inactive in England. They caused Lord Cochrane, and Colonel Cochrane
Johnson, his uncle, to be expelled the House of Commons, for what was
called a conspiracy to defraud the Stock Exchange. To punish men for
defrauding, or rather playing off a hoax upon a set of swindlers and
gamblers in the stocks, was curious enough! The Emperor of Russia and
King of Prussia arrived in London on the 7th of June, and the town was
illuminated. The Emperor of Russia took up his residence at the Imperial
Hotel, in Piccadilly, and the King of Prussia in St. James's Palace.
They were received in state at Court, which was held at Carlton House,
and the Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia were invested with the
Order of the Garter. All the Tom and Molly fools in the country were
flocking to London, to see these mighty Sovereigns; they spent their
money, and most of them returned disappointed, the fools having expected
to see something more than man in a King and an Emperor, and something
more than a brute in the dirty old animal Blucher. Nothing else but our
new visitors was talked of in town or country. Whatever company you went
into, the first question was, "Well, what do you think of the Emperor
Alexander? what do you think of Blucher? What! not seen the Emperor, and
not seen Marshal Blucher's whiskers?" To hear the females of England, my
fair countrywomen, talk of shaking hands with this filthy old beast, and
some of them even boasted of his having kissed them, not only disgusted
but quite sickened me; and I must own that the scenes I have heard
described, which took place at Portsmouth, when they were all there at
the great naval fete, made such an unfavourable impression upon my
mind, that I have always thought with the utmost contempt of those who
participated in these disgusting, revolting orgies. It was all very
natural that the time-serving, corrupt, vain, purse-proud Aldermen of
London should act as they did; it was very natural that they and their
wives and daughters should disgrace themselves as they did; but that my
good, handsome, wholesome country-women, should have suffered such
a disgusting monster as old Blucher to have slobbered them over and
mouselled them with his dirty, stinking whiskers and mustachios, is
something so extraordinary and so abhorrent to the character of English
women, or, in fact, of any modest woman, that I, as an Englishman, was
horror-struck every time I heard the filthy accounts of it. Thank God,
none of my family or connections ever disgraced themselves, even by
going to see any of these German, Russian, Prussian, or Cossack animals.
I had business in London, but I put it off, nay neglected it, because
I would not make one of the throng of fools who flocked to grace the
triumph of these tyrants, who had been so long waging war against the
liberties of mankind, and who had caused the shedding of oceans of human
blood, for the sole purpose of gratifying their own malignant desire, to
destroy every vestige of liberty and rational freedom upon the face of
the globe. During the whole time that these fiends in human form, these
enemies and destroyers of the human race, remained in England, I stayed
at home; I never spoke of them but with abhorrence and disgust; and as
my family felt towards them as I did, they were seldom mentioned at all.
I even, as much as possible, avoided having any company at my house,
that their blood-stained names might never be introduced. I shall,
perhaps, be told by some who read this, that I am inconsistent to
express such a horror at blood-stained tyrants, and yet take every
opportunity of extolling Napoleon, who was as great a tyrant as any of
those whom I condemn. To the unthinking, an explanation is certainly
necessary from me; for I fully concur in the opinion that CONSISTENCY is
absolutely necessary to form the character of a useful and honourable
public man; that amongst the dangerous failings in a public character,
_inconsistency_ is the most dangerous. A _vacillating, weathercock,
changeable being_, in the common pursuits, in any pursuits of life, is,
to say the least of him, a contemptible creature, one who is generally
despised by all classes; but a weathercock in politics, which is the
same as a weathercock in principle, is a being not only despicable but
most mischievous. To blow hot and to blow cold, in the same breath, or
to maintain one opinion to-day and another opinion tomorrow, and the
next day to revert to the former opinion, is not so much a proof of
a weak head, as a sure proof of a profligate, an abandoned, and a
dishonest heart. I do not mean to say that a man cannot alter his
opinion without being dishonest; far from it; to maintain this
proposition would be to deny the possibility of improvement in the
human understanding. But that man is to be dreaded and avoided, who can
change his principles, or desert his public duty, from private pique,
or selfish, interested motives; such a man would sacrifice not only his
principles, but he would sacrifice his dearest friends, nay, a whole
nation, to gratify his malignant and selfish passion for revenge; such
a passion springs wholly from cowardice; and as a coward is always the
most cruel of mortals, such a man, from mere cowardice, is always the
most revengeful and remorseless; and he would wade up to his knees in
human blood to accomplish his private and selfish ends. Therefore, of
