When the sanguinary contest closed in Europe, the exhibition of its continuous blaze of glory had lost much of its novelty in America; the ardor of our people commenced to cool down; they began to make a more dispassionate, and, consequently, a more rational estimate of their late heroes. This examination in some of its aspects was not favorable to the character of the republicans and of Napoleon. His genius, indeed, could not be denied; his deeds were marvellous; the splendor of his course had never been surpassed in ancient or modern ages; his individual or personal popularity was not in the least impaired. But on the whole, had his life been a blessing or otherwise to mankind? Had it been beneficial or injurious to progress? Had he or the preceding government of the Convention in the Reign of Terror promoted the welfare of France? Reluctantly but surely the American mind came to the conviction that the wars of the emperor had been as useless as they were prodigal of life, more desolating than the bloody guillotine worked by Robespierre. That decision will not soon be reversed; in all probability it will be confirmed and strengthened by time. On the eastern continent, however, this stage of enlightenment has not been reached by the mass of the intelligent population; but they are coming up to it. Napoleon as the scourge had there to be withdrawn, before he could reappear transformed into a hero, and from a hero into a great beneficent political being. His wars were there pronounced productive of good, as a destructive fire that had consumed the vermin of class abuses; that had extirpated the noxious weeds strangling civilization, which could not be eradicated by peaceful means; that the Reign of Terror had been a terrible tempest, to be sure, but a tempest, nevertheless, which, in the oratorical figure of Lord Erskine, had driven away pestilence and purified the atmosphere. At this point European sentiment now stands.
In republican America, the next stride will be still in the advance to the further conclusion, that Napoleon, in his martial policy, evinced only the cold-blooded, inordinately selfish despot, whose love of country was centred in self-love, whose patriotism for the State was unbounded when he was the State, for which he would sacrifice as much as Louis XIV. in a dazzling reign equally disastrous to the happiness of his subjects. But in Europe, to condemn the warlike propensities of Napoleon, is at the same time to condemn the hostile coalitions that promoted or provoked them. The measures adopted by inimical and rival powers to overthrow the French empire originated in passions and for a purpose fully as absurd and damaging to their own people. Both sides wanted war, without counting the cost, and now both are counting the loss, when war is no longer wanted. The losing figures present the longest columns to contemplative countenances the most elongated. In this showing, the picture is not inviting to monarchical perceptions; they are unwilling to acknowledge the fidelity of the portrait. England was always first in heart and soul in these conspiracies against the peace of Christendom, and England ever since has felt also, both first and last, the evil effects from the heaviest debts to be borne in consequence. Hence the dispiriting consciousness in the best of British circles, that France under Robespierre and Napoleon was matched in its foolishness by England under Pitt and Castlereagh. { 91} Something like even-handed retributive justice was meted out to all four: Robespierre attempted self-destruction when the executioner at the guillotine awaited him; Castlereagh cut his own throat; Pitt pined away and died as he closed the map of Europe with his finger pointing to the fatal field of Austerlitz; Napoleon lingered out a miserable life on a barren rock. The administrations of these men are now understood in the American republic, and have received the American condemnation. Talleyrand was an inferior personage to them in power, but only one degree less; he was the greatest in importance, and in position of the second grade. He is not so well comprehended. They did not know, until now, he had said to Montalvert: