Art. 2.-THE ETHICS OF PRUSSIAN STATECRAFT.

1. La Morale Politique du Grand Frédéric d'après sa Correspondance. By Commandant M. H. Weil. Paris: Plon, 1917.

2. La Guerre de Sept Ans. Histoire diplomatique et militaire. By Richard Waddington. Tome V. Paris: Firmin Didot, [1917].

3. Les Dessous du Congrès de Vienne, d'après les documents originaux des archives du Ministère Impérial et Royal de l'Intérieur à Vienne. By Commandant M. H. Weil. Paris: Payot, 1917.

'NOT every one can pursue the same policy,' said Frederick the Great to the Emperor Joseph II; that which does for me would not do for you; I have sometimes ventured on a political lie.' 'What's that?' asked the Emperor, laughing. 'It is,' replied the king, also laughing heartily, 'the invention of a piece of news which I knew would be discovered to be false within twenty-four hours, a matter of no consequence, since before then it had produced its effect.'

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The Prince de Ligne, who recorded this conversation, was by universal consent the most perfect type of the great gentleman of the 18th century, famous alike for his wit and for a charm and courtesy of address which was no mere surface polish, but a genuine expression of character. It is, then, the more significant that he discovered in Frederick's attitude nothing that was not admirable. As a faithful servant of the House of Habsburg, indeed, he deplored that the preponderance of the Empire and the closeness of Bohemia to Silesia interfered later with the sentiment which the great king had conceived for the young Emperor during this first interview; but there is a note of admiration in his epigrammatic account of Frederick's subsequent behaviour to him. You will remember, Sire,' he concluded his letter to the king of Poland, their correspondence on the subject of Bavaria, their compliments, the explanations of their intentions, explanations always given with politeness; and how from one politeness to another the king advanced into Bohemia.'*

*Correspondance du Prince de Ligne.' Ed. 1859, p. 57.

In his admiration for the politic qualities of Frederick the Prince de Ligne expressed the general sentiment of his age, an age-as Carlyle chose to describe it' of seething diplomacies and monstrous-wigged mendacities.' The age admired him, not for any originality in the cynicism of his pose, but because he was the most perfect exponent of its own philosophy, which represented a reaction from the bloodthirsty hypocrisies of the 17th century. It admired him, above all, for the same reason as that which led Carlyle to hold him up to admiration at a later day, namely because, accepting this 'Lapland-witch' world as he found it, he knew what he meant in it,' and, keeping his aim star-clear before him, earned the only title to its praise-success.

It is not to be supposed that there was anything essentially new in the moral standards of 18th-century politics, based as these were on the principle that in affairs of State 'interest ought to outweigh every other consideration, regardless of justice.' This Reason of State,' according to the learned Bielfeld, was no more than the maxim salus populi suprema lex, which had been adopted by all peoples ancient and modern; and, if we confound the interests of peoples with those of princes, we may admit that it had been ruthlessly applied ever since, in the 15th century, the conception of the State had begun to take shape. It was in the Italy of the Renaissance, which invented both the conception and the name, that 'statecraft' was first systematised; and its rules and maxims had begun to affect the practice of all Europe even before the publication, in 1515, of Machiavelli's 'Prince.' Nor was the immense influence of this wonderful book due to anything novel in its principles or want of principles; for Machiavelli merely held up the mirror to the world in which he lived, a world in which Might was Right, and the virtù which was esteemed the most admirable of human qualities had nothing in common with virtue.

This was the view of the great jurist Albericus Gentilis, according to whom the merit of Machiavelli was that he told the naked truth about princes-for the

* Count Ludwig von Cobenzl, quoted in Sorel, 'L'Europe et la Révolution française,' i, p. 19.

instruction of the peoples.* Bacon, on the other hand, praised Machiavelli's method without any reference to his motives. It is only men of large experience in affairs, he says, who ought to discuss them, and 'it is for this reason that we give thanks to Machiavelli and writers of this kind, who openly and without dissimulation set out what men are wont to do, not what they ought to do.'t Wicquefort, whose treatise on the ambassador and his functions became a text-book of 18th-century diplomacy, says the same thing in almost the same words: 'Machiavelli nearly everywhere says what princes do, and not what they ought to do.' +

The records of princes known to the generations of these writers certainly bear out the truth of this. The motto of Louis XI, 'qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare,' seemed in the 16th century to have become that of all sovereigns and their ministers. Before the 'Prince' was published, Thomas Cromwell had studied in Italy the politic arts which he devoted to the service of Henry VIII. Henry's Most Christian contemporary, Francis I, was no less ready than the new Defender of the Faith to subordinate religion to the Reason of State. As Voltaire put it, he 'burnt Lutherans in France and paid them in Germany'; and he used the Church patronage secured to him by the new Concordat with Rome to set up that vast system of diplomatic espionage and intrigue which, as the Secret du Roi, was to be developed by Louis XV with a passion that almost amounted to madness. Charles V was so completely Machiavellian that there were those who, regardless of dates, held that the author of the 'Prince' had taken him as his model. Catherine de Medici not only studied Machiavelli herself, but was believed to have prescribed the 'Prince' as the political text-book for the education of her sons, Charles IX and Henry III. Mary Queen of Scots, most fascinating of dissemblers, had learned in the same school. Queen Elizabeth, in diplomatic fence with James VI of Scotland, declared roundly that she could 'put to school your craftiest counsellor,' which was true even in that

*De legationibus libri tres.' Ed. 1585, Lib. iii, cap. ix, p. 110.

