Richelieu preferred firmness and patience in a negotiator to any other
qualities. Suppleness, no doubt, often supplies the place of patience,
and the man who can tack and veer was formerly not without his value;
but the time for using these small wares has now passed for ever. They
have been worn threadbare by a politician of our day, and are foul
in the nostrils of every civilized nation. In the middle ages, and
in Italian courts, such tricks may have been necessary, but they are
unsuitable to constitutional states. A pope of Rome is recorded to have
said of the Abbe Polignac:--"This young man always appears to be of my
opinion at first, but at the end of the conversation, I find I am of
his." Such an "artful dodge" and dissembler would be disrelished now
by all pure and honest men. An attempt has been made by some French
writers to attribute the science of negotiation to Mazarin. But the
science existed before the time of the wily cardinal, or even of that
good King Dagobert who, according to the old rhyme, "_Mit sa culotte
a l'envers_;" and France, and other modern countries, as well as Egypt,
Greece, and Rome, had produced great negotiators.
On the 14th of August parliament was prorogued, and soon after the
ministry showed renewed activity in the work of diplomacy, without
any advantage to the nation. The policy of the prorogation was much
arraigned by the public; but the evening on which it took place tidings
arrived of the bombardment of Sweaborg, which drew away the public
attention to a real and brilliant, although partial, triumph.
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