Part 23

The despatches of Hardenberg, while the negotiations of Paris were in progress, bore the impress of this bent in Germany, and in fact of the whole of his German existence. From the time he first took part in public affairs, he particularly interested himself in every thing concerning the confederation; his influence alone had induced Prussia to enter into the system of neutrality and centralisation, which became the national law of Germany from the time of the French revolution; and now these same interests were placed under his supreme direction. Germany, which had so long been endangered by French principles, was desirous of reacting against that power; and everywhere declared and averred, that Alsace and Lorraine had been taken from her, and that they ought to be restored to their elder sister; conquest alone had given them to France, and a reverse of fortune might deprive her of them. Prince Hardenberg set forth these ideas, and supported them at the conference in Paris; he asserted that the Rhine was not natural to France, but was, on the contrary, offensive to Germany; Strasburg is a threatening position, and so would be Mayence; the Vosges and the Moselle were the limits he was desirous of assigning as a disgrace to us, and this desire proceeded less from his own mind than from the detestation Germany had vowed against us: it was the reaction of liberalism against Napoleon, extending almost to the partition of France. I have already described how M. de Richelieu preserved us from this great misfortune, by appealing to the Emperor Alexander, more disinterested in the question of partition, and who interposed in favour of our vanquished country.

Notwithstanding this, the sacrifices imposed upon us by the treaty of Paris were sufficiently heavy. Hardenberg was one of those who signed it, and the influence he had exerted gave him very great claims upon the confidence of his sovereign. He became, in the Prussian cabinet, the representative of the Anglo-German alliance; renewing the union between the Tory party and the German aristocracy, whose fundamental principle was a hatred and hostility towards France, dating as far back as the battle of Fontenoy, where the troops of the Duke of Cumberland were humbled before the fortune of Louis XV.

Although peace was now established, the task of the minister was not completed, and a most difficult mission remained to be accomplished. The strong national impulse given to Germany by the necessity of getting rid of Napoleon, had roused an energetic feeling in favour of liberty in every breast; charters and constitutions had been promised, and a sort of mystic unity in Germany had been spoken of; and how were these promises to be redeemed? This political question, which I have already mentioned as so delicate, I may almost say so terrible, for Prince Metternich, was still more so for the head of the Prussian government. In Austria the popular mind was neither so advanced, nor so philosophically organised, as in Prussia; the enthusiasm of the people was at bottom only an extreme devotion to the Emperor and the august house of Hapsburg; and all they requested in return, was the repeal of a few of their taxes, some local liberties, and a little public happiness. But in Prussia the desires were not so moderate; all the secret societies had visions of a state of things so strangely liberal, that Germany would have been nothing more than a republic under a king, if a free course had been allowed to their expectations. In order to arrive at a regular plan of government, Hardenberg was obliged, even in the face of his former promises, to break with the patriot party, whose efforts he had so strenuously seconded during the crisis. Blucher and Gneisenau, the chiefs of these young men, were anxious for a national representative system, and for that purpose they wished the secret societies to remain in full force; but Hardenberg demonstrated to them that the object of these associations no longer existed, and that as to the constitution of the States, the part designated as the administration must be separated from the political legislation. Under this point of view Hardenberg's theory is particularly worthy of remark. According to him legislation belongs to the king alone; and it was certainly a right no one would have disputed with Frederic, the founder of the kingdom; the administration only belongs to the provincial states, as also the power of voting taxes. He established this theory by many successive acts, drawn up under his influence; and it reached such a pitch, that a royal edict even put a stop to the secret societies, as dangerous and fatal. The king's language is paternal, and explanatory of his motives; such being the usual course pursued in Prussia, where reason and explanation are had recourse to with a thinking people.

This second portion of the life of Hardenberg presents exactly the reverse of the medal; and such, we may observe, is generally the case. The existence of political characters is almost invariably divided into two parts: the one, all action and advance; the other, devoted to the repression of the ideas they may have favoured in the days of their youth and strength. The secret societies occasioned alarm, and, perhaps, with some reason, at a time when the strangest theories had begun to appear in Germany, and the press was doing mischief. There had been a time when it was desirable to rouse Germany, and then every thing might be said in favour of Liberty, as it was by her means that every thing was to be done; but, after the crisis was over, the government would be exposed to sudden and unexpected accusations. In the Prussian universities it is permitted to discuss all questions, to examine into the most important points of theology and morals; but when they come to the application, when the principles of the government are actually attacked, there is liberty no longer. All discussion is formally forbidden which leads to the examination of the rights of the crown or the obedience of the subject, because the head of the state is essentially military, and his power is the work of the soldier.

