as well, there
were still potent reasons why the clergy should continue to be employed
as diplomatic agents. Of these reasons the most practical was that of
expense; for the wealth of the church formed an inexhaustible reserve
which was used without scruple for secular purposes. Francis I. of
France, who by the Concordat with Rome had in his hands the patronage of
all the sees and abbeys in France, used this partly to reward his
clerical ministers, partly as a great secret service fund for bribing
the ambassadors of other powers, partly for the payment of those
high-placed spies at foreign courts maintained by the elaborately
organized system known as the _Secret du Roi_.[22] None the less, in
the 16th century, laymen as diplomats are already well in evidence. They
are usually lawyers, rarely soldiers, occasionally even simple
merchants. Not uncommonly they were foreigners, like the Italian Thomas
Spinelly mentioned above, drawn from that cosmopolitan class of
diplomats who were ready to serve any master. Though nobles were often
employed as ambassadors by all the powers, Venice alone made nobility a
condition of diplomatic service. They were professional in the sense
that, for the most part, diplomacy was the main occupation of their
lives; there was, however, no graded diplomatic service in which, as at
present, it was possible to rise on a fixed system from the position of
simple _attache_ to that of minister and ambassador. The "attache to the
embassy" existed[23]; but he was not, as is now the case, a young
diplomat learning his profession, but an experienced man of affairs,
often a foreigner employed by the ambassador as adviser, secret service
agent and general go-between, and he was without diplomatic status.[24]
The 18th century saw the rise of the diplomatic service in the modern
sense. The elaboration of court ceremonial, for which Versailles had set
the fashion, made it desirable that diplomatic agents should be
courtiers, and young men of rank about the court began to be attached to
missions for the express purpose of teaching them the art of diplomacy.
Thus arose that aristocratic diplomatic class, distinguished by the
exquisite refinement of its manners, which survived from the 18th
century into the 19th. Modern democracy has tended to break with this
tradition, but it still widely prevails. Even in Great Britain, where
the rest of the public services have been thrown open to all classes, a
certain social