavaria
and the recalcitrant States the lever which enabled them
for two years to paralyse the French Treaty; its re-in
sertion would have a precisely similar effect, whenever
the ZoUverein should attempt to take a further step in a
Liberal direction.' Morier to Earl Russell
'Berlin, September 7th, 1865.
' My positive information, i.e. information dravra from
actual official documents, does not reach later than this
date, and I know nothing but what has appeared in print
of what took place at Gastein. From the knowledge
furnished by the above, however, and from information I
gathered at Vienna of the motives at work with the Austrian
actors in the drama, I think that a pretty safe guess may
be made at the real meaning of the Gastein Convention
as far as Austria is concerned, and above all, I think I can
assert with pretty considerable confidence that the French

1865] SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN 417
story about the secret articles is a myth. It is evident
from the above what was the particular thing which
Austria dreaded, and to avoid which she was ready to
make large concessions. The thing she feared was the
fffifilment of the threat held out in July, that if
Austria did not consent to assist Prussia in taking
violent measures against the Prince of Augustenburg
and the inhabitants of the Duchies, Prussia would do
so on her ovra account. To consent to this was (after the
line she had taken up in the Duchies) to brand herself
before Europe as the Jack Ketch of Bismarck; to risk
letting Prassia begin the work on her ovra account was
to risk the chance of a coUision such as that evidently in
the mind of Mensdorff when he talked of the possibility
of the Prince of Augustenburg fmding a refuge amongst
the Austrian troops. That Prussia would have carried
out her threat of taking violent measures in the Duchies
without the consent of Austria seems to me Ukely, it is
certain that Austria thought she would. The Austrian
Cabinet lives from hand to mouth, and from one day to
the other sees offiy the danger of the day, and concentrates
its attention upon it. To avoid this danger was what it
was intently bent upon. At one moment they thought
it could be avoided only by actual and immediate rapture.
The Gastein Convention afforded a path which led past
the difficulty. It was a rugged path, and no man could
tell where it would lead them to, but aU they saw was
that it avoided the one particular danger which ffiled their
minds. It withdrew the Austrian Army from the command
of a Prassian Commander-in-Chief, and it freed Holstein
of Pmssian troops and the possibiUty of the dreaded
measures regarding which Austria could not make up her
mind to be either an actor or a spectator. This, I feel
sure, is the real history of the Gastein Convention. What
its ultimate result may be, I cannot pretend to say.
Austria seems to me in the position of a man who has
stripped and stood looking on for awhUe at the cold
water, and then put on his clothes again, and made up his
mind to wait tiU it looks a Uttle warmer. To a man who
has done that the water wUl probably always be too cold,
VOL. I. 2D

4i8 MEMOIRS OF SIR ROBERT MORIER [1865
and therefore it is impossible to teU what further line of
conduct Austria may not be forced into by her having
beaten a retreat at Gastein. For the present, however,
I feel convinced that in her ovra mind she is offiy thinking
that she will wait tiU the water is a little warmer, and
that she has not by any secret articles pledged herself
to a definitive solution of the question. Moreover, I feel
very sure of two things : (i) that as long as Mensdorff
is Minister, Austria will not consent to sell her co-partner-
sffip in the Duchies ; (2) that as long as Bismarck is Minister,
Prassia will not enter into a guarantee of Austria's Italian
possession.'

END OF VOL. I.

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Mr. Edward Arnold's
LIST OF NEW BOOKS,
Autumn, 191 1.

MEMOIRS AND LETTERS OF THE
RIGHT HON. SIR ROBERT MORIER,
G.C.B.,
FROM 1826-1876.
Edited by His Daughter, Mrs. ROSSLYN WEMYSS
In Tiiio Volumes. With Portraits. Demy Svo. 32s. net.
These two volumes of the Memoirs and Letters of a very eminent
diplomatist are of intense value, not only from a literary, but also
from an historical point of view, containing as they do a most graphic
and lucid description of the various events that went to make up
the history of Germany from 1853 to 1876. The matters that led
to the War of Schleswig-Holstein are dealt with in a vivid and
interesting fashion, and with a clarity which will enable the reader to
understand many points that have hitherto seemed obscure. The
story of the struggle for supremacy in Germany, and for German
Unity, and of the Franco-German War, is set forth impartially and
without prejudice by one who witnessed critical events from the
inside. Subjects of the most vital interest — as, for instance, the war scare
of 1875, the spread of European Liberalism, etc. — are dealt with by

LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

2 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
Sir Robert Morier in his correspondence in a style which must appeal
to anyone at all interested in the European history of the past century.
The distinguished diplomatist's views upon the Foreign Office, the
Emperor William I., and Bismarck, are given in a series of letters
to various correspondents all over the world, among whom we may
mention Jowett, Sir Louis Mallet, Lady Derby, and the Emperor
Frederick. The friends and acquaintances of Sir Robert Morier's
youth — Froude, Tennyson, and other eminent contemporaries — are
portrayed with a skilful pen.
NUTS AND CHESTNUTS.
By the Hon. L. A. TOLLEMACHE,
Author of " Old and Odd Memories."
On6 Volume. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. net.
A MEMOIR OF
EDWARD CHARLES WICKHAM,
DEAN OF LINCOLN, AND FORMERLY HEAD-MASTER
OF WELLINGTON COLLEGE.
By Canon LONSDALE RAGG,
Rector of Tickencote.
Author of " Dante and His Italy," " The Book of Books," etc.
With Illustrations, One Volume, js. 6d. net.
The interest of a life is not necessarily proportioned to its share of
dramatic incident and adventure. Edward Charles Wickham was
essentially a scholar and a student rather than a man of action :
his life was almost exclusively academic — at Winchester, at New
College, at Wellington College, and finally in the Deanery at Lincoln.
But it was far from being in any sense a stagnant one. Wherever
he went he bore with him the inspiration of a born reformer,
combined with an enlightened reverence for the past like that which
made his illustrious father-in-law, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, a thorough
going Conservative in certain departments. In accordance with
what would certainly have been the Dean's own wish, the Memoir
has been kept within strictly modest limits, and a sparing use has
been made of letters ; but the record is enriched by reminiscences
contributed by not a few of Wickham's former associates, colleagues,
and pupils. Mr. A. O. Prickard supplies an appreciation of Wick
ham's contribution to Scholarship, and Dr. Lock an appreciation of
his University Preaching. Dr. Wickham's singular gifts as a
preacher are too well known to call for mention. Specimens of a
few of his most notable sermons are given in an Appendix.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 3
HANDLEY CROSS;
OR,
MR. JORROCKS'S HUNT.
Illustrated by CECIL ALDIN.
In Two Volumes, with 24 Coloured Plates and ahout 100 Blach-and-White
Illustrations in the Text. The Ordinary Edition will he Royal 8w.,
handsomely bound. 21s. net.
Also a limited Edition de Luxe of 250 copies only for the British Empire,
each Copy Numbered and Signed by the Artist. £3 3s. net.
This is a complete edition of Surtees' glorious work, illustrated by
the one artist of the day who is pre-eminently fitted to do justice to
it. The tale of the immortal Jorrocks and his Hunt is to-day the
most popular classic work on fox-hunting, and Mr. Cecil Aldin is
unquestionably the most popular sporting actist. He has entered
heart and soul into the spirit of the work, and the excellence of his
pictures proves that they were inspired by enthusiasm for his subject.
The period is one that Mr. Aldin has made peculiarly his own, and
while preserving the traditional representation of the characters, he
has been able to give full play to his powers of depicting old-fashioned
country scenes both indoors and in the open, especially, of course,
those in the hunting-field. His strikingly original style brings out
the full flavour of the famous book.

THE HORSE :
5ts ©rigin anb development, combtne& witb
Stable practice.
By Colonel R. F. MEYSEY-THOMPSON,
Author of ''A Hunting Catechism," "Reminiscences of Camp,
Course, and Chase," etc.
With Illustrations. One Volume. Demy Svo. 15s. net.
This work covers a large field of remarkable interest to all lovers
of the horse. It is full of valuable matter, combined with sound
advice. The volume commences with the horse in its earliest shape,
and traces briefly its development down to the present time. Each
breed has a special chapter devoted to it which has been submitted
to the best known authorities in each department; and, amongst
others, it may be mentioned that Lady Anne Blunt has , kindly

4 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
criticized the chapter upon Arabian Horses, while Mr. Hermon
Bidden has done the same for SuflFolk Punches, Mr. Walter Winans
that on American Trotting Horses, and Mr. Alfred Withers has
overlooked the account of Carriage Horses; in this way it is hoped
the work may be regarded as authoritative on these subjects. The
latter half of the book deals with Stable Practice, Simple Ailments
and how to treat them, Breeding, Riding, Driving, Race- Riding, and
Training Horses for the race-course and for hunting. Colonel
Meysey-Thompson has had a lifetime's experience in all these
subjects, and is admirably qualified to deal with them.

THE PACIFICATION OF BURMA.
By Sir CHARLES CROSTHWAITE, K.C.S.I.,
Chief Commissioner of Burma, 1887-1890 ; Member of the Council of India, etc.
With Maps a^nd Illustrations. One Volume. Demy Svo. i6s. net.
Sir Charles Crosthwaite succeeded the late Sir Charles Bernard
as Chief Commissioner of Burma when that officer was compelled
by sickness to leave the Province in March, 1887. From that date
until December, 1890, he administered Burma, and he had every
opportunity, therefore, of knowing what was done. The measures
by which, in four years and in a country which has been described
by a soldier as " one vast military obstacle," order and law were
established, are narrated. After the military measures, without
which no attempt at a Civil Government would have been possible,
the constitution of the Indian military police and the establishment
on a legal basis of the indigenous village system were the chief
means of restoring peace. These measures are explained, and the
way in which order was gradually evolved out of confusion is told.
Separate chapters deal with the Shan States, with the wild Chins on
the West between Burma and Bengal, with the Kachins about
Mogaung on the North, and the Red Karrus on the South-East.

MY ADVENTURES IN THE CONGO.
By MARGUERITE ROBY.
With Numerous Illustrations and a Map. One Volume. Demy Svo.
I2S. 6d. net.
This is a book that casts an entirely new light on the vexed
question of Belgian rule in the Congo. The authoress travelled

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 5
alone with black porters for hundreds of miles through the very
districts in the Congo where the alleged Belgian atrocities have been
taking place, and the results of her observations, as here set forth,
put a somewhat startling complexion upon some views of the situa
tion that have been commonly accepted hitherto.
Although the conclusions drawn by Mrs. Roby from her travels
in Central Africa are such as to set all truly patriotic Britons
thinking, this book is no mere political tract. On the contrary, it is
a stirring human document, in which humour, pathos, adventure,
and indomitable pluck stand out from every page.
The devotion of " Thomas," the authoress's black boy, who stood
by her when everyone else had deserted her, and to whom on more
than one occasion she owed her life ; her desperate straits amongst
mutinous porters who sought to kill her ; her days and nights of
raging fever, alone and delirious in the Bush ; her big-game exploits ;
her experiences with savages who had never before clapped eyes on
a white woman ; these and innumerable other incidents combine to
make this one of the most remarkable books ever penned by
traveller. The emotions of a lifetime are crowded into this record of a six-
months' trek through Darkest Africa.
A feature that makes the book still more fascinating is the series
of splendid photographs taken by the authoress and her black boy
during their hazardous journey.

