The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-21 00:00:00

I+/11/
/V4/44/+

P.ICE 41), STAMPED, SD.

enemies of our species. That in this as in everything else
there is action and reaction cannot be doubted. The exist-
ence of the popular feeling in its strength beguiles the his-
torian, an instead of endeavouring to reclaim, he I:'3°:r;
to it. Sounder and better sentiments might grad7,ally be
diffused, and the bulk of mankind be weaned tom this fatal
error, of which the heavy price is paid y themselves in the
end. It is not to be denied that the, degree of reprobation due
to such crimes must practiceny depend upon the gee in
which they have been committed and the nation to which
the offender belongs. It would be a gross exaggeration of
feelings right in themselves were the same blame attached
to usurpation or conquest among eastern nations as
among Europeans, or among Europeans in the dark ages
as all, when calmly considering their conduct, without
hesitation pronounce upon tyrants and conquerors in the
present day. But ono consideration oftentimes referred
to is never to be admitted as an extenuation, much less a
defence of unjust hostilities—the propensity of man to
war, called the incurable propensity by those who
make no attempt to apply a remedy. This is the very
worst and most vulgar form of necessity, or denying
man's free-will, and impiously making Heaven the author
of our guilt. But the absurdity is equal to the wickedness
of the pretext. The self-same topic might be used in excuse
or in palliation of the ordinary crimes of pillage an I murder
—nay, might be applied as well to physical as moral evil.
and given as a reason against using the lightning rod to
protect us from the storm, or against taking precautions to
escape the venom of the snake when his rattle warns us,
or the fury of the tiger when he howls in the forest. Yet•
what but the proneness of man to succumb under great
genius, wickedly used, can be urged in extenuation of
Napoleon's usurpation, by which he made France pay for
her delivery from the anarchy and bloodshed of the Repub-
lic by the utter loss of her freedom, and in extenuation of
his dreadful wars waged to gratify an almost insane ambi-
tion at the cost of the people's misery, and the massacre
and pillage of her neighbours? From the height to which
his crimes had raised him of all but Emperor of the West,
and from the eminence so dearly purchased by the French,
of having dictated terms to all the Sovereigns in their own
capitals, he and they were hurled. Twice they had the
bitter mortification of receiving the law in their own capital
from those whom they had trampled upon ; and his fate and
their humiliation were the work of h'adstrong passions
blinding his reason after extinguishing his human feelings.
The latest and best historian of his reign (M.Thiers), though
filled with admiration of his genius, and, as if natural to
human weakness., leaning towards the hero of his tale, has
been compelled to account for his downfall by six capital
errors committed through a lust of dominion which no con-
quest could satiate, and through the caprices which sooner
or later are sure to spring up in the soil of despotic power
uncontrolled. Of these six errors any one would have
sufficed to shake, almost to subvert, his power; and
every one of them had caused the destruction of thou-
sands, the wretchedness of millions. It would only be
by a pervision of all right feelings that the spectacle of his
fate could excite our pity, or that we should regard his ex-
pulsion from France amid the execrations of the people
whom he had plunged into slavery, misery, and discomfi-
ture, his attempt at self destruction, his wretched end, a
solitary prisoner in a remote island, as other than the just
retribution by unexampled suffering for unexampled crimes ;
by the pride which had for self-indulgence humbled all
others being laid prostrate in its turn ; by that wretched-
ness falling at length on himself which whensover he had
a purpose to serve he had never hesitated to make others
undergo. Let it be that in every war which he
waged, from his assumption of supreme power until his
banishment to Elba, he was the aggressor; that each one
was taken for his personal aggrandisement, with a thin
disguise of national glory—the glory of France, of which
he was not a native—and we have the measure of his guilt.
The death of Enghien, the sufferings of Wright, the
punishment of Palm (all proceeding from the excess of
cruelty which fear is so apt to engender in a violent tem-
per), and the tortures of Toussaint, are often dwelt upon
because the fortunes of individuals, presenting a more de:
finite object to the mind, strike our imagination and rouse
our feelings more than wretchedness in large masses less
distinctly perceived. The outrage upon religion by his de-
claring himself a Mahometan to further his views in Egypt,
and the equal outrage upon morality by the mingled force
and fraud in his circumvention of the Spanish princes,
have in like manner been singled out as peculiar subjects of
reproach. But to the ~eye of calm reflection the undertaking
an unjustifiable war for a selfish purpose, or the persisting a
day longer than is necessary in a contest which was begun
on right grounds, presents a more grievous object of con-
templation, implies a disposition more pernicious to the
world, and is fitted to call down a reprobation far more se-
vere. The history of later times, indeed of our own country,
affords a contrast to the failings and the vices which we
have been viewing, and the contemplation of which may
well excite sorrow for the great genius which they perverted
and abhorrence of the mischievous uses to which they turned
it. Of our own illustrious captain and statesman, who de-
feated all Napoleon's Marshals in the cause of his country
and her allies, and who ended by overcoming Napoleon him-
self, it might not be fit to speak in this way; because,
though no one can haveihe least doubt how he would have
acted in a like position, yet he never had the opportunity of
declining an assumption of power bey the law. But in
Washington we may contemplate eve cellence, military
and civil, applied to the service of his country and of man •
kind—a triumphant warrior, unshaken in confidence when
the most sanguine had aright to despair, a successful ruler in
all the difficulties of a course wholly untried—directing the
formation of a new government for a great people, the first
time so vast an experiment had ever been tried by man—
voluntarily and unostentatiously retiring from supreme
power with the veneration of all parties, of all nations, of all
mankind, that the rights of men might be conserved, and
that his example might szerver be appealed to by vulgar
tyrants. It will be the duty of the historian and the sage,
in all ages, to omit no occasion of commemorating this
illustrious, man ; and until time shall be no more will a
test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom
and in virtue be defined from the veneration paid to the
immortal name of Washington. But though the offence is
great of passing over the crimes *of eminent men without
duly expressing the abhorrence or contempt which they raise
in all rational and virtuous minds, care must be taken to
describe fully their merits, to set forth their great qualities,
and to admit those good ones which are sometimes found
even in wicked and wholly unprincipled men, and much
more in those whose crimes are an exception to their
general character. The interests of justice and the truth
of history require this candid statement ; but it must
be added that the benefits are not inconsiderable which re-
sult from dwelling on these better parts, and pressing them
on men's minds with the authority of great names which
may influence some, while their example must arrest the
attention of all. Thus the wickedness of Henry V.'s wars
of mere plunder, and his feebleness in sacrificing Oldcastle,
the most distinguished person of the age, to the fury of bigots
whom he was courting, must ever be related with a full ad-
mission, not indeed of the benefits which our Constitution
derived from the cost of his expeditions requiring the popu-
lar consent to his supplies, but of his great capacity as a
commander, his general sincerity and frankness, so rare in

