life has
never been assailed; but it would be a libel on all decency to say
that he was suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to
fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an
atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his nature had
a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The fact is, there are indications
that his nature was warped from the beginning, and that he was just
the very kind of man who ought never to have been sent to a post of
such varied responsibilities. His appointment shows how appallingly
ignorant or wicked the Government, or Bathurst, were in their
selection of him.

He was a monomaniac pure and simple. If they thought him best suited
to pursue a policy of vindictiveness, then their choice was perfect,
though it was a violation of all moral law. If, on the other hand,
they were not aware of his unsuitableness, they showed either
carelessness or incapacity which will rank them beneath mediocrity,
and by their act they stamped the English name with ignominy. And yet
there is a pathos at the end of it all when he was brought to see the
cold, inanimate form of the dead monarch. He was seized with fear,
smitten with the dread of retribution, and exclaimed to Montholon,
"His death is my ruin."[4]

Forsyth has done his utmost to justify the actions of Hudson Lowe, but
no one can read his work without feeling that the historian was
conscious all through of an abortive task. He reproduces in vain the
instructions and correspondence between Lowe and his Government, and
the letters and conversations with Napoleon and members of his
household, and deduces from these that the Governor could not have
acted otherwise than in the manner he did. It is easy to twist words
used either in conversations or letters into meanings which they were
never intended to convey, but there are too many evidences of
cold-blooded outbursts of tyrannical intent to be set aside, and
these make it impossible to regard Sir Hudson Lowe in any other light
than that of a petty little despot.

He had ability of a kind. Napoleon said he was eminently suited to
"command bandits or deserters," and tells him in that memorable verbal
conversation which arose through Lowe requesting that 200,000 francs
per annum should be found as a contribution towards the expenses at
Longwood: "I have never heard your name mentioned except as a brigand
chief. You never suffer a day to pass without torturing me with