February, 1834.  It is a notable fact that nearly the whole of the prominent figures in the drama of the Empire and its fall had passed beyond the portal before the great captain’s remains were brought back to France.  These individuals are only remembered now as uninspired small men, benighted in mind, who had wrought ignobly to bring about the fall of a powerful leader, and to the end of their days were associated with and encouraged a fiendish persecution of the Emperor while he lived, and of his family before and after his death.

But the pious care of his tomb by a regiment of British soldiers, paid for by British taxpayers, from 1821 until the patriotic exhumation in 1840; by stately and solemn permission of the British Government, excels the comic genius of a gang of plethoric parochial innkeepers.  If it were not so degrading to the national pride of race, we might regard it as taking rank amongst the drollest incidents of human life.  What a gang of puffy, mildewed creatures were at the head British affairs in those days!  Indeed, they expose the human soul at its worst, and a curious feature is their ingrained belief in the integrity of all their doings, which beggars the English vocabulary describe.  How the people tolerated the drain on human life and the material resources of country is also phenomenal.

Thousands of lives were sacrificed and millions of money squandered, with the sole object of destroying and humiliating one man, who, had he been handled discreetly, would have proved greater public asset than he was.  Sir Hudson Lowe would not be known to posterity but for the guilty part he played in the tragedy.  He left St. Helena on July 25, 1821, and was presented on the eve of his departure with an address from the inhabitants.  It has been said that document was inspired from Plantation House, but that is scarcely credible.  Besides, we are not inclined to discount any credit Lowe and his friends and accomplices can derive from it.  It does not glow with devotion nor regret at his resigning his command.  Indeed, it is nothing more nor less than a cold, polite way of bidding him farewell.  Forsyth makes much of this, with the object of proving his popularity with the islanders and the itinerant persons in the service of the Crown.  He only makes his case worse by embarking on so hopeless a task.  As a matter of fact, this extraordinary representative of the British Government had roused the whole population of St. Helena at one time and another to a pitch of passion and scorn that puts it beyond doubt that no genuine regret could have been consistently expressed by a single soul, except those few composing his staff, who were as guilty as himself and were always ready to lick his boots for a grain of favour; and yet it is quite certain, notwithstanding the heroic fooleries and the care to make Plantation House a sanctuary of guilty secrecy, there was nothing that transpired, either important or unimportant,