's
conclusion was that, as no just rights had been sacrificed, it was a
positive advantage that Russia should be gratified by the removal of
restraints naturally galling to her pride.

The conference opened at the foreign office on Dec. 17, and held its final
meeting on March 13. Delay was caused by the difficulty of procuring the
attendance of a representative of France. Jules Favre was appointed by the
government at Bordeaux, but he was locked up in Paris, and he and Bismarck
could not agree as to the proper form of safe-conduct. What was even more
important, the governing men in France could not agree upon his
instructions; for we must remember that all this time along with the
patriotic struggle against the Prussians, there went on an internal
struggle only a degree less ardent between republicans and monarchists. It
was not until the final meeting of the conference, that the Duc de Broglie
was accredited as representative of his country.(230) At the first formal
meeting a special protocol was signed recording it as "an essential
principle of the law of nations that no Power can liberate itself from the
engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with
the consent of the contracting Powers by means of an amicable
arrangement."

To give a single signatory Power the right of forbidding a change desired
by all the others, imposes a kind of perpetuity on treaty stipulations,
that in practice neither could nor ought to be insisted upon. For instance
it would have tied fast the hands of Cavour and Victor Emmanuel in the
Italian transactions which Mr. Gladstone had followed and assisted with so
much enthusiasm, for Austria would never have assented. It is, moreover,
true that in the ever recurring eras when force, truculent and unabashed,
sweeps aside the moral judgments of the world, the mere inscription of a
pious opinion in a protocol may seem worth little trouble. Yet it is the
influence of good opinion, tardy, halting, stumbling, and broken, as it
must ever be, that upholds and quickens the growth of right. The good
rules laid down in conferences and state-papers may look tame in the glare
of the real world of history as it is. Still, if we may change the figure,
they help to dilute the poisons in the air.

IV

(M115) In England opinion veered round after Sedan. The disappearance of
the French empire had effectively dispelled the vivid suspicions of
aggression. The creation of the emp