[[55]]and re-adjusted by our councils, he had opportunities, which few ministers have enjoyed, of benefitting his country and the whole human race. But how did he employ these rare opportunities? Alas! his name is only to be found in treaties and conventions for clipping the boundaries, impairing the rights, or annihilating the existence of independent states; and he gloried in the opportunity of stifling liberty in all the lesser states of Europe. Even the colonial and commercial interests of Great Britain herself were bartered away for snuff boxes and the smiles of Continental despots! If, however, there is one action more than another calculated to brand the name of Castlereagh with immortal infamy, it is the mean, tyrannical, and inglorious conduct which he exercised towards the greatest man that ever reigned over a free and enlightened people—the Emperor Napoleon! To view the career of this truly illustrious man is to look back upon the course of a blazing star, that, drawing its fiery arch over the concave of heaven, fixes the admiring attention of the sublunary world, and dazzles, while it arrests, the wondering eye! What language can do justice to the mental powers and noble daring of the man who subdued the blood-thirsty enemies of his country, and laid Europe at his feet? In Napoleon, we saw the triumphant opposer of all despots, and the restorer of order to his own disorganized and distracted subjects. See him from his bold and judicious exertions at Toulon to his assumption of the imperial title, and the dread-inspiring attitude he

[[56]]presented to terrified and retiring Russia,—then judge his gigantic energy and valour! As first consul, he pacified Europe; and, as emperor and king, revenged her breach of the peace. Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Prussia, the Netherlands, Germany, Sardinia, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Naples, were all in arms against his power; yet—all fell before it!

The termination of the great war in Europe was not the peculiar triumph of that cabinet of which Lord Londonderry was the most prominent tool. The campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were guided by the skill and spirit of Russian and German officers,—aided, to be sure, by British soldiers,—and with the whole civilized world for their allies. The English ministers, or rather, the MONIED INTEREST of England, were bankers to the "Grand Alliance," and furnished the sinews of the war. But, even with such mighty odds against him, the towering and gigantic genius of Napoleon would have defied them all, if English money had not BRIBED some of his generals. It was this, and this only, that completed his downfall. To talk of the Duke of Wellington as the conqueror of Napoleon is an insult to the understanding of any intelligent man, and for Lord Castlereagh to have boasted of having subdued him, as his lordship was wont to do, "was pitiful, was wonderous pitiful!" The English cabinet, at this period, was the same "incapable" cabinet. The men were the same satellites to Mr. Pitt, subordinates to Mr. Perceval,—nay, even to Lord Sidmouth, of

[[57]]Manchester notoriety,—whom the independent members of parliament had long known and despised. Circumstances ruled these ministers, whose position was chosen for them, and improved by others. They could not have resisted that universal impulse which they had not created, but which Bonaparte himself had provoked; for he defied the whole "Grand Alliance," and, so far, was the author of his own reverses, which, however, he would not so soon have experienced if Fouché, Duke of Otranto, had not suffered his avarice to get the better of his duty. It was this wicked duke, who, dreading the detection of his treachery, devised a plan for assassinating the Emperor Napoleon on his road to Waterloo. But, though this diabolical intention proved a failure, he succeeded too well in putting his illustrious master in the power of the British government. Not content, however, with betraying his king, Fouché, though he capitulated for Paris, gave up the rest of France to the discretion of her enemies and the tender mercies of the Russian cossacks! This most consummate of traitors likewise exposed those who had assisted him to execute his diabolical plans, and actually signed lists for their proscription! Even the treaty for the capitulation of Paris proved a mere juggle; for none of its provisions were properly adhered to by Lord Castlereagh. The Parisians were here most shamefully deceived. It could never have been contemplated by them, for instance, that the capital was to be rifled of all the monuments of art and antiquity, whereof she had become possessed by

[[58]]right of conquest. A reclamation of the great mortar in St. James' Park, or of the throne of the King of Ceylon, would have just as much appearance of fairness as that of Apollo by the Pope, and Venus by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. What a preposterous affectation of justice did our foreign secretary evince in employing British engineers to take down the brazen horses of Alexander the Great, that they might be re-erected in St. Mark's Place at Venice,—a city to which the Austrian emperor has no more equitable a claim than we have to Vienna! Lord Castlereagh's authority for emptying the Louvre was not only an act of unfairness to the French, but one of the greatest impolicy as concerned our own countrymen, since, by so doing, he removed beyond the reach of the great majority of British artists and students the finest models of sculpture and of painting the world has produced. Although England was made to bear the trouble and expense of these removals, the complacent Castlereagh gave all the spoil to foreign potentates, whose smiles and a few trifling presents compensated him for their loss! But what will posterity think of a British minister's violating a treaty for such paltry gratifications?

We come now to speak of the conduct of the departed minister to the betrayed Emperor of the French. Napoleon always declared that he gave himself up to England, in the confidence of promises, sacredly made to him by Lord Castlereagh, that he should be allowed to remain in this country. "My having given myself up to you," were

[[59]]Napoleon's words, "is not so simple a matter as you imagine. Before I went to Elba, Lord Castlereagh offered me an asylum in England, and said that I should be very well treated there, and much better off than at Elba." But how did his lordship fulfil these promises? This will be best explained in the language of Napoleon himself, in a protest which he wrote on board the Bellerophon, August 4th, 1815, of which the following is a translation:

"I hereby solemnly protest, in the face of heaven and of man, against the violence done me, and against the violation of my most sacred rights, in forcibly disposing of my person and my liberty. I came voluntarily on board of the Bellerophon; I am not a prisoner, I am the guest of England. I came on board even at the instigation of the captain, who told me he had orders from the government to receive me and my suite, and conduct me to England, if agreeable to me. I presented myself with good faith, to put myself under the protection of the English laws. As soon as I was on board the Bellerophon, I was under shelter of the British people.

"If the government, in giving orders to the captain of the Bellerophon to receive me, as well as my suite, only intended to LAY A SNARE FOR ME, it has forfeited its honour and disgraced its flag.

"If this act be consummated, the English will in vain boast to Europe of their integrity, their laws,