What, then, are we to think of a British minister, who could violate his most sacred pledges of protection to a man of this exalted description? But Lord Castlereagh's mind was not capable of estimating the worth and talents of Napoleon, and the mean expedient to which his lordship resorted to gain possession of the emperor's person will ever reflect the greatest possible disgrace upon his character, both as a man and a minister. The petty, vexatious, and unjustifiable conduct, to which the Emperor Napoleon was afterwards subjected at St. Helena, was equal in meanness to his capture. When the emperor quitted the Bellerophon, on the 8th of August, the officers and ship's company were in consternation; they felt implicated in the shame and the injustice of such a procedure. Napoleon traversed the deck to descend into the sloop, with calmness and a smile upon his lips, having at his side Admiral Keith. He stopped before Captain Maitland, charged him to testify his satisfaction to the officers and crew of the Bellerophon, and, seeing him extremely grieved, said to him, by way of consolation, "_Posterity cannot, in any way, accuse you for what is taking place; you have been deceived as well as myself._" Napoleon enjoyed, during twenty-four days, the protection of the British flag; he sojourned in the inner roads of Torbay and Plymouth; and it was not until after that lapse of time, on the 8th of August, when passing on board the Northumberland, that Admiral Keith disarmed the French,--the delivering up of arms being one of the characteristics of prisoners of war. The arms of the emperor, however, were not demanded.
It would be unnecessary to give a copy of the "official" regulations, which Lord Castlereagh ordered to be observed towards the illustrious Napoleon; their tyrannical operation will be made manifest in the following correspondence:
LETTER FROM COUNT MONTHOLON TO THE GOVERNOR, SIR HUDSON LOWE.
"I have received the treaty of the 2nd August, 1815, concluded between his Britannic Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia, which was annexed to your letter of the 23rd July.