'I am all for Lamartine,' answered Corcelle; 'without him the others would have been powerless.'
'But,' I said, 'if Lamartine had never existed, would not the revolution of 1848 still have occurred?'
'It would have certainly occurred' said Tocqueville; 'that is to say, the oligarchy of Louis Philippe would have come to an end, probably to a violent one, but it would have been something to have delayed it; and it cannot be denied that Lamartine's eloquence and courage saved us from great dangers during the Provisional Government. Kossuth's influence was purely mischievous. But for him, Austria might now be a constitutional empire, with Hungary for its most powerful member, a barrier against Russia instead of her slave.'
'I must put in a word,' said Corcelle,[2] 'for Lord Palmerston. If Lamartine produced Kossuth, Lord Palmerston produced Lamartine and Mazzini and Charles Albert--in short, all the incendiaries whose folly and wickedness have ended in producing Louis Napoleon.'
'Notwithstanding,' I said, 'your disapprobation of Kossuth, you joined us in preventing his extradition.'
'We did,' answered Tocqueville. 'It was owing to the influence of Lord Normanby over the President. It was a fine _succès de tribune_. It gave your Government and ours an occasion to boast of their courage and of their generosity, but a more dangerous experiment was never made. You reckoned on the prudence and forbearance of Austria and Russia. Luckily, Nicholas and Nesselrode are prudent men, and luckily the Turks sent to St. Petersburg Fuad Effendi, an excellent diplomatist, a much better than Lamoricière or Lord Bloomfield. He refused to see either of them, disclaimed their advice or assistance, and addressed himself solely to the justice and generosity of the Emperor. He admitted that Russia was powerful enough to seize the refugees, but implored him not to set such an example, and--he committed nothing to paper. He left nothing, and took away nothing which could wound the pride of Nicholas; and thus he succeeded.
'Two days after, came a long remonstrance from Lord Palmerston, which Lord Bloomfield was desired to read to Nesselrode, and leave with him. A man of the world, seeing that the thing was done, would have withheld an irritating document. But Bloomfield went with it to Nesselrode. Nesselrode would have nothing to say to it. "Mon Dieu!" he said, "we have given up all our demands; why tease us by trying to prove that we ought not to have made them?" Bloomfield said that his orders were precise. "Lisez donc," cried Nesselrode, "mais il sera très-ennuyeux." Before he had got half through Nesselrode interrupted him. "I have heard all this," he said, "from Lamoricière, only in half the number of words. Cannot you consider it as read?" Bloomfield, however, was inexorable.'