Page images
PDF
EPUB

If, then, the Court at the Hague shall take what I consider a reasonable view of this matter, the treaty may be said to be closed, for whatever Humboldt thinks fit to urge in Conference, he privately states himself to have no doubt of being borne out by his own Government. You see we have made gigantic strides towards the completion of this business since my last. Both parties have, indeed, evinced an anxious desire to approach each other; and latterly the effect of this has been the leaving only one point of difference between them, and this of such a nature that, if the others shall be agreed to at the Hague, there can, as I should conceive, be but little difficulty in their yielding to the Prussian proposal upon this particular point. In my opinion, then, on the return, and that a speedy one, of the courier, we shall be called upon to sign. You will, therefore, see the necessity, if they shall not already have been forwarded, of sending my full powers to me without the least delay.

From Munich I have heard nothing since my last, and, having no messenger either on this or that station, I can scarcely expect to hear but imperfectly through others. Humboldt, however, acquaints me he has letters down to and dated the 22nd. In consequence of Montgelas' note, and in order, if possible, to make something of the last paragraph of it, the plenipotentiaries there had sought a conference with Montgelas. This had, in the first instance, been assented to, but afterwards postponed upon the plea of taking the King's previous orders; but, up to the 22nd, these orders had not been received. Wacquant has received despatches from Prince Metternich, (who, it appears, is confined with the ophthalmia at Milan) by which the General is directed to adhere to the Paris Protocol.

This is all the intelligence that Humboldt gives from his letters, and, I must confess, I can make but little of it. What is to be done, under the direction of adhering to the Protocol, further than what ought from the first to have been done

without it, viz., ascertaining whether the Court of Bavaria would or would not treat npon the principle of renounced contiguity, I am ignorant.

Adieu! this Bavarian question keeps all Germany in suspense. The Diet cannot open till it shall have been disposed of.

Yours most affectionately,

CLANCARTY.

Lord Clancarty to Lord Castlereagh.

Frankfort sur Maine, January 28, 1816.

My dear Lord-I wrote to you yesterday, intending to have sent my letter by a courier despatched by M. de Gagern to the Hague, and to beg of James thence to forward it. But Lamb's despatches, which subsequently reached me, and the opportune arrival of the Messenger Vick from Berlin, on his way to Paris, induced me to recall my letter from M. de Gagern, and to send it with Lamb's and my despatches, viá Paris, to England.

I have nothing to add to what I have said on the Netherlands' Treaty: this matter, brought as it is to a point, and that of Bavaria being hung up quant à nous, for at least a fortnight, by the Prince Royal's appeal to the Emperor, here we are for that space of time perfect idlers.

I tremble at opening the indemnities proposed by the Paris Protocol to Bavaria; great apprehensions will result from such a step, and it will involve such an unsettlement and resettlement of territory as will reflect upon the proceedings at Vienna, place the term of final arrangement probably still at some distance, and hazard our acquiring in style what we shall almost be in fact-a second Congress. I greatly fear Metternich's incaution will involve us in all this.

The following extract of a letter of the 25th inst., from Carlsruhe, may be interesting to you. I received it yesterday from Wessenberg :

"M. de Lavalette est arrivé le 17 Janvier, sous le nom d'un Colonel Anglais, (Lossack) à Manheim. Il en est reparti deux jours après, a passé par Stutgard, et s'est acheminé paisiblement vers Munich. Le Gouvernement Badois en a reçu l'avis hier l'après-midi de Manheim. Il est cependant étonnant que la France n'ait fait aucune démarche près du Gouvernement d'ici au sujet de l'arrestation de Lavalette dans le cas qu'il vint se refugier dans le grand-duché. Elle n'a pas même trouvé bon d'envoyer son signalement dans notre contrée."

The following is an extract of Lamb's note to me-I know not that it is of any value, but send it, lest it should be:"There seems to be an extremely active communication between Austria and Prussia. A courier direct for Berlin passed through here two nights ago: I believe another had passed about a week before. I have not mentioned this to Lord Castlereagh—do, if you think it worth while." Although I scarcely think it worth while, you have the fact, and the words in which it has been conveyed. From everything which appears here, these two Courts are on the best possible footing-and, in my mind, so much the better.

