it was he who appointed himself and became our unbearable master." To this, the king added: "He's a beastly brute." After the departure of Alberoni, the queen could not help acknowledging she considered him “a brilliant man and a great minister." After he had been driven out of Spain, Cardinal Alberoni wrote to Cardinal de Polignac: "Spain was a corpse. I brought the corpse to life again. After my departure, it returned to its coffin." On another occasion, he bemoans the weakness of his Spanish master, saying that "caught between a prayer-stool and a woman, he became oblivious to the existence of the external world.” Modern history has already reached the turning-point, where it becomes evident justice must be rendered to this statesman. Like a quickening flash he touched Spain which had fallen into lethargy and was slowly succumbing to it. We present here the record of his activity as head of the government; it is the work of experts: Messrs. Lavisse and Rambaud (p. 42):

He revised the conditions on which the right to levy certain taxes was granted; formulated a new scale of customs, so as to reduce the amount of foreign importations; and on the other hand he granted free exportation of native wines; he examined the question of colonial contraband and repressed its traffic; he built a national printery and established a woollen manufacture which furnished the clothing for the soldiers; he appealed to the merchants of the entire nation in behalf of common honesty, and called Dutch workmen to Spain for the manufacture of woollen and fine linen goods. As a means to recruit officers for the navy he founded the Cadiz Naval Academy; he revived the artillery foundries and the manufacture of weapons at Barcelona and Malaga, launched fourteen new vessels, laid the keel for as many more and had even two built at Havana. He rebuilt the harbor of Cadiz, constructed the port of Ferral, fortified Barcelona which he wanted to become the Mediterranean rival of Toulon and ruler over that sea; in the Pyrenees he made Pampelune so strong that in 1719 the French dared not lay siege to it. . . .

When we consider that this immense amount of work was performed in very little time, and at a time when neither railroads nor the telegraph were at the disposal of governments, we come to judge with greater impartiality, if not with more sympathy, the things accomplished for Spain by Cardinal Alberoni, to whom Mgr. Bandrillart (loc. cit. II, p. 400) refuses the title of "a great statesman," in spite of the fact that. he recognizes in him "a man of incontestable talent, of a bold spirit and

energetic character."4 And all this internal work was simply the posterior evidence of the external policy of Spain as conceived by Alberoni, consisting in the proposition to regenerate that country in the eyes of Europe and of the world, and to recover for it the preponderating position which it had occupied in past centuries. We shall not explore the labyrinth of this bold diplomacy which men of greater authority have already exhaustively studied. We would venture, however, to remark that we find unjustified the reproaches which have become common-places and according to which he intended to make his own country, Italy, profit by this regeneration of Spain. Were not these tendencies, on the one hand, quite in harmony with human nature, and did he not, on the other hand, reconcile them with the highest interests of European peace? On the morning following his dismissal, he wrote to one of his friends, who was also his confidant: "It was the smallest sacrifice that could be made to insure the peace of Europe." Before long he is driven from Spain, followed while on his way to Rome, seized, cast into prison and prosecuted. But he will know how to hold out against his detractors; he will know how to fight and defend himself with the weapons of the time, if necessary; but howsoever he fight, he will fight successfully. His enemies went so far as to say that he had been the paramour of Queen Elisabeth. To disprove this accusation, it would be sufficient for him to point to his portrait," and to the haughtiness of his young sovereign. But the accusation of having sought to enrich himself by the misuse of public funds wounded him to the quick. Later on in his life he refutes this charge with vigor. Nearly ten years later (July 4, 1727), Maréchal

One of his contemporaries, L. FERRARI, Delle Notizie storiche della lega fra l'Imperatore Carlo VI e la Republica di Venezia, etc., Venice, 1723 (pp. 259–260), characterizes him as follows: "A keen man, quick in his work, fertile in resources and one to whom nothing seems difficult: a man who when silent, yet speaks, and speaking he enchants, and so wonderfully. A German, Universal-Lexicon, Suppl. I, p. 903, speaks of him in 1751 as a "perfect politician and great statesman.” "One of his first biographers belittles him in the following terms: "The cardinal is of small stature; rather too corpulent than too thin; his face is not at all attractive; it is too broad, because his head is too large." Of his eyes alone he speaks well.

"Those who are acquainted with my career," he writes about the year 1735, “are honest enough to certify that I never made wealth my idol; and on this point I appeal to my own conscience. If I were a man who delights in the love of lucre, there are few who have had greater opportunity to acquire riches. I might say that I had

de Villars, one of the few men who at that time spoke favorably of the ability of the cardinal, writes in his Mémoires (vol. V, p. 138) of a "current rumor about the journey of Cardinal Alberoni to Madrid," adding that this rumor lacks confirmation, a fact which proves the continued interest which the Court of Versailles took in him. Only once thereafter, when, as Papal legate to Romagna, he had temporarily united the Republic of San Marino with the States of the Church, the people as a whole took an especial interest in him.

