period of their conquest, belong either to their respective family collections, or to the countries over which they now actually reigned.

Whatever value the Prince Regent might attach to such exquisite specimens of the fine arts, if otherwise acquired, he has no wish to become possessed of them at the expense of France, or rather of the countries to which they of right belong, more especially by following up a principle in war which He considers as a reproach to the nation by which it has been adopted, and so far from wishing to take advantage of the occasion to purchase from the rightful owners any article they might, from pecuniary considerations, be disposed to part with, His Royal Highness would on the contrary be disposed rather to afford the means, of replacing them in those very temples and galleries of which they were so long the

ornaments.

Were it possible that His Royal Highness's sentiments towards the person and cause of Lous XVIII. could be brought into doubt, or that the position of His Most Christian Majesty was likely to be injured in the eyes of His own people, the Prince Regent would not come to this conclusion without the most painful reluctance; but, on the contrary, His Royal Highness believes that His Majesty will rise in love and respect of his own subjects, in proportion as He separates Himself from these remembrances of revolutionary warfare. These spoils, which impede a moral reconciliation between France and the countries she has invaded, are not necessary to record the exploits of her armies, which, notwithstanding the cause in which they were achieved, must ever make the arms of the nation respected abroad. But whilst these objects remain at Paris, constituting as it were the title-deeds of the countries which have been given up, the sentiments of reuniting these countries again to France will never be altogether extinct; nor will the genius of the French people ever completely associate itself with the more limited existence assigned to the nation under the Bourbons.

266. After this, the stripping began, and we have some account of it in the following dispatch

from Wellington to Castlereagh. Let it be observed, that Castlereagh was at Paris, when he wrote his note of the eleventh of September, and that this dispatch of Wellington was dated from Paris on the twenty-third of September, giving. an account of the issue of the affair.

MY DEAR LORD,

There has been a good deal of discussion here lately respecting the measures which I have been under the necessity of adopting, in order to get for the King of the Netherlands his Pictures, &c., from the Museums; and lest these reports should reach the Prince Regent, I wish to trouble you, for His Royal Highness's information, with the following statement of what has passed :

Shortly after the arrival of the Sovereigns at Paris, the Minister of the King of the Nethe lands claimed the Pictures, &c., belonging to his Sovereign, equally with those of other powers; and, as far as I could learn, never could get any satisfactory reply from the French Government. After several conversations with me, he addressed your Lordship an official Note, which was laid before the Ministers of the Allied Sovereigns, assembled in conference; and the subject was taken into consideration repeatedly, with a view to discover a mode of doing justice to the claimants of the specimens of the arts in the Museums, without injuring the feelings of the King of France. In the meantime the Prussians had obtained from His Majesty not only all the really Prussian Pictures, but those belonging to the Prussian territories on the left of the Rhine, and the Pictures, &c., belonging to all the Allies of His Prussian Majesty; and the subject pressed for an early decision; and your Lordship wrote your note of the 11th instant, in which it was fully discussed.

The Ministers of the King of the Netherlands, still having no satisfactory answer from the French Government, appealed to me as the General-in-Chief of the army of the King of the Netherlands, to know whether I had any objection to employ His Majesty's troops to obtain possession of what was his un

doubted property. I referred this application again to the Ministers of the Allied Courts, and no objection having been stated, I considered it my duty to take the necessary mea. sures to obtain what was his right.

267. Thus, at last, it came to the employing of British bayonets, in order to carry into execution the wish of Mr. Bankes, and of the parliament who had so loudly cheered the expression of that wish; and thus was clearly proved that this was one of the objects in the bringing back of Buonaparte. Now, then, was put to the test the sincerity of the parliament, when it shouted on to war against Napoleon after his return; and when the two Houses echoed and re-echoed with the most solemn protestations not to desire anything that should be injurious or humiliating to the kingdom of France. We see here that the consent of the miserable Bourbon was never declared in favour of this stripping. We see that it took place in spite of him; and yet, he was one of the Allies who had "conquered" France. This act of baseness he appears to have been afraid to commit, and, therefore, it was committed openly without even his apparent assent. The logic of Castlereagh is of a piece with the rest of the transaction. It was not, he says, to be expected that the Allies, who had found it necessary to take from France a part of her own long-possessed dominions, should leave her in quiet possession of the spoils that she had taken in war. Why,

to be sure, it was not to be "expected," that those who had been guilty of one most flagrant breach of faith should very scrupulously abstain from committing another. In this respect, this stripping of the museums was natural enough; but, upon any other principle, how the taking away of the dominions of France by the hands of her Allies was to be a reason for the stripping her of her museums, even by those Allies, is not very easy to discover.

268. These pictures and other things are called plunder; but, they were no more plunder than the flags taken from the enemy in battle. They were taken from countries that had been conquered, and some of them even incorporated into the empire of France. Napoleon was actually sovereign of those countries at the very time when he took away these monuments of art and carried them to Paris. If they came from countries of which he had not actually assumed and exercised the sovereignty, they were, at the very least, booty of war; and there was no more pretence for taking them away than there would have been for the taking away of cannon, horses, carriages, or any other thing taken in war and brought to France.

269. If, indeed, the Allies took away these pictures and statues in their quality of conquerors of France, then their right was clear; and it was in that character, and that character

only, that they could lawfully take them away: but, then came the awkward circumstance that the King of France, the owner of the museums, was one of the conquerors; and they had stipulated, according to their Declaration at Vienna, to restore him to all his rights and possessions, and had never hinted at the thought of making those possessions an object of their plunder.

270. It is quite clear that they never had his consent in a regular formal manner, in any case, and that they had his refusal, with regard to the pictures which came from the Netherlands. Base as this Bourbon was, like all the other Bourbons; base as he was, he was not quite base enough to give his consent to the stripping of the museums. He had not, indeed, the power to prevent the stripping, if he had the will: his assent was obtained formally to the stripping of his kingdom of its frontier-towns, and to the imposing of a tribute upon his people, the interest of which tribute they have yet to pay, and which, to all appearance, will be paid by their children. who are now in their cradle; but, he gave no assent to the stripping of these museums; he was afraid to do that, though he had not been afraid to impose an everlasting load of taxes on the same people who submitted quietly to the tribute, though they swore, cried, and tore their hair, at the taking away of pictures and statues.

271. Every man of sincerity must be shocked