In 1840 the health of Joseph began to be seriously impaired. In London he had an attack of paralysis, which induced him to go to the warm baths of Wildbad, in Wurtemberg. He was somewhat benefited by the waters, and cherished the hope that he might join members of his family in Italy. But the Continental sovereigns so feared the potency of the name of Bonaparte upon the masses of the people that his request was peremptorily refused. Thus repulsed, he returned to the cold climate of England. In 1841, the King of Sardinia, who was strongly leaning toward popular principles, allowed Joseph to take up his residence in Genoa. He was conveyed to that city in an English ship. He had been there but a few weeks, when the Duke of Tuscany, commiserating his dying condition, kindly consented that he should join his wife, his children, and his brothers in Florence. In 1842 Joseph bequeathed to the principal cities of Corsica several hundred valuable paintings, which he had received as a legacy from his uncle, Cardinal Fesch. In 1843, the Government of Louis Philippe, with marvellous inconsistency, voted to demand the remains of the Emperor Napoleon from the British Government, and to rear to his honor, beneath the dome of the Invalides, the monument of a nation's gratitude, while at the same time that Government persisted in banishing from France all the members of the Napoleon family. A very earnest petition was sent at this time to the Government, numerously signed by Frenchmen, praying that the decree of banishment against the Bonaparte family might be annulled. But the Louis Philippe Government declared in council that the resolution of the Government to prolong the exile of the family of Napoleon was positive and unchanging. Joseph wrote a letter of thanks in behalf of the Bonaparte family to the signers of the petition, in which he said: "The elder branch of the Bourbons, brought back to France by foreign bayonets, we have ever frankly treated as enemies. They did not conceive the hope of degrading us in our own eyes. It has been reserved for the younger branch to call artifice to its aid--to glorify the dead Napoleon, and to traduce, to proscribe his mother, his sisters, his nephews, fifty or sixty French people, charged with the crime of bearing his name. "Were Napoleon living to-day, he would think as we do. He would recognize in France no other sovereign than the French people, who alone have the right to establish such a form of Government as to them may seem best for their interests. The too long dictatorship of Napoleon was prolonged by the persistence of the enemies of the Revolution, who endeavored to destroy in him the principle of national sovereignty from which he emanated.