THE WILDS OF PATAGONIA.
H IRarratlve of tbe Swe&lsb Bjpe&itlon to Patagonia,
trierra Del fncQo, anb tbe jfalftlanE) Sslanbs
in 1907*1909.
By CARL SKOTTSBERG, D.Sc, etc.
With Illustrations and Maps. One Volume. Demy Svo. 15s. net.
Three years after his return from the great Swedish Antarctic
expedition in which he played so prominent apart, Dr. Carl Skottsberg,
the distinguished naturalist and botanist, set forth once more, with
two eminent fellow-scientists. Dr. Quensel and Dr. Halle, to explore
the territories of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, of which so little
is known to the outside world. This " Swedish Magellanic Expedi
tion," as it was called, not only resulted in many valuable biological,
botanical, and geological discoveries, but was also the means of

6 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
supplying Dr. Skottsberg with the material upon which he has
founded his book, " The Wilds of Patagonia." Full of interest and
excitement are the graphic accounts which the author gives in this
volume of the various expeditions made by him in the Falkland
Islands, of the hardships he endured in the unknown interior of
Tierra del Fuego, of his constant exposure to wind and weather in
the heart of Chile, of his visit to Robinson Crusoe's romantic island,
and his journeys across the Andes and through the Cordilleras.
Dr. Skottsberg writes with humour as well as charm, and while the
descriptions of his various adventures and misadventures are amusing
as well as thriUing, his pen-pictures of South American scenery are
striking and vivid. This book should appeal especially to the
naturalist and the traveller, but cannot fail to prove a source of
pleasure and interest to the general reader. Its attractive character
is further enhanced by a number of illustrations from photographs
taken by the author in the course of his travels.

BRITISH AND GERMAN EAST
AFRICA.
Ubeir lEconomic an& Commercial IRelations.
By Dr. H. BRODE,
Author of "Tippoo Tib." »
With a Map. One Volume. Demy Svo. js. 6d. net.
In this book Dr. Brode graphically describes the growth and
development of British and German territories in East Africa, gives
most interesting details as to the trade of the country, the shipping
and railway services, etc., and discusses the question of native
taxation and the position of native labour. He deals at length with
the agricultural position of East Africa, its natural products and
resources, the education of its aboriginal inhabitants, and many
other matters of paramount importance. The comparison which
Dr. Brode draws between the administration and commercial methods
and arrangements of Germany and Great Britain respectively is of
the greatest possible interest to British readers, and the tables of
statistics with which he supplements his arguments must prove
of enormous value to all who seek for information on the subject
of East Africa.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements 7
THE KING'S CARAVAN.
across Hustralta in a Maggon.
By E. J BRADY.
With Illustrations and Map. One Volume. Demy Svo. 12s. 6d. net.
After attaining eminence in the musical and cricket worlds,
Australia seems to be rapidly coming to the front in literature.
The Sydney Bulletin has for some time been the centre of a group of
young Australian-born writers who bid fair to do their country great
service by revealing its charms to the world at large through the
medium of both poetry and prose. One of the strongest among
them is Mr. Brady, whose volume announced above is the outcome
of an adventurous driving tour he made a few years ago. Starting
from Sydney in a light waggon, he made his way gradually to
Townsville in the north of Queensland. The route he took —
parallel with the coast, but for the most part some way inland
— enabled him to visit all the places of importance on the way, and
to study the conditions of life under great variations of climate.
The result of his observations, given with much dry humour and
interspersed with interesting yarns, will be a revelation to English
readers, and probably very largely so to Australians. The trip was
not without its dangers, for the veneer of civilization is in parts still
somewhat thin, while there were also tornados, snakes, alligators,
and the peculiarly Australian terror of getting lost.
FROM PILLAR TO POST.
By Lieut.-Colonel H. C. LOWTHER, D.S.O., M.V.O.,
Scots Guards.
With Illustrations. One Volume. Demy Svo. 15s. net.
Colonel Lowther is already well known as a soldier and a
diplomatist. He has held a commission in the Scots Guards for
over twenty years, has served with distinction in the last South
African War, and has held an important appointment in the Intelli
gence Department of the War Office. In 1905 he accompanied the
Diplomatic Mission to Fez, and for the next four years filled the
responsible position of Military Attache at Paris, Madrid, and
Lisbon. Colonel Lowther, who is a brother of the present Speaker
of the House of Commons, has recently been appointed Military
Secretary to H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught, whois shortly to take
up his duties as Governor-General of Canada. In his volume of
personal reminiscences, "From Pillar to Post," Colonel Lowther

8 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
shows himself not only as a soldier and a diplomat, but also as an
explorer, a world-wide traveller, and a sportsman, possessing great
powers of observation, a facile and gifted pen, and a keen sense of
humour. In a light and breezy style he describes his travels all
over the world — from Crete to Morocco, from Ceylon to East Africa.
He narrates his experiences of cattle-ranching in America and of
lion-hunting in Somaliland, and gives a most interesting account of
his adventures in times of peace and war, on active service in South
Africa, and on manoeuvres at home. The volume is illustrated
throughout by original photographs taken by the author.

MY LIFE STORY.
By EMILY, SHAREEFA OF WAZAN.
With Illustrations. One Volume. Demy Svo. 12s. 6d. net.
Some forty years ago there was a considerable stir in European
circles in Morocco, and in London as well, when the news was
published that a young Englishwoman was about to marry the Grand
Shareef of Wazan, who is the Ecclesiastical Head of Morocco.
There was a violent discussion in the London Press, many people
going so far as to protest against the intended marriage. Now, in
igii, the Grand Shareef is no more, but his widow is still living
in Morocco, and, at the request of their many friends in Europe and
America, has set down the story of her life. It may be safely
said that her experiences have not been paralleled by any European
woman, and that she has been brought face to face with the intimate
seclusion of the Moorish woman's life, even while maintaining her
original faith. The story of her life has been edited by Mr. S. L.
Bensusan, and Mr. R. B. Cunninghame Graham has written a
preface. The book is dedicated by permission to Princess Henry
of Battenberg, and will contain many original illustrations.
PERU OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY.
By PERCY F. MARTIN,
Author of '* Mexico of the Twentieth Century," etc.
With 32 pages of Illustrations and a Map. One Volume. Demy Svo.
15s. net.
Of all the South American Republics, perhaps Peru ranks as the
most interesting, not only on account of its romantic history and the