all the deadly sins with which public men are accused, oh! save me and
protect me, from the misfortune, from the indelible disgrace, of being
deservedly pronounced AN INCONSISTENT CHARACTER! I have never praised
Napoleon, or at least I have never intended to eulogise him, as a friend
of freedom. I have characterised him as a brave and noble-minded man;
and the reason why I have been led away sometimes, perhaps, to be too
general in my praises and admiration of the man is, not because he was
not a tyrant himself, but because I always found him more disposed to
tyrannize over _mighty tyrants_ than he was to crush the weak and the
unprotected. Possibly all mankind are by nature tyrannical. Take, for
instance, the most humane, the most generous, the most sincere lover of
liberty, and one who has been the most steady practiser of it--to such a
man even as this only give an unlimited, uncontrouled, and unrestricted
sway over his fellow-creatures, and ten to one but he becomes an
arbitrary tyrant; when, on the other hand, if he had been restrained
within due bounds, by means of the proper checks and guards prescribed
by a free constitution, he would have been one of freedom's brightest
ornaments, one of liberty's safest, staunchest, guardians and
protectors. So it was with Napoleon. If the tyrants of Europe had
suffered him to remain First Consul of France, surrounded by such men as
Carnot, to guard the liberties and rights of Frenchmen, and to controul
their ruler's actions, Napoleon possessed all the qualifications for
making a mild, liberal, and patriotic, as well as a brave and brilliant
ruler. But the despots and tyrants of Europe dreaded such an example;
they dreaded the example of freedom which the then constitution
conferred upon the people of France. It was not Napoleon's political
influence, great as it was, that excited their hatred, but they dreaded
the little remaining liberty that the French people possessed, and it
was their combined efforts, supported, maintained, and cherished, by the
wealth of the people of England, that drove the French nation to submit
to the hard and cruel necessity of placing unlimited authority in his
hands, and consequently preparing the way for a great tyranny, and
compelling him to be a tyrant. My sincere and unchangeable opinion is,
that few men ever lived, who, if they had been masters of the same
boundless power that Napoleon was, would not have made much more cruel
and more arbitrary tyrants than he ever did, and have exercised it more
vindictively against the liberties of mankind than he did. My admiration
of Napoleon has, therefore, been always by comparison, as contrasted
with the sanguinary and remorseless tyrants who were opposed to him; men
who had sworn eternal abhorrence of liberty, eternal war against it;
men, who, at the time that they professed a hatred of the tyranny of
Napoleon, were themselves the greatest tyrants in the universe, and
whose sole aim in destroying Napoleon's power was to rivet the chains of
slavery upon the inhabitants of the whole civilized world, and who
have since sworn upon the altar of the Holy Alliance to maintain an
indissoluble union, for the purpose of extinguishing every spark of
freedom, wherever it may arise. Napoleon was the enemy, the successful
enemy of these tyrants; and under his sway, despotic as it might
apparently be, and governed by the excellent code of laws that bears
the name of its author, the people of France enjoyed a tenfold
greater portion of liberty than any of the people who lived under the
protection, or rather who groaned under the pretended forms of law and
justice exercised by the hypocritical tyrants who were opposed to him.
All these tyrants had made war upon France, because the French had the
spirit to overthrow the most execrable tyranny that ever cursed mankind;
they made war against French liberty and French principles, before
Napoleon was known; he was the child of fortune, who sprung up during
the Revolution, and his talent and bravery pointed him out to the people
of France as the most likely man successfully to oppose her enemies. He
was elevated to unlimited power through the rancour and the malice of
those who had sworn in their hearts to restore the hated Bourbons, the
Pope, the Devil, and the Inquisition. While he exercised that power he
subdued all those who resisted him, and his greatest fault, his greatest
crime, was his generosity to the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian
despots: having had those enemies to liberty and humanity in his power,
it was a crime, an offence, in the eye of God and man, not to annihilate
them, and thus secure the human race from the continuance of their
arbitrary and brutal domination. Napoleon having conquered them all,
restored them all to power, and when they got him into their clutches,
the return whichthey made him was, to banish him, to linger out the
remainder of his life upon a barren rock, in a noxious and pestilential
climate, cut off from the society even of his wife and son. Peace to his
manes, for he beat, he humbled, and he subdued, the greatest of tyrants,
and he was the author of the Napoleon code, which restrained the power
of infamous Judges, and established a real, instead of a mock trial
by jury. These are the traits of Napoleon's character, which, as an
Englishman, I admire; had I been a Frenchman, I should have adored him.
