ported as they are by
facts--then it is a complete refutation of what Scott has written as
to the health-giving qualities of the island.

Here is the statement of the Emperor's medical adviser (see p. 517,
Appendix, vol. ii., "Napoleon in Exile"):--

"The following extract of an official letter transmitted by me
to the Lords of the Admiralty, and dated the 28th October, 1818,
containing a statement of the vexations inflicted upon Napoleon,
will show that the fatal event which has since taken place at
St. Helena was most distinctly pointed out by me to His
Majesty's Ministers.

"I think it my duty to state, as his late medical attendant,
that considering the disease of the liver with which he is
afflicted, the progress it has made in him, and reflecting upon
the great mortality produced by that complaint in the island of
St. Helena (so strongly exemplified in the number of deaths in
the 66th Regiment, the St. Helena regiment, the squadron, and
Europeans in general, and particularly in His Majesty's ship
_Conqueror_, which ship has lost about one-sixth of her
complement, nearly the whole of whom have died within the last
eight months), it is my opinion that the life of Napoleon
Bonaparte will be endangered by a longer residence in such a
climate as that of St. Helena, especially if that residence be
aggravated by a continuance of those disturbances and
irritations to which he has hitherto been subjected, and of
which it is the nature of his distemper to render him peculiarly
susceptible.--(Signed) BARRY E. O'MEARA, Surgeon R.N. To John
Wilson Croker, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty."

It is a terrible reflection to think that this note of warning should
have gone unheeded. A body of men with a spark of humane feeling would
have thrown political exigencies to the winds and defied all the
powers of earth and hell to prevent them from at once offering their
prisoner a home in the land of a generous people. What had they to
fear from a man whose political career ended when he gave himself up
to the captain of the _Bellerophon_, and whose health was now
shattered by disease and ill-usage? Had the common people of this
nation known all that was being perpetrated in their name, the Duke of
Wellington and all his myrmidons could not have withstood the revolt
against it, and were such treatment to be meted out to a political
prisoner