The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-07-15 00:00:00

PT KT: Or WELT,INriTO

The following summary of the character of this eminent
illan is from his life by Maxwell, and is very succinct and
masterly :—" One duty yet remains to be discharged ; and
the professional character of him whose military command,
commencing at Assaye, and concluding at Waterloo, embra-
cing such opposite services and scenes, shall be briefly and
impartially considered.
"The time, however, has yet to come when that character
shall be correctly estimated. When party prejudices have
died away—petty jealousies subsided—the grave received its
honoured tenant—and in Ossian's words, the gray stone
rests upon the chief',—then, and not till then, will public
opinion be dispassionately exercised, and justice awarded to
the greatest man whom England has produced.
" In a double view Wellington's character is to be examined;
for two epochs of a long life were devoted, and althost ex-
clusively, to very opposite pursuits—war and politics. The
history of one epoch we have completed ; and as the memoirs
of the second are reserved for a future duty, we will simply
content ourselves with observing, that as a politician, many
have been abler, but none honester than the Duke of Wel-

lington.
" The intrinsic value of a soldier's character must not be
tested by merely what he has done, but by the circumstances
under which his exploits have been achieved. What was the
opening of Wellington's Peninsular career? He debarked
with an army, not 10,000 strong, to operate against an able
General, commanding five and twenty thousand disposable
soldiers, and at a period immediately subsequent to disas-
trous campaigns in which the qualities of British soldiers had
been unjustly depreciated, while those of their opponents ac-
quired, by admirable discipline and consequent success, a re-
putation amounting to invincibility.
" That delusion Wellington's first victories dispelled. Was
he then cordially supported by his allies, and liberally sus-
tained by his friends ? No : abroad and at home, he was
harassed by the suspicions of one party, and paralysed by the
misconduct of the other ; and, while an object of deadly
jealousy to the imbeciles with whom he was obliged to act,
whose errors he was forced to remedy, whose madness he
was expected to control, the keenest shaft reached him from
that country to which he should have looked confidently for
support; and in England, while goaded out of doors by the
rabid outpourings of unwashed demagogues, within the walls
of St. Stephen's he was exposed to the baser attacks of dis-
honest statesmen, who, to attain an unworthy end, would
have blasted the hopes of Britain, and left Europe at the
mercy of a man whose ambition the extent of a world could
not satisfy.
" As a great commander, the amount of Wellington's re-
putation depends upon a simple question :—Was he the first
or second of his age ;
" That he was less vast in his designs, less daring in exe-
cution, neither so rapid nor so original a commander as Na-
poleon, must be admitted, and being later in the field of
glory, it is to be presumed that he learned something of the
art from that greatest of all masters ; yet something besides
the difference of genius must be allowed for the difference of
situation ; Napoleon was never, even in his first campaign
Italy, so harassed by the French, as Wellington was by the

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