Chapter XIII: Book THE FOURTH (1)

1815-1821

N.B.—This book contains notes for Memoirs from the summer of 1815 [to the autumn of 1821].

It was not begun till 1830, and _many_ of the facts are from memory, unassisted by notes taken at the time, though refreshed generally by reference to some correspondence or document.—V.H.

When I transcribed my notes for Memoirs in 1825, I meant that they should end at the close of the year 1814. I proposed to confine all my future labours of the kind to the completion of two supplementary chapters already begun, one of which related to foreign characters and events, and is now brought down to the year 1815,[203] and the other,[204] still in hand, relates to such as having fallen within my observation either in England or elsewhere before 1815, seem to me, albeit unconnected with politics, not destitute of interest.

It is not necessary to account, much less to apologise, for having at one time abandoned a task which I had voluntarily imposed upon myself. It may with more reason be expected that I should explain my motives in resuming it now. The truth is, that the third expulsion of the Bourbons from France in July, 1830, has in some little degree revived in my breast the spirits and hopes which animated me at an earlier period of life:

Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ.

Moreover, the accession of King William, to whom my son[205] is attached both by connection and gratitude, makes it possible that I may be privy to the secret causes of public and party transactions, although neither my age, position, nor inclinations render it likely that I either can or shall take a more active part in them than I have done for fifteen years past.[206] Of the events of these fifteen years my report must be rapid and imperfect. I have taken little share in party councils during that period, and have preserved few memorials of the events, especially of the first five.

I returned to England in the summer of 1815—the day, I believe, that the Emperor Napoleon was brought to our shores in a British man-of-war, and after the second restoration of the Bourbons had been virtually effected. To both those restorations it is strange but true that the personal character and predilections of George IV. had mainly contributed. On the first occasion, without the knowledge of Lord Castlereagh and the Ministers, he connived at, if he did not contrive, the arrival of the Bourbon Princes at Bordeaux and other places in France, and during the negotiations at Chatillon he resorted to many underhand manœuvres to prevent any termination of them which did not include the restoration of the pretended legitimate dynasty.

To the presence, intrigues, and misrepresentations of the almost forgotten faction of the Bourbons, as well as to a variety of mistakes and accidents elsewhere recounted,[207] the result of the Emperor of Russia’s arrival at Paris in 1814 is mainly to be attributed. Austria was averse, Russia was indifferent to, the restoration of the Bourbons, and Prussia was exclusively bent on vengeance and aggrandisement; and the Regent of England was almost the only man in his own councils, as well as the only Prince in the Confederacy, really desirous of accomplishing that object. It is not perhaps equally known, but it is equally true, that there was, in 1815, equal and greater indifference in the Allied Powers, amounting to an unwillingness to confer on Louis XVIII. all the advantages which the prodigious efforts of Europe had wrested from his antagonist. The experiences of one year have given them an insight into the personal character of the restored Princes, and still more of the ungrateful and unreasonable faction which accompanied them. This would have led Austria, Russia, and Prussia to acquiesce in any arrangement cheerfully which afforded a prospect of preserving peace, even though it had altered what is miscalled the legitimate succession of the Monarchy.

The Prince Regent and Duke of Wellington exploded all such notions. They treated the restoration of Louis XVIII. as an indispensable part of the arrangement. The Duke of Wellington asked Louis if he preferred being placed on his throne by Frenchmen or by foreigners. He answered, “Decidedly by Frenchmen.” “Then,” replied Wellington, “there is but one method and one man: you must employ Fouché.”[208] Reluctantly, and with a bad grace, Louis consented. Fouché became Minister. But ere long Fouché and the base, runaway emigrants whom he restored affected to be so national that they treated the foreigners, and even the Duke of Wellington himself, with indignity. The courtiers and the King himself turned their backs upon him in so marked a way that the Duke resented it, and did not return to the Tuileries till Monsieur (Charles X.) conveyed an apology to him.[209] He wrote an account of this transaction home. The letter was among those confided to and printed by Gurwood (from whom I had the relation), but suppressed in the publication.

During my absence from England in 1815, many changes had occurred in the aspect of the party with whom I had uniformly acted. Mr. Whitbread, who had for many years much influence, good and bad, on its fortunes, had recently put a violent termination to his ever-active but useful existence.[210] That lamentable event, as well as many of his defects, might be traced to a restless impatience of contradiction, which, resulting perhaps from physical causes, was unaccountably blended in his very singular character with the earnest affection for individuals and the most unquestionable benevolence towards mankind. Too honourable and too conscientious to do what he thought wrong, he had, nevertheless, such an appetite for applause, and had been so pampered with it by dependants and sycophants, that when he foresaw it was about to cease or to be converted by many who had administered it into censure and resistance, he mistook their discontent with him for self-reproach, and he could not endure it.

Such was the real history of his suicide. He had extraordinary readiness and indefatigable application in business, a warm heart, great decision of character, and a good understanding. Though not without some imagination, he was lamentably deficient in taste; yet by dint of earnestness, assiduity, and practice he had made himself little less than an orator and certainly a very able speaker in Parliament. Vanity often made him impracticable. Flatterers and dependants engrossed his society, and not unfrequently perverted his manners and judgment. His death, though a great loss to the public, and yet more to his neighbourhood and country, was more likely to heal than exasperate any dissension in Opposition, for he loved to mark distinctions favourable to his own popularity, and was, moreover, personally obnoxious to the Grenvilles.

