Powers and the European Concert of the nineteenth century were, in like manner, only secondary and conditional expedients—the second best, and not a bashful one, in the accepted absence, at a distance, of the best desirable.[1] The 'Concert of Europe' has often been made use of as a fiction to cloak the mutual jealousy and enmity of the Powers. If there was something of despair, there was also much that was robustly British and healthy in Canning's exclamation in 1823: 'Things are getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation for itself, and God for us all!' It is possible, as has been said,[2] to agree with both sentiments at the same time. There ceased to be any European law, such as was projected in the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, to which the weaker States could appeal in defence of right as against the might of the stronger. It was aptly observed by Prince Gortschakoff on the occasion of the Schleswig-Holstein dispute, 'qu'il n'y a plus d'Europe'.[3]
In the vigorous era of diplomacy, during the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, diplomatists, accredited to
- ↑ 'The system of preserving some equilibrium of power,—of preserving any state from becoming too great for her neighbours, is a system purely defensive, and directed towards the object of universal preservation. It is a system which provides for the security of all states by balancing the force and opposing the interests of great ones. The independence of nations is the end, the balance of power is only the means. To destroy independent nations, in order to strengthen the balance of power, is a most extravagant sacrifice of the end to the means. … In truth, the Balancing system is itself only a secondary guard of national independence. The paramount principle … is national spirit. … The Congress of Vienna seems, indeed, to have adopted every part of the French system, except that they have transferred the dictatorship of Europe from an individual to a triumvirate.'—Sir James Mackintosh, Speech on the Annexation of Genoa to the Kingdom of Sardinia, April 27, 1815, Miscellaneous Works (1851), 708–9.
- ↑ Bernard, Four Lectures on Diplomacy (1868), 96.
- ↑ Loftus, Diplomatic Reminiscences, I. ch. xxi.
