"It is remarkable that, in one of those papers so sent (to Elba) by Lady Holland, was a paragraph hinting a project among the confederates of transporting him to St Helena. True it is that such an idea, however inconsistent with honour or good faith, was started and discussed, though probably never committed to paper, at the Congress of Vienna, before Napoleon left Elba. It is just to add that it was discountenanced and rejected by Austria. In confirmation of so base a design having been entertained, it is observable that a negotiation with the East India Company to place St Helena under the control of the Government, with no other probable or ostensible object for such a measure, was actually commenced in March 1815, and discontinued on the landing of Napoleon in that month. Any well-grounded suspicion of such a proceeding was sufficient to release the exiled Emperor from the obligations of his treaty and abdication of Fontainebleau, and to justify his attempt to recover the empire he had so recently lost."
We observe that the writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ denies the statement of Lord Holland, that the removal of Napoleon from Elba was mooted at the Congress of Vienna. We, on the contrary, have always understood that the proposition was seriously considered, though not, as Lord Holland would insinuate, without sufficient cause and provocation. The intrigues, of which Elba was the centre, to pave the way for another attempt at the dethronement of the Bourbons, had for some time been in active progress, and were well known to Fouché and others, and by them communicated to the Congress. Also, the attitude of Murat in Italy was such as to excite very serious apprehensions. Mr Alison, in his _History of Europe_,[20] thus notices the intrigues of Elba:--
"Its close proximity to the Italian shore led naturally to a secret correspondence between the Island of Elba and the Court of Naples. Murat, ever governed by ambition, and yet destitute of the firmness of purpose requisite to render it successful, now found that his vacillation of conduct had ruined him with the aristocratic, as it had formerly done with the revolutionary party, and that the Allies were little disposed to reward his deviation from his engagements by the lasting possession of the throne of Naples. He threw himself, therefore, once more into the arms of France; and it was arranged that the descent of Napoleon on the coast of Provence should be contemporaneous with the advance of his troops to the Po, and the proclamation of the great principle of Italian liberty and independence."
