Note 88:A — SECRET HISTORY, &c. &c. (continued 2)

However tyrannical the orders of Lord Castlereagh might have been, we cannot help remarking on the petty pleasure Sir Hudson took in executing them, even to the very letter. It was this kind of conduct in Napoleon's jailer that gave rise to the following distich:

Napoleon himself said of this governor, "I have had to do with men of all countries; I never saw any who had so bad a physiognomy, and a more execrable conversation. He writes with the intention of being amicable. That is a contrast to the ignoble vexations that are daily imagined. There is something sinister in all this." Without contradicting the repeated asseverations of Sir Hudson Lowe, that he only acted according to instructions, we must say, that any man of honour should rather have resigned his office than have executed them; for they were not only unnecessary to the security of Napoleon, but they were also ILLEGAL. But Sir Hudson did not possess moral courage; he was captious and mistrustful, and was not at all calculated for the delicate offices he had to perform; he created his own fears, and lost his understanding in endeavouring to foresee misfortune. Count Lascases thus writes of him:

"The noble-minded English beside us," says the Count, "as well as those who merely visited the island, used to say that our treatment would experience a great and blessed change when the new governor appeared, &c. &c. This new Messiah at length came; but, gracious God!—the word escapes involuntarily from my pen,—it was an executioner, a gens-d'arme, whom they had sent. On his appearance, every thing assumed a dark and gloomy aspect; every appearance of external respect, and all the forms prescribed by a due regard to decency, which had hitherto been observed, at once disappeared; every day since has been to us a day of greater pain and more insulting treatment; he has narrowed still farther the boundaries prescribed to us, and even endeavoured to interfere with our domestic economy; he has strictly interdicted all intercourse with the natives, and even prohibited all society with officers of his own nation; he has ordered our residence to be surrounded with ditches and palisades; he has increased the number of soldiers, and endeavoured to make prisons within prisons; he has surrounded us with objects of affright, and reduced us to close custody. The emperor remains almost always in his prison, and no longer leaves his apartment. The few audiences which he has given to that officer have been highly disagreeable and oppressive to him; he has put an end to them, and determined not to see the governor any more. 'I had just grounds,' he observed, 'to complain of the Admiral, though he had at least a heart; but this man has not even a vestige of the character of an Englishman, he is nothing but a low Sicilian sbirro.' Sir Hudson Lowe pleads the instructions of his minister in justification of himself, with respect to all these complaints; if this justification is well founded, his instructions are most barbarous; but he can bear witness, at the same time, that he endeavours to carry them into execution in a barbarous manner."