ars the stamp of truth--the
indictment is the same though it may be related differently.

Some writers have cast doubt on the authenticity of the St. Helena
chroniclers without having a peg to hang their contentions on. The
answer to all this is, that if never a line had been written by these
men, the State papers, cunningly devised and crafty though most of
them are, would have been ample evidence from which to draw
unfavourable conclusions. Indeed, without State papers being brought
into it at all, there is facing you always the glaring fact of a
determined assassination perpetrated in the name of humanity, and if I
felt any desire to be assured of this, I would take as an authority
William Forsyth's three volumes written in defence of Sir Hudson Lowe.
No author has so completely failed to prove his case. Moreover, no
valid reason has ever been given, or ever can be, for doubting the
veracity of O'Meara and other gentlemen of Napoleon's suite who have
written their experiences of the St. Helena period.

In the first place, those sceptical writers who deal with the
different books that have been published relative to this part of
Napoleon's history were not only not there to witness all that went
on, but some of them were not born for many years after Napoleon and
his contemporaries had passed on. So that it really narrows itself
down to this: the knowledge the sceptics have attained is taken from
documents or books written for the most part by the very men who they
say are not to be relied on as giving a true version of all that took
place during their stay at St. Helena. It cannot be disputed that
these gentlemen were in daily and hourly contact with England's
prisoner, and, as they aver, jotted down everything that passed in
conversation or that transpired in other ways between themselves and
the Emperor, or anybody else.

The history of the St. Helena period, as written by authors who were
on the spot, is, in the present writer's opinion, singularly free from
exaggeration, let alone untruths. Besides, what had any of them to
gain by sending forth distorted statements and untruthful history? No
one knew better than they that every line they wrote would be
contested by those who had relied on the rigid regulations suppressing
all communications except those which passed through the hands of Sir
Hudson Lowe. Certainly O'Meara cannot be accused of having ulterior
motives, nor can any of the others--not even Gourgaud