Note 8 — Extract from an unpublished Poem on Freedom.

Napoleon in his protest to Lord Bathurst, provoked by the petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, said of the "Proscriptions," and (by negative inference) in extenuation of them, that they "were made with the blood yet fresh upon the sword." A sentence, which, falling from the lips of one of the most imperturbably cool and calculating of mankind, under circumstances superinducing peculiar reflection on every word uttered, cannot but come with the force of a whole volume of excoriative evidence against the demoralization of war, even upon the most abstracted and elevated natures.—Vide Letters of Montholon and Las Cases.