A few weeks later, the Secretary of State wrote to Sir Hudson Lowe a letter to the same purpose with the former, 26th October, 1816:—
"With respect to General Buonaparte himself, I deem it unnecessary to give you any farther instructions. I am confident that your own disposition will prompt you to anticipate the wishes of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and make every allowance for the effect which so sudden a change of situation cannot fail to produce on a person of his irritable temper. You will, however, not permit your forbearance or generosity towards him to interfere with any regulations which may have been established for preventing his escape, or which you may hereafter consider necessary for the better security of his person."
The just and honourable principle avowed by Government is obvious. But it was an extraordinary and most delicate tax upon Sir Hudson Lowe, which enjoined him to keep fast prisoner an individual, who, of all others, was likely to be most impatient of restraint, and, at the same time, to treat him with such delicacy as might disguise his situation from himself, if it could not reconcile him to it. If Sir Hudson failed in doing so, he may be allowed to plead, that it was in a case in which few could have succeeded. Accordingly, Napoleon's complaints against the governor were bitter and clamorous.
HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.
The first point of complaint on the part of the family at Longwood, respected the allowance assigned by the British Government for their support, which they alleged to be insufficient to their wants. This was not a point on which Napoleon thought it proper to express his feelings in his own person. His attention was apparently fixed upon obtaining concessions in certain points of etiquette, which might take him from under the condition in which he was most unwilling to allow himself to be placed, in the rank, namely, of a prisoner of war. The theme, of the inadequacy of the allowance, was not, however, left untouched, as those concerned were well aware that there was no subject of grievance which would come more home to the people of England than one which turned upon a deficiency either in the quantity or quality of the food supplied to the exiles. Montholon's letter was clamant on the subject; and Santini intimated, that the Emperor must sometimes have gone without a meal altogether, had he (Santini) not been successful with his gun.
The true state of the case was this:—The British Government had determined that Napoleon's table should be provided for at the rate of a general of the first rank, together with his military family. The expense of such an establishment was, by the regulations furnished to Sir Hudson Lowe, dated 15th April, and 22d November, 1816, supposed to reach to £8000 a-year, with permission, however, to extend it as far as £12,000, should he think it necessary. The expense could not, in Sir Hudson Lowe's opinion, be kept within £8000; and indeed it was instantly extended by him to £12,000, paid in monthly instalments to the purveyor, Mr. Balcombe, by whom it was expended in support of the establishment at Longwood. If, however, even £12,000, the sum fixed as a probable ultimatum, should, in the governor's opinion, be found, from dearth, high price of provisions, or otherwise, practically insufficient to meet and answer the expense of a general's family, calculated on a liberal scale, Sir Hudson Lowe had liberty from Government to extend the purveyor's allowance without limitation. But if, on the other hand, the French should desire to add to their housekeeping any thing which the governor should think superfluous, in reference to the rank assigned to the principal person, they were themselves to be at the charge of such extraordinary expenditure.
It is apprehended that the British Government could not be expected to do more for Napoleon's liberal maintenance, than to give the governor an unlimited order to provide for it, upon the scale applicable to the rank of a general officer of the first rate. But yet the result, as the matter was managed, was not so honourable to Great Britain, as the intentions of the Government really designed. The fact is, that virtues as well as vices have their day of fashion in England; and at the conclusion of the peace, when the nation were cloyed with victory, men began, like epicures after a feast, to wrangle about the reckoning. Every one felt the influence of the Quart d'heure de Rabelais. It ascended into the Houses of Parliament, and economy was the general theme of the day. There can be no doubt that a judicious restriction upon expenditure is the only permanent source of national wealth; but, like all other virtues, parsimony may be carried to an extreme, and there are situations in which it has all the meanness of avarice. The waste of a few pounds of meat, of a hundred billets of wood, of a few bottles of wine, ought not to have been made the shadow of a question between Britain and Napoleon; and it would have been better to have winked at and given way to the prodigality of a family, which had no motives of economy on their own part, than to be called upon to discuss such petty domestic details in the great council of the nation, sitting as judges betwixt England and her prisoner. A brief answer to those who might in that case have charged the government with prodigality, might have been found in referring the censors to the immense sums saved by the detention of Napoleon in St. Helena. It is something of a different scale of expense, which is requisite to maintain a score of persons even in the most extravagant manner, and to support an army of three hundred thousand men.
But although such disputes arose, we think, from the governor mistaking the meaning of the British ministers, and descending, if he really did so, to details about the quality of salt or sugar to be used in the kitchen at Longwood, there is no reason to entertain the belief that the prisoners had any actual restriction to complain of, though it might not always happen that articles of the first quality could be procured at St. Helena so easily as at Paris. The East India Company sent out the supplies to the purveyor, and they consisted of every luxury which could be imagined; so that delicacies very unusual in St. Helena could, during Napoleon's residence, be obtained there for any one who chose to be at the expense. The wine was (generally speaking) excellent in quality, and of the first price;[243] and although there was rather too much said and thought about the quantity consumed, yet it was furnished, as we shall hereafter see, in a quantity far beyond the limits of ordinary conviviality. Indeed, though the French officers, while hunting for grievances, made complaints of their treatment at table, and circulated, in such books as that of Santini, the grossest scandal on that subject, yet when called on as men of honour to give their opinion, they did justice to the governor in this respect.
In a letter of General Bertrand to the governor, he expresses himself thus:—"Be assured that we are well persuaded of the good intentions of the governor, to supply us with every thing necessary, and that as to provisions there will never be any complaints, or if there are, they will be made against the government, not against the governor, upon whom the matter does not depend." He adds, "that such were the sentiments of the Emperor. That indeed they had been under some difficulties when the plate was broken up, but that ever since then they had been well supplied, and had no complaint whatever to make." Such is the evidence of Count Bertrand, when deliberately writing to the governor through his military secretary.
But we have also the opinion of the Ex-Emperor himself, transmitted by Dr. O'Meara, who was at that time, as already noticed, in the habit of sending to the governor such scraps of information as he heard in conversation at Longwood: