BOOKS.
TALLEYRAND.*
Ow the crowded page of history, which records the names of those who held the fate of modern Europe in their bands, when France was torn by civil feuds and bound by foreign conquests, the name of Talleyrand stands out the signal of an intellectual giant, whose intellect never led him astray. But that intellect has never been able to gain for his character or his actions the approbation of his critics. Perhaps it has been the cause of their blame; certainly it is the father of their bewilderment. Carlyle pronounced Talleyrand "one of the strangest things ever seen or like to be seen, an enigma for future ages." Frederic Masson dubbed him with the name of that enigma of forgotten times, "le Sphinx." And yet this mystification has never restrained his biographers, from the time he lived till Dr. Holland Rose and Lady Blennerhassett wrote, from blaming what they only partly understood. But now, seventy years after Talleyrand's death, Mr. McCabe, strong in the faith that tout comprendre eat tout par- dormer, has set out to solve the enigma, and in the solu- tion to redeem his subject's reputation. That his task was difficult Mr. McCabe doubtless would not deny; that he has been to some extent successful in this task is high praise, and nothing but the highest praise is due to his masterly and fascinating defence. Because his task was difficult, Mr. McCabe appears rather as the barrister pleading for, than as the Judge delivering, a verdict. Because the Devil's advocate always starts with the advantage of possessing a bad case, Talleyrand's defender calls forth all our chivalrous sympathy ; he seems to weave some dangerous charm about his reader's judgment; and we are in danger of tasting the lotus, and are tempted to forget that right and wrong are not interchangeable terms. Talleyrand replied to an inquisitive lady, when she inquired how his affairs progressed, "As you eee. Madam"; and the lady squinted. So Mr. McCabe pleads that if Talleyrand's earlier biographers should inquire bow we thought they had painted him, we should reply that they had painted him as they saw, with the mental reservation that their mind suffered from a distorted vision.
In the days when England scorned France all Frenchmen, in the opinion of the ordinary Englishman, were accounted heirs in possession, of vice, venality, and treachery ; but report and his biographers made Talleyrand the most vicious, the most venal, and the most treacherous of them all. Mr. McCabe writes: "He was not licentious, nor corrupt, nor vindictive, nor treacherous, nor devoid of idealism. He was humane, generous, affectionate, a sincere patriot, a lover of justice and peace." Yet he records himself that Talleyrand gambled, kept mistresses, received many million francs from foreign Powers, and served many Governments, made many men Kings, and many Kings citizens and refugees. Let us consider the process by which Mr. McCabe etas to make his opinions compatible with his facts. "U we could succeed," he tells us, "in putting ourselves in the frame of mind of a man who bad lived in that time, we should be in a position to pass moral judgment on him." The society in which Talleyrand moved was only less corrupt in morals than that which preceded the fall of Rome. He lived in a circle of vice, and in that circle he is not to be accounted vicious. Yet history in passing judgment 'must take an impartial stand- point, and judge not by the standard of one circle, but by the standards of all time ; and if it allows scene mitigation of the charge of vice in consideration of the force of eircum. stances, still Talleyrand will not be acquitted. "He was not corrupt," urges Mr. McCabe ; yet his venality has been a charge repeated by every critic of this great Foreign Minister. Every evil lends itself to two modes of treatment; it may be considered either from the subjective or the objective point of view. The former is the view that the moralist must take, where the evil itself is considered apart from its material
• Toileyrolui. By Joseph McCabe. Loudon Hutchinson snit Co. CM. meta effects. But the historian is naturally inclined to look at the results that spring from the particular instance in which be is interested. Therefore when Mr. McCabe defends Talley- rand on the ground that although be took huge sums, he never sold the interest of his country, the moralist is not satisfied. Yet history, though it judges vice by the standard of all time, cannot be held altogether blameworthy if it judges such things as the giving and taking of gifts by customs preva- lent at the time of those transactions. That this giving of gifts to Ministers was customary at that time the payments to Metternich and Nesselrode at Vienna, to Haugwitz after the battle of Austerlitz, and to Sieyes (who accused Talleyrand, in the scandal caused by the demands from the American Envoys, of "trafficking with his honour," and received four hundred thousand francs for making Napoleon First Consul) are sufficient proof. That Talleyrand was not vindictive, surrounded as he was by enemies—from whom no one who had his caustic wit without his success, or his unending success without his wit, could be entirely free—is a mild statement of the tolerance of this cynic. Were we of the mind of many of his critics, we would say that a man who had joined so many parties could not but be tolerant of his colleagues of yesterday—or of to-morrow. But this attitude is not that of a judicial temperament ; that it is as untrue as it is unfair one instance of the absence of vindictive feeling in him will prove. At Paris in 1791 priests who refused to take the oath of the new civil Constitution were threatened; and Talleyrand, who no more than six weeks before this time had been him- self in danger from these very priests, induced the Depart- ment, at the risk of his own popularity, to pass a measure for their protection. It is, perhaps, this spirit of tolerance that has brought him much of his ill name. For he was tolerant not only of parties, but of individuals ; not only of good, but of evil. This toleration even of ill deeds is exemplified by his behaviour at the time when the Dec d'Enghien was murdered by Napoleon; and it was the cause of the charge of complicity in that murder levelled against him by his critics. Mr. McCabe frees him in a very able manner from the charge of actual participation in it; but Talleyrand himself pleads guilty of being an accomplice after the fact when, defending himself for keeping office, he said : "Si comma vous le dites Bonaparte s'est rendu coupable d'un crime, cc n'est pas une raison pour qua je me rende coupable d'une faute." Universal toleration does not redound to a statesman's 'credit.