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements g
extremely picturesque nature of its people, but because its future is,
by general consent of those travellers who have sufficiently studied
the subject, one of the most brilliant and likely to prove one of the
most permanent.
Of the many volumes upon Peru which have been issued from
time to time, the economic student has sought in vain for a complete
account of the Republic's commercial and industrial conditions, and
thus a new work from the pen of an acknowledged authority upon
this part of South America will be especially welcome.
Herein will be found a careful, well-considered, and painstaking
account of the Republic's present condition and future prospects.
The writer has studied the country very closely and very carefully ;
and it was generally admitted in Peru at the time of his visit last
year that he actually travelled more extensively throughout the State,
and looked more deeply and critically into its economic resources,
than any author who had latterly visited it.
The result is a volume literally crammed with valuable first-hand
information about the leading industries. The many different rail
ways are described fully. The copper, gold, and other mines are care
fully dealt with. The sugar, guano, rubber, oil, and cotton industries
are faithfully depicted and frequently illustrated, and new mercantile
prospects of every description are foreshadowed.

SALVADOR OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY.
By PERCY F. MARTIN,
Author of "Mexico of the Twentieth Century," etc.
With 32 pages of Illustrations and a Map. One Volume. Demy Svo.
15s. net.
Of late months the smaller Latin-American States — those forming
what is known geographically as " Central America " — have
attracted a great amount of attention, principally owing to the
attempt made by the United States to force an alliance, commercial
and financial, with them. Hitherto not a single book has been
written regarding the most important, because most settled and most
progressive, of these States— Salvador— and the present volume will
therefore meet with more than ordinary attention. This work is
from the pen of Mr. Percy F. Martin, F.R.G.S., the author of several
well-known publications, most of which (at least those devoted to
Argentina and Mexico) have received the cachet of "standard works"
upon their particular subjects. Mr. Martin has probably seen more

10 Mr, Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
of Latin- America than any living writer; and he has made this
particular portion of the world his careful and special study.
" Salvador of the Twentieth Century " will afford a complete descrip
tion of the Republic ; will show its gradual emancipation from the
thraldom of the Spanish yoke j its early struggles against annexation
by more powerful neighbours ; its commercial accomplishments and
possibilities — in fact, it will afford a thorough insight into a little-
known but extremely interesting land with vast potentialities.
Mr. Martin, who travelled extensively throughout the Republic,
and was accorded every facility by the Government for making his
enquiries and investigations untrammelled by official interference,
has shown us in these pages an unexpectedly impressive and attrac
tive picture of Central American life and progress, which, being
assisted by a number of capital illustrations, should prove a welcome
addition to Latin-American literature.

ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA.
By Mrs. M. A. HANDLEY.
With Numerous Illustrations. One Volume. Demy Svo.
I2S. 6d. net.
" Roughing it in Southern India " is just what its name implies —
a book of travel, but with such a refreshingly picknicky air about it
as lifts it quite out of the common rut of such books. The work is
an account of the writer's journeyings with her husband through the
wilder forest tracts of Coimbatore, the Wynid, and Malabar — vast
districts, each of them — in the course of his duties as an officer of the
Madras Woods and Forests Department ; it relates a story of adven
ture and novel experience in pursuance of work and shihar with all
the incidental predicaments and obstacles. It describes encounters,
sought and unsought, with wild animals ; dealings with quaint jungle-
people ; excitements of travel along bad roads and no roads ; difficul
ties in great variety, all of which had to be got through and over
somehow. The manner in which these difficulties are portrayed
gives a vivid human interest to every page, the whole being sketched
in with an enviable lightness of touch, and clearly shows that nerve
without ¦nerves is indispensable to make such a day-after-day life as is
here depicted possible, to say nothing of enjoyable. To a person
hampered with nerves it could be no better than a series of night
mares. The book gives one a pleasant feeling that the day has gone by
when Englishmen in India thought it fine to speak slightingly of, and
even to, natives as " niggers " — a manner of speech as ignorant as it
is insulting.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. ii
THE LIFE OF A TIGER.
By S. EARDLEY- WILMOT,
Author of "Forest Life and Sport in India.
With nearly 150 Original Illustrations, One Volwne. Medium Svo.
7s. 6d. net.
In his popular work, " Forest Life and Sport in India," published
last autumn, Mr. Eardley-Wilmot devoted a chapter to the habits of
tigers. This, however, by no means exhausted his material, but it
aroused much interest in an enthralling subject and paved the way
for the present volume. The author has cast his work in the form
of a life-history of an individual tiger from birth until, owing to the
inroads of civilization into his ancient preserves, he becomes a man-
eater and is finally shot. It would be difficult to over-emphasise the
fascination of this tale, which not only records the vie intime of
the tiger family, but introduces the whole life of the jungle in a
series of vivid and kaleidoscopic pictures. The attractions of the
book are enhanced by about 150 thumb-nail sketches by the author's
daughter, as well as by reproductions of some of Mrs. Eardley-
Wilmot's charming and artistic photographs.

THE SPORT OF SHOOTING.
By OWEN JONES,
Author of "Ten Years of Game-Keeping," etc.
With Illustrations. One Volume. Demy Svo. los. 6d. net.
This is an informative volume of absorbing interest and utility to
the ever-increasing army of shooting-men, and to those many others
who cherish an innate hankering after shot-gun sport. While the
seasoned sportsman cannot fail to glean many a useful idea, the
chief object of the book is to cater sympathetically (at the same time
avoiding technical phraseology) for the beginner, whether he be an
eager youngster or one whose opportunities have come with riper
years — to put him from the first on the right track, and save him
the endless disappointments of unguided inexperience. It explains
those perplexing questions which undermine confidence and account
for disheartening failures, puts him in the way of meeting each
difficulty as it comes, assists him in laying out his money to good
advantage, in buying a gun, cartridges, or dog: taking a shoot,
engaging a keeper, and managing them both: or in distributing
appropriate tips. Thus, perceiving the why and wherefore of this
or that all-important detail of the ropes of shooting, he will be

12 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
resourceful, self-reliant, and independent of others for the goodness
of his sport ; find abundance of healthy recreation in the making
of a modest bag ; by his own wise woodcraft cancel mere deficiencies
of marksmanship ; and last, but not least, whether as guest or host,
add tenfold to his own enjoyment and that of his companions.