De augmentis scientiarum.' Ed. Louvain, 1652, p. 503.

L'ambassadeur et ses fonctions.' La Haye, 1680, i, p. 174.

age of crafty counsel. King James, in his turn, though he resented Sir Henry Wotton's famous pleasantry, piqued himself on a statecraft that was certainly not scrupulous, and he handed on the worst part of the Machiavellian tradition to his Stuart successors. In them it was reinforced by the contemporary influence of the Court of France, the political morals of which under the Bourbons were no improvement on those under the Valois. Cardinal Richelieu regarded the maxims of Machiavelli as 'indispensable,' and he certainly acted on them. Of his successor Mazarin, another churchman, it was said that as a statesman he had one fault-that he was always a rogue.* It was at his suggestion that Gabriel Naudé wrote his Considérations,' t of which Voltaire said that 'the maxims of the Parisian make those of the Florentine seem mild,' but which was none the less so highly thought of that an enlarged edition was published so late as 1752.

But, in the end, it was Louis XIV who, by the magnificence of his pose and the prestige of his conquests, gave a general vogue to the idea that the monarch, as the vicegerent of God, stands above the moral law. Henceforward every princeling in Europe applied to his own case the Grand Monarque's formula 'L'État c'est moi,' with all that this was held to involve. It involved, among other things, the confounding of personal ambition with the reason of State. Machiavelli had praised the instinct of acquisition as laudable in itself; the 17th century began to conceive aggrandisement as not only the right but the duty of princes, since the weaker are at the mercy of the stronger, and the only frontiers of a State are those necessary to its own conservation.' The principle which was to swell into the 'Weltmacht oder Untergang' of the Pan-Germans was already articulate-the principle that a State when it

Don Luis de Haro, quoted in the Anti-Machiavel,' ed. 1740, p. 119. + Considérations sur les Coups d'Etat.' The original edition (Paris, 1639) consisted of only twelve copies. It was reprinted at Rome in 1714. The dedication was to Cardinal De Bagni, a papal diplomatist, whose servant and librarian Naudé was. Naudé advocates political assassination as a justifiable coup d'état, and he is not afraid' to praise the Massacre of St Bartholomew as a master-stroke.

Céleste, Louis Machon, apologiste de Machiavel.' Quoted by Sorel, op. cit., i, p. 20.

ceases to expand begins to perish. The old political conception of unity and ordered interdependence, never effectively realised, had disappeared in the dreadful anarchy of the Thirty Years' War; and it was only a thinker here and there who, like Leibnitz, still valued as an ideal the legal fiction of the Holy Roman Empire. The Continent of Europe had, like the Italy of the 15th century, broken up into warring political groups, whose only hope of stability depended upon the balance of power among them. The analogy was, indeed, recognised; and the champions of the rival faiths of Christendom modelled their conduct on the example of atheistical' Italy. As to the general scope of their policy, that already foreshadowed the 18th century. Frederick William, the great Elector of Brandenburg, enlarged piously in his 'Political Testament' on 'the true virtues of a righteous ruler'; but in a sort of codicil to this testament he pointed out that the House of Austria was tottering to its fall, set out his own claims to the Duchy of Silesia, and developed in great detail a plan for seizing it by force the moment the death of the Emperor should be announced. Beneath the mask of the 17th-century piety we already recognise the features of 18th-century diplomacy-naked aggression veiled by genealogical pedantry, the struggle for the balance of power, the assertion of the raison d'état as the plea for all crimes.'†

In the vocabulary of the 18th century, 'philosophy' took the place of 'religion,' 'reason' that of 'faith,' and 'virtue' that of 'righteousness.' But, so far as political morals were concerned, the effect was much the same. Diplomacy, adjusting its language to the new fashion, merely invented a fresh jargon to disguise a realism offensive to the new canons of good taste; its exquisite politeness was but the reflexion of the elaborate manners of a society in which the slightest affront meant a challenge; and in the universal game of deception, of which the rules were perfectly understood, nobody was really deceived. The social prestige of sovereigns was exactly proportioned to their power; and power was

Ranke, 'Preussische Geschichte,' ed. 1878, i, ii, p. 518.

+ Temperley, Frederick the Great and Kaiser Joseph. An episode of War and Diplomacy in the 18th century,' 1915.