Hardenberg, as minister of the king, took a part in all the acts which prepared the Germanic constitution; for Frederic William abandoned himself to his long experience, and he was prime minister in the fullest sense of the word. To mark how perfectly he was satisfied with his services, the king not only wrote to him with his own hand on his birthday, but he also, as an agreeable surprise, caused his portrait to be placed in the principal apartment of his hôtel.

By the act of the Germanic Confederation a close alliance took place between Prussia and Austria, in order that they might share the power equally between them; the one in the north, the other in the south; Prussia as the representative of the Protestant, and Austria of the Catholic system. The German unity was remodelled on that plan, and there was no longer any thing but a moral struggle between the two nations. Prussia was more advanced in her philosophical ideas, and Austria more paternal and provident in her domestic regulations.

The well-established distinction between the administration and the political system is particularly owing to the exertions of Hardenberg. The administration is careful, economical, and often dishonest; the political branch watchful and military, carefully restricting the developement of liberty within the most exact limits. After the termination of the great transactions of 1816, Hardenberg occupied himself only in applying his system of repression to the press, to the convocation and to the limited constitution of the States. At Troppau and Laybach he supported Prince Metternich's designs, and all the measures against the schools were taken in concert with Austria. The system of the German universities embraced two main points,--studious and intellectual ideas, and political influence. Hardenberg, a highly educated man, the friend of Humboldt, Gentz, and Kotzebue, and himself distinguished for his literary tastes, was willing to leave to philosophy the vast domain where intellect displays, and often loses itself; therefore the studies were not restricted in their developement, the universities were still left mistress of their doctrine, but they were obliged to resign their mysterious influence on secret societies, and they no longer formed acting and deliberating corps. Science, thought, and philosophy, remained as a grand and noble trinity in the domain of the learned, like the school divinity of the middle ages.

Political action being restrained, it was easier to bring the administration to perfection. The system of Prussian presidencies was only a collection of vast prefectures or local administrations, and every thing was regulated with so much economy, that the taxes are collected with a third less expense than in France.

In this long struggle of every-day labour, the life of Prince Hardenberg was worn out; and at Aix-la-Chapelle and Troppau it was evident that his strength was beginning to give way. Old age had come upon him, and one is astonished a war with parties should have been carried on so vigorously by a man who had reached the advanced age of threescore and ten. One can imagine the peaceful government of an aged man over a peaceful state; but the last four years of Hardenberg's life had been the most laborious, because he not only had to contend with external powers, but with his own opinions and ideas, hardly five years old. He had organised the secret societies, and he was now compelled to destroy them. It was not his feelings that had changed, but the necessities of Europe, with whom deliverance had passed into repression.

At the congress of Verona, Hardenberg was seen, for the last time, exerting all his strength to support the opinions of the Emperor Alexander and Metternich, upon the necessity of a war with Spain. His last public act was a journey to Rome, to sign a concordat between Prussia and the Holy See; and the reconciliation between a Protestant state and the head of the Catholic Church was certainly a most singular and novel proceeding. Whence did it proceed? and what was the cause of it? The excitement occasioned in Europe by the Holy Alliance had reunited the various and scattered sovereignties. Their ideas were confounded by the necessity of mutual defence, and the various shades of opinion were effaced by the urgent anxiety for the repression of the democratic principle; so that the Pope was restored by the English, Prussians, and Russians, who all belong to different communions. These political reconciliations had strengthened the religious feeling, and, at this time, the Czar was dreaming of an universal church, by the union of all the sects, which offers some explanation how Hardenberg might go to Rome to sign the concordat. We must not, however, forget that, owing to her new position, and her great acquisition of territory, nearly half her population were now Papists, all the Rhenish provinces surrounding the great cathedral of Cologne being of that profession, and it was necessary to secure the exercise of their religion to these people, but half-subject to their new master. Hardenberg had still sufficient strength to preside over this treaty; he then proceeded to Genoa in search of a milder climate, and had taken one of those delightful villas where Lord Byron was accustomed to enjoy the charms of a lovely country, when he was surprised by illness and death, at the age of seventy-two years.

