n faith were in
no way particular as to the form or authenticity of their declamatory
ebullitions.

But what of Nelson? He was a subject of his King, employed by the
King's Government under certain plenary powers to fight the country's
battles, defend its right, uphold its dignity, guard its honour, and
commit no violence. That is, in plain English, he was to play the
game. But he assumed an authority that no Government of England would
have dared to have given him by revoking the word of honour of a
distinguished officer who had pledged England's word that the lives of
the beleaguered men would be spared. I think the writer of the gospel
of "Let brotherly love continue," and the rhetoricians who claim that
Britons have no competitors in the science of moral rectitude, will
have a hard task to square the unworthy declamations against
Napoleon's responsibility in the Duc d'Enghien affair with their
silence on Nelson's in breaking the truce already referred to, and the
awful consequences set forth in Mr. Fox's speech, which is reminiscent
of the powerful disciplinary methods of that manly martinet Ivan the
Terrible, who was responsible for the massacre of men by the thousand,
flaying of prisoners alive, collecting pyramids of skulls,
slaughtering of innocent men, and the free use of other ingenious
forms of refined scientific torture which tires the spirit to relate.
It is hard to forgive Nelson for having smirched his own and England's
name with atrocities so terrible. But more humiliating still to
British honour is the fact that his part in the breaking of the treaty
was dictated to him from the quarter deck of the _Foudroyant_ by a
woman whom my vocabulary is unable to describe in fitting terms. I
shall emphasize this masculine female's orders to Nelson by quoting
them again. Were it not for the comic impertinence of the order, I
think it would almost make me feel the bitterness of death. Nelson
seems to have been the victim of her dominating spirit, though the
evidence in support of him swallowing the whole dose of medicine is
quite feeble. That he swallowed too much of it will always detract
from his fame. "Haul down the flag of truce, Bronte. No truce with
rebels." Nelson lost a great opportunity of adding romance to his
naval glory by neglecting his imperative duty in not putting Sir
William Hamilton's wife in irons or having her thrown into the sea. A
story of this kind would have sounded better, and its effect w