He is dead and gone, and John Gull is beginning to reap the bitter
fruits that were sown to procure Napoleon's destruction. John is now
grumbling, because he is called upon by the despots to pay the bill, to
discharge the expenses which they incurred in dethroning and destroying
NAPOLEON, and restoring Louis to the throne of France. I hope and I
believe these is not a man in the world who hates and detests tyrants
and tyranny more than I do; yet I trust that I may, nevertheless, be
permitted to admire certain traits in the character of the brave and
murdered Napoleon, without being justly accused of inconsistency. If I
am asked whether I should like to live under such a tyrant and such
a tyranny as existed in France, during the latter days of Napoleon's
reign, I answer NO. But if I _must_ submit to a tyrant, let it be to one
that I can look up to, and whose superior qualities I can admire, rather
than to a despicable wretch, who has not one noble quality, but, on the
contrary, is deserving of contempt, derision, and execration. I have
been led into this digression by the recollection of hearing a very
pretty little girl say, that she had been kissed by the filthy old beast
Blucher, at Portsmouth, where the sceptered tyrants and their whole
train had been to view the English fleet and the naval arsenal. This
young lady, who was really a very pretty delicate girl, I had always
before considered as also a very amiable and a very modest girl; but,
after hearing her boast of having been kissed by that dirty old animal,
I could never look upon her but with pity, mingled with disgust.
On the 20th of June, peace was proclaimed in London. The country was
still intoxicated, or rather insane, with the idea of the GLORY that had
been obtained by the downfall of one man, against whom all the despots
in Europe had been united, and all the wealth of nations had been
squandered during fourteen years. On the 25th, there was a naval review
at Portsmouth, to amuse the Royal tyrants; and on the 27th they all
departed for Dover, where they embarked on the 28th. On the 7th of July,
a mockery or thanksgiving for peace was offered up in these churches,
where the tocsin of war had for so many years been sounded by the pious
preachers of the Gospel, the servants of the meek and lowly Jesus. On
this occasion the Prince Regent went in state to St. Paul's. On the 21st
he gave a superb fete to two thousand five hundred persons, and on the
1st of August there was a pompous celebration, on account of the peace,
held in Hyde and St. James's Parks, in the latter of which there was a
grand display of fireworks; while, still further to amuse the _John_ and
_Jenny Gulls_ of the cities of London and Westminster, there was a sham
naval engagement got up on the Serpentine River, representing a battle
between the British and American fleets. Of course the British fleet was
victorious, and the Americans struck their colours, amidst the huzzas
and shouts of the family of the Gulls, who, having for nearly a quarter
of a century been gulled out of their money to pay the expenses of a
sanguinary war, were now gulled out of an additional sum of their money
to pay the expenses of a mock naval engagement with the Americans, who
were in reality beating the British navy out of their lakes and seas.
This was the way in which the peace was celebrated, and at the same time
the jubilee to commemorate the accession of the House of Brunswick.
It was a considerable drawback upon the pleasure to some of the Royal
party, that, at the drawing-room which was held at Court, to receive the
Royal visitors, the PRINCESS OF WALES WAS EXCLUDED; and as soon as the
rejoicings were concluded, her Royal Highness quitted England, and
embarked from Worthing for the Continent.
All this time the old King was confined at Windsor Castle, in some
apartments which were padded six feet high; in these, blind and mad, he
was suffered to wander about, a melancholy and disgusting object. It is
confidently affirmed, however, that he had frequent intervals of reason,
in which he was perfectly sensible of his forlorn and wretched fate.
During one of these lucid intervals it is said that one of the domestics
about his person informed him of the abdication of Napoleon; upon which
he put himself in a great passion, and swore "_it was a lie_." This
wretched old man was reduced from the highest pinnacle of grandeur to
the most pitiable condition; none of his subjects were admitted to
see him for many years; even his children were excluded, except upon
particular occasions, and then they were admitted only in the presence
of certain individuals. The old Queen had the care of his person, and it
is currently reported that she governed his gracious Majesty (it being
of course necessary to do so) with considerable harshness.
When one reflects upon the bloody reign of George the Third, and calls
to mind the rivers of human gore that were shed during that reign; when
one looks back to the period of the American war, which was generally
understood to be a war of the King's, more than of his Ministers; when
one calls to recollection the commencement of the French war, which, it
has been asserted, was waged at his Majesty's particular instance, in
opposition to the private opinion of Mr. Pitt; when one looks back on
the numerous sanguinary penal statutes that were passed during this
King's reign, and the thousands of victims that fell a sacrifice to
them; when one contemplates the myriads upon myriads of brave Britons
whose lives were offered up as a sacrifice to these Moloch wars, it
may well and truly be called the UNFORTUNATE REIGN of King George the
Third--which reign was concluded by the King himself being locked up,
for many years, in his own castle, a solitary captive, suffering under
the complicated and melancholy visitation of _blindness_ and _madness_:
and when one thinks of all this, one may, without being very
superstitious, consider the catastrophe as an awful instance of the
Divine vengeance levelled at the ruler of a sinful nation.