But there were other alterations in the state of the party. Our leaders had espoused very opposite principles on one great branch of commercial policy which was brought into agitation in 1814 and 1815. Lauderdale had been the secret instigator, and was the open champion, of the restrictive Corn Law[211] which Ministers had adopted. Grey’s real opinion, fortified and perhaps inculcated by Lauderdale, leant towards any measure that kept up the price of that article, and prevented any sudden reduction of rents. Lord Grenville and Mr. Horner were decidedly friends to a free trade; and the authority and sound philosophy of such men, coinciding with the natural prejudices of the populace and the mischievous clamour of some seditious writers, constituted a formidable opposition to a very questionable, as well as unpopular, policy. Lord Grey, after hesitating between his own and Lauderdale’s opinion on one side, and a desire of harassing the Ministry under the sanction of Lord Grenville on the other, pressed for a postponement of the question, and steered a course deeply resented by Lauderdale, not quite agreeable to either party, nor perhaps entirely creditable to himself.[212] He and Lord Grenville had differed yet more openly on the war, the latter reverting to his anti-Jacobin prejudices, and Grey maintaining nobly and ably the wisdom and justice of not interfering. But the war was terminated by the victory of Waterloo, the occupation of Paris, the forced restoration of Louis XVIII., and the mass of treaties negotiated by the Prince Regent, Duke of Wellington, and Lord Castlereagh, and vainly denominated by them the final settlement of Europe. That immediate cause of difference was therefore extinct. Yet there remained, in truth, between the Foxite and Grenville branches of Whigs no real bond of union but a concurrence of opinion on the subject of Roman Catholics and Ireland, and the recollection of mutual kindnesses and services during a political connection of ten years.

The latter feeling was, I believe, strong in Lord Grenville’s honourable mind, notwithstanding some tenacity of opinion for which his family has always been remarkable, and from which he is not entirely exempt. It could not be stronger in his mind than it was in mine, but I am aware that many Whigs, and among them persons of importance who differed with him less, felt very soon afterwards much more inclination to separate from him than myself.

Lord Grey did not come up to the meeting of Parliament in 1816. The treaties[213] were discussed in his absence; but Lord Grenville was so little disposed to court the Government that he arraigned without scruple or reserve every fault of omission or commission he could find in the treaty, and proposed an amendment which, while it lamented the power and territory left to France, dwelt yet more emphatically on the impolicy and danger of keeping a foreign force in that kingdom, and deprecated the necessity created by that measure of maintaining vast standing armies during peace. For that amendment, which he had accommodated as far as he could to my views, I voted. I signed, in common with eleven peers, a dissentient to its rejection. I moved no amendment of my own, but having said _not content_ without directing the House to the original address, I embodied in a short protest of my own the main objections to the treaty, namely, that it imposed the Bourbons on France, and sanctioned the principle of guaranteeing hereditary monarchies against the people, for whom and from whom they should alone derive their authority.

Many of the transactions at Paris, as well as the ungenerous treatment of Napoleon, were objectionable on principle and disgusting to the feelings of all who had a nature capable of justice or humanity to a fallen foe. Substantially, if not technically, the merit or guilt of such acts rests with the Prince Regent and the Duke of Wellington. If the removal of the works of art,[214] the demolition of sundry monuments, and other severe retributions of the kind were after the capitulation irregular and questionable; if the judicial murders of Labedoyère and Marshal Ney were direct violations of the articles of that capitulation; and if the detention and transportation of a dethroned and abdicated monarch by a foreign Power be a breach of the Law of Nations, as well as an unusual and harsh exercise of power, they will all be more or less stains on the character of the great General of the Confederacy, as well as on the Governments who sanctioned and the Ministerial agents who counselled or perpetrated such acts of violence or bad faith.

The Duke of Wellington did not, indeed, instigate, possibly he did not approve of, these public crimes, nor was he the official instrument in committing them.[215] Nothing perhaps but a weak reluctance to give advice unpleasant to Royalty restrained him from remonstrating against some of those acts. He must even then have been aware that they would tarnish the lustre of his achievements. He had, indeed, the bad taste on that and many subsequent occasions to speak loudly in disparagement of Frenchmen,[216] but bigotry or fanaticism in a cause he is much too sensible to feel, and personal resentment to Ney or Napoleon he could have none. He is said to have censured in private the appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe to St. Helena, foreseeing from his knowledge of the character of that gaoler that his usage of the illustrious prisoner would be neither humane nor decorous.[217] Such regret, if expressed, was never conveyed to the quarters where it might have rectified the mistake and alleviated the sufferings of the prisoner. Wellington preferred the odium of abetting the oppression of a great man to the hazard of losing Royal favour or incurring the resentment of official pride, by an act of humanity and generosity. He must abide by the consequences. History, if she does not brand him as an accessory in the guilt, will describe him in this instance as deficient in that magnanimity which is incapable of it, and which has been so justly extolled in our Black Prince. That great General, in circumstances not totally dissimilar, respected, soothed, and interceded for a fallen competitor or dethroned usurper,[218] whom the chances of war had placed at his disposal. With whom the cruel expedient of exiling Napoleon originated I do not know. I have reasons to believe that such a destination for him had been contemplated before he left the Isle of Elba.[219] When I, in private, upbraided Lord Liverpool with an act of harshness, so little of a piece with his general character and policy, he defended himself by the extreme difficulty of knowing what to do with such a prisoner.