THE ROMANCE OF THE HOLY
LAND.
By Dr. CHARLES LEACH, M.P.
With Numerous Illustrations. Large Crown Svo. js. 6d. net.
Avoiding technical terms and scientific descriptions, the author
has produced a volume that should be welcomed by men and women
in every country who have even a remote interest in the Bible and
the land in which it was produced.
The writer has made nine visits to Palestine during the last
twenty years, and has delivered lectures upon it in many of the
large towns of England. He takes the reader on a tour to the Holy
Land, and travels with him to the principal places of Biblical
interest. He describes many of the chief towns in such terms that
the reader not only sees them as they are to-day, but can picture
them as they were in the far-off first century. He describes the
manners and customs of the people, the physical features of the
country, the rivers and lakes of Palestine, and some of the remark
able historic events which have made the land famous throughout
the world.
Those who have been to the Holy Land will welcome this book,
whilst those who have not been so fortunate will profit greatly from
its pages.
THE GRAVEN PALM.
H /Ibanual of tbe Science of palmistry.
By Mrs. ROBINSON.
With about 250 Original Ilhistvations. Medium Svo. ids, 6d. net.
This work is the result of nearly twenty years' practical experience,
and the careful examination of many thousands of hands. The

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 13
illustrations are drawn by Mrs. Robinson herself, and are in every
case taken from hands which she has herself read. The great majority
of the lines given are entirely original — i.e., are not to be found in any
known work upon the Science of Palmistry.
This book will enable those who study it to read character cor
rectly from the shapes of the hands and the comparative lengths of
fingers and phalanges; to understand the values of the diflferent
mounts, as bearing upon the character and life ; and, by the full and
comprehensive delineation of the six principal and the many chance
lines upon the hand, to understand and read correctly the events of
their own past and future, as given by the lines on the Mount of
Venus in particular, and also in a minor degree by the lines of fate,
fortune, and health.
There are also at the end of the book several photographs of the
hands of well-known and celebrated people.

SOCIETY SKETCHES
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
By NORMAN PEARSON,
Author of "Some Problems of Existence."
With Photogravure Portraits. One Volume. Demy Svo. 12s. 6d. net.
This book deals with some features and figures of the eighteenth
century which have hitherto escaped any detailed treatment, and
with certain aspects of familiar persons which have been unduly
overlooked. The Virtuosi who founded the Royal Society, but also
called into existence a host of scientific quacks and charlatans ; the
Scowrers, and their successors the Mohocks, who infested the
streets of London at the beginning of the eighteenth, and the High
waymen who survived into the nineteenth century, are discussed in
its pages. An essay is devoted to the fashionable Wits of the period,
and another throws new light upon the inner history of the Macaronis.
Tradition represents these as mere brainless fops, but the author
shows that this reproach belongs rather to their later imitators than
to the Macaronis of 1764.
Governor Pitt, grandfather ofthe first Lord Chatham, the brilliant
scapegrace " Etheldreda" (third Viscountess Townshend), the "Mad
Duchess " of Queensberry, and that clever oddity Soame Jenyns, also
find a place in the book, while new aspects of even such well-known
characters as Horace Walpole and Hannah More are revealed in
" The Serious Side of a Worldly Man," and " The Lighter Side of a
Serious Woman."

14 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
CAMEO BOOK-STAMPS.
By CYRIL DAVENPORT, F.S.A.,
Superintendent of Bookbinding in the British Museum.
With about 150 Illustrations from Original Drawings hy the Author.
The First Edition will be limited to 500 Copies only. In One Volume.
Super-Royal Svo. 21s. net.
Bookbinding stamps of different kinds have already been much
written about, especially heraldic ones, but cameo stamps, although
they have now and then been mentioned, have up to the present
received no special recognition. They are in low relief, like medals,
and are generally left ungilded and uncoloured.
These stamps — the larger and more important of which are illus
trated in this book — form, in fact, a very important division ofthe
subject of decorative bookbinding, and, unhke most of the other kinds
of book decoration, they rarely can be satisfactorily photographed.
Mr. Davenport's drawings, however, are singularly accurate copies
of their originals, and will undoubtedly prove of the utmost value both
to book-collectors and dealers in books.
Some of the stamps shown are well known — those English oneS)
for instance, showing the Tudor Rose, and the coat-of-arms of Henry
VIII, ; but others are not so common. The English stamps of St.
George and of St. Michael are very fine indeed. The beautiful
French stamps of the vision of the Emperor Augustus, and the very
interesting Italian stamps of Horatius Codes and of Marcus Curtius,
will doubtless come as a revelation to many, and so with the
" Canevari " stamp of Apollo, although it is better known to
connoisseurs. The large series of German stamps, mostly on pigskin, is of great
importance ; there are several excellent portraits of Luther and of
Melanchthon, and quaint stamps of Lot and his daughters, Judith
and Holofernes, Jonah and the Whale, and many delicately cut
stamps of incidents in the life of Christ and of the Virgin Mary.
All these stamps, of which there are about 150, are beautifully and
truthfully copied from the originals, and with each is a short descrip
tion. At the end is a full and most useful index. Every inscrip
tion, whether in Greek, Latin, or German, is translated, and every
initial noted and indexed.
The book will be invaluable to every librarian — in fact, necessary —
and it will add much to the interest of every book, whether in
morocco, calf, or pigskin, that bears upon it one of the stamps
illustrated.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 15
A LITTLE HISTORY OF MUSIC.
By ANNETTE HULLAH.
With Numerous Illustrations. One Volume. Medium Svo. 5s.
This is a history of music written in a simple way for young
people. After a chapter on aboriginal songs and dance-tunes, and
another on the music of ancient nations, the Romans lead us into
early Britain, and so to the first Christian chants. Then we have
mediaeval monks and scholars arranging scales. Minstrels and
troubadours, with the stories of their time, bring us to the Eliza-
bethian age of masque and madrigal. How Florentine genius
developed these into the first operas and oratorios completes the
next century. Then we come to a period of fine players and fine
instruments, of Corelli and Tartini, of Amati and Stradivarius, of
harpsichordists like Scarlatti, and of German organists long since
eclipsed by the light of Bach. What he, and the other great com
posers since his day, did for music fills up the rest of the chapters
and takes the record down to our own time. There are many
legends and anecdotes in the book, and illustrations of quaint
musical instruments of old days.
THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME
RULE.
By ERSKINE CHILDERS,
Author of "War and the Arme Blanche," "The Riddle of the Sands," etc.
One Volume. Demy Svo. ids. 6d. net.
A study of the Irish question, mainly from the Imperial standpoint.
First sketching the history of Ireland in close conjunction with that
of the lost American Colonies and the present self-governing
Dominions, the author shows that the same forms of misgovern
ment arising from similar conditions have always led to the same
mischievous results, and that their only remedy, when applied in
time, has been Home Rule. He then reviews the present state of
Ireland, describing the extraordinary anomalies of the semi-colonial
government. Full attention is given also to the brighter side of
Irish life. But the author points out the deep marks of arrested
development, and the need for self-reliance and self-development
under a responsible Irish Government.
With regard to the form Home Rule should take, the author
devotes special attention to the vital questions of finance and Irish
representation at Westminster, as well as to guarantees for an Ulster
minority, executive power, police, judges, and numerous other points
of secondary importance.
The aim is to supply not only a reasoned defence of Home Rule,
but a practical up-to-date guide to the legislative settlement of the
question.

