The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-17 00:00:00

rely on it, it never will be said that he
forgot a kindness or abandoned a friend. The
sharers in his sorrows are associated with his
prosperity, and the claims alike of Ham and St.
Helena found no tardy welcome in the palace of
the Elysee. The companion of his prison is now
the first physician of his Court, and the legatees of
his uncle were amongst the objects of his earliest
solicitude. Let ignorance mistake, and pre-
judice misconstrue and animosity misrepresent
him, his life has been, and will be, their re-
futation. While strangers paint him, fashioning
the portrait from rumour or from impulse, my ap-
pliances are more authentic. He sat for the pic-
ture. To those who have studied him and known
him best, I appeal, as to your lordship, for the
fidelity of the likeness.
It was in London, and at this time, that he
organised the so much derided and so little under-
stood expedition to Boulogne. He failed, but it
was a failure against which no wisdom could have
guarded. He trusted and was betrayed. There
is the whole secret. Let it be remembered that of
the sixty persons composing that expedition, from
Montholon downward, not one repined at it. Those
who gained by the failure laughed at it, of course.
Alas, they laugh no longer. Was it, indeed, really
so ridiculous ? Was it a futile confidence which
reposed so trustfully in the magic of a name ? See-
ing what we see, have we a right to say so ? Wash-
ington and Cromwell both succeeded, and accord-
ingly history calls them heroes ; but had they
failed, one would have been a rebel--Anothing more ;
the other, merely a crazy fanatic, or a derided
Roundhead. So true it is success stamps upon
everything a character. Had that project pros-
pered—in favour of which, except for treachery,
there was every calculation—Napoleon would have
been, what he now is, a few years earlier, and then
how different would have been the commentary t
We know what it would have been because we have
it before our eyes. We see it in the abject and
despicable homage with which the high-born rabble
bend before the fortunate: Well and truly did
Napoleon's advocate expose this baseness before the
Peers of 1840—the loyal Peers who at first refused
the Prince even his title—the grateful Peers across
many of whose shoulders his uncle had flung their
robes ! " Speaking on your conscience and before
God (exclaimed the eloquent and daun doss Berryer),
and in the presence of us, who know you, say, if he
had succeeded—if he had triumphed, I would have
denied him ; him will I acknowledge as a compe-
tent judge." This was in the year 1840. The
prudent Peers postponed their answer till 1852.
The world heard, and history has recorded it.

The result of this trial has been made matter
of accusation against the Emperor. Indeed, what
incident of his life has not. Louis Philippe,
it seems, saved his life—twice spared it—after
Strasburgh and Boulogne, and he repaid him with
ingratitude ! This is simply falsehood. Ingrati-
tude is alien to his nature. Let any Englishman
who ever shewed him the slightest civility say
whether he has forgotten it. Where, however,
was the ingratitude ? Was it in revisiting Swit-
zerland from America ? The answer to that is, in
the Prince's own words, in a letter to the deputy
for La Manche, whetl on the eve of his embarkation
—" It is quite untrue that I have ever been asked
to mak6 the least promise not to return to Europe."
The Procureur-General formally admitted this in
1840 in the Court of Peers. Or was it in his sub-
sequent escape from Ham ? The answer to that is,
he was a prisoner under sentence, bound by no
parole of any kind. He refused to bind himself—
he refused his liberty offered on the sole condition
that he would so bind himself. He had no cause
for gratitude during that captivity. Indeed, at
first, he had reason rather to complain. On the
22d of May, 1841, ho appealed to Europe against
the way in which he was treated, in a solemn pro-
test. " During the nine months (it says) which I
have now been in the hands of the French Govern-
ment, I have submitted patiently to indignities of
every description. Ido not, however, wish longer
to be silent, or to authorise oppression by my
silence." "By an infinity of details too long to
enumerate, it appears that pains are taken, at
every instant of the day,, to make me sensible
of my captivity, and hear the incessant cry of
" Yce victis." It is important to call to mind that
none of the measures which I have pointed out
r were put in force against the Ministers of Charles
the Tenth, whose dilapidated chambers I now oc-
cupy, and yet these Ministers were not " born on
the steps of a throne." "Ifit be supposed that
such measures will subdue me, it is a mistake ; it
is not outrage but marks of kindness which sub-
due the hearts of those who suffer." Though this
did not fail altogether of its effect, still there was
no pledge whatever, written or oral, positive or
implied, that he would endure imprisonment for
one moment after it was possible to evade it ; and
he did not•; and it is as well here distinctly to con-
tradict the very current rumour that the prisciner
of Ham was, in the most remote degree, indebted
to the Government for having ceased to be so. Or
did this alleged ingratitude consist in his accepting
the sovereignty of France ? A strange charge from
the friends of Louis Philippe, the cousin of Charles
the Tenth. What does the Count de Chambord
say to it ? Is memory " fused" also in the amal-
gamation of Frodshroff ? Napoleon Louis has, to
say the least of it, as good a title to the throne lie
occupies, as either of the branches of the house of
Bourbon. Do they claim from royal ancestry ?So
can he, and mate his ancestor with the proudest of
their dynasty—he, the son of a king, the nephew
of kings, the heir to an emperor, and such
au emperor ! Do they claim from their ap-
pointment by the people? The people can-
celled it in 1792, and Philip Egalite blotted
it out with blood ; or do they claim from
the restoration of 1815, carried at the point of fo-
reign bayonets, and shattered again by France in
the person of Charles the Tenth ? Or do they claim
from the accident of au emeute which superseded one
Royal cousin for another—thus annihilating "right
divine" without the substitute of a national election?
If so, the nation negatived it in 1848, and Europe
taught wisdom-by mournful experience, at last dis-
covered that the right of choosing a governor lay