The Prince Regent subsequently showed himself so full of rancour to the very memory of a man who had eclipsed the glory and assumed, with some of the vices, all the functions of Royalty, without having been born or bred to any such pernicious office, that the suspicion of posterity will fall chiefly upon him. Yet his first feeling, or at least his first exclamation, on receiving the famous letter, by no means bespoke the hatred he afterwards displayed to the writer! He is reported to have said, after glancing his eye over its contents, “Upon my word, a very proper letter: much more so, I must say, than any I ever received from Louis XVIII.” This commendation was extorted neither by the strange singularity of Napoleon’s fate, by the striking and pathetic selection of the topics, the apt allusion to Themistocles, or the short and emphatic style of the epistle, but by the title “Altesse” with which it commenced, and which for some reason or another, to me unknown, our Regent considered as more respectful and more appropriate to the station he then held than “Monseigneur.” But though struck with such profound display of knowledge in etiquette, as none, he deemed, but _porphyrogeniti_ and Germans could possess, it did not soften him, or, if it did, the compassion it excited was very transient indeed. He grudged even the asylum our laws afforded to the persecuted adherents of the fallen Emperor. He was cross at the attentions shown by fashionable society in London to Flahault[220] and other young men of the late Imperial Court, and he was bitterly incensed against me because the Duke of Sussex signed a dissentient to the bill for the detention of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The importance he attached to that incident, and the soreness expressed about it many years afterwards, are proofs, among many, of the very trifling, contracted, and personal view he took of all transactions, as well [as] of the inaccuracy of the reports with which his appetite for gossip was generally supplied. He imagined, or at least asserted, that both Lady Holland and myself had used very earnest persuasions to prevail on his brother Augustus to sign his name, whereas it so happened that from some little personal motives of vanity, and chiefly at the request of Lady Holland, I had taken considerable pains to conceal my entering the protest till it was too late for him or any other peer to add his name. He, however, availed himself, contrary to my wishes,[221] of the third reading to annex by reference his adherence to the opinion I had recorded.

The necessity of any bill implied the irregularity of the whole proceeding. It passed, however, with little debate in the Session of 1816. Our politicians had a feverish dread of incurring odium by a fruitless expression of sympathy for a man, so long the theme of popular execration in the country. Mr. Brougham most unnecessarily expressed some qualified approbation of the measure. I felt on that, as on some other occasions, the full value of our privilege of protesting. One has the consolation of recording one’s principles, without inviting observation to the shades of difference subsisting between one’s self and one’s friends. I was, indeed, told that the step I was taking would be peculiarly offensive to the English public. To the Court it was so, no doubt: to the people, I believe, far the contrary. The dispassionate portion of the community would have been better pleased if a less distant exile and a milder fate had been reserved for their fallen enemy. Our people, on this, as on many other occasions, displayed more delicacy and generosity of sentiment than their representatives either gave them credit for or had the courage to exemplify in their own conduct.

The trial and execution of Marshal Ney and the papers relating to it, though laid before the House of Lords, on the motion of Lord St. John, attracted little notice and no debate in Parliament. It was apprehended by those who reprobated the proceeding, that an unsuccessful attempt to stigmatise it as a crime comparable to that of infamous memory which brought Jerome of Prague to the stake, might invite a vote of actual approbation and stamp permanently on the national character a stain which, as it is, only tarnishes the fame of a few individuals.[222] The thirst for revenge which manifestly actuated Louis XVIII. might perhaps be palliated, and at least was reasonably accounted for by a reference either to the Marshal’s private professions to him and his subsequent violation of them, or to the King’s habitual and unfeeling cruelty. But it is remarkable that the very letters of Lord Bathurst and the Duke of Wellington of July 7 and 15, 1815,[223] which were produced to justify the construction put upon the 12th article of the Capitulation by the victors, distinctly admit and show that a doubt of the meaning of that article had occurred to the Prince Regent himself before he ratified the Convention.

It is equally clear from those letters that such doubt was removed from his mind by the explanation of the Duke of Wellington—that is, by the interpretation put upon it by one of the signing parties without any fresh communication with the other. It results from this simple statement of facts that, by the admission and almost in the judgment of that power to which an appeal was afterwards made to give the milder construction to the 12th article, the said article was ambiguous and susceptible of two interpretations. But another article of the same treaty, namely, the 15th, contains the following words: “If difficulties arise in the execution of _any one_ of the articles of the present Convention, the interpretation of it shall be made in favour of the French Army and of the City of Paris.” Difficulties did arise in the execution of the 12th article. The construction which the ratifying party apprehended was put upon it by one of the weaker party, and the benefit of the doubt under the 15th article was claimed by that party. Yet “the interpretation was not made in favour” of, but to the injury and murder of a Marshal of the Army, and an inhabitant of Paris!

