In October of the same year (1797) occurred an event which Talleyrand’s critics contemplate in a perfect luxury of moral indignation. Vice, venality, and treachery are said to be the capital offences of his career. The first charge we have considered; the third can be appreciated only at a later stage; the second now calls for examination. Let me indicate at once my reply to it. Talleyrand was not “venal” in the more offensive sense of the word. He never sold the interest of his country, or any humane cause. He _did_ endeavour to make as much money as possible out of the Governments and princes which benefitted, or escaped injury, by his diplomatic arrangements; but these were always in the interest of France. Further, whatever be said of diplomatic arrangements in our time, the secret transfer of money was a common association of them in Talleyrand’s day; and the transaction, being secret, was commonly exaggerated. At the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1815, Metternich and Nesselrode were accused of taking a million each from Louis XVIII. M. de Bacourt, who was in a position to know, says they “only took the _usual_ diplomatic present” (boxes worth 18,000 francs each). Hangwitz is accused of being still more venal. Mirabeau and Danton had been in the secret pay of the Court. Mirabeau is even said to have taken a thousand _louis d’or_ from Spain for his diplomatic recommendation in 1790. Sieyès took 400,000 francs from Napoleon for his share in making him First Consul—when, in fact, Napoleon distributed a respectable fortune. Barras was notoriously corrupt. Rewbell was implicated. Roger Ducos was bought. Pitt had been quite willing to make the Directors a secret present of ten and a half million francs (while loftily refusing to pay two million sterling) during the negotiations, and Malmesbury had on his own account tried to buy the vote of one of the Directors. Fifty blacks do not make one white. I am only pointing out that Talleyrand’s conduct was not distinctive. He had far more opportunities than any other man of his time; and the actual charges against him are generally frivolous. The American “scandal” is one of the most authentic.