"He was not treacherous," says Mr. McCabe; and treachery is the most serious charge that is or could be urged against the Foreign Minister of many Governments. "Re betrayed his Church," say his detractors. Talleyrand, before he was France's greatest diplomatist, was one of Louis XVI.'s Bishops; and the training that made him a cleric and not a soldier made him Napoleon's Foreign Minister: and not one Of his Marshals. Much importance has been attributed to the influence of Byron's lameness and the treatment which the poet received from his mother on his future career. The same physical disablement and his mother's neglect had even greater influence on Talleyrand. He was made for Courts, and not for Cathedrals ; his genius fitted him for the Council chamber rather than the pulpit; and so with no mother to foster a love of religion or to restrain his wild desires, it is little matter for wonder that, when he was forced into the Church through his physical unfitness for the Army, Talleyrand chose the company of Lomenie de Menne and Dillon, and occupied in the company of these Archbishops of Toulouse and Narbonne the box reserved pour is elerge un pen disaipe at the notorious Madame de Montesson's private theatre. It was in the temporal, if not in the spiritual, aide of Church affairs that the Abbe found scope for his talents and earned the bishopric of Autun. This bishopric gave him his chance in the wider field of national politics, and he was not slow to sink the Bishop in the politician. On October 10th, 1789, he advocated that the property of the Church should be called in to remedy the bankruptcy of the nation. This is the great betrayal that led to all his difficulties with the Church; and Mr. McCabe defends him on the plea that he was a Bishop in spite of himself ; and no great exculpation is necessary for the politician who urged that the Church, whose property was worth two thousand one hundred million livree, and whose
minor clergy were underpaid, should come to the financial assistance of the country which had given her the right to that property. Talleyrand once said that, provided be T. emamed French, be was prepared for anything. He loved his country more than his Church; and to help France he betrayed Rome. He was beyond denial hypo- critical in his assumption of clerical honours, he was hypo- critical in his dealings with his diocese; but if this was treachery, it was treachery that was in part compensated by loyalty. The Pope soon suspended him, the Bishop d'Autun removed his apron, and the agnostic was ready to be Citizen Talleyrand or Prince. Yet, his critics go on to say, as he betrayed his Church, so he proceeded to the betrayal of the
various Governments that ruled France,—and, it may be added, for the same reason, the good of France. A story very characteristic of the attitude his detractors have adopted is told of him at the time of the troubles of 1830. When the first clarion sounded its declaration of discontent, he is said to have turned to his man with the words "Hark ! we triumph"; and when the man asked who triumphed, be replied: "Hush ! I will tell you to-morrow." But this servant of many rulers was the servant of one country. "The King knows," he once said, "that I am a partisan of no dynasty. Since the days of Louis XVI. I have served all Governments out of my attach- ment to my country. I have abandoned them the moment they sacrificed the interests of France to personal interests." He believed neither in the autocracy of one nor in the despotism of democracy. His ideal was a limited Monarchy, and England was his pattern. To this ideal he was loyal, but loyal to no Government. He was loyal to Napoleon only as far as he thought the aims of Napoleon coincident with the interests of France. He did not hesitate to enter into intrigues with Russia and Austria when he thought Napoleon's aims were not for the good of France. He refused to be his servant openly in 1807 when he found that by intrigue be could no longer hold Napoleon's giant ambition in leash; and his resignation is sufficient evidence of his sincerity. He spent his life in a vain attempt to find some one who would rule France as be thought France should be ruled. He was the mechanic who pumped oil on the racing. car of France, and many drivers steered that car; yet when they drove too near a precipice and tumbled headlong, still Talleyrand was ready to pump oil for his successor as long as he could hope that the steering-wheel, either voluntarily or by his instigation, would be set towards the goal of French prosperity and universal peace,—the destiny which, we are asked to believe, he ever had before his eyes. Such were the political ideals of this man. He was a loyal servant of France, but not of the rulers of France :— " True patriot he, for be it understood
He sold her rulers, for his country's good ! "
And yet this patriot, "though his head"—as was well said of Shakespeare—" was in the clouds, had his feet firmly fixed on earth." The man who would betray his King for the needs of France would take money for that betrayal for his own needs. If he was an idealist in ultimates, he was a cynic in action. And because contemporaries must judge by small actions rather than by broad ideals, which only time can make clear, if their
holder is silent, Talleyrand has been condemned almost universally, till now Mr. McCabe asserts that not by ex- tenuating his faults, but by understanding all, we can forgive nearly all, and by explaining all we can justly demand the forgiveness of that person of whom Talleyrand said : "It y a quelqu'un qui a plus d'esprit que Voltaire, plus d'esprit que Bonaparte, plus d'esprit que chacun des ministres passes, presents, h venir ; c'est tout le monde." We have stated as fairly and as sympathetically as we could
Mr. McCabe's view of Talleyrand, but it is not our view. When all is said and done, when all the special pleas have been urged, all the motions in arrest of judgment made, all the circum- stances in mitigation set forth, and all the reasons given why the final judgment should be one of acquittal, or at most of disapproval, the fact remains that there is an absolute, not a relative, difference between right and wrong. That Talleyrand ignored this difference is plain. We cannot refrain from calling him a bad man because an ingenious advocate shows us so clearly the steps by which be was led into wrongdoing. Bad deeds do not change their nature by being so clearly illuminated that we see every stage in the process of evil, and realise how only a little honesty of heart was wanted to
transform them into good. Nor can we agree with Mr. McCabe that "the only rational ground of censure is that he kept so entirely together his personal interest and the high cause of France and humanity that he served through all these vicissitudes of his country."
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