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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