i6 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
PROS AND CONS OF POLITICAL
PROBLEMS.
By Sir J. D. REES, K.C.I.E.
One Volume, ys. 6d. net.
In this book Sir J. D. Rees, K.C.I. E., ex.-M.P., surveys the more
important political problems at present before the nation from the
points of view of both great parties in the State. The following
subjects are dealt with : Imperial Organization, Defence, Foreign
Policy, Indian and Colonial Problems, Trade Relations and Tariff
Reform, Suffrage, Home Rule, Education, Disestablishment, Finance,
Socialism, Labour Questions, Land Reform, and the Constitutional
Problems at present before the country. To each great question a
chapter is devoted which gives the reader a concise survey of the
points at issue and a summary of the position at the present day,
and to every chapter are appended the arguments for and against :
in the hope that the reader in a few pages may find a guide to the
reasons upon which political parties base their case. The utility of
the work to the student and politician will be enhanced by the
bibliographical notes at the end of each chapter, which indicate the
scope of the works recommended, so that the reader may be able to
follow up his study of any political question. The information has
been compressed into a volume of handy size so as to be of use
to speakers and politicians. It is not, however, merely a work of
reference — although an excellent index and the sub-division of the
chapters make reference easy — but is intended to be read.

ECONOMICS FOR BEGINNERS.
By GEORGE W. GOUGH, M.A.,
Sometime Exhibitioner of Balliol College.
One Volume. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net.
The need of a short textbook of economics which teachers can
place in the hands of pupils who are starting the subject with a view
to preparing for the more elementary parts of the higher examina
tions in it, is well known, and Mr. Gough's little volume is an
attempt to meet it. The core of this vast subject, if the expression

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 17
may be used, is fully and simply treated in accordance with authori
tative opinion. Hence the beginner who means to continue his
studies will be put in a position to read one or more of the larger
manuals with advantage. As appendices there will be given a guide
to further reading, a selection of typical questions—for the answers
to which the text of the book will be found to furnish materials and
hints — and a short selection of statistics illustrating modern economic
conditions in the United Kingdom. It is, further, the author's hope
that the book will be useful to older students interested in social
problems, and that they will find in it the elements of the economic
principles bearing on their solution.

THE GREAT PLATEAU OF
NORTHERN RHODESIA.
By CULLEN GOULDSBURY and HERBERT SHEANE,
Of the British Sooth Africa Company's Service.
With Preface by Sir ALFRED SHARPE, K.C.M.G., CB.
With 40 pages of Illustrations and a Map. One Volume.
Demy Svo. i6s. net.
This book has been written about the Tanganyika Plateau of
Northern Rhodesia, which — though some fifty thousand square
miles in extent — is still practically unknown, since it has not yet been
penetrated, or its resources tapped by the Cape to Cairo Railway.
Apart from its abundant natural resources, the excellent climate
of the Plateau and its high altitude (from 4,000 to 6,000 feet) render
it as healthy and suitable for white colonization as the far-famed
Highlands of British East Africa.
The book is divided into two parts, European and Ethnographic.
The Ethnographic Section is dealt with by Mr. Sheane, who, during
the past ten years, has made a special study of language and native
customs upon the Tanganyika Plateau.
The needs of prospective settlers and ranchers are fully discussed,
and information for sportsmen and travellers is supplied in two
chapters dealing with elephant-hunting and the species and habits
of game, big and small, to be found upon the Plateau.
Lastly, the Native chapters should prove of value, not only to
anthropologists, but also to that increasing body of readers who are
interested in the problems of native life and of native law and
custom in Central Africa.

