"
This situation so described, and so truly described, rendered our
solicitation not only degrading, but from the very outset evidently
hopeless.
I find it asserted, and even a merit taken for it, "that this country
surmounted every difficulty of form and etiquette which the enemy had
thrown in our way." An odd way of surmounting a difficulty, by cowering
under it! I find it asserted that an heroic resolution had been taken,
and avowed in Parliament, previous to this negotiation, "that no
consideration of etiquette should stand in the way of it."
Etiquette, if I understand rightly the term, which in any extent is of
modern usage, had its original application to those ceremonial and
formal observances practised at courts, which had been established by
long usage, in order to preserve the sovereign power from the rude
intrusion of licentious familiarity, as well as to preserve majesty
itself from a disposition to consult its ease at the expense of its
dignity. The term came afterwards to have a greater latitude, and to be
employed to signify certain formal methods used in the transactions
between sovereign states.
In the more limited, as well as in the larger sense of the term, without
knowing what the etiquette is, it is impossible to determine whether it
is a vain and captious punctilio, or a form necessary to preserve
decorum in character and order in business. I readily admit that nothing
tends to facilitate the issue of all public transactions more than a
mutual disposition in the parties treating to waive all ceremony.
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