British Ambassadors.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 32, 7 August 1902, Page 20

British Ambassadors.

Only a short time ago (says the London Tablet} the late Sir William White could claim, at Const mtinople, to b* the first Catholic Ambassador sent abroad by England since the Reformation. Now we have Sir Nicholas O'Connor, Sir Francis Plunkett, Sir Henry Howard, and to add to that illuHtrious li»t another addition has now to be made, the King having this week appointed Sir Martin Goasetin, K.C.M.G., to be his Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Lisbon Sir Martin, who is not yet 50 years of age, and is married to a daughter of the late Lord Gerard, had, as it happens, his first experiences in diplomacy at the Portuguese cipital; and he had served far afield in I'arie, Petersburg, Paris, Berlin, and Madrid, when he was brought home and appointed permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The Foreign office, with the bent of intentions, had fallen into strange blunders from the absence of just such a man as Sir Martin, who, when a question came up, could speak with personal experience of the cities, the men, the manners, whot-e case was in question. His place will be difficult to fill ; but in the great outer sphere now found for him, he will easily render services that will compensate the Government for the loss they sustained in London. The appropriateness of sending a Catholic to the Court of Lißbon does not need a word of exposition ; and yet it is safe to say that this consideration did not determine the appointment. The Catholic Ambassadors have been chosen for the personal qualifications which ditttinguishtd them above th-»ir fellows of all creeds, and the nation gets thrown into the bargain the uncovenanted advantages in Lisbon, in Vienna, and even in Constantinople, of a diplomat with a religion that is either professed, or at least understood and recognised, in those capitals. A Catholio is of necessity BOoiething of a cosmopolitan ; and that is what a great ambassador must needs be. Moreover, his profession of the Catholic faith vouches for him, and he need nob fussily intrude his sentiments when and where they are irrelevant thingf, essentially impertinent. Disraeli, who knew moßt thing?, expressed something of this when he bluntly paid : ' A diplomatist i", after all, an abstraction. There is a want of nationality about his being. 1 always look upon diplomatists as the Hebrews of politics, without country, political creed, popular convictions.' Poepibly some of our countrymen — the preliminary grumblers have, in fact, already been heard — may grudge to Catholics (or, aa they would say, Jesuit*) their large representation, though a purely accidental one, in a field from which for centuries they have been most unrighteously excluded. To some of these we may offer for use as a consoling gibe yet another definition of ambassadors as ' the men who lie abroad for their country*! good.'