Replies to Minor Queries.
_Algernon Sydney_ (Vol. v., pp. 318. 426.).--I can hardly suppose that
MR. H. DIXON can have made any progress in his inquiries as to Algernon
Sydney, without having met with the "authorities" mentioned by your
correspondent C. E. D.; and yet it is certainly strange that, if MR.
DIXON had seen these authorities, he could have called Sydney "an
_illustrious patriot_." It may be therefore as well to state that the
specific evidence which destroys Sydney's claim to the title not merely
of an "_illustrious patriot_," but even of _an honest man_, and shows
him to have been a corrupt traitor of the worst class, is to be found in
the Appendix to Sir John Dalrymple's _Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. 339. 386.
(8vo edit. 1790), where are transcribed the secret despatches of the
French ambassador, Barillon, to Louis XIV., detailing the _bribes_ by
which he engaged Algernon Sydney to that factious and traitorous
opposition which had, for a hundred years prior to Dalrymple's
publication, passed off for _patriotism_. I shall be very curious indeed
to see what light MR. H. DIXON may be able to throw on this curious and
infamous case; of which the best that even Mr. Macaulay can say is, that
Barillon's _louis d'ors_ were "a temptation which conquered the virtue
and the pride of Algernon Sydney."--_History of England_, vol. i. p.
228.