I was, I own, deeply affected by the merits of this case at the time, not only from compassion for the sufferers, but from a sincere dread of the disgrace which would attach to the English General and to the English name, if so just a claim for our intercession were resisted. I ventured to write to Lord Kinnaird,[224] then living in intimacy with the Duke of Wellington, on the subject; and in the persuasion that my letter would arrive long before the irrevocable moment of his execution, I urged him to communicate my reasons and feelings to his powerful friend. The letter is as follows:

MIDDLETON, _Dec. 5, 1816_.

DEAR KINNAIRD,

What is passing at Paris annoys me more than I can well
describe. For La Valette,[225] on the score of private
acquaintance, though slight, I am much concerned; but, from the
regard to the character of our country and to that of the Duke
of Wellington (in whom, after the great things he has done,
even as decided an opponent of the war as myself must feel some
national interest), I have conceived more horror at the trials
and executions going on in the teeth of our Capitulation than
mere humanity could create.

How can such a man as Wellington assert that the impunity for
political conduct extends only to impunity from the Allies
for offences committed against them? When ships strike, when
garrisons surrender, do the captains or commanders stipulate
that the foreign conqueror shall not molest them for their
political exertions? With or without such stipulations, what
shadow of right has a foreign enemy to punish individuals for
opinions held or conduct pursued in their own country? It is
clear the impunity promised was impunity for crimes, real or
supposed, against a French Government. If the French Government
was a party to that promise, by that promise it must abide;
if not, the other Allies are bound in honour not to deliver
over a town taken in virtue of it without exacting the same
terms from those to whom they deliver it. Such perhaps is the
formal, technical way of putting the argument. Practically
and substantially the case, if not more striking, is yet more
conclusive to men of justice and honour. The Allies have
virtually (I might say formally too) been masters of Paris,
while the persons who delivered it to them, on the faith of
impunity for political offences,[226] have for political
offences been imprisoned, tried, condemned, and executed!

Wellington has himself precluded all doubt on the question.
He maintains in his letter to Lord Castlereagh that there is
no article in the Capitulation securing to the town of Paris
the pictures and statues, and thereupon he argues; and he acts
upon his argument that the Allies may seize the pictures,
etc., etc., and seize them without any fresh or formal cession
from Louis XVIII. Up to that time, then, the Allies, according
to him, were in military possession of Paris; and up to that
time therefore, even upon his own view of the subject, the
inhabitants were entitled to claim impunity for all political
opinions and conduct. Those who had the right and the power of
taking forcibly from Paris property not specified or disposed
of in the Capitulation, notwithstanding the nominal Government
of Louis XVIII., must surely have a right to enforce on any
such nominal and dependent Government the observance of
promises on the faith of which the inhabitants had surrendered
the town. Technical arguments may possibly be urged on both
sides; and though they appear to me all in favour of Ney’s
claim, it is _not_ on them I lay the stress, but on the obvious
and practical aspect of the transaction as it must strike
impartial men and posterity. The plain relation of the events
in history will be this. A promise of security was held out to
the inhabitants of Paris: they surrendered the town; and while
Wellington and the Allies were still really in possession of
it, Labedoyère was executed, and Ney was tried for political
opinion and conduct. Even of subsequent executions, and I fear
there will be many, it will be said, “The Allies delivered
over their authority in Paris to a French Government, without
exacting an observance of the stipulations on which they had
originally acquired it.”

Had we taken Martinique in ’93 or ’94 on a promise of not
molesting individuals for political opinions or conduct, should
we have been at liberty to cede it, had Louis XVIII. been then
restored, without insisting on the impunity of all political
offences, or, at the very least, on the right of leaving the
country for such as might have so offended? In Egypt the French
stipulated that no natives should be molested for their conduct
or opinions during the war. We took military possession of
the country on those terms, and then delivered it over to the
political authority of the Ottoman Porte. When, however, the
Captain Pacha, acting under that authority, began murdering the
Beys and proceeding against the adherents of the French, we
not only remonstrated and threatened, but actually protected
the persecuted men within our lines. Yet by reference to the
history of those times, you will find that many blamed Lord
Hutchinson,[227] for not having recourse to yet more violent
methods to enforce on the “legitimate political authority”
the observance of engagements entered into by our military
power on taking military possession of the country. Lord
Nelson’s conduct at Naples was indeed different: but what is
the impression left of those transactions? Will Wellington
condescend to accept the only palliation ever offered for
Nelson, though a man in all other respects so justly beloved,
_viz._, blind, bigoted zeal and a very narrow capacity on
every subject not connected with his own profession. What
would Wellington himself have said, if the British troops had
surrendered any town in Spain to the French with a similar
stipulation, and if on the flimsy and hypocritical subterfuge
of a distinction between Joseph’s Spanish Government and the
French military authorities, all the Spaniards who had assisted
us during the siege had been prosecuted for treason against
Joseph? Yet where is the distinction?

The worst is, that as nothing but Wellington’s name could
carry down so foul a transaction, so the whole odium of the
breach of faith will fall on him and him only. He signed, he
interpreted the Capitulation; _and when a construction of a
doubtful passage might have saved one of the first officers
of the age, he gave it the meaning least favourable to the
conquered party, and left a man with whom he had once coped in
the field of honourable war to be taken off by the hands of the
executioner._

The want of principle and consistency and the disgusting
changes of the Marshals have, I know, steeled men’s minds to
their sufferings. This is natural enough. But when the violence
of the times is gone by, and, above all, when the tomb has
closed on their offences, the transaction will be judged with
reference to the character of Wellington and to the nature of
his promise, not to the conduct or misconduct of the sufferers.

