It has been insinuated to the officers of your nation that they are not to present themselves before him whom they guard; or they have been forbidden to do so. The English themselves, whatever may be the rank and the confidence which they enjoy, have been forbidden to approach us, and to enter into conversation with us, without formalities which are equivalent to an interdiction, lest we might represent to them the ill usage heaped upon us—a precaution useless with respect to security; but which proves the jealous care with which we are prevented from communicating the truth. Our efforts on this subject have been made a crime; as if to inform you of the truth, particularly where it interests your honour, your character, was not doing you a service.
You certainly never intended to allow such a tyranny over our thoughts and sentiments, as to insinuate to us, or inform us, that, if we continued to express ourselves freely in our letters to our relatives, to our friends, we should be torn from the presence of Napoleon, and banished from the Island. Yet it is precisely this circumstance which has brought about my deportation, by causing me to forward, clandestinely, the very letters which I had in the first instance, intended for the Governor, and which I would have sent to him, had it not been for his vexatious intimation—an intimation gratuitously tyrannical—since these letters were sent open to Ministers, accompanied, if necessary, by the notes of the local authority, that they might be detained by the Ministers, if they were improper; or even delivered up to the laws, if they were criminal: and since, at all events, they must have in their eyes the merit of being a further means of coming at the truth.
Certainly, you never intended that those who had obtained the favour of staying with Napoleon should find themselves within the penalties of the laws, but excluded from their benefit. This is, however, what has been positively signified to us. You did not intend that my most secret, and most sacred, papers should be seized; and, though I had allowed them to be read cursorily, in order to shew their nature, that they should be taken from me, and that I should not be allowed to put my seal upon them. You never intended that a barbarous sport should be made in my case, of whatever is most holy and most sacred among you; that, in contempt of my constant claims to be restored to liberty, or brought to trial; that, in despite of my reiterated offers to submit myself voluntarily, beforehand, to all the privations, even arbitrary, which might be imposed upon me in England, I should be kept prisoner at St. Helena; that I should be sent from that Island to the Cape of Good Hope, to be brought back in the course of time, from the Cape to St. Helena; that I should be carried a prisoner over the vast extent of sea, in a frail vessel, to the great injury of the health of my son, whose life was in danger, to the peril of my own life, which has been afflicted with infirmities that must accompany me to the grave,—if, indeed, they do not plunge me into it before my time.
It was not your intention that, on my arrival at the Cape, the Governor should detain me there arbitrarily, without examination, without inquiry, without inquest, and cause me to wither there in the pangs of sorrow, of delay, and of despair, upon the ridiculous pretence of sending to a distance of two thousand leagues to inquire of my natural judges, the ministers to whom I so earnestly solicited to be delivered up, if it would be right to send me to them; and executing beforehand upon me, by that single act, a sentence a thousand times more terrible than could have been that of my judges, viz. depriving me for several months of my liberty, detaining me the whole of that time a captive at the extremity of the earth, separated from my family, from my friends, from my interests, painfully wearing out in the desert the few days which remain to me. Surely, under the empire of positive laws, no one could thus tyrannically sport with the liberty, the life, the happiness of individuals.
O Englishmen! if such acts should remain unpunished, your excellent laws would be no more than an empty name. You would carry terror to the extremities of the earth and there would no longer be either liberty or justice among you.
Such are the grievances which I had to make known to you, and which are developed, with others, in a letter hereto annexed,[[35]] which, on leaving St. Helena, I sent to the Governor, in the hope that it might produce a reformation.
Many of these grievances would perhaps have deserved to pass unnoticed by us; nevertheless, I have done myself the violence of laying them before you. There are none of them so trivial as not to interest your honour. And what could be the causes of such measures? Whence can proceed these gradual attacks, these continued aggravations. How can they have been justified? We know not.
Not, however, that the ruling power at St. Helena denies the danger to the health of the captive, the imminent peril of his life, the probable and speedy issue of such a state of things. ‘It will have been his own wish,’ they content themselves with coldly observing; ‘It will be his own fault.’ But do they act discreetly in this? To confess that Napoleon seeks death, is it not confessing that they have rendered life intolerable to him? ‘Moreover,’ continue they, ‘why refuse to take the necessary exercise, because an officer must accompany him? What is there in this formality so hateful, so painful? Why does he insist upon making it a matter of such great importance?’ But who can arrogate to himself the right of judging of the feelings of the illustrious[illustrious] victim? Napoleon debars himself, and he is silent; what would they have more? Besides, it has been reported, a thousand times, it is neither the colour of the coat nor the difference of nation which creates repugnance; but the nature of the thing itself, and its inevitable effects. If, in such exercise, the benefit of the body were greatly below the sufferings of the mind, would this exercise be an advantage?
But it is further insinuated, (for there is not one identical scale for all minds and all sentiments) ‘Why such particular regard, why such extraordinary cares and attentions? After all he is a captive, of distinction perhaps, but what is he more? what are his claims?’
What he is, and what are his claims, I will proceed to state.