of the French disbelieve,) how do we know who he is, or why he is confined there?  There have been state-prisoners before now, who were never guilty of subjugating half Europe, and whose offences have been very imperfectly ascertained.  Admitting that there have been bloody wars going on for several years past, which is highly probable, it does not follow that the events of those wars were such as we have been told;—­that Buonaparte was the author and conductor of them;—­or that such a person ever existed.  What disturbances may have taken place in the government of the French people, we, and even nineteen-twentieths of them, have no means of learning but from imperfect hearsay evidence; and how much credit they themselves attach to that evidence is very doubtful.  This at least is certain:  that a M. Berryer, a French advocate, has published memoirs, professing to record many of the events of the recent history of France, in which, among other things, he states his conviction that Buonaparte’s escape from Elba was DESIGNED AND CONTRIVED BY THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT.[22] And we are assured by many travellers that this was, and is, commonly reported in France.

Now that the French should believe the whole story about Buonaparte according to this version of it, does seem utterly incredible.  Let any one suppose them seriously believing that we maintained for many years a desperate struggle against this formidable emperor of theirs, in the course of which we expended such an enormous amount of blood and treasure as is reported;—­that we finally, after encountering enormous risks, succeeded in subduing him, and secured him in a place of safe exile;—­and that, in less than a year after, we turned him out again, like a bag-fox,—­or rather, a bag-lion,—­for the sake of amusing ourselves by again staking all that was dear to us on the event of a doubtful and bloody battle, in which defeat must be ruinous, and victory, if obtained at all, must cost us many thousands of our best soldiers.  Let any one force himself for a moment to conceive the French seriously believing such a mass of absurdity; and the inference must be that such a people must be prepared to believe anything.  They might fancy their own country to abound not only with Napoleons, but with dragons and centaurs, and “men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,” or anything else that any lunatic ever dreamt of.  If we could suppose the French capable of such monstrous credulity as the above supposition would imply, it is plain their testimony must be altogether worthless.

But, on the other hand, suppose them to be aware that the British Government have been all along imposing on us, and it is quite natural that they should deride our credulity, and try whether there is anything too extravagant for us to swallow.  And indeed, if Buonaparte was in fact altogether a phantom conjured up by the British Ministers, then it is true that his escape from Elba really was, as well as the rest of his exploits, a contrivance of theirs.