urt. His five years spent at Lisbon cannot
be counted as one of his most fruitful periods, despite 'the large
settlement of African affairs', which Lord Granville tells us that
Morier had suggested to his predecessors in Whitehall. For the big
schemes which he planned he could get no continuous backing at home,
either in political or commercial circles. For the petty routine England
hardly needed a man of such outstanding ability. Of necessity his work
consisted often in tedious investigation of claims advanced by
individual Englishmen, whether they were suffering from money losses or
from summary procedure at the hands of the Portuguese police. Of the
diplomatic questions which arose many proved to be shadowy and unreal.
Something could be done, even in remote Portugal, to improve
Anglo-Russian relations by a minister who had friends in so many
European capitals. The politics of Pio Nono and the Papal Curia often
find an echo in his correspondence. Here, too, as elsewhere, the
intrigues of Germany had to be watched, though Morier was sensible
enough to discriminate between the deliberate policy of Bismarck and the
manoeuvres of those whom he 'allowed to do what they liked and say what
they liked--or rather to do what they thought _he_ would like done, and
say what they thought _he_ would like said--and then suddenly sent them
about their business to ponder in poverty and disgrace on the mutability
of human affairs'. In a passage like this Morier's letters show that he
could distinguish between a lion and his jackals, between 'policy' and
'intrigue'.

Had it not been for Germany and German suggestions, Portuguese
politicians would perhaps have been free from the fears which loomed
darkest on their horizon--the fears of an 'Iberian policy' which Spain
was supposed to be pursuing. In reality the leading men at Madrid knew
that they had little to gain by letting loose the superior Spanish army
against Portugal and trying to form the whole peninsula into a single
state. Morier, at any rate, made it clear that England would throw the
whole weight of her power against such treatment of her oldest ally. But
alarmist politicians were perpetually harping on this string, and
Morier, in a letter written in 1876, compares them to 'children telling
ghost-stories to one another who have got frightened at the sound of
their own voices, and mistake the rattling of a mouse behind the
wainscot for the tramping of legions on the march'.