The Month and Catholic Review Volume 41, PT. 1 - V. 42, PT. 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1881 Excerpt: ... the writing of which his son is now furnishing the world with copious notes, memoirs, and correspondence. If, then, the qualities of Prince Mettemich--and they are remarkable qualities--are those, not of the statesman, but of the diplomatist, his claims to the title of a great man are none other than those which he can make out from the attainment of excellence in that more restricted field of statecraft, and in this department his career will stand comparison with that of the ablest diplomatists of his own or more modern times. In the skill and the sagacity, the tact and the temper with which he conducted negotiations the most delicate and difficult, with opponents the most powerful and unscrupulous, he is inferior to none, and superior to most of the Talleyrands, Hardenbergs, Nesselrodes, and Castlereaghs of earlier days, or the Guizots, Palmerstons, Cavours, and Bismarcks of later times. Pitted against thoroughly unprincipled men like Napoleon and his agents, who had absolutely no regard for truth, or honour, or justice, Mettemich, on the contrary, was actuated, and consequently in so unfair a race heavily handicapped, by principles, which he honestly believed to be those of truth and justice, and in the long and difficult contest he waged with the enemies of his country was weighted, as they were not, by the possession of something which, if not strictly conscience, was not a bad substitute for it, and to the dictates of which he is perhaps a little too fond of reminding us he ever lent a willing and obedient ear. If with his strong volition, his faith in blood and iron, his superb disregard of the ordinary rules of right and wrong, and his doing of great things in a grand manner, Prince Bismarck may be not inappropriately designated the Napoleon of mod...