Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Francis Lieber to Senator Chares Sumner, April 10, 1863

New York, April 10,1863.

. . . I do not think that your remarks concerning foreign ministers having intercourse with the opposition apply to the case of Lord Lyons. Would or would not the premier of England have sent word to a monarch that his minister was no longer agreeable to his majesty, if this minister in London, a century ago, had held covert intercourse with Scottish sympathizers or adherents of the Stuarts? I believe that a minister must be very circumspect in his intercourse with the opposition, — as opposition, and in excited times. Depend upon it, Pitt would not have allowed a foreign minister to be closeted with Fox and Sheridan, discussing high politics of England, without making complaint. I give you an anecdote which will be interesting to the chairman of Foreign Affairs. President King tells me that when his father, Rufus King, was American Minister in London, he paid a visit to Paris after the Peace of Amiens, when Fox likewise went. Fox went to see Consul Bonaparte. The latter desired that King would have himself presented, or the chief officers of the consul told King that they would gladly present him. King, who was then engaged in making a treaty with England, declined, because he knew that Bonaparte was very disagreeable to George III., and he thought he had no right to do anything that could interfere with his relation to the British court or ministry. When he returned to England and went to court, George III. went up to him and said: “Mr. King, I am very much obliged to you; you have treated me like a gentleman, which is more than I can say of all my subjects.” I give the words exactly as President King gave them to me, and he says that he gave the words to me as exactly as he could remember them, the anecdote being in lively remembrance in the family. He thinks he can now repeat the very words in which his father told the affair immediately after his return from court, and that they are the ipsissima verba of George III.

My belief is that, had we to consider nothing but diplomatic propriety, Lord Lyons's case is one which not only would authorize the President, but ought to cause him to declare to the Queen of England that Lord Lyons “was no longer agreeable to the American Government.” This occurrence belongs to the large class of facts which show, and have shown for the last two hundred and fifty years, that monarchies always treat republics as incomplete governments, unless guns and bayonets and commercial advantages prevent them from doing so. You remember the Netherlands? Lord Palmerston would not have spoken of a puny kingkin as he did of us in the recent Alabama discussion. Do you believe that the course of England toward us at present would have been anything like what it has been, and continues to be, had we had a monarch, though there had been an Anne or a Louis XV, or a Philip on our throne? Unfortunately, I must add that it is a psychological phenomenon which is not restricted to monarchists. The insolence of the South would have presented itself as rank rebellion to the grossest mind, had we had a monarch, or a president for life. Man is a very coarse creature. I can never forget that I found in Crabbe's “Dictionary of Synonyms,” that “properly speaking rebellion cannot be committed in republics, because there is no monarch to rebel against.” What does my senator and publicist think of this? A girl, “not of an age at which any respectable millinery establishment would be intrusted to her,”as Lord Brougham expressed it, is a more striking name, figure, sign, to swear allegiance to, than a country, a constitution, and their history, or the great continuous society to which men belong, let them be ever so old or glorious. Five hundred years hence it may be somewhat different. For the present, it is true that, could you extinguish the whole royal family in England, but keep the nation ignorant of the fact, and rule England by a ministry and parliament in the name of Peter or John, Bull would be far warmer in his allegiance than he would prove to the State, or Old England, or Great Britain. Observe how degrading for our species the beggarly appointment of a king of Greece is, — a Danish collateral prince! Our race worships as yet the Daimio as much as the Japanese do. Though a perfect Roi fainéant, it is a Roi, — an entity, a thing, and therefore better than an idea, however noble,— gross creatures that we are! . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 331-3

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