Si ego digna in quam faceres, tu tamen indignus qui
feceris, Pamphile.

Nor is this all. If we judge by former instances, even the
crime itself will be regarded with more indulgence by posterity
than any irregular mode of punishing it. Allowance for
individuals is made in all great changes. It is difficult in
sudden emergencies and great convulsions of State, especially
for professional men whose lives have been passed in camps, to
weigh maturely all the considerations by which their conduct
should, in the strict line of duty, be regulated. Unforeseen
cases occur, and men even of good principles and understanding
are hurried into acts of inconsistency and political
immorality. History is full of such instances, and in our own
the name of one, with whom Wellington himself cannot dislike
being associated, brings them to our recollection. Marlborough
abandoned, in his King, a benefactor and protector, betrayed
the person who placed great confidence in him, and did so when
the opinions of his friends and party were, to say the least,
divided, and not unanimous in favour of the step he took.

These men deserted a standard to which they were recently,
reluctantly, and barely reconciled; under which they were
regarded with suspicion by their Government, with hatred and
reproach by their fellow soldiers, and they went over to their
ancient companion in arms and victory—to one from whom they had
derived rank, property, character, and importance. They did
so, too, when all the military feeling of their country was
decidedly in unison with the cause they espoused. A stoic, a
philosopher, a man whose public principles are stronger than
his private affections, gratitude, or vanity, might perhaps
have acted otherwise, and from strict regard to his honour,
once given, have sacrificed his fortunes, his favour, and
popularity with those to whom he was obliged, to support a
cause in which he found himself engaged against his interests
and inclinations. I own, however (you will perhaps reckon me
lax for thinking so), that any military man who was to lay his
hand on his heart and say that he would have done so, would
give me a much higher opinion of his present prudence than of
his self-knowledge and candour.

In this latter view of the subject, I know I am somewhat
singular. Few at present make such allowances for the political
tergiversations of the Marshals, and many, more indulgent than
I am in their judgment of political apostasy in England, are
quite outrageous with Frenchmen for not acting with inflexible
principle in the most trying and difficult circumstances.
Some, however, among the most indignant at their crimes, yet
doubt the justice, policy, and safety of punishing them; and
more, especially among the moderate of all parties, think the
claim of the Capitulation conclusive, or if not quite so, of
a nature questionable enough to induce Wellington, for the
preservation of his own and the national character, to give
it the construction most favourable to the weaker party. My
opinion is of no importance, but it is so strong that I could
not resist expressing it to you, who have access to those
whose character is most interested in forming a sound one upon
this very important subject. I have not spoken of La Valette.
All my arguments apply in his favour as strongly as in Ney’s,
and surely he is not, as the other may be, any object of a
bystander’s indignation. He seems an honourable man throughout.

Yours ever truly,

VASSALL HOLLAND.

The above letter arrived too late. Marshal Ney had perished the day before. Lord Kinnaird somewhat injudiciously showed the Duke of Wellington the letter. The truths contained in it were probably by that time, and have been since, very unpleasant to him. He affected to take umbrage at a passage,[228] which he erroneously supposed was intended to convey an imputation upon him as jealous or fearful of the military superiority of Marshal Ney. When I met him two years afterwards at Paris, he would not speak to me. This sort of distance continued, till our common friend, General Alava,[229] persuaded us to renew the slight intercourse which had formerly subsisted between us. We exchanged visits; he dined with me, and subsequent differences in politics have not interrupted the interchange of civility between us.

I remember him, though he is older than myself, at Eton. He was in no way distinguished there. Soon afterwards, both in his regiment and in Ireland, he was, perhaps from contrast with his elder brother, reckoned below mediocrity. In Dublin Castle his companions treated him as a good-humoured, insignificant youth; and in India he was thought to require all Lord Wellesley’s affection and interest to screen him even from disgrace.[230] It is said that the compliance or good nature of Sir John Harris, on one occasion, procured him the peerage, which he certainly owed exclusively to Lord Wellesley’s recommendation. That warning, however, if it was as serious as it is represented, roused the faculties of Arthur Wellesley. From that period he devoted himself to business and his profession. He rose rapidly through the gradations of a good officer and useful man of business to much consideration both in the State and the Army. He showed great discretion, temper, and judgment in defence of his brother against an impeachment in 1806, and in the following year he was designated by Lord Grenville to command a large expedition to Mexico. He soon afterwards began his career in Portugal.