1 8 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
HINTS TO SPEAKERS AND
PLAYERS.
By ROSINA FILIPPI.
One Volume. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net.
Miss Rosina Filippi is an actress well known to, and deservedly
popular with, the playgoing public of Great Britain. The excellent
work she has done in teaching the younger members of her pro
fession has evoked the admiration of her colleagues who recognize
her claims to a front place on the English stage which she has long
adorned. She has, indeed, won a deservedly high reputation as a
teacher of dramatic art, and many are the students who have profited
by her instruction and owe their success to her ripe experience.
" Hints to Speakers and Players " is, as its name implies, a guide
or handbook to all who desire to attain proficiency in the art of
speaking or acting. In this work the author offers invaluable advice
upon such subjects as Elocution, Diction, Gesticulation, Ranting,
etc., not only to would-be actors, but also to Members of Parliament,
orators, clergymen, and all who may be called upon to deliver
speeches on the political platform, in the pulpit, or at the dinner-
table. Her facile pen ranges over the wide field of her experience
and deals in a light but informing fashion with a hundred matters
that must inevitably prove interesting to all who are compelled to
raise their voices in public.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LIFE
OF FATHER TYRRELL.
By MAUD PETRE.
In Two Volumes. Demy Svo., cloth. 21s. net.
The first volume, which is autobiographical, will cover the period
from George Tyrrell's birth in 1861 to the year 1885, including an
account of his family, his childhood, schooldays, and youth in
Dubfin ; his conversion from Agnosticism, through a phase of High
Church Protestantism to Catholicism ; his experiences in Cyprus
and Malta, where he lived as a probationer before entering the
Society of Jesus ; his early life as a Jesuit, with his novitiate and
first studies in scholastic philosophy and Thomism. This autobiog
raphy, written in 1901, ends just before the death of his mother,
and was not carried any farther. It is edited with notes and
supplements to each chapter by M. D. Petre.
The second volume, which takes up the story where the first ends.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 19
deals chiefly with the storm and stress period of his later years.
Large use is made of his own notes, and of his letters, of which a
great number have been lent by correspondents of all shades
of thought. Various documents of importance figure in this later
volume, in which the editor aims at making the history as complete
and objective as possible. Incidentally some account is given of the
general movement of thought, which has been loosely described as
" modernism," but the chief aim of the writer will be to describe the
part which Father Tyrrell himself played in this movement, and the
successive stages of his mental development as he brought his
scholastic training to bear on the modern problems that confronted
him. The work ends with his death on July 15, 1909, and the
events immediately subsequent to his death. The date of publica
tion it uncertain, but will be announced as soon as possible.

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.
Essays on 5u5aism anb Cbristian ©rigins.
By GRADUATES OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Edited by Dr. F. J. FOAKES-JACKSON.
With an Introduction by the Very Rev. W. R. INGE, D.D.,
Dean of St. Paul's.
One Volume. Demy Svo. los. 6d. net.
Several volumes of Theological Essays have appeared from the
two ancient Universities, but none hitherto by members of a single
college. Jesus College, Cambridge, has, however, had exceptional
opportunities for encouraging the study of Divinity, owing to the
fact that of recent years it has numbered two Lady Margaret Pro
fessors among the fellows, and has been generously endowed by the
late Lord Justice Kay, who founded scholarships for post-graduate
study in Theology.
The object of these essays is to trace the origin of Christianity from
Judaism, and its development till the final parting of the two religions.
With the exception of the Introduction and Essays I. and III., all
the writers have taken their degrees quite recently, and though they
have obtained high honours at the University, the volume must be
judged as a young men's book. As such it may prove the more
interesting as illustrating the ideas of some of our younger theo
logians. The essays are not the product of any school, but represent
all shades of thought in the Church of England, whilst one is written
by a Nonconformist, and another by a Jewish scholar. All the
essayists have, however, been the pupils of the editor, and most
have come under the influence of the Dean of St. Paul's.

20 Mr, Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements,
HOW TO DEAL WITH MEN.
By the Rev. PETER GREEN, M.A.,
Rector of St. Philip's, Salford, and Canon of Manchester,
Author of "How to Deal with Lads," etc.
One Volume. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. net.
Beginning with chapters on the nature of work among men, and
the special needs of the present time, and on the type of man
required for success in this kind of work, the author goes on to
treat in detail such subjects as tbe Men's Bible-Class; the various
methods for promoting its success ; the different kinds of work
which should spring out of the work of the class ; and some of the
commoner dangers to be watched and guarded against. Following
the chapters on the Bible-Class and its developments, come chapters
on social and recreative work, such as that of the Men's Club and
the minor clubs in connection with it, temperance benefit societies,
and social and parochial work for men. The second part of the
book is devoted to a detailed treatment of personal work with
individual men. Methods with men troubled with religious doubt,
cr with other intellectual difficulties, and methods of dealing with
various moral problems, are carefully and fully discussed.

THE FAITH OF AN AVERAGE MAN.
By the Rev. CHARLES H. S. MATTHEWS, M.A.,
Author of " A Parson in the Australian Bush," etc.
One Volume. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net.
The author is profoundly convinced that on the one hand the
endless restlessness of modern life is a witness to man's need of a
vital faith, and on the other that the continued vitality of the historic
Church of England is in itself a proof of her power to meet this
fundamental need of men. The position he occupies, and would in
this book commend to others, may best be described as a kind of
progressive Catholicism, a true via media between an exclusive
Protestantism on the one hand, which seems to him to be founded
on a view of the Bible no longer tenable, and an equally exclusive
Catholicism on the other, which in its turn seems to be founded on
a no less untenable view of the Church. It is the author's hope
that his appeal may be read, not only by laymen, but also by the
younger clergy.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 21
THE CHURCH AND MODERN
PROBLEMS.
By the Rev. C. F. GARBETT, M.A.,
Vicar of Portsea.
One Volume. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net.
An interesting volume, composed of addresses mainly delivered
in the course of the author's ordinary parochial work during the last
two years. They are all united by the attempt to state the attitude
of the Church to some of the many modern problems of religious
thought and action. Among these are Modernism, Rationalism,
Agnosticism, the Higher Criticism, Inspiration, the Reunion of
Christendom, Divorce, Temperance Reform, and Socialism. The
attitude of the Church to all these tremendous intellectual, moral,
and social problems is briefly argued and discussed with tact and
ability.
THE MIND OF ST. PAUL:
Hs 3llttstrate& by bis Seconb ^Epistle to tbe Corintblans.
By Canon H. L. GOUDGE, D.D.
Principal of Ely Theological College.
One Volume, Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. net-