princes and stateimen of these thins, and his freedom at least
from such a stain of cruelty as attaches to the memory of his
uncle, the Black Prince, whom Mr. Hums describes as a per-
fect
character, to the hour of his death "unstained by any
blamable action," suppressing the massacre of 3000 persons
of both sexes and all ages at Limoges before his face in his
last illness. So the unjust and sanguinary wars of Edward
111. with Scotland and France must not shut our eyes to his
great talents both in the field and in government, to the
mildness of his administration, and to the improvements he
effected both in our jurisprudence and in our Constitution.
When we describe the political fraud and falsehood of
Elizabeth, her maltreatment of Mary, and her covert at-
tempts to take her off by assassination, her sacrifice of
Davidson for obeying her commands for the execution, in
order to support her false denial of those commands, we must
at the same time commemorateher great qualities for govern-
ment, by which she preserved the peace of her dominions in
a season of extreme difficulty from religious as well as poli-
tical dissensions, and her allowing no influence whatever in
the management of public affairs to those favourites with
whom indeed she led a life of indulgence little sanctioned
by most Protestant historians. But far w. rse princes,
while justly held up to reprobation for their tyranny, and to
contempt for their sordid schemes carried into execution at
the public expense, in fact by the plunder of their subjects,
deserve just commendation for their encouragement of the
arts and advancing the improvement of their country. In-
stead of denying all merit to Lorenzo de Medici, or ascribing
his munifict nce to vanity, we are only to lament that his
accomplishments and his patronage of genius should have
dazzled good men, friends of liberty as well as of letters, and
blinded them to the conduct of one•who enslaved his coun-

try, directed its resources by a serious of fraudulent devices
to his own profit, treacherously intrigued to sub vert the
power of his neighbours, shed the blood of his adversaries
at home, sometimes by his official tools, sometimes by
delivering them over to the mob, when their atrocious
offences against him might have been surely visited by
the law. Take even the worst of rulers, those whose
cruelty and profligacy are the detestation of all man-
kind, our own Richard 111. and the Borgias. The for-
mer is believed upon light evidence to have committed
many crimes besides those of which there can be no
doubt, while just praise is not given to his capacity, his
courage, hisimprovement of our jurisprudence, and the
mildness of his
.government to all but the nobles ; and the
latter (the Borgias) have not been generally noted as they
deserved for their talents in government, their protection
of learning, and especially their promotion of the important
study of jurisprudence. The caprice of historians in some
sort resembles that of the vulgar, either struck by signal
turpitude and regarding it as prevailing generally, and ex-
cluding all exceptions, or only securing the exception, and
making it the rule of decision. A Borgia is held incapable
of any good of any kind ; a Lorenzo incapable of evil. No-
thing can tend more to keep men in ignorance than such
exaggerations ; and they have the hurtful effect of intercept-
ing the instruction which a contemplation of the real state
of the facts in each case is fitted to impart. The ills that
have proceeded from the great scourge of later days have
been adverted to, as well as the mischievous effects of the
admiration which he excited, and which unhappily has not
ceased to inspire the people whom he most injured. But
some of his great qualities it would be impossible to admire
too much ; and though his genius may be pronounced in-
imitable, in some things his example may be followed, and.
it is therefore fit that these should be recorded. There is,
indeed, an obvious expediency in dwelling rather upon qua-
lities the example of which may lead to imitation, than upon
genius however calculated to command admiration—genius
which consists in the rare gifts of rich fancy, perception of
resemblance and differences not app 'rent to ordinary minds
but admitted by all as soon as suggested, quick and sure
judgment, and the power of not only abstracting the atten-
tion from all objects save one, but of directing and concen-
trating it upon that one. This is what we call genius, the
gift of very few, and the works of which ale to be admired
at an awful distance. The ordinary qualities which diligent
study and a fixed desire to excel may place more or less
within the reach of all are most fit to be recommended by
the example and the success of distinguished individuals.
Of these Napoleon possessed two in an eminentd,e,grTeeake;
the can never be sufficiently . kept in mind, and
they are of universal application the strict eco-
nomy of time, in compliance with the maxim,
care of the minutes, the hours will take care of
themselves ;" and the habit of invariably mastering the
whole of veaatever subject or part of a subject he considered
himself interested in being acquainted with. The captain
who conveyed him to Elba expressed to me his astonishment
at his precise and, as it were, familiar knowledge of all the
minute details connected with the ship. I heard from one
connected with the great Helvetic mediation (1802) that,
though the deputies soon found how hopeless they were of
succeeding with the Vast Cousin, yet they felt themselves