John Lord

“ But when the army was a sham, and corruption had pervaded every office under government; when the expenses of living had nearly doubled from taxation, extravagance, bad example, and wrong ideas of life; when trusted servants were turned into secret enemies, incapable and false; when such absurd mistakes were made as the expedition to Mexico, and the crowning folly of the war with Prussia, proving the incapacity and folly of the master-hand,--the machinery which directed the armies and the bureaus and all affairs of State itself, broke down, and the catastrophe was inevitable. ”

“ France, surprised, perplexed, affrighted, must needs carry on a war of despair, or succumb to the usurpation. The army and the people alike were governed by terror.
But although France had lost her freedom, it was only for a time; and although Louis Napoleon ruled as an absolute monarch, his despotism, sadly humiliating to people of intelligence and patriotism, was not like that of Russia, or even like that of Prussia and Austria. The great men of all parties were too numerous and powerful to be degraded or exiled. ”

“ Among the great prime ministers of England Sir Robert Peel is to be classed. He ranks with Pitt, Canning, and Gladstone for his intellectual force, his services, and his patriotism. He was to England what Guizot and Thiers were to France,--a pre-eminent statesman, identified with great movements, learned, eloquent, and wise. He was a man of unsullied character, commanding the respect and veneration of superior minds,--reserved and cold, perhaps; not a popular idol like Fox and O'Connell, but a leader of men.
There was no man in his cabinet more gifted or influential than he. ”

“ I look upon this educational movement in the most gloomy period of German history as one of the noblest achievements which any nation ever made in the cause of science and literature. It took away the sting of military ascendency, and raised men of genius to an equality with nobles; and as the universities were the centres of liberal sentiments and all liberalizing ideas, they must have exerted no small influence on the war of liberation itself, as well as on the cause of patriotism, which was the foundation of the future greatness of Prussia. ”

“ He never was popular until he had made Prussia the most powerful military State in Europe. He never sought to be loved so much as to be feared; he never allowed himself to be approached without politeness and deference. He seemed to care more for dogs than men. Nor was he endowed with those graces of manner which marked Metternich. He remained harsh, severe, grave, proud through his whole career, from first to last, except in congenial company. What is called society he despised, with all his aristocratic tendencies and high social rank. ”

“ The great agitator had made his power felt long before the stormy debates in favor of reform took place, which called out the energies of Brougham,--the only man in England to be compared with O'Connell in genius, in eloquence, in intellect, and in wrath, but inferior to him in the power of moving the passions of an audience, yet again vastly superior to him in learning. ”

“ Not for lofty sentiments, such as Burke uttered on the eve of the French Revolution, are the highest rewards given in a material country like that of our ancestors, but for the skill a man shows in expounding the way in which a nation may become prosperous and rich. It was Sir Robert Peel's mission to make England commercially prosperous, even as it was that of Brougham and Russell to give it liberty and political privileges, that of Pitt and Castlereagh to save it from foreign conquest, and that of Wilberforce to rescue it from the disgrace and infamy of negro slavery. ”

“ The silent, dull, and heavy man had outwitted everybody; and he showed that he understood the French people better than all the collected statesmen and generals who had served under Louis Philippe with so much ability and distinction.
What shall we say of a nation that so ignominiously surrendered its liberties? All we can say in extenuation is that it was powerless. Such men as Guizot, Thiers, Cousin, Changarnier, Cavaignac, Molé, Broglie, Hugo, Villemain, Lamartine, Montalembert, would have prevented the fall of constitutional government if their hands had not been tied. ”

“ I need not go into the details of a system which made Prussia a nation of patriots as well as of soldiers, and which made Scharnhorst a great national benefactor, sharing with Stein the glory of a great deliverance. He did not live to see the complete triumph of his system, matured by genius and patient study; but his work remained to future generations, and made Prussia invincible except to a coalition of powerful enemies. ”

“ Such men as Pascal, Leibnitz, Calvin, Locke, he lets alone to discuss the great actors in political history, like Warren Hastings, Pitt, Harley; but in his painting of such characters he stands pre-eminent over all modern writers. Gladstone does justice to Macaulay's vast learning, his transcendent memory, and his matchless rhetoric,--making the heaviest subjects glow with life and power, effecting compositions which will live for style alone, for which in some respects he is unapproachable. ”

“ Prussia was dismembered; its provinces were seized by the conqueror; its population was reduced to less than four millions; its territory was occupied by one hundred and fifty thousand French soldiers; the king himself was an exile and a fugitive from his own capital; every sort of indignity was heaped on his prostrate subjects, who were compelled to pay a war indemnity beyond their power; trade and commerce were cut off by Napoleon's Continental system; and universal poverty overspread the country, always poor, and now poorer than ever. Prussia had no allies to rally to her sinking fortunes ”

“ Who is not in the power, more or less, of those who are compelled to serve; and when an absolute monarch discovers that he has been led into mistakes by treacherous or weak advisers, how natural that his temper should be spoiled!
Thus was Nicholas in the latter years of his reign. He was thwarted by foreign Powers, and deceived by his own instruments of despotic rule. He found himself only a man, and like other men. He became suspicious, bitter, and cruel. His pride was wounded by defeat and opposition from least expected quarters. ”