He was a source of even greater interest to diplomatists. As an instance, we reproduce here words written on February 18, 1736 by the Duke de Saint-Aignan, who was at Rome at that time. These words. are quoted from a report the duke had transmitted to his government, a report which all modern aspirants to the diplomatic career ought to read: the duke does not enter into details, having fully delineated him in his official dispatches forwarded from Madrid, where during four years he had resided as ambassador. He writes:

The great rôle which he has played, the independence which his disfavors compelled him to assume, the consequent relations into which he entered with the zealots, some external traits such as contempt for pomp, a kind of personal unreservedness and a keen interest in all matters concerning public welfare made him a rather conspicuous personage at that court; and many there were who thought that luck, which had done so much for him, was holding him in reserve for further government service. But his conduct in the Romagna legation, which he accepted only because he would not have it said that he had never served the Holy See, has done him a harm from which he will find it difficult to recover, so that what he had imagined would pave his way to the Pontificate may perhaps prove the greatest obstacle to his ambition. And in truth, beside the fact that the public had criticized his ready willingness to give up, for an office of this nature, the retired life of a philosopher, which he had made up his mind to live on his estate of Castel-Romano, saying that he would either have to rule a world or cultivate a cabbage-patch; and far from trying to prove himself worthy become his treasurer when the Duke de Vendôme honored me with his confidence. Frequently he teased me because of my contempt for money, stating that he believed I would never take great pains to discover the philosopher's stone. My station in Spain offered me opportunities to acquire immense wealth. Yet I never spent more than was necessary to keep up my position as minister. I did not allow a single one of my relatives to come near me." And still later, in 1742, he adds that he will be "in history, an example of strange calumnies and persecutions."

of the high regard in which he was held, he discredited himself by his oddities, by his too rigid sternness and his lack of consideration for the nobility, which did not bring him popular favor; by his unwarranted haughtiness; and withal, he was not entirely proof against unfounded notions of fear. Again, the depotism which he intended to exercise, the direct correspondence which he desired to carry on with the Pope, his treatise on taxes, so contrary to all accepted principles, in the writing of which he had been misled by the Imperials, have set the Holy Father, the Ministers and the Sacred College so against his administration that he would have been dismissed forthwith, if they had not feared the liberty which he assumes in speaking, showing sovereign contempt for the most of his confrères, imagining that for ability there is none to compare with him. He said frequently to His Holiness that all this was merely an open synagogue. And it is in order to guard against this kind of liberties that it was decided to keep him away from here; but, in spite of all I have just stated, and without feeling in the least way offended by the reputation which he thought he enjoyed, I owe it to him to say that I have only praise for the sentiments which he entertains for France as a whole, as well as for myself personally, ever since I came to Rome; but I am not equally satisfied with his manner toward the King of the Two-Sicilies, whom he failed to greet on his passage near this city, nor with his way of thinking of the King of Sardinia, whom I might suspect of influencing the misunderstanding between the courts of Madrid and Turin which we have never been able to remove. It has been said that the Cardinal had a representative in Vienna at the time of the signing of our Preliminaries; but I am not sufficiently informed of this and can only speak of it as a matter which ought to be carefully looked into.

In the MEMOIR TO SERVE AS INSTRUCTION FOR THE ARCHBISHOP OF BOURGES, going as ambassador extraordinary of His Majesty to Our Holy Father the Pope, 1745, we read that the ambassador must apply to Cardinal Alberoni for information, "that one may depend as much upon the reliability of his information after he has promised to give it as upon his skill to secure reliable information." Cardinal de Rohan, who in his turn is going to Rome as ambassador, is directed to ask the opinion of Cardinal Alberoni. It will not be without interest to quote still another passage taken from a letter of Benoît XIV, dated March 29, 1743 to Cardinal de Tencin:

On the evidently false supposition that Cardinal Alberoni had recruited men for the Spaniards against the Austrians in the last action of Campo Santo, it is proposed, without informing him of this report and without giving him the opportunity to be heard, to recall him from his

legation. They are threatening to ravage the country, to seize the person of this cardinal and to sack the college which he built at Piacenza. My dear Cardinal, can there be anything more horrible? We are thinking of summoning the cardinal to Rome, so that he may give an account of himself to the Pope, before whom he stands accused and who is his superior; but leaving him his legation nevertheless. We do not know whether he is willing to come, or if willing, whether he can come, for he has been ill several months.

The cardinal is advancing in years, and reports concerning his health become more and more frequent in the correspondence. Here is one such reference, taken from a letter of the same Pope, dated March 8, 1752: "The Milan messenger has brought us bad news about Cardinal Alberoni, who will probably recover without the assistance of any doctor and without poultices, by eating salt-pork and sausages." But shortly afterward he died, on June 26 of the same year, in his native city which, during his life-time, he endowed with a college for preparing young men for the priesthood, and to which he bequeathed the major part of his fortune. This "unworthy priest and dangerous minister" in the opinion of some; this "base valet and dregs of the people, buffoon, charlatan" according to Saint-Simon, this "meddlesome individual" and "secondrate statesman" as Valbert characterizes him, is, in the judgment of Voltaire, the "most powerful genius which has governed Spain long enough to bring her glory, and not long enough for the greatness of that State." Lord Stanhope passed judgment upon him in these terms: "If Spain could go on in this way and succeed as well in all the other enterprises he means to carry out, there will be no Power can oppose her." In a NOTICE SUR LE RÈGNE DE PHILIPPE V ET SUR LE MINISTÈRE DU CARDINAL ALBERONI, written soon after his death, we find the following: "Alberoni died in 1752, leaving the reputation of a politician and minister as enterprising and ambitious as Cardinal Richelieu; supple and skillful as Mazarin. But, possessed of their great qualities, he also had their shortcomings. His genius was vast, his projects were immense, but fortune was against him." And this moral portrait comes perhaps nearest to the original. Alberoni, moreover, has written a description of himself, in a letter of 1742, when he was already advanced in years. He says: "The more difficulties a man of spirit encounters in an enterprise, the greater must be the courage, perseverance and obstinacy with