FRENCH AFFAIRS. GENERAL D'ARBLAY'S HEALTH.
(Madame d'Arblay to her Son.) Bath, Friday, April 2, 1816. ……The Oppositionists, and all their friends, have now a dread of France, and bend their way to Italy. But the example now given at Paris, in the affair of Messrs. Wilson and Co.(292) that Englishmen are as amenable to the laws and customs of the countries which they inhabit, as foreigners while in England are to ours, will make them more careful, both in spirit and conduct, than heretofore they have deemed it necessary to be, all over the globe. It is a general opinion
Page 387 that there will be a great emigration this summer, because John Bull longs to see something beyond the limited circumference of his birthright - but that foreign nations will be now so watchful of his proceedings, so jealous of his correspondence, and so easily offended by his declamation or epigrams, that he will be glad to return here, where liberty, when not abused, allows a real and free exercise of true independence of mind, speech, and conduct, such as no other part of the world affords.
I am truly happy not to be at Paris at such a juncture ; for opinions must be cruelly divided, and society almost out of the question. Our letters all confess that scarcely one family is d'acord even with itself. The overstraining royalists make moderate men appear jacobins. The good king must be torn to pieces between his own disposition to clemency, and the vehemence of his partisans against risking any more a general amnesty. All that consoles me for the length of time required for the cure of your padre's leg is the consequence, in its keeping off his purposed visit. A cold has forced him to relinquish the pump till to-day, when he is gone to make another essay. He is so popular in Bath, that he is visited here by everybody that can make any pretext for calling. I have this moment been interrupted by a letter to invite me with my " bewitching husband " to a villa near Prior Park. He is not insensible to the kindness he meets with - au contraire, it adds greatly to his contentment in the steadiness of a certain young sprig that is inducing him here to plant his final choux; and the more, as we find that, as far as that sprig has been seen here, he, also, has left so favourable an impression, that we are continually desired to introduce him, on his next arrival, wherever we go.
Your kind father, upon your last opening of "All here is well," instantly ran down stairs, with a hop, skip, and a jump, and agreed to secure our pretty lodgings for a year.
THE ESCAPE OF LAVALETTE. THE STREATHAM PORTRAITS.
(Madame d'Arblay to her Son.) Bath, April 30, 1816. The three chevaliers have all been condemned as culpable of aiding a state-criminal to escape, but not accused of any conspiracy against the French government. They Page 388 are therefore, sentenced merely to three months' imprisonment.(293) Certainly, if their logic were irrefutable, and if the treaty of Paris included the royal pardon with the amnesty accorded by the allied generals, then, to save those who ought not to have been tried would have been meritorious rather than illegal; but the king had no share in that treaty, which could only hold good in a military sense, of security from military prosecution or punishment from the Allies. These Allies, however, did not call themselves conquerors, nor take Paris, nor judge the Parisians ; but so far as belonged to a capitulation, meant, on both sides, to save the capital and its inhabitants from pillage and the sword. Once restored to its rightful monarch, all foreign interference was at an end. Having been seated on the throne by the nation, and having never abdicated, though he had been chased by rebellion from his kingdom, he had never forfeited his privilege to judge which of his subjects were still included in his original amnesty, and which had incurred the penalty or chances of being tried by the laws of the land - and by them, not by royal decree, condemned or acquitted.
A false idea seems encouraged by all the king's enemies, that his amnesty ought to have secured pardon to the condemned: the amnesty could only act up to the period when it was granted and accepted; it could have nothing to do with after-offences.
I am grieved to lose my respect and esteem for a character I had considered so heroical as that of Sir R. Wilson: but to find, through his intercepted correspondence, that the persecution
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