matist in the conduct of great affairs between States. Cavour we may rank above Bismarck for success, if allowance be made for a slighter use of the expedients that are deemed questionable and that transform la diplomatie into la polissonnerie; and of Cavour—whose maxim was at times, as that of others similarly placed, ‘tout ou rien—per fas aut nefas’—it was said by his countryman, Manzoni, that he had both all the prudence and all the imprudence of the true statesman.
The first ambassadors—those of Biblical and Homeric times, and of times much later—were orators, men skilful of speech; and in those early days there were those, even as there are those to-day, who practise ‘open’ diplomacy, who have the bad manners actually to speak to the people in their own language, instead of merely to the King or his officers and in a language that the people understand not. When the King of Assyria sent Rabshakeh[1] from Lachish to Jerusalem, he sent with him a large army—an effective aid to the conduct of diplomacy, whether before or after the outbreak of hostilities, since speech is not at all seasons persuasion, nor persuasion always, of itself, force. To Rabshakeh there came forth ‘Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son, which was over the house, and Shebna, the scribe, and Joah, Asaph’s son, the recorder’.
‘Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian[2] language; for we understand it; and speak not to us in the Jews’ language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall. But Rabshakeh . . . stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you:
