Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke

“ Disraeli was my admiration as a public man—a Bismarck without his physique and his opportunities—but then in politics one always personally prefers one’s opponents to one’s friends. As a republican, I had a cordial aversion for Sir Charles Dilke, a clever writer, but an awfully dull speaker, who imagines that his forte is public speaking, and who, having been brought up in a set of strong prejudices, positively makes a merit to himself of never having got over them. ”

“ Why is it that inhabitants of small and isolated communities never can see a joke? M. de Payan, slightly drawing himself up and speaking with as much stiffness as he could assume towards his prince, gravely answered me, “Your Serene Highness is not aware, I presume, that Rabagas was a satire directed against France p. 19in her decline, and not against your Highness’s principality.”
M. Sardou wasting his hours on satirising Monaco. I will never joke again, I said to myself, unless I should suffer the modern fate of kings and be deposed. ”

“ Women are not likely to abandon the idea of a compensation in the next world for the usage which too many of them meet with in this.
As for my failure at Monaco, I went too fast. I agree with Mr. Freeman, your English historian, that a sudden breach in the continuity of national institutions is an evil, and that “the witness of history teaches us that, in changing a long established form of executive government, p. 79the more gently and warily the work is done the more likely it is to be lasting.” I could have stopped at Monaco by humbling myself, but at all events I went too fast. ”

“ My cousin, Prince Albert, the “Sailor Prince,” a good fellow of my own age, with no fault but his rash love of uselessly braving the perils of the ocean, had often been warned of the fate that would one day befall him. Once when a boy he had put to sea in his boat when a fearful storm was raging, had been upset just off the point at Monaco, and had been saved only by the gallantry of a sailor of the port who had risked his own life in keeping his sovereign’s son afloat. In October 1873 my unfortunate cousin bought at Plymouth an p. 4English sailing yacht of 450 tons. ”

“ As I left the palace, surrounded by the tars and preceded and followed by the sergeants of the ex-garde, Abbé Ramin came running up and seized me by the hand.
“Your Serene Highness must not leave us,” he cried; “the people are irritated for a moment against their prince, but happier days will come.”
“I can stop if I please, Abbé Ramin,” I replied, “but only either by firing upon the people, or by blockading them and depriving p. 72the women and children of the upper town of their daily bread. I will do neither.”
“History will speak of your Highness as your Highness deserves!” ”

“ Colonel Jacquemet made his way to me and said, “Sir, I can count on twenty of the sergeants and corporals who are in the courtyard, ex-soldiers of your Highness’s ex-garde. They are grand old soldiers, and with the strong walls to help them will hold this canaille in check.”
He might have said, “Sir, I don’t like your p. 67ways, and have disapproved of everything that you have done, but after all you are the rightful Prince of Monaco, as well as a good fellow, saving your Highness’s presence, and I am ready to die for you.” He didn’t. ”

“ This was a startling state of things, but I soon found out that, as Colonel Jacquemet had used his men twice over on my arrival, so we used our politicians twice or thrice, politicians being happily scarce with us. Many posts were filled by one man, a plan which has its advantages as well as its drawbacks, the advantages predominating in a country where there are eleven hundred and sixty posts to fill and only thirteen hundred grown male inhabitants. ”

“ The night sentry duty at the palace was to be performed by the paid sergeants only, and the regiment was to parade but once a week. I could see that Colonel Jacquemet did not like it, but he bowed and left the room.
My next interview was with M. de Payan. He heartily concurred in my army reform, and said that no measure could be better for the country, educationally, than my plan of universal service of this limited character. When I came to talk of church reforms, however, M. de Payan was very cold and hard to fire. ”

“ I am not sure that as a mere investment they will not pay, and at all events I will do my best to make them do so; but as for your reforms of army, church, and education that you talk about, I beg your Highness to leave it all alone. The shares in the bank will fall ten per cent. when it is known. My shares here are like the funds at Paris, they hate liberty. The less liberty, the higher they stand. ”

“ I admire M. Gambetta, who is at this moment the first man in France, in my estimation, and the second political man in Europe. His figure will stand out in history, daubed as even it is with the mud that p. 20French politicians are ceaselessly flinging at each other.”
“M. Gambetta is, as your Serene Highness says, a man of extraordinary powers; but his father was a tradesman at Cahors, and is retired and lives at Nice, near your Serene Highness’s dominions.” ”

“ M. Blanc, whose appearance I described before, is well known to gambling Europe as a distinguished political economist, the keeper of the greatest “hell” on earth, and the loving father of a pair of pretty and accomplished daughters, living upon roulette, but himself innocent nowadays of all games but the mildest patience—of which he knows sixty kinds. At Monaco he is more than a public character: he is a benefactor and a prince. Attacks may be made upon p. ”

“ Père Pellico, to my astonishment, exclaimed, “But on the contrary; my opinions are not different from those of your Highness. They are the same. But as a democrat I do not venture, although I may be wrong, to force them upon the people.”
Here was a change of base.
“If I were your Highness,” he continued, “I would dismiss the Council of State and call an elected parliament to frame a constitution. That would be a more regular method of proceeding p. 53than limiting your own prerogative by the exercise of that very prerogative itself.” ”

“ I had no wish in my proposed reforms to reform out of existence my roulette revenue. I wished indeed to make good use of it; better use than my predecessors had done. I wanted to make of Monaco a Munich and a Dresden all in one. I would have a gallery of the greatest modern pictures—great ancient ones are not now to be obtained—a magnificent orchestra, a theatre of the first rank; art, in short, of all kind of the highest p. ”

“ On the contrary, so opposite are the conditions of England and of Monaco, that what would have succeeded in one would have failed in the other as a matter of course. In England you have a divided church; an increasing and active though still little numerous Catholic body ”

“ Public works were dealt with liberally by M. Blanc as a part of his “concession.” The ordinary revenue was derived from four sources, each contributing about an equal share. These were:—
p. 37I. The payment of the Government of France for half the value of the tobacco sold in the principality on behalf of the French régie.
II. The payment of France for customs collected by France in my ports.
III. The payment by the “Paris, Lyons, Méditerranée” Railway for right of passage.
IV. Our only local tax, one on all lands and houses changing hands. ”

“ There are sixty soldiers and carbineers, and there are one hundred and fifty unpaid consular and diplomatic representatives of Monaco abroad.”
“How many servants have I in all, including stable men?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Then you mean to say that there are three hundred and sixty-one persons employed under the crown for a population of thirteen hundred male inhabitants of full age?”
p. 35“Yes, Sir, and M. Blanc employs on his works and at the Casino eight hundred of the remainder.” ”

“ The Catholic schools were supported by the state. Mine were supported by myself. I went a step further, and I offered Father Pellico the alternatives of stopping the state contributions to all schools, or of continuing them, provided that lay p. 63teachers only were employed during the principal hours of the day. He coldly said that an agreement of the nature proposed by me would be contrary to his duty, and that if I chose to stop the state contributions to his schools the effect of my action would be to shake my throne without harming them. ”

“ I insisted on the vast improvement in the standard of secular education to be expected from the introduction of highly trained lay teachers, and said that the priests should be absolutely free to teach the children out of school hours. ”

“ During my four years at Cambridge I had rowed in First Trinity Second. I had heard at the Union Mr. Seeley defend the Commune, and oppose a motion declaring it innocent because it did not go on to express the “love and affection” with which that body was regarded by the University. ”

“ The administration should be decentralised. I rang and sent to the secretarial office for M. de Payan. I addressed him thus:—
“I gather from this tedious document that my principality of five thousand persons possesses every appliance and every excrescence of civilized government except a parliament. The perfection of bureaucracy and of red tape has been reached in a territory one mile broad and five miles long. No doubt centralisation is less hurtful than it is elsewhere in a country so small that it is p. ”

“ I moved the councils to the palace, and fitted up the public offices thus rendered vacant as my museum. I got M. Lucas at the Casino to improve his already admirable orchestra, to start a free school for instrumental music, and to play once a week in the town of Monaco instead of at Monte Carlo. I wrote to M. Gounod, whom I had the honour to count among my friends, to offer him the Louis Quinze rooms beyond the Chambre d’York, at the north-west corner of the Castle, with the most lovely view in both directions, p. ”

“ A proclamation was posted in the town the moment the sitting ended, declaring the joint regency of the dowager princess and of Baron Imberty. A telegram was sent to Princess Marie, who was staying with her child at Nice, informing her of her husband’s death and of the accession of her son, and begging that she would the next day confide the little Duc de Valentinois to the deputation of the councillors of state and of the officers of guards, who would reach Nice by train at noon. ”

“ M. de Payan escaped without a scratch.”
Prince of Monaco! Prince of Monaco. And I had seen Lafont in Rabagas! I was not a “milk-and-water Rabagas,” as Mr. Cole called Mr. Lowe, when all the papers reported him to have said “milk-and-water Rabelais,” and the Spectator p. 14mildly wondered at the strangeness of the comparison. No, but I was somewhat of a milk-and-water Prince of Monaco after Lafont. What distinction! What carriage! If the princes of the earth were only like the princes of the stage, there would be no republicans. But then, fortunately, they are not. ”

“ The only one of my reforms which was really popular was the national army, which afforded all the young married men in the principality a weekly holiday away from their wives. But Major Gasignol, who had a “soul above buttons,” used on parade when he was acting as adjutant to take an opportunity of reminding me of the days of glory when one of my ancestors, Grimaldi II., about the time of the Norman p. ”

“ So on for twenty and more pages, the last informing me of the names of the fishing boats that had come in and gone out, of the time of sunrise, and of the fact that a private in my guards had caught a cold in his head.
It was unbearable. These formalities should be suppressed at once. ”

“ Suppress all the journals, and they would rise five francs! Suppress the Assembly, and they would rise ten! Does your Serene Highness take part in pigeon-shooting?”
Making nothing of M. Blanc, except as to art matters, I returned slowly to the Castle, where I found the Council of State assembled to take the oaths.
I chatted with the members of the Council, p. 44but arranged to develope my plans in the first place to a few carefully-selected individuals. I fixed hours at which I would receive M. de Payan; Dr. Coulon; the curé of the cathedral; l’abbé Ramin; Père Pellico; and Colonel Jacquemet ”

“ Outside of them all you have people who believe two-thirds of them in the Bible pure and simple, but with prominence given in their minds to the communistic side of the New Testament, and one-third in nothing unless it is Mr. ”