“You might have had another reason for disbelieving the statement of my appearing as a witness in behalf of Mr. St John Long, to wit, that I am not likely to put myself into the hands of a quack. Probably he has had a patient of the same name, and the news’ reporters supposed it to be me. It was contradicted in the Times by my brother (I suppose), who perhaps thought it some derogation to his own doctorship as well as mine.
“I am troubled at the course of events, yet I can find some considerations, which, if they do not allay my disquietude, have in them a growing comfort. Had it been in my power to turn the balance between the contending principles of France,—which were Liberalism and Jesuitism,—I should have laid my hand with great misgiving on either scale; and, if I had decided on that which was, for the time, the cause of order, and brought with it the least immediate evil, it would have been with no clear conviction or good will. The complete triumph of the old Bourbon system would be the re-establishment of such a religion and such a court as those of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. Charles X. did not desire such a court, neither did the Dauphin his son, but they both deemed it their duty to do all that could be done by sovereign power for the holy Roman Catholic Church.
| 116 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 56. |
“The royal family fully understood that a scheme for expelling them and putting the son of Philippe Egalitè in their place had been carrying on ever since the battle of Waterloo, but they were strangely mistaken with regard to their strength, and did not calculate on the means of resistance which had been prepared. Otherwise, they had troops on whom they could have perfectly relied, who could have been brought up, for they were within two days’ march.
“It is better as it is, for they had put themselves glaringly in the wrong by the Ordinances, having been wholly in the right before. You might have been with them for mere political considerations (and those only temporary ones), if they had succeeded; but you could not have been with them in principle and in heart. But all three are now united in the Duke de Bordeaux’ cause. Oh, how blind of intellect and dead of heart must the Duke of Orleans be to have thrown away such an opportunity of securing himself a good and glorious name! Had he insisted upon that child’s right, and the plain policy of maintaining it—had he acted for him as a faithful regent,—he would have had, not the mere recognition of unwilling courts, nor the ‘hey, fellow!’ recognition of Cobbett and Co., but the sure support of all the European Powers, and the grateful attachment of all the old Royalists, and of all Frenchmen who desire tranquillity; and his name would have become as illustrious as that of Washington.
“Did you ever read the Abbé Terasson’s Sethos? There this Duke might have found a
better model for himself than Fenelon
exhibited for his pupil in
| Ætat. 56. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 117 |
