372 VISCOUNT FERDINAND DE LESSEPS. 



caused his bust to be set up. A few years later he received the 

 insignia of Chevalier of the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic. 



lu 1848 he was summoned to Paris by Lamartiue, and ?ent as 

 Minister Plenipotentiary to Madrid. After about one year he was 

 withdrawn by Prince Napoleon, and sent in the same capacity to 

 Rome, at the time of Garibaldi's occupation, — ''a man," said M. 

 Odilou Barrot, " who enjoys our full confidence, whom we have put to 

 the test in very trying circumstances, and who has always served the 

 cause of liberty and humanity." 



M. de Lesseps has told the vexations of his Roman mission very 

 interestingly in his " Recollections," but with singular absence of 

 personal consciousness even in failure. He often defends himself, and 

 designs to do so ; but it is always an argument for the merit of the 

 work upon which he is engaged, rather tlian any declaration of his 

 own higher motives, except that he attributed all his successes to the 

 energy of " patriotism," — a word which seemed to embrace about all 

 the world. He seems to have used tliis word simply as the most 

 modest admissible expression for public duty, and the obligation to 

 serve in the great march. 



He learned in the foreign service to respect and sympathize with 

 earnest people everywhere, and formed enthusiastic friendships among 

 even those of radically different blood and radically different traditions. 

 To bring people together in some common interest and intent seemed 

 to him to be the cure for national prejudice, and he saw in foreign 

 trade this catholicon. In the administration of foreign affairs during 

 periods mostly peaceful, he acquired a pretty clear impression of those 

 larger principles of reciprocal trade that escape the merchant's more 

 short-sighted view. The consulates were for him not only schools of 

 commercial jurisprudence, but they enabled him to distinguish the 

 interest of the community from that of tlie individual. An obstruction 

 or difficulty in the path of trade may be of value to the few wlio know 

 or can afford the roundabout way ; but it is the mission of public 

 spirit to equalize opportunities as well as to shorten process. M. de 

 Lesseps, in his letter to Cobden (1854), advised those statesmen who 

 opposed the Suez Canal because it would reduce the number of ships 

 and men by shortening the route to India, to induce shipmasters to 

 take the Cape Horn route, and thus employ more men and more ships. 

 This retort is a pretty good illustration of his way of meeting disin- 

 genuous criticism by the reductio ad absurdum. 



In this earlier part of his life, following in the footprints of his 

 fathers, he often missed complete success, — although always in 