A GOODLY FELLOWSHIP
Ubougbts in IDerse an& prose from many Sources.
Collected by ROSE E. SELFE.
With a Preface by
His Grace the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
One Volume. ^Small Svo. 2s. 6d. net.
This small religious anthology has been compiled in the hope
that the various suggestions and counsels, the voices of praise and
aspiration, and the poets' visions of the past, present, and future may
come through the windows of the soul, which are open to receive

22 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
them with comfort, encouragement, and inspiration. The passages
are grouped under the following headings : Religion in Childhood,
Our Human Life, Sorrow and Suflfering, On Prayer, Aspiration
and Communion, The Incarnate Christ, Christian Seasons, Old Age,
Death and After. But there are no hard and fast divisions, and many
of the extracts might be appropriately classed under two or more
of these headings. More than seventy authors have been laid
under contribution, including some as widely separated in time as
Boethius, Thomas Traherne, William Law, Christina Rossetti, the
present Dean of St. Paul's (Dr. W. R. Inge), and Mr. G. K.
Chesterton.
New and Cheaper Edition.
SCOTTISH GARDENS.
By the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart.
With 32 Coloured Plates from Pastel Drawings especially
done for this work by
Miss M. G. W. WILSON,
Member of the Pastel Society and of the Scottish Society of Artists.
New Edition. Medium Svo. -js. 6d. net.
It was not originally intended that this charming work, of which
both the Edition de Luxe and the ordinary Edition were sold out
two months after publication, should be reprinted. So persistent,
however, have been the inquiries for it that it has been decided to
re-issue it in a cheaper edition, but with all the original plates. The
success of the book in the first instance may be attributed both to
the attractiveness of the subject and to the harmonious combination
cf artistic and literary skill which characterized it, and these features
will in no sense be modified in the new edition.
A New Edition Revised.
A BOOK ABOUT ROSES.
By the late Very Rev. S. REYNOLDS HOLE,
Dean of Rochester.
With Coloured Plates. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d.
This edition contains the Dean's latest corrections of his famous
book, a new chapter on " Progress " up to the present time by
Dr. Alfred Williams, Member of Committee of the National Rose
Society, and a full and up-to-date list of roses compiled and classified
by the same competent hand.

Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements. 23
NEW FICTION.
TANTE.
By ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK
(Mrs. Basil de Selincourt),
Author of "Franklin Kane," "Valerie Upton," etc.
O'ne Volume. Crown Svo. 6s.
A deeply interesting book, which, it is believed, will be considered
by far the most powerful work the author has accomplished. It is
a long story, but the interest never flags, and the plot culminates in
an exceedingly dramatic way.
THE BRACKNELS.
By FORREST REID.
One Volume. Crown Svo. 6s.
This is an interesting novel describing the fortunes of an Irish
family, into the midst of which comes Mr. Rusk, a young English
tutor. Each member of the family is well and distinctly portrayed,
and there is an under-current of mysticism of a distinctly uncanny
tendency. Denis, a boy of sixteen, the pupil of Mr. Rusk, is a
particularly charming figure, who contrasts sharply with some of the
other members of the Bracknel family.
A ROMANCE OF THE SIMPLE.
By MARY J. H. SKRINE.
Adthoe of "A Stepson of the Soil."
6s.
MORE GHOST STORIES.
By Dr. M. R. JAMES,
Provost of King's College, Cambridge.
Author of ** Ghost Stories of an Antiquary," etc.
Medium Svo, 6s.

24 Mr. Edward Arnold's Autumn Announcements.
THE MOTTO OF MRS. McLANE.
Ubc Storg of an Hmerican jfarm.
By SHIRLEY CARSON.
One Volume. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d.
A very clever piece of character drawing ; the scene is laid in
a Western American farm, where the McLane family have been
settled for a considerable number of years. Life on the farm at
various seasons is painted in vivid and attractive colours, but the
feature of the story is the shrewd homely wit of Mrs. McLane and
her neighbours. Their conversations remind one of the success of
" Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," and are so clever and
spontaneous that they cannot fail to be thoroughly enjoyed by all
readers.
LOVE IN BLACK.
By Sir H. HESKETH BELL, K.C.M.G.,
Governor of Northern Nigeria.
One Volume. Medium Svo. 6s.
This volume contains a number of sketches of native life in West
Africa, in the garb of fiction. No one has had better opportunities
than the author of penetrating the veil of mystery and fetish that
enshrouds the inner life of the native, and no one has drawn their
characters with a more sympathetic and romantic hand. The titles
of the sketches give some idea of the contents of the volume. Among
them are "The Fetish Mountain of Krobo," "The Yam Custom,'
"The Tale of a Tail-Girl," " His Highness Prince Kwakoo," " On
Her Majesty's Service," " A Woman of Ashanti."

STEAM TURBINE DESIGN:
Mitb Especial IReference to tbe IReaction tCgpe.
By JOHN MORROW, M.Sc, D.Eng.,
Lecturer in Engineering, Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Demy Svo. Fully illustrated with 150 Diagrams and 9 Folding Plates.
Since the days of Watt no greater revolution has taken place in
steam machinery than the advent of the turbine. In the face of the
greatest difficulties it was introduced by the Hon. Sir Charles A.
Parsons both for marine and electrical work, and with the success of
the s.s. Lusitania and Mauretania the public for the first time realized
that it had come to stay. Many books, both of description and
theory, have been written on the steam turbine, yet up to the
present few have been devoted definitely to its design. In the
present volume Dr. Morrow gives a clear explanation of the prin
ciples and practice of turbine design and construction as followed
out in the drawing-office and engineering workshop.
LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.

3 9002 03747

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