“ It is difficult for any nation to carry on a great war unless it is supported by the people. In Turkey and throughout the scattered dominions of the Sultan, religion and patriotism and warlike ardor combined to make men arise by their own free-will, and endure fatigue, danger, hunger, and privation for their country and their faith. The public dangers were great; for Russia was at the height of her power and prestige, and the Czar was known to have a determined will, not to be bent by difficulties which were not insurmountable. ”

“ Once again Gladstone was seated on the summit of power, and with every prospect of a long-continued reign. Although an old man, his vigor of mind and body had not abated. He was never stronger, apparently, than when he was past seventy years of age. At no previous period of his life was his fame so extended or his moral influence so great. Certainly no man in England was more revered than he or more richly deserved his honors. ”

“ It would be interesting to show how seldom the great rulers of this world have had an unchecked career to the close of their lives. Most of them have had to ruminate on unexpected falls,--like Napoleon, Louis Philippe, Metternich, Gladstone, Bismarck,--or on unattained objects of ambition, like the great statesmen who have aspired to be presidents of the United States. ”

“ In the meantime the usurper bestowed so many benefits on the middle and lower classes, gave such a stimulus to trade, adorned his capital with such magnificent works of art, and increased so manifestly the material prosperity of France, that his reign was regarded as benignant and fortunate by most people, until the whole edifice which he had built to dazzle the world tumbled down in a single day after his disastrous defeat at Sedan,--the most humiliating fall which any French dynasty ever experienced. ”

“ The idea of war with Russia became popular,--partly from jealousy of a warlike empire that aspired to the possession of Constantinople, and partly from the English love of war itself, with its excitements, after the dulness and inaction of a long period of peace and prosperity. In 1853 England found herself drifting into war, to the alarm and disgust of Aberdeen and Gladstone, to the joy of the people and the satisfaction of Palmerston and a majority of the cabinet. ”

“ Germany, though fallen into the hands of a military hero from defects in the administration of governments and armies, was not disgraced when her professors in the university were the greatest scholars of the world. They created a new empire, not of the air, as some one sneeringly remarked, but of mind, which has gone on from conquering to conquer. For more than fifty years German universities have been the centre of European thought and scholastic culture,--pedantic, perhaps, but original and profound. ”

“ Success had shut the mouths of his enemies, except of a few obdurate ones like Thiers and Victor Hugo,--the latter of whom in his voluntary exile in Guernsey and Jersey still persisted in calling him "Napoleon the Little." Thiers generally called him Celui-ci,--"That fellow." This illustrious statesman, in his restless ambition and desire of power, probably would have taken office under the man whom he both despised and hated; but he dared not go against his antecedents, and was unwilling to be a mere clerk, as all Louis Napoleon's ministers were, whatever their abilities. ”

“ As for Prince Bismarck, with all his faults,--and no man is perfect,--I love and honor this courageous giant, who has, under such vexatious opposition, secured the glory of the Prussian monarchy and the unity of Germany; who has been conscientious in the discharge of his duties as he has understood them, in the fear of God,--a modern Cromwell in another cause, whose fame will increase with the advancing ages. ”

“ This was that series of measures which determined the result of the greatest military struggles of the nineteenth century, and raised Prussia to the front rank of military monarchies. It was the levee en masse, composed of the youth of the nation, without distinction of rank, instead of an army made up of peasants and serfs and commanded by their feudal masters. Scharnhorst introduced a compulsory system, indeed, but it was not unequal. Every man was made to feel that he had a personal interest in defending his country, and there were no exemptions made. ”

“ He is well read in history, but not in art or science or poetry. His stories are admirable when he is in convivial mood; all sit around him in silent admiration, for no one dares more than suggest the topic,--he does all the talking himself. Bayard Taylor, when United States minister at Berlin, was amazed and confounded by his freedom of speech and apparent candor. ”

“ He came into power by the will of the nation if any man ever did,--by the spontaneous enthusiasm of the people for the name he bore, not for his own abilities and services; and as he proclaimed, on his accession, a policy of peace (which the people believed) and loyalty to the Constitution,--Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, the watchwords of the Revolution,--even more, as he seemed to represent the party of order, he was regarded by such statesmen as Thiers and Montalembert as the least dangerous of the candidates ”

“ Infuriated mobs, successful in France in overturning governments and thrones, have been easily repressed in England with comparatively little bloodshed; for power has ever been lodged in the hands of the upper and middle classes, intolerant of threatened violence. In England, since the time of Cromwell, revolutions have been bloodless; and reforms have been gradual,--to meet pressing necessities, or to remove glaring injustice and wrongs, never to introduce an impractical equality or to realize visionary theories. And they have ever been effected through Parliament. ”

“ He did for England what Alexander Hamilton did for the United States in matters of finance, although as inferior to Hamilton in original genius as he was superior to him in general knowledge and purity of moral character. No one man can be everything, even if the object of unbounded admiration. To every great man a peculiar mission is given,--to one as lawgiver, to another as conqueror, to a third as teacher, to a fourth as organizer and administrator ”

“ But a nation is greater than any individual, even if he be a miracle of genius. When the imperial cause was lost, and the armies of France were dispersed or shut up in citadels, and the hosts of Germany were converging upon the capital, Paris resolved on sustaining a siege--apparently hopeless--rather than yield to a conqueror before the last necessity should open its gates. The self-sacrifices which its whole population, supposed to be frivolous and enervated, made to preserve their homes and their works of art ”