“I thank you for your letter, and I daresay you will not be surprized when I tell you that the Circumstances which have led to, and attend upon, this great Event, are such as to enable me to contemplate it with entire satisfaction.
“A Limited Monarchy in France, with Religious Liberty, a Free Press and Legislative Bodies such as have been stipulated for before the Recognition of the Bourbons, leave their Restoration without the possibility of Regret in the Mind of any Man who is a Lover of Liberty and a friend to his kind. Paris safe, Bonaparte suffered to depart, after the experiment had been fully tried of effecting a Peace with him, upon terms such as he was mad to reject—‘Tis more than I dared to hope!
“Then the great Example set of the Fidelity of all His Generals, and of the Armies they commanded, up to the very Moment that He himself gave all up for lost and opened his own Eyes to the consequences of His own desperate Folly, must surely have its effect on the World, and redeems many of the Treacheries
* Son of R. B. Sheridan. |
| 1813-14.] | THE PEACE. | 191 |
“If the Regent had but a true friend to tell him that he has only two things to do at home to complete the Happiness and Splendour of this Epoch!* I hear He says I am the worst Man God Almighty ever formed, except Bonaparte! but I could tell him how to be as justly popular as Alexander himself.† . . . No Murders, No Torture, No Conflagration—how ill the pretty Women of London bear it?”