It was a diplomatic career as long as that of Prince Talleyrand; but Prince Hardenberg had not, like him, preserved the polished manners and mode of expression which, in his youth, won the hearts of the republicans. His speech had become thick and heavy; he spoke French well, but with the German accent, that is slightly observable with Baron Humboldt. His language was very cold, and appeared the mirror of his feelings, which seldom permitted themselves to be excited by the imagination; he appeared to be even more a man of business than a statesman; and, in fact he has organised, not created, an administration which still exists, and gradually advances on the path marked out for it by him.

At present, Prussia has done nothing beyond enlarging this system, and at the same time stamping it more powerfully with a poetical and philosophical tendency; for the ideas and impressions of stormy and difficult times are not required in calmer seasons. Prussia appears likely to realise the problem of an intelligent people, highly advanced in philosophical knowledge, and yet capable of doing without what are called constitutional institutions. The idea that proposes to centralise and confound every thing, the visionary desire that would group Germany around the cathedral of Cologne, is grand and vast; but, in order this unity should triumph, would not the first necessary condition be, that there should be but one faith, one object of love, one system of belief? And how can Protestantism, which is so constantly subject to internal dissensions, create unity? To make Berlin the capital of science, to cause all the universities to converge towards that point, as to an Athens dreamed of by the philosophers, is a noble idea of the government; but, on the other hand, what means this license against Christianity? Though Frederic the Great received Atheists privately at his table, he would never have permitted atheism to be publicly taught; and an empire desirous of seeking for unity in science and philosophy must lay the first foundations in religion and Christian instruction. My opinion, then, is, that the Romish system can alone form a powerful bond among the people; otherwise, Cologne restored will only present a barren proof of the utter incapacity of Protestantism to renew the Catholic union of the arts and religion, as it existed during the middle ages.

COUNT NESSELRODE.

In the march of generations two distinct periods are observable: the one of ardent and vigorous activity, when quiet and lukewarmness are vexatious and annoying; the other of fatigue and exhaustion; and, when this reaction has taken place, it is necessary there should be at the head of affairs, wise and moderate ministers, perhaps even men who are themselves weary of too active and busy a life. The great European monarchies enjoy an incontestable advantage over freer but more stormy governments, in the perpetuity of their system and the lengthened career of their statesmen. Look at Austria and Russia during the last thirty-three years; they have been under the unvarying direction of two ministers, who have alone had the direction of affairs,--Prince Metternich and Count Nesselrode; and only the death of Prince Hardenberg has deprived Prussia of his services. This perpetuity of statesmen is attended with many advantages: it creates a constant succession of precedents in the cabinet; it permits the conception of a long series of measures, and allows one idea to be followed and worked out with perseverance. A young man is selected immediately he has finished his studies, and placed in the second or third rank among the _attachés_ of an embassy; he next becomes a minister plenipotentiary; and, if he rises and distinguishes himself, he obtains a post in the _chancellerie_; and when, owing to the confidence of his sovereign, or the force of circumstances, he has once been placed in a superior rank, he remains there to the end of his life. And what is the result?--a most serious attention to all transactions, and a most profound knowledge of business: the political situation, which was originally the great object of his ambition, now becomes the subject of his careful study, and, indeed, his whole existence is bound up in it.

England, always intelligent and clear-sighted, has striven to apply a remedy to the instability of men, by the stability of parties. In that country there are two schools opposed to each other, the Whigs and the Tories; and men from their earliest childhood are destined to belong to one, or other of these vast divisions. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge receive into their bosom this twofold generation of students, who apply themselves to the study of the peculiar ideas which divide these shades of parliamentary opinion, and proceed without hesitation on the path they have chosen for themselves; and, on quitting the university, they support in parliament the opinions in which they have been educated, or which they have adopted. Suppose a young man to be a Tory, if the Tories are in power he obtains an appointment as one of the under-secretaries of state, and only resigns it when his party go out of office; should he be a Whig, and the Whigs are at the head of affairs, the same thing takes place: every thing is fixed, and proceeds according to rule in the government; by that means alone it is known whence people come, and they are equally well acquainted with the course they are likely to take.