My opinion of him was formed very early. He is not only a very capable and useful, but he is a great, fortunate, and extraordinary man, both in politics and in war. No one ever possessed greater dexterity in adapting his means to his ends. His want of any remarkable exterior accomplishments only renders this faculty more wonderful. It is possible that his wisdom may not be of the most enlarged and comprehensive, and certainly not of the most refined and delicate kind; but it is so unerring on all great occasions that it partakes at least of the character of genius. Then his apprehension is quick, his sagacity marvellous, his application indefatigable, and his decision and courage unfailing. Even his defects turn to account. A certain insensibility, real or assumed, gives his judgment uninterrupted scope for its exertion; and habitual carelessness and inaccuracy in language, disarming criticism in public, has often procured him advantages in his private intercourse with politicians, which are seldom supposed to be attainable but by qualities of a more exceptionable character. It is, indeed, rare for a man of sense, education, and spirit to be more destitute of taste, wit, grace, or imagination. But he affects none of them, and is often humble or adroit enough to profit by the allowance made for their absence. He loves to display a knowledge of details, even when he possesses it very imperfectly; but, in general, his conversation and manners have the ineffable charm of unassuming simplicity. Though he is very close and his designs quite impenetrable, he speaks of past transactions with great readiness and ease, and has all the air of being frank and communicative. He has not quick or delicate feelings, and generosity is not the chief ingredient in his composition.

On the other hand, he has few bad passions, and can subdue them effectually when his interests, or even his convenience, require it. Good-humoured, however, as he seems in social life, he is said to be often indifferent and even harsh to inferiors,[231] which, if true, is a trait not rendered less unamiable by the proof which his demeanour with equals affords, that he can control his dislikes, conceal his chagrin, stifle his resentments, and command his temper when he chooses. His vanity, I have sometimes thought, exceeds his ambition; for he has occasionally seemed to prefer the appearance to the reality of doing whatever he likes. Opinions and principles may possibly sit rather loosely upon a soldier. Like his own warhorse, he may care little what troops he leads or what cause he serves, so that _He_, richly caparisoned in the front, be the chief pageant of the show and reap the benefit of the victory and the grace of the triumph.

It must be also admitted that all public men who have an appetite for power occasionally cede some portion of consistency and opinion, and some predilections and connections, to expediency and success; but where others have made one sacrifice of the sort, the Duke of Wellington seemed at one time to lead whole hecatombs to the shrine. The cheerfulness with which he went through that unpleasant ceremony created a malicious inference that he did not value the State more, but political principles and friendships somewhat less, than his predecessors and contemporaries. His character was so interpreted during one period of his life, and especially in 1828 and 1829, by many of his contemporaries. But the subsequent publication of his correspondence, as well as his temperate and measured conduct both in and out of office, have since proved that he can sacrifice all selfish views and even his vanity and predilections to public principles, and that although generosity is not supreme she is yet not excluded from the mind where justice and prudence predominate.

He was not, at the time of which I am now treating, connected with the purest or most stoical of public men. Lord Castlereagh perhaps never entirely lost sight of certain good objects he had been taught to value in his Whig or reforming days,[232] but he was at the best but a temporising politician, and the unusual honours he had recently received at Courts and in Congresses had almost turned his head. It required, to use a metaphor of Mr. Frere, the strong currycomb of the House of Commons to scrape off the lacquer with which he had been varnished at Vienna; and there is reason to think that the rough discipline he experienced, on his return, irritated and wounded him so much that he never recovered his natural serenity of temper and that coolness of judgment which had hitherto constituted the chief merit of his character. On his first arrival from abroad the year before, incense such as he was accustomed to in foreign Courts seemed reserved for him here. He was greeted by a long and unusual cheer as he entered the House of Commons. But short lived were such triumphs. The dread of the Property Tax[233] produced innumerable petitions, and the indefatigable genius of Mr. Brougham, who, through the influence of Lord Grey and Lord Thanet, had returned to Parliament, allowed scarce one to be presented without an exposure of the policy and a derision of the capacity of the Minister. House and country were thus enflamed against that great act of confiscation, as it was hyperbolically called in the publications of the day. The Bill was rejected. The Minister, lowered as he was by his inferiority as an orator and the defeat of his great financial measure, yet determined to maintain his post.

Thus a Cabinet was continued, divided in sentiment on the great domestic question of Catholic Emancipation and defeated by a House of Commons on their favourite scheme of finance. Such a surrender of the functions of a Ministry to a Court, combined with such an acknowledgment of their want of authority in Parliament, effected practically a more violent change in the nature of our Government than many measures which lawyers and historians stigmatise as innovations. Whether the result will be beneficial or injurious to the Commonwealth, time alone can show. It would require no great ingenuity to trace many phenomena which have since perplexed, and some which do still perplex, our political system, to that original. But mine is a narrative and not a dissertation.

The fruits of that victory over Ministers, which had been gained in a great measure by the exertions of Mr. Brougham, were thrown away by the imprudence of that same powerful but unmanageable member of Opposition. On some trivial occasion he launched out into an unseasonable invective against the habits, expenses, and personal qualities of the Prince Regent. This diatribe, deserved or undeserved, would, at all times, have been too coarse for the taste of the assembly in which it was delivered; and at that particular period it had the effect of estranging many members, who had been recently softened towards the Whigs by voting with them against the Property Tax. Mr. Ponsonby was grieved, Mr. Tierney appalled, at the fresh instance of indiscretion. It was the more unaccountable because Brougham had during that Session evinced more disposition to concert with the party than he had affected for some years. He had even resumed his habits with me, after an absence from my house of six years, upon an understanding that he should be received as if we had parted in the morning.[234] His jealousy of Mr. Horner had somewhat abated. I should be loth to suspect that he had even then detected the seeds of a disease which were to bring that excellent man shortly to the grave, and that foreseeing the untimely removal of his rival, he was willing to conciliate those whom he had avoided from jealousy of an early friend.

