1830.] and their Salaries. 13 



300,000/. a year, which, at the rate of three per cent, for which money 

 can now be had, and which is nearly the rate of the government stock, 

 is equivalent to ten millions of pounds sterling ! 



That this enormous expenditure will not be curtailed for any repre- 

 sentation of ours, or any body else, we have the most positive conviction. 

 But we have a conviction equally decided that the whole business of 

 England, at any court in Europe, might be transacted at a fifth part 

 of the expenditure ; and that, for 2,000/. a year, men might be found 

 adequate to the utmost vigour of Lord Cowley, or Mr. Lamb, or Lord 

 Stuart, or Sir Robert Gordon ; nay, men who would transact the business 

 with ten times the activity, ability, and knowledge, of any one of them. 

 As to the supposition that such men would not be found to accept of the 

 situations at the lowered salaries, we must laugh, and the Duke of Wel- 

 lington must laugh as loudly as we ; for he well knows what a troop of 

 applicants wait on the steps of patronage, and how reluctantly men, 

 even of the highest ranks, would see an office of 2,000/. a year slipping 

 through their hands. 



The fact is, that the whole is an antiquated abuse, which cannot be 

 put an end to too soon. The whole , Diplomacy of England, and 

 of every other country, ought to be transacted by individuals little 

 above the rank or allowances of Consuls ; men not sent out to pro- 

 vide for them, but men accustomed to the country in which they are 

 to have their appointments; thoroughly acquainted with the habits, 

 the language, the prejudices, and the passions of the nation. The pre- 

 sent system sends out an incumbrance of the Foreign Office, who knows 

 no more of foreign life than he could learn from flirtation in the green- 

 room of the Opera ; or some dandy Peer who hangs heavy on the minis- 

 ter's hands, and who, if he but speak the w r orst French that ever 

 issued from the lips of man, and can fold a letter, looks on himself as 

 qualified for the conduct of affairs. The system is old, and its result has 

 been, that British Diplomacy has been a proverbial subject of bur- 

 lesque on the Continent ; that we have been admonished to our teeth, 

 by the fact, and that the- sneer has amounted to an established political 

 maxim, that whatever the English have won by the sword, they have 

 lost by the Ambassador. 



But if we are to be told that every other country sends Ambassadors 

 with high appointments to England, and that we must, in decorum, do the 

 same to them, the answer is obvious. It was the early custom of foreign 

 countries to send men of rank, because, from the general slavery and ig- 

 norance of those countries, men of rank were almost the only men of edu- 

 cation, except the priesthood; and because, from the aristocratic nature of 

 those governments, nobles were almost the only leaders of armies, minis- 

 ters of state, or directors of national business. The original Embassies, too, 

 were temporary, brief, and occupied with little more than the immediate 

 object of the mission. Large expenditure was a natural concomitant of 

 a rank equal to that of princes, and the briefness of their stay rendered 

 that expenditure a matter merely temporary. Thus when the Embassies 

 became permanent, the system of rank had been settled. England, at all 

 times a much dearer country than the Continent, required a large allow- 

 ance ; und the English government, partly not to be outdone in liberality, 

 gave its Ambassador, in the cheap country, the same sum which was 

 sufficient for the expenditure of the foreign minister in England. What 

 pride sanctioned, the spirit of patronage stimulated. And on this princi- 

 ple we have, at this hour, an English Ambassador in the Rue St. 

 Honore, with an income equivalent to three times the income of the 

 French Ambassador in Portland- Place. 