in those who were to be governed. Louis Philippe
lost his throne, not through the plot of any one,
but through thee general disgust at a system of cor-
ruption which even Guizot could not control by his
power or counteract by his integrity. So far for
the accusation of ingratitude. But no cause for
gratitude ever has arisen. Your lordship, at least,
has not to learn that the busy slander which has so
long found a " local habitation" in the breast of
many is, after all, merely an " airy nothing." The
fact is, Louis Philippe never spared the prince's
life, the prince never having been condemned to
lose it. For the Strasburg affair he was never tried
at all. A trial, however, he demanded—loudly
demanded, in order that by his testimony he
might endeavour to mitigate the fate of his
associates. He was refused a trial—who will
say it was not a wise refusal—it seems to me
to have sprung from the profoundest policy.
But, it is not the fact that the refusal of a trial
necessarily saved the life of Napoleon. It is
not credible that under the circumstances any
French tribunal would have decreed his death. He
was tried by the Court of Peers for the self same
offence charged against him at Strasburg—" the
I exciting of a civil war, seeking to change the order
of succession to the throne, and inducing the citi-
zens to arm against the royal authority," an offence
unquestionably punishable with death by the 87th
and 91st articles of the penal code. But what was
the sentence of the Court of Peers ? Not death,
but perpetual imprisonment. Here are the very
words of the decree. I need not say that the
offence charged was the landing at Boulogne
"Le complot ayant pour but l'un des crimes
prevus au present article, et la proposition de
former un complot, seront punis des peines portees
en rarticle 89 suivant les distinctions qui y sont
etabli. Vu pareillement les art. 57 et 60 du code
penal ; attendu que les peines doivent etre gra-
duees selon la nature et la gravite de la participa-
tion de chacun des coupables aux crimes commis.
" Oondamne le Prince Charles-Napoleon Bona-
parte a r imprisonment perpetuel dans line forte-
resse situee our le territoire continental du roy-
aume."

The others were sentenced, one, to deportation,
and the rest to various terms of captivity. The
hand of Louis no wheref appears in the decree a
I
the Court of Peers. any doubt could possi-
bly, after this, remain upon the subject, it is set at
rest by the protest of the Prince, heretofore alluded
to. " With respect (it says) to my legal position, the
Court of Peers h
y.
has created, in my case, an excep-
tional penalt By condemning me to perpetual
in
imprisonent it has only legalised. the decree of
fate which has' made me a prisoner of war. It has
endeavoured to combine humanity with policy, by
inflicting upon me the mildest punishment for the
longestt possible time. In its execution, however,
e Government has fallen very far short of the
h
in-
tention which I am pleased to ascribe to my judges."
So far from mercy being extended to his case, e
alleges that the mercy really intended,
had
the neu-
tralised. Far indeed is it from imp
the sentence been death, that it would have been
commuted. The Citizen King would scarcely have
forgotten that through the interference
mother,
of the
" good Hortense," his own age
do Bourbon, received a pension of 400,r0 Adelaide
odeide
francsla
when she was in dire extremity. He might have
remembered also, that to the same angelic influence,
his aunt, the Duchess of Bourbon, was indebted
for the relief she supplicated from it. The mother
of Napoleon Louis effected thisior both these
Royal supplicants, and their letters of solicitation
and gratitude are extant. Neither perhaps would
a monarch whose sagacity was never questioned,
have dug a grave beside that of the brave Ney, for