In bringing together the names of Metternich, Nesselrode, and Hardenberg, I do not pretend to draw an absolute parallel between them; on the contrary, there exists a strong and well-defined difference. Metternich and Hardenberg always expressed their own ideas, and were the representatives of a system, which they followed with the utmost perseverance, and applied through all the changeful course of events that occurred in the two great kingdoms committed to their care. They were statesmen who had taken office with fixed principles, and their whole life was employed in their developement. For instance, the self-imposed object of Prince Hardenberg's foreign policy, was the increase of the national influence of Prussia against Napoleon; and of his internal government, the reconstruction of the States and of the Prussian citizen classes. Prince Metternich, in the foreign relations of the cabinet of Vienna, especially strove to establish his system of armed mediation, and moral influence produced by means of vast military establishments; while, to speak the truth, Count Nesselrode has been nothing more than the upright and intelligent executor of the will of his sovereign: he was the reflected image of Alexander, the faithful hand which undertook the execution of his wishes, even of those where his personal feelings were most concerned. The position of Nesselrode with regard to the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas, might be compared to that of the _ministres secrétaires d'état_ under Napoleon; the influence he exercises results from his long experience, and from the circumstance of his every-day life being passed in the midst of politics, which are thus interwoven with all his habits; and this in itself confers a great degree of power.

Charles Albert, count Nesselrode, was born at Lisbon in 1770, of a noble family of German extraction. His father was minister plenipotentiary in Portugal under Catherine II., and some traditions exist concerning the cause of this species of exile; there are, however, always some of these rather sneering, and random legends, current in the _corps diplomatique_, as if for the purpose of unbending the brow of official gravity.

Count Nesselrode was still very young at the termination of the reign of Catherine,--that extraordinary woman, whose character forms so curious a study, because it perfectly represents the state of civilisation in Russia; whose political ideas were so masculine, and by whom the system of Peter the Great had been constantly followed up and advanced. She appeared to effect an alteration in the influence of the cabinet of St. Petersburg, which had hitherto been purely oriental, and to render it more German and central; being the first step towards the predominance in Southern Europe, which was afterwards the ambition of her grandson Alexander. Peter the Great had pointed to Constantinople; but Catherine considered Warsaw the most favourable point, as a position which might enable the Russian power, at a later period, to assume in the south the importance which her literary correspondence, and political despatches were already preparing. It was solely with this view that she encouraged the spirit of the eighteenth century, and caressed D'Alembert and Diderot, journalists who were devoted to her interests. When Voltaire, with his expression of flattering vanity, wrote to Catherine that light came from the north, he foretold the consummate ability of the Czarina, which prompted her to make herself talked of at any price; "because," as she cleverly observed, "by dint of exalting the Russian name, it will at last be made some account of in France and in England; we shall no longer be reckoned among the barbarians; we shall be talked of at Versailles, in London, and at Madrid; and this, in politics, is indispensable, if we are desirous of obtaining any ascendancy."

The leading principle of the cabinet of St. Petersburg for the last hundred years, has been the agglomeration of Poland, and the expulsion of the Turks, whom they are desirous of driving back as far as the Black Sea. Poland has fallen; nor was it in the power of any government to prevent the ruin of that fated country. A strong antipathy, a deep, unmeasured hatred, exists between the Poles and Russians; they are two races ready to fall upon each other; two giants, armed at all points, constantly contending during six centuries. The most unpopular of all proceedings at Moscow, at Kalouga, at Novogorod, and in the old castles of the ancient nobility, was the erection of Poland into an independent kingdom, organised by Alexander,[47] which occasioned murmurs of dissatisfaction on every side. The other object of Russia, the fall of Turkey, will also take place sooner or later; it cannot be prevented, and, if the government will not undertake it, the people will do it themselves. Saint Sophia is required to crown the patriarchate of the Greek Church. Of this Europe is well aware; she delays the explosion until the proper time has arrived, and determines the various shares beforehand: but to prevent it altogether is beyond her power. And some day we shall hear that the Russians, with the cross as their banner, have marched to the succour of their brethren, and that another empire of Constantine has arisen on the Bosphorus. It is so written in the book of fate!

[47] _Vide_ art. Pozzo di Borgo.