The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 1837Various
History
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 1837
Various
Periodicals
because Sir Robert Peel advocated Catholic emancipation, which he
had all his previous life opposed, every contumelious epithet that
rancor could invent, was hurled at him by his old friends; while
the advocates of that measure viewed his accession to their ranks,
not merely with distrust, as but a late convert, but with jealousy,
as tending to rob them of some portion of the merit of carrying it
on the very point of their success. And John Bull refused, from the
hands of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues, a greater measure of
reform and retrenchment than even the original advocates held forth.
Thus it is, a thief may reform, or become a useful member of society,
if he will only amend; but a politician must look to nothing but
consistency.
* * * * *
THE fair Marguerite found no difficulty in gaining access to Sir
Robert. Her beauty, her distress, her tale at once simple and
affecting, all conspired to move him. He laid her petition and
her woes at the foot of the throne. Majesty was pleased to find
extenuating circumstances in Mitford's case, and a reprieve was
granted to him.
The bitter draught of grief had been too much for the gentle
Marguerite. Her faculties had been too nervously awakened. While
her lover required her aid, reason had kept its throne. His safety
insured, she became a maniac, and the inmate of a mad-house.
Still farther mercy awaited our hero. After some detention in prison,
he was liberated, on condition that he should leave the kingdom,
never to return.
* * * * *
YEARS had now elapsed. Mitford's error and his shame had alike been
forgotten; and it was supposed he was dead. It was not until the
tempest of a new revolution awoke regenerated France to a sense of
the wrongs endeavored to be inflicted on her by a Bourbon, whose
family a million of foreign bayonets had seated on the throne, and
until Paris taught all the capitals of Europe how easily a large
city could resist a well-appointed army, that a ray of light was shed
upon his fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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