Yours, my dear lord, most affectionately,

CLANCARTY.

Lord Clancarty to the Hon. F. Lamb.

Frankfort sur Maine, January, 1816. My dear Lamb-I have received your long letter of the 10th instant, with its long reasoning, which, for both our sakes, I could either have wished to have been more sound, or, if sound, that my understanding had been sufficiently acute to comprehend its force.

In the first place, I send you a copy of the Protocol of the 17th of November, in support of my former assertion respecting the origin of General Wacquant's mission. And now to your dissertation upon Rechberg's note, which I had not failed to read with my best attention, before I addressed you on the

4th instant, and have, since the receipt of yours, followed the advice therein contained, and have again gone over it most attentively. The result has been my confirmed conviction that, as far forth as he was qualified, M. de Rechberg intended to convey the renunciation of his Court of the principle of contiguity that the document will bear no other construction —that it either means this or it means nothing—and that, out of Munich, it would be difficult, nay, I might venture to say impossible, to find any person who would otherwise interpret it. We are then at direct issue upon a point, now, perhaps, of little importance, but which, properly understood at the commencement, ought, in my mind, to have led to a very different course from that which has been adopted by the Austrian negociator. You seem, however, still to attach such consequence to this part of the subject, inasmuch as the reasoning upon it occupies nearly two sheets of your letter, that I shall endeavour to lay before you the manner in which my conclusions, so totally at variance with yours, have been drawn.

I cannot admit your distinction as applicable to the present case between the words contiguity and arrondissement. Strictly speaking, nothing in surface can be said to be rond but a circle; but, as no country (with the exception, I believe, of one mentioned in Gulliver's Travels) was ever a complete circle, so different States are said to be more or less arrondis, as they approach nearer to or are further removed from a compact or circular form. I have always conceived, then, that a country may properly be styled arrondi (tant bien que mal, assuredly) whenever it can be circumscribed by a single or uninterrupted line; and this I take to be also the exact definition of contiguity. Under any other supposition, you, with your distinction between contiguité and arrondissement, would perhaps be puzzled to mark by any intelligible rule at what precise point arrondissement ceases, and simple contiguité

commences.

By renouncing the principle of arrondissement, therefore, I hold that M. de Rechberg renounced the principle of contiguity. His note either means this, or it means nothing. However guarded, he in terms seeks compensation "par des convenances statisques et financières" (not a word of contiguity, you will remark) for the disadvantage "de renoncer à un arrondissement qui a été tant de fois garanti." Now where, let me ask you, who seem to assert the fact, has arrondissement been ever guaranteed to Bavaria in any other sense, or by any other expression than that of contiguité? I have not, it is true, the entire of the treaties of Ried and the Convention of Paris with me; but I have copies of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th additional Articles of the former, of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 6th Articles, and of the 1st and 3rd additional Articles of the Convention of Paris, copies of which go herewith; and these, I conclude, contain all that has reference to the case of Bavaria upon this subject, because they were selected by M. de Rechberg himself in support of his reasoning on these very points, presented in the shape of a confidential Memoir to Lord Castlereagh on the 28th of October last. Although in these the stipulation of Bavaria to cede these very countries now sought from her is positive, they do not in any part contain a single mention, still less a guarantee, of "arrondissement," renounced in M. de Rechberg's note of the 11th of November. The latter relinquishes nothing at all; and, with all its pompous detail of the sacrifice it takes upon itself to conceive its Court ready to make, means nothing. Now, I believe it is a universal rule of construing the meaning of every instrument, so to construe it, ut res magis valeat quam pereat; and consequently as, in any other sense, these highflown expressions of surprise would mean nothing, the renunciation of M. de Rechberg of the principle of "arrondissement" must be taken to be his renunciation of" contiguité," and nothing else. But this is not all. What, let me ask, was the ground and foundation of M. de Rechberg's note? to what

« PreviousContinue »