§ No. I. Viscount Castlereagh to the Earl of Clancarty, dated Foreign Office, 8th of April, 1815.
§ My lord—I herewith enclose a copy of an overture this day received from M. de Caulaincourt, with the answer returned. You will communicate the same to the Allied Sovereigns and plenipotentiaries at Vienna, for their information.—I have the honour to be, &c.
§ (Signed) CASTLEREAGH.
§ No. II. The Earl of Clancarty to Viscount Castlereagh.
§ Vienna, May 6, 1816.
§ My lord—Adverting to your lordship's dispatch, No. 3, and to its several enclosures, conveying a proposal made by the existing Government in France, and your lordship's answer thereto, I have the honour to acquaint you, for the information of his Majesty's Government, that, at a conference held on the 3d instant, his highness Prince Metternich acquainted us, that a M. de Strassant, who had been stopped, on his way hither, at Lintz, from Hot having been furnished with proper passports, had addressed a letter to his Imperial Majesty, and therewith forwarded some unopened letters which the Emperor had directed him to unseal in the presence of the plenipotentiaries of the Allied Powers.
§ These proved to be, a letter from Buonaparté, addressed to his Majesty, professing a desire to continue at peace, to observe the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris, &c, and a letter from M. de Caulaincourt to Prince Metternich, containing similar professions.
§ After reading these papers, it was considered whether any, and what answer should be made thereto, when the general opinion appeared to be, that none should be returned, and no notice whatever taken of the proposal.
§ Upon this, as indeed upon all other occasions subsequent to the resumption of authority by Buonaparté, wherein the present state of the Continental Powers, with regard to France, has come under discussion, but one opinion has appeared to direct the councils of the several Sove- 312 reigns. They adhere, and from the commencement have never ceased to adhere, to their declaration of the 13th of March, with respect to the actual ruler of France. They are in a state of hostility with him and his adherents, not from choice, but from necessity, because past experience has shown, that no faith has been kept by him, and that no reliance can be placed on the professions of one who has hitherto no longer regarded the most solemn compacts, than as it may have suited his own convenience to observe them—whose word, the only assurance he can afford for his peaceable disposition, is not less in direct, opposition to the tenour of his former life, than it is to the military position in which he is actually placed. They feel that they should neither perform their duty to themselves, or to the people committed by Providence to their charge, if they were now to listen to those professions of a desire for peace which have been made, and suffer themselves thus to be lulled into the supposition that they might now relieve their people from the burthen of supporting immense military masses, by diminishing their forces to a peace establishment, convinced as the several Sovereigns are, from past experience, that no sooner should they have been disarmed, than advantage would be taken of their want of preparation, to renew those scenes of aggression and bloodshed, from which they had hoped that the peace so gloriously won at Paris would long have secured them.
§ They are at war, then, for the purpose of obtaining some security for their own independence, and for the re-conquest of that peace and permanent tranquillity, for which the world has so long panted. They are not even at war for the greater or less proportion of security which France can afford them of future tranquillity, but because France, under its present chief, is unable to afford them any security whatever.
§ In this war, they do not desire to interfere with any legitimate right of the French people; they have no design to oppose the claim of that nation to choose their own form of government, or intention to trench, in any respect, upon their independence as a great and free people: but they do think they have a right, and that of the highest nature, to contend against the re-establishment of an individual, as the head of the French government, whose past conduct has invariably 313 demonstrated, that in such a situation he will not suffer other nations to beat peace—whose restless ambition, whose thirst for foreign conquest, and whose disregard for the rights and independence of other states, must expose the whole of Europe to renewed scenes of plunder and devastation.
§ However general the feelings of the Sovereigns may be in favour of the restoration of the King, they no otherwise seek to influence the proceedings of the French in the choice of this or of any other dynasty, or form of government, than may be essential to the safety and permanent tranquillity of the rest of Europe: such reasonable security being afforded by France in this respect, as other states have a legitimate right to claim in their own defence, their object will be satisfied; and they shall joyfully return to that state of peace, which will then, and then only be open to them, and lay down those arms which they have only taken up for the purpose of acquiring that tranquillity so eagerly desired by them on the part of their respective empires.
§ Such, my lord, are the general sentiments of the Sovereigns and of their ministers here assembled; and it should seem, that the glorious forbearance observed by them, when masters of the French capital in the early part of the last year, ought to prove to the French that this is not a war against their freedom and independence, or excited by any spirit of ambition, or desire of conquest, but one arising out of necessity, urged on the principles of self-preservation, and founded on that legitimate and incontrovertible right of obtaining reasonable security for their own tranquillity and independence—to which, if France has on her part a claim, other nations have an equal title to claim at the hands of France.
§ I this day laid before the plenipotentiaries of the three Allied Powers in conference, the Note proposed to be delivered upon the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty of the 25th March. After the opinions which I have detailed as those with which the Allied Sovereigns are impressed, with respect to the object of the war, it is scarcely necessary for me to add, that the explanation afforded in this Note, as the construction put by his royal highness the Prince Regent on the eighth Article of that Treaty, was favourably received. Immediate instructions will 314 consequently be issued to the ambassadors of the imperial courts of Austria and Russia, and to the minister of his Prussian Majesty, to accept of this note on the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty in question.
§ In order to be assured that I have advanced nothing in this dispatch, which does not accord with the views of the Cabinets of the Allied Sovereigns, I have acquainted the plenipotentiaries of the High Allied Powers with the contents thereof, and have the honour to inform you, that the sentiments contained in it entirely coincide with those of their respective Courts.—I have the honour to be, &c.(Signed) CLANCARTY.