A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV | Page 8

the history of fallen greatness can be more touching than these pages.
Not all that Napoleon said about England, however, was mere complaint and disparagement. The world of London may be interested in learning from these reminiscences how Napoleon told Dr. Barry O'Meara that if he, Napoleon, had had any authority over the English Metropolis, he would have long ago taken measures for constructing an embankment on both sides of the Thames as it passed between Middlesex and Surrey. If Dr. O'Meara had embodied this suggestion in his public volume, Napoleon might unconsciously have become the projector of the Thames Embankment. Fas est ab hoste--the proverb is somewhat musty.

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CHAPTER LXIV.
POPULAR ALARMS--ROYAL EXCURSIONS.
[Sidenote: 1820--The Cato Street conspiracy]
The plot which has been already mentioned as one of the unpropitious events that marked the opening of George the Fourth's reign was the famous Cato Street conspiracy. The conspiracy was nothing less than a plot for the assassination, all at once, of the whole of his Majesty's ministers. The principal conspirator was a man named Thistlewood, a compound of half-crazy fanaticism and desperate villany--a creature who believed that he had private vengeance to satisfy, and who had, at the same time, persuaded himself that no good could come to the people of England until an example had been made of the King's official advisers by the avenging hand of the lover of liberty. The novelty as well as the audacity of the plot created a perfect consternation all through England, and it became, for a while, the sincere conviction of a vast number of reasonable Englishmen that the whole political and social system of the kingdom was undermined by such plots, and that only the most strenuous exertions made by the champions of law and order could protect the realm from an outbreak of horrors far transcending any of those that had convulsed France during the worst days of the Revolution. It was soon made clear enough that Thistlewood's plot was a conspiracy which included only a very small number of men, and it has never been quite certain whether it was not originally put in motion by the machination of some of the paid spies and informers whom it was believed, at that time, to be the duty of the Ministry to keep in its service for the detection and the frustration of revolutionary conspiracy. It was the common practice of spies and informers, in those days, to go {16} about secretly in quarters where revolutionary conspiracy was believed to be in existence, to represent themselves to some of the suspected plotters as fellow-revolutionists and brother-conspirators, and thus to get into their confidence, and even to suggest to them some new form of conspiracy, in order that their willingness to accept the suggestion might mark them out as proper subjects for a Government prosecution and obtain for the informers the credit of the detection.
[Sidenote: 1820--Origin of the conspiracy]
Thistlewood had been engaged in popular agitation for some sort of reconstitution of political society, and he had been once put on his trial for some alleged offence arising out of such an agitation. More lucky than many other of his contemporaries under similar conditions, he was brought before a jury who found him not guilty of the charge made against him. Now, if Thistlewood had been a sane member of even an Anarchist organization, he might have been softened in his feelings towards the existing order of things by finding that a jury had actually recognized the possibility of his being formally charged with an offence against the Crown and yet not being guilty. But Thistlewood regarded the bare fact that a charge had been made against him as a crime calling out for vengeance, and in his frenzy he got the idea into his head that Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, was the person on whom he was bound to take revenge. Accordingly, the unfortunate creature actually sent a challenge to Lord Sidmouth, inviting and defying him to mortal combat. Perhaps Lord Sidmouth would have acted wisely if he had taken no notice whatever of this preposterous challenge, but, at the same time, it is only fair to remember that Lord Sidmouth might think it dangerous to the public peace to allow a person to go unrebuked who had sent a challenge to a Minister of the Crown. Criminal proceedings were, therefore, taken against Thistlewood, and, instead of being committed to the protection of a lunatic asylum, the author of the challenge was sentenced to a year's imprisonment. When his prison time was over, Thistlewood came out a man inflamed with a desire for vengeance on all the ruling classes {17} in general, and on Ministers of the Crown in particular. Like the murderer in "Macbeth," he thought himself one whom the vile blows and