“If your Excellency should wish to render yourself acquainted with my affair, and to ascertain my sentiments, I am ready to submit to your perusal all my correspondence with the Governor of St. Helena, and to lay before you my letters to his Royal Highness the Prince Regent and his Ministers. I make this offer with the wish that it may be accepted. If to subject myself voluntarily, on my arrival in England, to any measures, however arbitrary, which might be deemed equivalent to my political quarantine here, would induce you to alter your determination, I am ready to accede willingly to that condition: such is my ardent desire to return to Europe, owing to the state of my son’s health and my own; and also on account of the melancholy solitude in which I find myself placed, separated as I am from my family, which is most dear to me, and from the revered object for whose sake I made the sad sacrifice of leaving my country.
“Finally, my Lord, if there remain no chance of my liberation, at least permit my son to depart. Let him not fall a victim to circumstances to which his age must render him wholly a stranger. I willingly consent to see him separated from me, in the hope of securing to him a happier lot than that which seems to be reserved for me. I will remain here alone, to struggle with my infirmities and sorrows, to which I shall resign myself with the greater indifference, when I reflect that my child is released from the sentence of lingering death which is executing on me, though I have been tried by no tribunal, and condemned by no judge.
“I have the honour to address to your Excellency a letter to Lord Castlereagh, enclosing one for his Royal Highness the Prince Regent. These letters were written before I received the information which you had the goodness to communicate to me on this subject. I know not to which of the Ministers I ought to have addressed myself; but I consider it unnecessary to write the letter over again, as the state of my eyes renders writing a very painful task, and I find that I have observed the necessary forms.”
LETTER TO LORD CASTLEREAGH, INCLOSING THAT
ADDRESSED TO THE PRINCE REGENT.
“My Lord,—As I know not to which of your colleagues I ought to appeal, I address myself to you, as the person of whom I have acquired the greatest knowledge through public events. If the details relating to St. Helena have been communicated to your Lordship, they must, doubtless, have inspired you with great prejudice against me; and yet, had they been properly explained, my conduct must have appeared to you worthy of esteem, and, perhaps, even have excited your interest.
“At Longwood I considered myself within a sacred boundary, of which it was my duty to defend the approaches. I would willingly have died on the breach: I resisted. But now, when I find myself removed from the revered circle, and again mingling with the common mass, I assume another attitude: I implore.
“I therefore beg and entreat, my Lord, and I speak in the supposition that I am addressing the Minister to whom this appeal ought to be directed, I entreat that you will allow me to proceed to England, since the alarming state of my son’s health and my own renders skilful and prompt medical treatment necessary.
“What reason can there be for refusing my request? It cannot be personal hatred! I am too obscure to attain such an honour. It cannot be the vague dislike arising from difference of opinion! You are so much accustomed to difference of this kind in England, and it is cherished with so little rancour, that it would be ridiculous to suppose such a circumstance could operate to my prejudice. Can it be the fear that I should write or speak of the affairs of St. Helena? But would not your refusal to grant my request, in some measure, authorize the bitterness which it will be so easy to vent elsewhere? Besides, if your object were to restrain me from publishing, my residence in England would surely render this object the more secure and easy; for there you have not only general laws, but also particular laws, against such offences. When the individual is near you, you have, as positive guarantees, his prudence, his judgment, and, above all, his wish of remaining in the country.
“Thus, my Lord, I see no motive for refusing my request; but I see many reasons for granting it. You would, by this means, have the fairest opportunity of arriving at the truth, by procuring contradictory and opposite statements. In discharging the noble functions of a juror, can you satisfy your conscience by viewing only one side of the question? I can shew you the other; and I will do so, without prejudice or passion. You will find that I am inspired only by sentiment.
“I must now call your Lordship’s attention to my papers which are detained at St. Helena. I have several times explained their nature; but I will once more describe them. They are a collection of manuscripts, in the form of a Journal, in which, for the space of eighteen months, I inscribed all that I learned, saw, or heard respecting him who, in my eyes is, and will ever continue to be, the greatest of men. This Journal, which was incomplete, incorrect, unarranged and, from its nature, requiring continual correction, was a secret, which was revealed only by the circumstances that took place previously to my departure from St. Helena. Its existence known to none, except perhaps the august individual who was the object of it; and even he is, at this moment, ignorant of its contents. It was not destined to be published during my life; and I took pleasure in endeavouring to render it a complete and valuable historical monument. My Lord, I beg that you will order the whole of those papers to be forwarded to you. This you may do without inconvenience. I solemnly protest that they contain nothing that can, either directly or indirectly, be necessary or useful to the local authority of St. Helena, in furtherance of the great object with which that authority is intrusted. The inspection of my papers at St. Helena can be productive of no advantage; but, on the contrary, may occasion serious inconvenience by aggravating, through the personal allusions contained in them, the ill-humour and irritation that already prevail in too great a degree.