Whatever were his secret motives or public extravagances, he, and still more Sir Samuel Romilly, rose greatly in estimation as Parliamentary speakers in the course of 1816. Lord Castlereagh, who had felt the want of support, was not averse to secure it even in the person of one whom he hated—Mr. Canning. That gentleman had submitted to be employed by him at Lisbon in 1814, tempted, it was said, by large emoluments, and impelled by the vexations which a discontented and precarious set of adherents out of office created him at home.[235] He accepted, on his return, the Board of Control. The selection of that place seemed to indicate that neither he nor his employers thought constant or familiar intercourse any very binding cement to their new connection. The Prince Regent also, in all probability, preferred at that time an arrangement which required no personal interviews between him and the new member of the Cabinet. Mr. Canning had, indeed, advised the Princess of Wales to absent herself, and that absence was agreeable enough to the Prince Regent; but the circumstances which gave any advice from him to the Princess great weight could not be equally so. I have myself heard the Prince Regent more than insinuate causes for such ascendancy, which would not have led him to anticipate much comfort or ease in any frequent intercourse with her adviser.

No man was so well qualified as Mr. Canning to cope in debate with the established as well as rising orators in Opposition. It was prudent, therefore, in Lord Liverpool to suggest, and equally so in Lord Castlereagh to acquiesce in, a junction which placed so brilliant a speaker in the front of their battle; nor was it less so in Mr. Canning to accept of a post on their side, without stickling for what is calling the “lead” in the House of Commons. His talents were sure ere long to overshadow those of his nominal chief but real rival. There was no party of followers who could feel their honour wounded at his taking a station comparatively subordinate, and he had, moreover, already descended from his vantage-ground by the more hazardous acceptance of his Lisbon mission from and under Lord Castlereagh. It is not, however, to be denied that his condescension on those two occasions lowered him for a time in public estimation. It required several fortunate incidents, as well as the resources of application and genius which he had at command, to regain that station to which his abilities and character fairly entitled him.

About the time that he resumed a seat in Council and Parliament, the person whose example and precepts had in earlier days enflamed his ambition and improved his talents, Mr. Sheridan, was closing a career more fit,

To point a moral and adorn a tale,

than to exercise the pen of those who, like myself, have shared some portion of his friendship, enjoyed his society, and retain regard for his memory. Nothing but a sense of justice to others could induce me to inflict any on him. Mr. Canning had the gratification of offering some pecuniary assistance, and what was, in truth, more real service, as well as more agreeable to him, of paying some attention to his early friend in his last sickness and adversity. The want of such attentions from some great names, and from the Prince Regent in particular, no doubt cut him to the quick. It was perhaps a theme on which his biographer was fairly entitled to moralise. But when Mr. Moore censures the opulent and titled companions of Mr. Sheridan’s happier days for not relieving him from his pecuniary embarrassments, I, whom he almost as inaccurately excepts from his censure, am bound to say that it is unjust. To my knowledge, some aid of that nature was offered, and more was possibly accepted than his biographer relates or than his benefactors ever wished to have recorded.

That the real amount of his debts was small is, I believe, correctly true; but that it was so is not less strange than true. The inference that therefore an advance of a sum equal to the debts would have relieved him from his distresses may seem plausible; but a little reflection on the real state of the case and on the character of Mr. Sheridan will show it to be erroneous. His debts, though reported to be enormous, might be of inconsiderable amount,[236] but they were of a most complicated nature, and known only to himself. Without his assistance it would have been impossible, with it not easy, to ascertain their extent. He would never have assisted any inquiry, or complied with any limitation or arrangement to secure the application of the money so raised exclusively to his creditors. Had he even consented to co-operate (which, if my memory does not mislead me, he above once refused to do), his inveterate habits of subterfuges and mis-statement were such that little truth could have been ascertained, and none without affronting and mortifying him.

In such circumstances, to impute want of generosity or dereliction of friendship to those who hesitated to afford him pecuniary aid, and much more to such as merely omitted to come forward for the purpose of incurring expense in a thankless and impracticable undertaking, is manifest and gross injustice. The same man who would cheerfully sacrifice a thousand pounds to save a friend from permanent distress might very consistently withhold a hundred which would merely postpone his arrest for a week. But Sheridan’s mind was so perversely constituted that he would have received without scruple the latter boon from a common acquaintance, but would never have pardoned a brother for conferring the former, if he had exacted any co-operation or any unpleasant acknowledgments as the condition of it.

It is exceedingly painful to chronicle the infirmities of Sheridan’s character and the faults of Mr. Moore’s book. But that lively, popular, and warm-hearted writer, in his zeal to exalt his countryman, takes facts for granted, and then draws hasty conclusions, not only unfair to our aristocracy (in whose defence I am nowise interested), but injurious to that association of public men to whom Mr. Sheridan, as well as myself, professed himself attached, and of whom I have, in a manner, constituted myself the historian. The injustice of those inferences can only be exposed by recording the failings that really disqualified Mr. Sheridan for a station to which his intellectual powers, as well as many other endowments, would have entitled him among his contemporaries.

