But, alas, it is not the same with our negotiators. They are indeed rare among us because there has been in general no discipline nor fixed rules of the foreign service of his Majesty by which good citizens destined to become negotiators might instruct themselves in the knowledge necessary for this kind of employment. And indeed we find that instead of gradual promotion by degrees and by the evidence of proved capacity and experience, as is the case in the usages of war, one may see often men who have never left their own country, who have never applied themselves to the study of public affairs, being of meagre intelligence, appointed so to speak over-night to important embassies in countries of which they know neither the interests, the laws, the customs, the language, nor even the geographical situation. And yet I may hazard a guess that there is perhaps no employment in all his Majesty’s service more difficult to discharge than that of negotiation. It demands all the penetration, all the dexterity, all the suppleness which a man can well possess. It requires a widespread understanding and knowledge, and above all a correct and piercing discernment. [Sidenote: _Diplomacy an Expert Craft._] It causes me no surprise that men who have embarked on this career for the sake of titles and emoluments, having not the least idea of the real duties of their post, have occasioned grave harm to the public interest during their apprenticeship to this service. These novices in negotiation become easily intoxicated with honours done in their person to the dignity of their royal master. They are like the ass in the fable who received for himself all the incense burned before the statue of the goddess which he bore on his back. This happens above all to those who are employed by a great monarch on missions to princes of a lower order, for they are apt to place in their addresses the most odious comparisons, as well as veiled threats, which are really only a mark of weakness. Such ambassadors do not fail to bring upon themselves the aversion of the court to which they are accredited, and they resemble heralds of arms rather than ambassadors whose principal aim is ever to maintain a good correspondence between their master and the princes to whom they are accredited. In all cases they should represent the power of their own sovereign as a means of maintaining and increasing that of the foreign court, instead of using it as an odious comparison designed to humiliate and contemn. These misfortunes and many others, which are the result of the lack of capacity and of the foolish conduct of many citizens employed by princes to deal with public affairs abroad, occasioned in me the belief that it is by no means impertinent to set down some observations on the manner of negotiating with sovereigns and with their ministers, on the qualities necessary for those who mean to adopt the profession of diplomacy,