Of the Foreign Office,in its reformed state,we have much to say.Abolition of imaginary work,and replacement of it by real,is on all hands understood to be very urgent there.Large needless expenditures of money,immeasurable ditto of hypocrisy and grimace;embassies,protocols,worlds of extinct traditions,empty pedantries,foul cobwebs:--but we will by means apply the "live coal"of our witty friend;the Foreign Office will repent,and be driven to suicide!A truer time will come for the Continental Nations too:Authorities based on truth,and on the silent or spoken Worship of Human leness,will again get themselves established there;all Sham-Authorities,and consequent Real-Anarchies based on universal suffrage and the Gospel according to George Sand,being put away;and le action,heroic new-developments of human faculty and industry,and blessed fruit as of Paradise getting itself conquered from the waste battle-field of the chaotic elements,will once more,there as here,begin to show themselves.
When the Continental Nations have once got to the bottom of their Augean Stable,and begun to have real enterprises based on the eternal facts again,our Foreign Office may again have extensive concerns with them.And at all times,and even ,there will remain the question to be sincerely put and wisely answered,What essential concern has the British Nation with them and their enterprises?Any concern at all,except that of handsomely keeping apart from them?If so,what are the methods of best managing it?--At present,as was said,while Red Republic but clashes with foul Bureaucracy;and Nations,sunk in blind ignavia,demand a universal-suffrage Parliament to heal their wretchedness;and wild Anarchy and Phallus-Worship struggle with Sham-Kingship and extinct or galvanized Catholicism;and in the Cave of the Winds all manner of rotten waifs and wrecks are hurled against each other,--our English interest in the controversy,however huge said controversy grow,is quite trifling;we have only in a handsome manner to say to it:
"Tumble and rage along,ye rotten waifs and wrecks;clash and collide as seems fittest to you;and smite each other into annihilation at your own good pleasure.In that huge conflict,dismal but unavoidable,we,thanks to our heroic ancestors,having got so far ahead of you,have interest at all.Our decided ion is,the dead ought to bury their dead in such a case:and so we have the ho to be,with distinguished consideration,your entirely devoted,--FLIMNAP,SEC.FOREIGNDEPARTMENT."--I really think Flimnap,till truer times come,ought to treat much of his work in this way:cautious to give offence to his neighbors;resolute to concern himself in any of their self-annihilating operations whatsoever.
Foreign wars are sometimes unavoidable.We ourselves,in the course of natural merchandising and laudable business,have and then got into ambiguous situations;into quarrels which needed to be settled,and without fighting would settle.
Sugar Islands,Spice Islands,Indias,Canadas,these,by the real decree of Heaven,were ours;and ody would or could believe it,till it was tried by can law,and so proved.Such cases happen.In former times especially,owing very much to want of intercourse and to the consequent mutual igance,there did occur misunderstandings:and therefrom many foreign wars,some of them by means unnecessary.With China,or some distant country,too unintelligent of us and too unintelligible to us,there still sometimes rises necessary occasion for a war.
Nevertheless wars--misunderstandings that get to the length of arguing themselves out by sword and can--have,in these late generations of improved intercourse,been palpably becoming less and less necessary;have in a manner become superfluous,if we had a little wisdom,and our Foreign Office on a good footing.
Of European wars I really hardly remember any,since Oliver Cromwell's last Protestant or Liberation war with Popish antichristian Spain some two hundred years ago,to which I for my own part could have contributed my life with any heartiness,or in fact would have subscribed money itself to any considerable amount.Dutch William,a man of some heroism,did indeed get into troubles with Louis Fourteenth;and there rested still some shadow of Protestant Interest,and question of National and individual Independence,over those wide controversies;a little money and human enthusiasm was still due to Dutch William.
Illustrious Chatham also,to speak of his Manilla ransoms and the like,did one thing:assisted Fritz of Prussia,a brave man and king (almost the only sovereign King I have kn since Cromwell's time)like to be borne down by igle men and sham-kings;for this let illustrious Chatham too have a little money and human enthusiasm,--a little,by means much.But what am I to say of heaven-born Pitt the son of Chatham?England sent forth her fleets and armies;her money into every country;money as if the heaven-born Chancellor had got a Fortunatus'purse;as if this Island had become a volcanic fountain of gold,or new terrestrial sun capable of radiating mere guineas.The result of all which,what was it?Elderly men can remember the tar-barrels burnt for success and thrice-immortal victory in the business;and yet what result had we?The French Revolution,a Fact decreed in the Eternal Councils,could be put down:the result was,that heaven-born Pitt had actually been fighting (as the old Hebrews would have said)against the Lord,--that the Laws of Nature were stronger than Pitt.Of whom therefore there remains chiefly his unaccountable radiation of guineas,for the gratitude of posterity.Thank you for hing,--for eight hundred millions less than hing!
Our War Offices,Admiralties,and other Fighting Establishments,are forcing themselves on everybody's attention at this time.