The story goes that a mouse had contracted a sort of friendly sympathy
for the hoary-headed, sightless Royal maniac, and paid him such frequent
visits, during his long captivity, that it was at length become quite
tame, and would submit to be handled by the unfortunate shadow of a
great monarch. The King was very much delighted with this friendly
little visitant, and its little antics and gambols assisted him to pass
away many a wearisome, sorrowful hour. Unfortunately, the Queen came
into the room one day, before the little trembling animal had time to
escape to its hiding place. The Queen eyed it before it had yet left
the King's hand, and when she quitted the apartment she ordered the
attendant to take care and kill that "_nausty mose_," before she came
again. The attendant ventured to state that the poor old King was so
exceedingly partial to the mouse, and appeared so much entertained with
it, that he was fearful his Majesty would miss it very much, and that
the loss of it might make him unhappy. The answer was "_kill the nausty
mose_ before I come again!" It was as much as the servant's situation
was worth to disobey, and the poor little tame animal, too confident
of its former protection, was easily caught and killed! The King, of
course, soon missed the little solitary companion of his adversity,
and for along time inquired the cause of its absence with the greatest
earnestness; and when he found that it never came again, he grieved
incessantly, more so than he did for any thing that happened to him
during his long and cruel captivity.
So goes the tale, and I, for one, believe it. What a subject this for
reflection, what a picture of misery, what an awful monument of fallen
greatness! If the King had those lucid intervals of reason which it is
said he had, his situation must have been, if possible, infinitely more
deplorable than that of the captive of St. Helena; it must have been
a thousand times more hopeless than that of the latter; shut up and
confined for life in his own palace, by his own family, he must have
soon lost all hope: while Napoleon, till he found that his dissolution
was approaching, must have always been cheered by the hope, arising from
ten thousand chances which could not fail to present themselves to his
mind, of his being at length relieved from his iron bondage.
George the Third was the only King I ever saw, and I never wish to see
another King. The last time I saw him was when he was getting out of his
carriage at the Star, at Andover, on his return from Weymouth; which
place he never after visited. His eyesight was then nearly gone, and his
attendants were obliged to guide his feet, and to lead him like a child
into the Inn. I had known him in his prime, and had frequently hunted
with him. At the time when I saw him at Andover, he had indeed sadly
fallen off, and his signature to all documents was effected by a stamp,
some one directing his hand. All Acts of Parliament, all Commissions,
all Death-warrants, and all Pardons, were for a long time signed in this
manner. He who had signed more death-warrants than any mortal that ever
breathed, and who could spare or kill human beings by the mere dash of
his pen; alas! alas! he, once so powerful, could not now even save the
life of a poor mouse. He who, as a mere matter of course, and perhaps
without giving the subject a thought, had put his fiat on the black
scrolls which ordered hundreds upon hundreds of his fellow creatures to
be sent to their long homes, and executed in cold blood; he now grieved
and lamented, and cried like a child, at the death of a mouse. I would
have had the Emperor Alexander, the King of Prussia, and all the Royal
Visitors, go down to Windsor, to be eye-witnesses of the "ills that
(_Royal_) flesh is heir to:" they should have been reminded, by a
personal interview with this poor old maniac, to what a wretched state
it was possible even for the greatest monarch to be reduced, by the hand
of Providence. That all-wise and just Providence, the same Power that
permitted the Emperor NAPOLEON to be sent a prisoner to St. Helena; the
same Power that permitted HENRY HUNT to remain a captive in Ilchester
Bastile, for TWO YEARS AND SIX MONTHS, commanded also that GEORGE THE
THIRD should, after having LOST HIS SIGHT, and been DEPRIVED OF HIS
REASON, be confined as a solitary prisoner in his own palace, for many
of the latter years of his existence. The Lord's will be done!
During the whole time that these ridiculous freaks were going on in
London, and that John Gull and his family were running stark mad with
joy and glory, each bellowing out, whenever or wherever you met him,
have you not seen the Emperor? have you not seen the King? have you not
seen Blucher with his whiskers? surely you have seen the Don Cossack?
