[15]
He asked me who will be our next President.
I told him that it will be Van Buren; and that, as I do not desire it, he might consider my opinion at least unprejudiced.
He answered, ‘Neither should I be of Mr. Van Buren's party, if I were in America I should rather be of that old party of which Washington was originally the head.
It was a sort of conservative party, and I should be conservative almost everywhere, certainly in England and America.
Your country is a very important one.
This government is about to establish regular diplomatic relations with it. You have always managed your affairs with foreign nations with ability.’
I do not remember what followed with sufficient distinctness to repeat it; but after talking a little about Austria, and praising the late Emperor very much, as a man of perfect uprightness of purpose and a strong will and character, he turned the conversation upon Europe, and said several times in the course of it, ‘The present state of Europe is disgusting to me,—L'etat actuel de l'europe m'est degoutant. England is advancing towards a revolution,—L'Angleterre marche vers une revolution.’
On my expressing a strong hope and belief that she would be spared it, he replied very decidedly:—
‘Non, Monsieur, elle ne laechappera pas. England, too, has no great statesmen now, no great statesmen of any party, and woe to the country whose condition and institutions no longer produce great men to manage its affairs.
France, on the contrary, has the Revolution behind her,—La France a la Revolution en dos,’—a phrase which he repeated several times in the course of the conversation.
‘She is like a man who has just passed thoroughly through a severe disease.
He is not so likely to take it as if he had never had it. But France, too, wants men of ability; Louis Philippe is the ablest statesman they have had for a great while.
And then in France there is such a want of stability.
On the 7th of next month I shall have sat in this very chair, as the director of the affairs of this monarchy, twenty-seven years, and in the course of that time I have had intercourse with twenty-eight Ministers of Foreign Affairs in France.
I counted them up the day I had been here twenty-five years, and there had been just twenty-five; but in the last two years there have been three. So,’ said he, laughing,
I have one to spare over the number of years I have been here, and I shall soon have another.1 This is very bad for a country like France. France, too, acts badly upon England; and, indeed, France and England have always