It was neither Irish birth nor low extraction (as Mr. Moore not very covertly insinuates) that excluded Mr. Burke or Mr. Sheridan from a pre-eminence attained by Lord North, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Pitt, in their respective parties. Mr. Burke, albeit abounding in knowledge, zeal, and genius, and of far less questionable honour and integrity, had yet so little judgment in debate and so little command of his temper in council or in society, that it was at all times a problem whether he did more harm or good to the side which he espoused. Had he been placed at the head of a party, he would have been left without followers in the course of a year. Such is, at least, a fair inference from his mismanagement of the impeachment of Hastings and his conduct during the absence of Mr. Fox, in the King’s illness, in 1788. On the latter occasion, in less than six weeks he had ceased to be on speaking terms with any man of consequence in the party. His intemperate language, more than any other circumstance, enabled Mr. Pitt to rivet his popularity by an unconstitutional restriction on the prerogatives and a personal stigma on the Heir-Apparent of the Crown.

Mr. Sheridan, although far more disposed to covet and better qualified to acquire popularity, was yet less likely to attain the permanent confidence of a body of independent English gentlemen. I do not speak merely of his dissipation and intemperate habits, though towards the close of his life amounting almost to disqualifications; but there were others of a graver nature, such as not even his fascinating manners and exquisite wit (for the attainment of special and immediate purposes almost irresistible) could, in any protracted commerce or relationship with him, counterbalance. Those who enjoyed his society most and knew him best, even while they retained affection for him, were compelled to acknowledge that jealousy of disposition, delight in artifice and contrivance, and a proneness to gratify his own vanity with disregard to the feelings and reputation of other men, and, above all, an occasional indifference to truth, rendered any habitual reliance on his conduct preposterous in the extreme. The irregularities and mortifications of his early life and education may, in a great degree, palliate such defects in his moral character; but there is no denying them, and the injudicious endeavour to ascribe all their consequences to the injustice of others has compelled me to record them. His father,[237] a famous actor, was a harsh, unjust, and needy man, generally negligent and at times vexatious to his children. He seems to have been jealous of his son’s talents. None of them, if we except the power of bitter sarcasm, were inherited from him. That unamiable faculty he must, indeed, have possessed, if it be true that, on its being remarked how wonderful was the delineation of opposite characters in the _School for Scandal_, he replied: “Richard had only to dip his pen in his own heart, and he had both Joseph and Charles.” His mother,[238] the authoress of _Sidney Bidulph_, was a gentle, virtuous, clever, and unhappy woman. She died abroad of a consumption; and her sufferings were aggravated by hard usage from her husband and anxiety about her absent and neglected children.

The salary for Richard Brinsley’s education at Harrow, where he had been left, was irregularly paid. He was slighted by the masters and tormented by the boys, as a poor player’s son. I have heard him relate, with tears in his eyes,[239] that he never met with kindness at school but from Dr. Parr.[240] He was soon afterwards removed to Bath. His father had a project of establishing a school of rhetoric there, and destined his son to be one of his ushers. The scheme failed, and the intended usher commenced a man of wit and gallantry.

The adventures of that part of his life are, I believe, correctly recounted by Moore. He used to relate a scene with his father, about this period, somewhat less romantic than ludicrous. The retired actor was in the habit of haranguing his two sons after supper on the consequences of drunkenness and the motives which had induced him to renounce that vice and avoid all excess in wine. To enforce his precepts he denied them all access to his bottle, but he filled and emptied his own glass so frequently in the earnestness of discourse, that ere the lecture on sobriety was finished the two disciples were compelled to convey the professor of that virtue drunk to bed.

His long confinement from illness in Soho Square was the only period of his life in which he devoted himself to reading or study. He had no great appetite for general knowledge. Endowed as he was with the powers of memory and observation, he had less learning than the common run of well-educated men in society. He was conscious of his deficiency; yet he sought to make it appear greater than it really was, and concealed the information he had, with the hopes of giving to his wit and eloquence (often very elaborate) the air of genius and inspiration. He managed this so well that his pleasantry and replies appeared to common acquaintance sudden sallies excited by the occasion, and even to those who suspected them to be studied, tinctured with a sort of archness and complacency at the opportunity of introducing them, which lent them fresh relish, and added to their effect in society.

He was almost as wonderful in his physical constitution as in his intellectual powers. He seemed built for longevity; and no man was better made to bear fatigue, labour, or debauch. Even in hearing and seeing he had the advantage of other people. Vain as he was, he, in words and manner and sometimes in actions, acknowledged the superiority of Mr. Fox,[241] and even liked his society as much as he could that of any man who had advantages over him. He was, in short, less jealous of him than he would have been of another in the same situation. The unaffected admiration which he knew Mr. Fox entertained and professed for his wit, eloquence, and writings, in some measure disarmed his malignity.

The truth is, that although vindictive where his vanity had been wounded, he was not an ill-natured man. He could pardon an injury more readily than a slight, and either, I fear I must add, more easily than a great obligation. To inferiors he was not merely civil and serviceable, but he was kind and considerate. Where his own self-love was no wise concerned, he was disposed to soothe that of others, and that, too, in cases where he could have no view of courting popularity. Even on his death-bed, the old woman put into the house by his creditors was so won by his anxiety lest she should lose her dinner by waiting on him, that she contracted an attachment for him as strong as if she had attended him from his childhood.