Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/216

 Alas! Sir Robert. "How little knew'st thou of Calista!" as a body may say. But you have in part redeemed your errors, and revenged the trick that was thus put upon your preux chevalier notions of honour!—One would think there was shuffling and paltering and evasion and cant and cunning enough in the foregoing part of this transaction. What follows is worse. After the campaigns which so providentially delivered France and Europe from the hands of illegitimate into those of legitimate power en plein droit, and while the immortal congress was yet assembled at Vienna, "Prince Talleyrand, on the part of King Louis," says Mr. Macirone, "was indefatigable in his exertions to induce the Austrian government to withdraw their alliance from the King of Naples, from whom the allied powers had so recently received the most efficient support. The Austrian government being warmly urged to undertake the holy war of legitimacy against its ally, the King of Naples, at length expressed its willingness to comply, but alleged the exhausted state of the finances of the country. This difficulty was, it is said, immediately removed by the British ministers, who offered to defray all the expense of the expedition, and moreover to furnish a British fleet, in preference to a French fleet, as proposed by Talleyrand in his famous note, which fleet should act in concert with and assist the movements of the Austrian forces."

One would think that after this open and profligate breach of faith, the legitimates had made up their minds to keep no terms with illegitimacy. But, no: expediency turns round once more, and British honour, simplicity, and good faith, with it! Murat, in consequence of the preparations against him, attacked the Austrians "at the very moment, as it afterwards turned out, that the apprehensions of his union with Napoleon, who had just returned to France from Elba, had determined the British cabinet to attend to the invocations of justice in his favour. Lord Castlereagh had written to the Duke of Wellington, who was at that time the plenipotentiary of the British court at Vienna, and informed him, that in consequence of the reappearance of Napoleon at the head