No. 5.
Mr. Jay to Mr. Fish.
The visit of M. Thiers to this court, on behalf of the government of the national defense at Paris, left behind it no marked impression. He remained but a few hours, and what he said had relation, as the chancellor remarked, rather to the blunders committed by the last dynasty, than to the plans and hopes of that which has succeeded it.
He expressed, as I understand, his belief that France was republican in her feelings, and that the national convention when elected would sympathize with the present government at Paris, and he urged the propriety of a recognition of the government of national defense by the powers of Europe. He was answered that this cabinet was inclined to the same view, but that it seemed proper that recognition of the new government by France herself should precede its recognition by foreign governments. He was assured of the continued friendly disposition toward France of the court of Austria, Hungary, and of its readiness in the future, as in the past, to unite in any effort at mediation.
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The growing importance of American opinion on the continent, of which I have frequently spoken, is shown in the efforts made by the German press to deprive American recognition of the republic of all moral power by intimations that the Government at Washington were deluded into the step by the deceptive representation of their envoy at Paris.
A dispatch, of course fictitious, intended to produce this impression, I find in the Vienna press of the 27th of September, as follows:
Non-approval of the French Republic.—Glassbrenner’s Monday’s paper says: “The American envoy at Berlin, Mr. Bancroft, immediately after the expression of his colleague in Paris in favor of the proclamation of the republic, had submitted a memorial to his Government, relating to the insignificance of the French republican movement and warning his Government against any illusions in that direction.”
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