&c. &c. &c.; during this time I remained quietly and snugly at Middleton
Cottage, occupied in fishing or looking after my farm, and most
sincerely lamenting the folly of my countrymen and countrywomen; and
whenever I had an opportunity, I did not fail to remonstrate with them
on their ridiculous and preposterous conduct, and to assure them that
the hour would come when they would be heartily ashamed of it, and would
have cause and leisure for bitter repentance. With many this time has
arrived, with others it is fast approaching. So far was I from ever
making one of the number of fools who ran after these sceptred despots,
that, when some of them were travelling post by the house where I was
staying, I retired into a _back room_, in order to avoid the possibility
of seeing them; always saying, when the question was put to me, that "I
thanked God I had seen _one King_, and was so well satisfied, that I
never wished to see another." A single sample was quite enough for me.
One of my great political friends had expressed the same sort of disgust
at the idea of running after these foreign Sovereigns, and he swore most
roundly and lustily, that none of his family should stir an inch to see
them. It turned out, however, that he did not keep his word--but whether
his breach of it arose from "the grey mare being the better horse," or
from his being himself overcome by a childish curiosity, I cannot tell;
perhaps a little of both prevailed; at any rate I heard that my _friend_
and all his family went to Portsmouth, to see the Royal sight, and get
a squint at Blucher's whiskers and mustachios. My friend and his family
swelled the number of those who _suffered_ at Portsmouth--"ninny nanny,
one fool makes many!" It was now all glory, all joy, and all seeming
prosperity with John Gull, every thing was military! As a proof that
it could not well be otherwise, let us look to a return, which was
presented to the House of Commons, of the number of officers in the
British army in the pay of John, which return was as follows: Field
Marshals, 5--Generals, 81--Lieutenant Generals, 157--Major Generals,
221--Colonels, 152--Lieutenant-Colonels, 618--Majors, 612--Captains,
2960--Lieutenants, 4725--Ensigns, 2522--amounting in the whole to the
enormous number of TWELVE THOUSAND AND FIFTY-FOUR officers! What think
you of this, John Gull? Here is a larger army of officers than the whole
number of military that was thought sufficient by our ancestors to be
kept up during the time of peace. Yes, the officers alone, at the time
to which I allude, actually out-numbered the whole of what our peace
establishment used to be.
One of the precious effects of the downfall of Napoleon was the
restoration of the bigotted, despicable tyrant, Ferdinand the Seventh,
to the throne of Spain; and one of his first acts was to restore the
hellish Inquisition, with all its horrors, which had been abolished
during the sway of the French, and which had also been suppressed by the
Cortes. The amiable Pope Pius the Seventh being restored to the see of
Rome, he performed his part in the scene of mummery and tyranny, by
issuing a Bull for the restoration of the order of the Jesuits. So
it will be clearly seen that the canting Boroughmongering Protestant
Parliament of England, while it pertinaciously refused to grant
emancipation to the Catholics in Ireland, contrived to restore the Pope,
Popery, the Inquisition, the Jesuits, and every species of superstition
and intolerance upon the Continent!
About this time two fanatics, of the names of Johanna Southcote and
Hannah More, were much followed in the West of England. Somersetshire
could boast of possessing two female saints, _Mrs. Hannah More_ and
_Mrs. Johanna Southcote_, at the same time; which of the two was the
greatest imposter it would be very difficult to decide, although the
former appears to have borne off the palm of successful fraud and
imposition. Miss Hannah, who, in her younger days, had been a very
frolicsome lass, became all at once converted into a saint, and set up
for a severe and rigid moralist; and she had the merit of establishing
the gang generally known by the title of the SAINTS, amongst our
politicians. In her train she had the Sidmouths, the Wilberforces,
the Babingtons, the Dickensons, and others of that puritannical cast;
although it has been whispered, but that, of course, must be a calumny,
that, from the well-known character of some of these gentry, who were
very frequent in their visits, the buxom dame (who had now assumed the
title of Mrs.) contrived, like the friars of old, to indulge in the
gratification of those passions to which it is said real saints are not
prone. Some of her neighbours were in consequence so ill-natured as to
say, that her conversion was not sincere, but that it was a mere cloak
to cover certain practices. But my readers are aware that we must not
believe _all_ that the world says. Mrs. Johanna was an illiterate woman,
whose fanaticism was carried to full as high a pitch as that of Mrs.
More; but as her doctrine did not suit "the powers that be" quite so
well as the doctrine of the other did, she could not boast of having
Ministers of State and many of the Nobility as her disciples, although
amongst her numerous followers she did not want for men of talent and
education. Dr. Ash, under whose care the VERY VENERABLE JUDGE BEST
received his education, was a staunch disciple of Johanna's, and it
is said the _venerable Judge_ himself at times discovered a little
hankering after the prophetess; but whether his attachment was to her
person or her principles, is not clearly decided.