Representative British Orations Volume 2 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
History
Representative British Orations Volume 2 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
Speeches, addresses, etc., English
fighting? Not for a principle; not for security; not for conquest;
but merely for an experiment and a speculation, to discover whether a
gentleman at Paris may not turn out a better man than we now take him
to be. * * *
Sir, I wish the atrocities, of which we hear so much, and which I
abhor as much as any man, were, indeed, unexampled. I fear that they
do not belong exclusively to the French. When the right honorable
gentleman speaks of the extraordinary successes of the last campaign,
he does not mention the horrors by which some of these successes were
accompanied. Naples, for instance, has been, among others, what is
called _delivered_; and yet, if I am rightly informed, it has been
stained and polluted by murders so ferocious, and by cruelties of
every kind so abhorrent, that the heart shudders at the recital. It
has been said, not only that the miserable victims of the rage and
brutality of the fanatics were savagely murdered, but that, in many
instances, their flesh was eaten and devoured by the cannibals, who
are the advocates and the instruments of social order! Nay, England is
not totally exempt from reproach, if the rumors which are circulated
be true. I will mention a fact, to give ministers the opportunity, if
it be false, to wipe away the stain that it must otherwise affix on the
British name. It is said, that a party of the republican inhabitants of
Naples took shelter in the fortress of the Castel de Uovo. They were
besieged by a detachment from the royal army, to whom they refused
to surrender; but demanded that a British officer should be brought
forward, and to him they capitulated. They made terms with him under
the sanction of the British name. It was agreed that their persons and
property should be safe, and that they should be conveyed to Toulon.
They were accordingly put on board a vessel; but, before they sailed,
their property was confiscated, numbers of them taken out, thrown into
dungeons, and some of them, I understand, notwithstanding the British
guaranty, actually executed![28]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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