This digression I have ventured on, because in the first place it harmonises with the theatrical nature of my subject, and may be interesting—because it relates to the father of an eminent and amiable woman; and most particularly, because I was informed that Mr. Owenson took a warm interest in the welfare of Miss Francis, and was the principal adviser of her mother in rejecting Mr. Doyne’s addresses.
After a lapse of many years I chanced to acquire the honour of a favourable introduction to His Royal Highness the Duke of C——, who became the efficient friend of me and of my family—not with that high and frigid mien which so often renders ungracious even the favours of upstart authorities in the British government, but with the condescending frankness and sincerity of a royal prince. He received at an early age, and educated, my only son with his own, and sent him, as lieutenant of the fifth dragoon guards, to make his campaigns in the Peninsula. This introduction to His Royal Highness gave me unerring opportunities of knowing, appreciating, and valuing, Mrs. Jordan. In her there was no guile; her heart was conspicuous in every word—her feelings in every action; and never did I find, in any character, a more complete concentration of every quality that should distinguish a mother, a friend, and a gentlewoman.
The outlines of Mrs. Jordan’s public life during her connexion of twenty-three years with a royal personage are too well known to require recital here. But with respect to her memoirs after that period, so much falsehood and exaggeration have gone abroad—so many circumstances have been distorted, and so many invented—some of the latter possessing sufficient plausibility to deceive even the most wary—that, if not a duty, it appears at least not wrong to aid in the refutation of malicious calumnies.
I have ever felt a great abhorrence of the system of defamation on hearsay. Public men, as such, may properly be commented on. It is the birthright of the British people to speak fairly their sentiments of those who rule them; but libel on private reputation is a disgusting excrescence upon the body of political freedom, and has latterly grown to an extent so dangerous to individuals, to families, and to society in general, and so disgraceful to the press at large, that it may hereafter afford plausible pretences for curtailing the liberty of that organ—the pure and legal exercise of which is the proudest and surest guardian of British freedom. The present lax, unrestrained, and vicious exuberance of the periodical press, stamps the United Kingdom as the very focus of libel and defamation in all their ramifications. No reputation—no rank—no character, public or private, neither the living nor the dead,—can escape from its licentiousness. One comfort may be drawn from the reflection—that it can proceed no further; its next movement must be a retrograde one, and I trust the legislature will not permit this retrogression to be long deferred.
That spirit of licentiousness I have been endeavouring to stigmatise was never more clearly instanced than by the indefatigable and reiterated attempts (for several years persevered in) to disparage a royal personage, whose domestic habits, and whose wise and commendable abstinence from political party and conflicting factions, should have exempted him from the pen and from the tongue of misrepresentation, and rendered sacred a character which only requires development to stand as high in the estimation of every man who regards the general happiness and power of the empire, as that of any other member of the same illustrious house. On this point I speak not lightly: that which I state is neither the effusion of gratitude nor the meanness of adulation: the royal personage I allude to would not commend me for the one, and would despise me for the other.
I cannot conclude this digression without reprobating in no measured terms that most dangerous of all calumnious tendencies which endeavours systematically to drag down the highest ranks to the level of the lowest, and by labouring to excite a democratic contempt of royal personages, attempts gradually to sap the very foundation of constitutional allegiance: such, however, has been a practice of the day, exercised with all the rancour, but without any portion of the ability, of Junius.[[33]]
[33]. I rather think that a very good man, and one of the first advocates of Ireland, carried this observation of mine and its bearings rather beyond the point I here intended, in his speech (as reported) in the Court of Chancery, on the arrival of the present chancellor. The reply of Sir Anthony Hart appeared to me to be the wisest, the most dignified, effective, and honest, that could possibly be pronounced by a lord chancellor so circumstanced, and coming after his noble predecessor.
It is deeply to be lamented that this system has been exemplified by some individuals whose literary celebrity might have well afforded them the means of creditable subsistence, without endeavouring to force into circulation works of mercenary penmanship containing wanton slander of the very highest personage in the United Empire. I specify no name: I designate no facts;—if they exist not, it is unimportant; if they are notorious, the application will not be difficult. It is true that a libeller cannot fully atone—yet he may repent; and even that mortification would be a better penance to any calumniator of distinguished talent than to run the risk of being swamped between the Scylla and Charybdis of untruth and disaffection.