wn family. Nor was
there at any time an instant when any one of the Bonapartes could have
overstepped, by a hair's-breadth, the line of decency, without being
fatally exposed. None of them pursued the noiseless tenor of their way
along the vale of obscurity. They were walking in the clear sunshine, on
the topmost summits of the earth, and millions of enemies were watching
every step they took. The highest genius of historians, the bitterest
satire of dramatists, the meanest and most malignant pen of the
journalists have assailed them for half a century. We have written these
words because a Republican is the only man likely to speak well of the
Bonaparte family. It was, and is, and will be the dynasty of the people,
standing there from 1804, a fearful antagonism against the feudal age
and its souvenirs of oppression and crime."

Napoleon at St. Helena said: "Of all the libels and pamphlets with which
the English ministers have inundated Europe, there is not one which
will reach posterity. When there shall not be a trace of those libels to
be found, the great monuments of utility which I have reared, and the
code of laws which I have formed, will descend to the remotest ages; and
future historians will avenge the wrongs done me by my contemporaries.
There was a time when all crimes seemed to belong to me of right. Thus I
poisoned Hoche, strangled Pichegru in his cell, I caused Kleber to be
assassinated in Egypt, I blew out Desaix's brains at Marengo, I cut the
throats of persons who were confined in prison, I dragged the Pope by
the hair of his head, and a hundred similar abominations. And yet I have
not seen one of those libels which is worthy of an answer. These are so
contemptible and so absurdly false, that they do not merit any other
notice than to write _false_, _false_, on every page."

It is well known, by every one acquainted with the past history of our
country, that George Washington was assailed in the severest possible
language of vituperation. He was charged with military inability,
administrative incapacity, mental weakness, and gross personal
immorality. He was denounced as a murderer, and a hoary-headed traitor.
This is the doom of those in power. And thousands of men in those days
believed those charges.

It is seldom possible to prove a negative. But no evidence has ever been
brought forward to substantiate the rumors brought against Hortense.
These vile slanderers have even gone so far as to accuse