This is simply an indication of what is perhaps the most vexatious plague which afflicts American representatives in the leading European capitals,--a multitude of people, more or less worthy, pressing to be presented at court or to be invited to official functions. The whole matter has a ridiculous look, and has been used by sundry demagogues as a text upon which to orate against the diplomatic service and to arouse popular prejudice against it. But I think that a patriotic American may well take the ground that while there is so much snobbery shown by a certain sort of Americans abroad, it is not an unwise thing to have in each capital a man who in the intervals of his more important duties, can keep this struggling mass of folly from becoming a scandal and a byword throughout Europe. No one can know, until he has seen the inner workings of our diplomatic service, how much duty of this kind is quietly done by our representatives, and how many things are thus avoided which would tend to bring scorn upon our country and upon republican institutions.
CHAPTER XXX
AS MINISTER TO GERMANY--1879-1881
In the spring of 1879 I was a third time brought into the diplomatic service, and in a way which surprised me.
The President of the United States at that period was Mr.
Hayes of Ohio. I had met him once at Cornell University, and had an interesting conversation with him, but never any other communication, directly or indirectly. Great, then, was my astonishment when, upon the death of Bayard Taylor just at the beginning of his career as minister to Germany, there came to me an offer of the post thus made vacant.
My first duty after accepting it was to visit Washington and receive instructions. Calling upon the Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, and finding his rooms filled with people, I said: ``Mr. Secretary, you are evidently very busy; I can come at any other time you may name.''
Thereupon he answered: ``Come in, come in; there are just two rules at the State Department: one is that no business is ever done out of office hours; and the other is, that no business is ever done IN office hours.'' It was soon evident that this was a phrase to put me at ease, rather than an exact statement of fact; and, after my conference with him, several days were given to familiarizing myself with the correspondence of my immediate predecessors, and with the views of the department on questions then pending between the two countries.
Dining at the White House next day, I heard Mr. Evarts withstand the President on a question which has always interested me--the admission of cabinet ministers to take part in the debates of Congress. Mr. Hayes presented the case in favor of their admission cogently; but the Secretary of State overmatched his chief. This greatly pleased me; for I had been long convinced that next to the power given the Supreme Court, the best thing in the Constitution of the United States is that complete separation of the executive from the legislative power which prevents every Congressional session becoming a perpetual gladiatorial combat or, say, rather, a permanent game of foot-ball. Again and again I have heard European statesmen lament that their constitution-makers had adopted, in this respect, the British rather than the American system. What it is in France, with cabals organized to oust every new minister as soon as he is appointed, and to provide for a ``new deal'' from the first instant of an old one, with an average of one or two changes of ministry every year as a result, we all know;and, with the exception of the German parliament, Continental legislatures generally are just about as bad; indeed, in some respects the Italian parliament is worse.
The British system would have certainly excluded such admirable Secretaries of State as Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton Fish; possibly such as John Quincy Adams, Seward, and John Hay. In Great Britain, having been evolved in conformity with its environment, it is successful; but it is successful nowhere else. I have always looked back with great complacency upon such men as those above named in the State Department, and such as Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, Stanton, and Gage in other departments, sitting quietly in their offices, giving calm thought to government business, and allowing the heathen to rage at their own sweet will in both houses of Congress. Under the other system, our Republic might perhaps have become almost as delectable as Venezuela with its hundred and four revolutions in seventy years[13]
[13] See Lord Lansdowne's speech, December, 1902.
On the day following I dined with the Secretary of State, and found him in his usual pleasant mood. Noting on his dinner-service the words, ``Facta non verba,'' Icalled his attention to them as a singular motto for an eminent lawyer and orator; whereupon he said that, two old members of Congress dining with him recently, one of them asked the other what those words meant, to which the reply was given, ``They mean, `Victuals, not talk.' ''
On the way to my post, I stopped in London and was taken to various interesting places. At the house of my old friend and Yale classmate, George Washburn Smalley, I met a number of very interesting people, and among these was especially impressed by Mr. Meredith Townshend, whose knowledge of American affairs seemed amazingly extensive and preternaturally accurate. At the house of Sir William Harcourt I met Lord Ripon, about that time Viceroy of India, whose views on dealings with Orientals interested me much. At the Royal Institution an old acquaintance was renewed with Tyndall and Huxley;and during an evening with the eminent painter, Mr.
