Many English went to Elba about this time; the substance of their conversations is still in my recollection--April 2, 1815. He said that he considered the great superiority of England to France lay in her aristocracy, that the people were not better, but that the Parliament was composed of all the men of property and all the men of family in the country; this enabled the Government to resist the shock which the failure of the Duke of York's expedition was liable to cause--in France it would have destroyed the Government. (This is an opinion rather tinged by the Revolution, but it is true that our House of Commons looks to final results.) They were strong, he said, by "les souvenirs attachants à l'histoire"; that on the contrary he could make eighty senates in France as good as the present; that he had intended to create a nobility by marrying his generals, whom he accounted as quite insignificant, notwithstanding the titles he had given them, to the offspring of the old nobility of France. He had reserved a fund from the contribution which he levied when he made treaties with Austria, Prussia, etc., in order to found these new families. "Did you get anything from Russia?"
N. No, I never asked anything from her but to shut her ports against England.
He wished, he said, to favour the re-establishment of the old families, but every time he touched that chord an alarm was raised, and the people trembled as a horse does when he is checked.
He told the story of the poisoning, and said there was some truth in it--he had wished to give opium to two soldiers who had got the plague and could not be carried away, rather than leave them to be murdered by the Turks, but the physician would not consent. He said that after talking the subject over very often he had changed his mind on the morality of the measure. He owned to shooting the Turks, and said they had broken their capitulation. He found great fault with the French Admiral who fought the battle of the Nile, and pointed out what he ought to have done, but he found most fault with the Admiral who fought--R. Calder--for not disabling his fleet, and said that if he could have got the Channel clear then, or at any other time, he would have invaded England.
He said the Emperor of Russia was clever and had "idées libérales," but was a veritable Grec. At Tilsit, the Emperor of Russia, King of Prussia, and N. used to dine together. They separated early--the King of Prussia went to bed, and the two Emperors met at each other's quarters and talked, often on abstract subjects, till late in the night. The King of Prussia a mere corporal, and the Emperor of Austria very prejudiced--"d'ailleurs honnête homme."
Berthier quite a pen-and-ink man--but "bon diable qui servit le premier, à me témoigner ses regrets, les larmes aux yeux."
Metternich a man of the world, "courtisan des femmes," but too false to be a good statesman-"car en politique il ne faut pas étre trop menteur."
It was his maxim not to displace his Marshals, which he had carried to a fault in the case of Marmont, who lost his cannon by treachery, he believed--I forget where. The Army liked him, he had rewarded them well.
Talleyrand had been guilty of such extortion in the peace with Austria and with Bavaria that he was complained against by those Powers and therefore removed--it was he who advised the war with Spain, and prevented N. from seeing the Duke d'Enghien, whom he thought a "brave jeune homme," and wished to see.
He said he had been fairly tried by a military tribunal, and the sentence put up in every town in France, according to law.
Spain ought to have been conquered, and he should have gone there himself had not the war with Russia occurred.
Lord Lauderdale was an English peer, but not of "la plus belle race." England will repent of bringing the Russians so far: they will deprive her of India.
If Mr. Fox had lived, he thought he should have made peace--praised the noble way in which the negotiation was begun by him.
The Archduke Charles he did not think a man of great abilities. "Tout ce que j'ai publié sur les finances est de l'Evangile," he said--he allowed no gaspillage and had an excellent treasurer; owing to this he saved large sums out of his civil list.
The conscription produced 300,000 men yearly.
He thought us wrong in taking Belgium from France--he said it was now considered as so intimately united that the loss was very mortifying. Perhaps it would have been better, he said, to divide France--he considered one great advantage to consist as I--(End of Journal.)
During the session of 1813 Lord John was returned for the family borough of Tavistock. He was obliged, however, principally owing to ill-health, to retire from active life at the end of three years, during which time he made a remarkable speech against the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. It must have been at about this time that he thought of giving up politics and devoting himself to literature, which brought the following "Remonstrance" from his friend Thomas Moore:
REMONSTRANCE
(After a conversation with Lord John Russell in which he had intimated some idea of giving up all political pursuits.)
What! thou, with thy genius, thy youth, and thy name--
Thou, born of a Russell--whose instinct to run
The accustomed career of thy sires, is the same
As the eaglet's to soar with his eyes on the sun.
Whose nobility comes to thee, stamped with a seal,
Far, far more ennobling than monarch e'er set,
With the blood of thy race, offered up for the weal
Of a nation that swears by that martyrdom yet I
Shalt thou be faint-hearted and turn from the strife,
From the mighty arena, where all that is grand,
And devoted and pure, and adorning in life,
'Tis for high-thoughted spirits like thine to command?
Oh no, never dream it--while good men despair
Between tyrants and traitors, and timid men bow,
Never think, for an instant, thy country can spare
Such a light from her darkening horizon as thou.
With a spirit as meek as the gentlest of those
Who in life's sunny valley lie sheltered and warm;
Yet bold and heroic as ever yet rose
To the top cliffs of Fortune and breasted her storm;
With an ardour for liberty, fresh as in youth
It first kindles the bard and gives life to his lyre,
Yet mellowed even now by that mildness of truth
Which tempers, but chills not, the patriot fire;
With an eloquence--not like those rills from a height,
Which sparkle and foam, and in vapour are o'er;
But a current that works out its way into light
Through the filtering recesses of thought and of lore.
Thus gifted, thou never canst sleep in the shade;
If the stirrings of Genius, the music of fame,
And the charms of thy cause have not power to persuade,
Yet think how to Freedom thou'rt pledged by thy Name.
Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree,
Set apart for the Fane and its service divine,
So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree,
Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her shrine.
THOMAS MOORE.
In spite of strong literary proclivities it would certainly have been a wrench to Lord John to leave the stirring scenes of Parliamentary life, and his feeling about it may be gathered from a letter written to his brother in 1841: