The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-22 00:00:00

WEDNESDAY

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
(From the Weekly Dispatch.)
The death of the Duke of Wellington has proved to
all the greatness of his life. Nothing could be more
quiet—let us not be misunderstood in using the word
—more common-place than his closing scene ; there
was no climax, no catastrophe, no heroic sacrifice in
battle, like the fall of Nelson; no exhaustion by stern
mental strife, as in the fates f Pitt and Canning, no
sudden stroke of unforeseen accident, as we misterm
it, as in the loss of Peel. The Duke died at an age
when death must, in ordinary cases, have been long
expected—of a disease that often strikes old age
fatally—epilepsy; and this was caused probably by a
paroxysm of the morbid appetite for food, which it is
especially necessary guard against at that period of
life. His danger, if we may believe the accounts,
was apparent to himself, and much underrated by
the apothecary who was summoned, Mr. Hulke,
although that person bud attended him on the occa-
sion of a previous similar attack. However, the Duke
has quitted life, as far as we may pronounce for
another, happily ' years, in the fulness of and without
the painful and humiliating decline of faculties. He
has died a natural death, and, we hope, a very
easy one. The time of his ceasing to breathe could
not be exactly determined. And so passing away,
with as little to startle in the event as death
can bring, the event itself causes one deep,
strong, unanimous sensation. What may be the effect
in other lands we know not—we almost care not; the
great country which he served is enough to estimate
his memory and to treasure it. He has, as much as
one man can embody a common cause, saved Europe ;
but we do not expect Europe to repay its debt, or
even to understand it. It was the single misfortune
of the Duke's life that he served those who were every
way less worthy than himself. In this we do not
speak of the nations he so mainly helped to redeem
from intolerable and disgraceful bondage, but of those
who led and represented them. In England he has
long been looked upon as a piece of living history.
The past had more of him in men's minds than the
present, but, had a present arisen that needed his help,
the old faith in him would have been shown, as of
old. Indeed, in the two latest crises of our policy,
both within the period of the shortest memory, he
was looked to as the arbiter of all differences. The
Russell Ministry could scarcely rule, and none were
ready to succeed them ; the Duke's moral authority
composed the difficulty, and on the weight of his
decision the effete continued in power. The nation
was in possible peril from the freaks of irregular and
unscrupulous authority in France ; all sane men
asked, what insurance against the danger will the
Duke think sufficient ? He had not outlived his
service or his fame ; and he dies when neither could
have been much increased. Moreover, he passes from
us at a time when all enmity and all envy are disarmed
—when he is understood as he would desire to be.
This is great fortune. The earlier part of his Euro-
pean career was subject to all the spleen of party.
The somewhat shallow, and the not too honest persons
who then represented the people's cause, never divided
or classed the progress of the French revolution and
its consequences. In the origin of the great war,
which was only stayed, till 1814, by a hollow truce,
the French, maddened and brutalized as they were by
the education of serfs, fought for the inherent rights
of mankind against the paltriest and most presump-
tuous usurpers of them. They claimed national exist-
ence against the miserable conspirators of Pilnitz.
Disgraced as their cause might be, it was, in its main
essentials, holy. The disgusting egotism of many in-
dividuals polluted it ; the horrible selfishness of one
engulfed it. Men who are striving against the charla-
tan tyrannies of Napoleon the Little should begin by
rightly estimating him whom, for antithesis' sake,
they call Napoleon the Great. That Napoleon sub-
stituted bloodglory for the defence of patriots and free-
men ; he substituted aggression, lust of conquest,
brigandage, for republican virtue; he derided equality,
and threw baubles to dupes as badges of slavery; he,
the ancient enemy of France by blood and feeling,
the avenger of Paoli—he, the Corsican, the son of a
conquered land, whose schoolboy dreams were hatred
to his island's oppressors—crushed France and stood
upon its ruins, its possessor, its tyrant, governing
the estate and the human cattle upon it with
skill indeed, but with skill exerted only for his own
personal purposes. France was his, and that was the
sum of his regard for it. But half-minded men never
analyse causes; when party spirit works they wilfully
confuse them. When Napoleon reigned, it was
England fighting for existence against a tyranny as
frightful as that which France had discomfited.
France bad taken the place of aggression. Our Li-
berals could not see this. To them, as to some Frenc-
hmen of the present day, who, as children, are unable
to give up the bauble glories of the Empire, Napolean
was the vindicator of freedom against tyrants, the
child of the Republic. He hated and despised both.
When Wellington entered the field of European con-
test, it was in opposition to the idol of these twaddling
dramatic romancers, these would-be politicians, who
preferred a story book in weekly or daily parts, in
which their favourite might triumph, to the serious
justice and the hard practical facts they had no skill
to appreciate. They felt for Napoleon as they would
feel for Madame Laffarge or Ainsworth's Jack
Sheppard. We are tracing Wellington's career in
tracing these contrasts. He and Napoleon were
indeed impelled on different courses in widely
different spheres of action, but the moral
distinction was as great as the material. Wellington
was no hero for slipslop sentimentality. The Li-
berals of England thought that they were doing
service to mankind when they were mocking at
his plain, patient genius, and thwarting his efforts to
arrest a plague that dazzled them by flashing its in-
fluence in lightning meteors. But the English sym-
pathy, the heart of the people, as we remember well,
was with the English general. They did more than
illuminate for his victories—they rejoiced in the ap-
portionment of the rewards which they were well
aware they had to pay. Even after the retreat from
Moscow they could hardly believe Napoleon Bona.
parte to be anything less than personally invincible ;
but they honoured Wellington as the man that could
beet all his generals. The cynical Opposition carped
and hindered—the paltry Government was afraid of
supporting to its utmost, and with full avowal, the
soldier who did its choice unwonted honour. Welling-
ton had to win success, that he might have the power
his employers the means of success
e did it. He conquered reluctance
to
ftceormwapredl
at home as enemies abroad, and forced enthusiasm as
e_froamhd h
well as victory. He has been compared to Napoleon :
he should be contrasted with him. For ourselves, we
decidedly say tbat be was the greater man. He un-
dertook his task under all the obligations of morality
and honour, and he beat the man who would own
none of them. This ought never to be forgotten
in the estimation of noted men. It is the
first interest of mankind to give the prize to those
who deliberately choose to serve their fellows in com-
pliance with the laws of right, and not to those who
make mankind serve them in utter defiance of these
laws. If merely to produce a given quantity of
change, regardless of the means which bring it about,
or the ends for which it is accomplished, be the mea-
sure of greatness, the conscienceless must transcend
those who have conscience. Good is heavily weighted
while evil is free. We are not comparing abilities,
but deeds ; the men as they stand in history self-
sculptured. The use of all qualities is the glory of
the possessors. Wellington and Bonaparte acted
upon opposite principles • they never could have un-
derstood one another. Wellington's unselfish devo-
tion was to his country, personified to him, as a soldier,
in that country's Sovereign. If we could imagine
him at a conference in another world, it would be
carrying out the Queen's interests to the utmost of
his power. Bonaparte so completely mistook him,
that one of his calculations was that the Wellesley
family, after what they had achieved for England, must
be expecting to reign in it. He could not understand
the dignified humility of true glory, the fame that
is won by working for a great cause without a second
thought, that imperishable and ever honoured
fame that comes as an unsought accident to the per-
formance of duty. Again, as a soldier, we cannot
allow Wellington to be less than Napoleon's superior.
The successes of Austerlitz and Jena were in a great
degree Napoleon's own ; but even there he had no
worthy competitors. At Marengo he was beaten.
Desaix released him from defeat. At Wagram he
would have perished with all his army, had the Arch-
duke Charles trusted in his own victory. What
Wellington achieved he owed to himself, even to the
formation of his armies out of the most unpromising
materials. Lamartine has thoroughly estimated him
when, in his narrative of the battle of Waterloo, he
treats him as the most perfect and illustrious imper-
sonation of the English character. Wellington des-
paired of nothing. He might :be slain with his last
follower, as he made up his mind to be at Waterloo,
but he would not be beaten. When but one of his
staff was left beside him, and he was asked what was
to be done in case of anything happening to himself,
he had but one order to give, "to die to the last
man." Napoleon had won many a battle by out-
dating his enemies; there was no such thing as out,
daring Wellington. As he bad been obliged to
cover with his fame the sins of his patrons at the
opening of his career, so he suffered in the dis-
grace of others when he had helped to win Europe
for them. The tyrants of the Holy Alliance made
him appear an accomplice in their iniquity, though he
was in nowise responsible for the abuse of the power
which he had so mainly contributed to recover for
them. This is admitted and comprehended now.
When we turn to him as a statesman, we have the
same character, but employed on a subject respecting
which his mind was not specially instructed. There
were the same sense of right, the same simple single-
mindedness, the same disdain of hollow convention,
the same disregard of personal consequences; but there
were, also, the pride of birth and the habit of aristo-
cratic predilection, and the absence of philosophical
training which might
countervail them. What he