BISMARCK
We were neither confident enough to expect that our representative, be he who he might, would succeed in shaking those strong convictions which have induced his holiness to adopt his recent attitude toward us and the world at large; nor could we, after the new dogmas promulgated by him, think of concluding a concordat with the possessor of supernatural wisdom and power. In point of fact, I am sorry to say, after the prerogative lately assumed by the pope, that no government which is not prepared to see the secular power annihilated and placed under spiritual jurisdiction, will consent to conclude a concordat.
All, therefore, we could have meant to effect by sending Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe to Rome was to let the pope know the real bearings of the case and to keep him au courant of events going on in this country. For reasons which the pope has failed to explain, he has declined to give to our choice that sanction which courtesy requires us to ask for. A refusal of this kind has not often been recorded in the annals of diplomacy. I have been nearly ten years at the head of the foreign office and twenty-one years in domestic employment, but I do not remember a single analogous case.
I do, indeed, recollect that the expediency of recalling an envoy or minister has been suggested by the power to which the objectionable repre-
brated penance of the German emperor, Henry IV., before Pope Gregory VII.
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