My Lord,
If your diplomatic despatches are as obscure as the one which now lies before me, it is no wonder that England should cease to have that proud preponderance in her foreign relations which she once could boast of.
Your lordship tells me that you have thought it your duty to explain to the Queen the subject which caused me to address her Majesty: I should have thought, my lord, that it would have been your duty to have made those explanations prior to having taken the liberty of using her Majesty’s name, and alienated from her and her country a subject, who, the great and small must acknowledge, (however painful it may be to some) has raised the English name in the East higher than any one has yet done, besides having made many philosophical researches of every description for the advantage of human nature at large, and this without having spent one farthing of the public money. Whatever may be the surprise created in the minds of statesmen of the old school respecting the conduct of government towards me, I am not myself in the least astonished; for, when the son of a king, with a view of enlightening his own mind and the world in general, had devoted part of his private fortune to the purchase of a most invaluable library at Hamburgh, he was flatly refused an exemption from the custom-house duties; but, if report speaks true, had an application been made to pass bandboxes, millinery, inimitable wigs, and invaluable rouge, it would have been instantly granted by her Majesty’s ministers, if we may judge by precedents. Therefore, my lord, I have nothing to complain of; yet I shall go on fighting my battles, campaign after campaign.
Your lordship gives me to understand that the insult which I have received was considerately bestowed upon me to avoid some dreadful, unnameable misfortune which was pending over my head. I am ready to meet with courage and resignation every misfortune it may please God to visit me with, but certainly not insult from man. If I can be accused of high crimes and misdemeanours, and that I am to stand in dread of the punishment thereof, let me be tried, as I believe I have a right to be, by my peers; if not, then by the voice of the people. Disliking the English because they are no longer English—no longer that hardy, honest, bold people that they were in former times—yet, as some few of this race must remain, I should rely in confidence upon their integrity and justice, when my case had been fully examined.
It is but fair to make your lordship aware, that, if by the next packet there is nothing definitively settled respecting my affairs, and that I am not cleared in the eyes of the world of aspersions, intentionally or unintentionally thrown upon me, I shall break up my household and build up the entrance-gate to my premises: there remaining, as if I was in a tomb, till my character has been done justice to, and a public acknowledgment put in the papers, signed and sealed by those who have aspersed me. There is no trifling with those who have Pitt blood in their veins upon the subject of integrity, nor expecting that their spirit would ever yield to the impertinent interference of consular authority.
Meanly endeavouring (as Colonel Campbell has attempted to do) to make the origin of this business an application of the Viceroy of Egypt to the English Government, I must, without having made any inquiries upon the subject, exculpate his highness from so low a proceeding. His known liberality in all such cases, from the highest to the lowest class of persons, is such as to make one the more regret his extraordinary and reprehensible conduct towards his great master, and that such a man should become totally blinded by vanity and ambition, which must in the end prove his perdition—an opinion I have loudly given from the beginning.
Your lordship talks to me of the capitulations with the Sublime Porte: what has that to do with a private individual’s having exceeded his finances in trying to do good? If there is any punishment for that, you had better begin with your ambassadors, who have often indebted themselves at the different courts of Europe as well as at Constantinople. I myself am so attached to the Sultan, that, were the reward of such conduct that of losing my head, I should kiss the sabre wielded by so mighty a hand, yet, at the same time, treat with the most ineffable contempt your trumpery agents, as I shall never admit of their having the smallest power over me—if I did, I should belie my origin.
Hester Lucy Stanhope.
Here let me ask the reader whether Lady Hester had not indeed a right to be indignant with the minister who then directed the foreign affairs of the country, for the illiberal manner in which he gratified his spleen and mortified vanity. He had not the power of directly stopping the payment of her pension, it being a parliamentary grant; but he had recourse to the unworthy artifice of directing his agent not to sign the certificate of her life, without which her pension could not be paid. Nothing can be added to the well-merited castigation inflicted upon him, and he has brought down upon himself the condemnation of all men of good breeding and generous sentiment. What his present feelings on the subject may be it is impossible to say; but I would fain hope that there are few who are disposed to envy him, much less to follow his example.