Redgauntlet | Page 6

of persuasion, to
induce him to part with his mistress, and even proceeded so far as to
assure him, according to his instructions, that an immediate interruption
of all correspondence with his most powerful friends in England, and,
in short, that the ruin of his interest, which was now daily increasing,
would be the infallible consequence of his refusal; yet he continued
inflexible, and all M'Namara's entreaties and remonstrances were
ineffectual. M'Namara stayed in Paris some days beyond the time

prescribed him, endeavouring to reason the prince into a better temper;
but finding him obstinately persevere in his first answer, he took his
leave with concern and indignation, saying, as he passed out, "What has
your family done, sir, thus to draw down the vengeance of Heaven on
every branch of it, through so many ages?" It is worthy of remark, that
in all the conferences which M'Namara had with the prince on this
occasion, the latter declared that it was not a violent passion, or indeed
any particular regard, which attached him to Mrs. Walkinshaw and that
he could see her removed from him without any concern; but he would
not receive directions, in respect to his private conduct, from any man
alive. When M'Namara returned to London, and reported the prince's
answer to the gentlemen who had employed him, they were astonished
and confounded. However, they soon resolved on the measures which
they were to pursue for the future, and determined no longer to serve a
man who could not be persuaded to serve himself, and chose rather to
endanger the lives of his best and most faithful friends, than part with
an harlot, whom, as he often declared, he neither loved nor esteemed.'
From this anecdote, the general truth of which is indubitable, the
principal fault of Charles Edward's temper is sufficiently obvious. It
was a high sense of his own importance, and an obstinate adherence to
what he had once determined on--qualities which, if he had succeeded
in his bold attempt, gave the nation little room to hope that he would
have been found free from the love of prerogative and desire of
arbitrary power, which characterized his unhappy grandfather. He gave
a notable instance how far this was the leading feature of his character,
when, for no reasonable cause that can be assigned, he placed his own
single will in opposition to the necessities of France, which, in order to
purchase a peace become necessary to the kingdom, was reduced to
gratify Britain by prohibiting the residence of Charles within any part
of the French dominions. It was in vain that France endeavoured to
lessen the disgrace of this step by making the most flattering offers, in
hopes to induce the prince of himself to anticipate this disagreeable
alternative, which, if seriously enforced, as it was likely to be, he had
no means whatever of resisting, by leaving the kingdom as of his own
free will. Inspired, however, by the spirit of hereditary obstinacy,
Charles preferred a useless resistance to a dignified submission, and, by

a series of idle bravadoes, laid the French court under the necessity of
arresting their late ally, and sending him to close confinement in the
Bastille, from which he was afterwards sent out of the French
dominions, much in the manner in which a convict is transported to the
place of his destination.
In addition to these repeated instances of a rash and inflexible temper,
Dr. King also adds faults alleged to belong to the prince's character, of
a kind less consonant with his noble birth and high pretensions. He is
said by this author to have been avaricious, or parsimonious at least, to
such a degree of meanness, as to fail, even when he had ample means,
in relieving the sufferers who had lost their fortune, and sacrificed all in
his ill-fated attempt. [The approach is thus expressed by Dr. King, who
brings the charge:--'But the most odious part of his character is his love
of money, a vice which I do not remember to have been imputed by our
historians to any of his ancestors, and is the certain index of a base and
little mind. I know it may be urged in his vindication, that a prince in
exile ought to be an economist. And so he ought; but, nevertheless, his
purse should be always open as long as there is anything in it, to relieve
the necessities of his friends and adherents. King Charles II, during his
banishment, would have shared the last pistole in his pocket with his
little family. But I have known this gentleman, with two thousand
louis-d'ors in his strong-box, pretend he was in great distress, and
borrow money from a lady in Paris who was not in affluent
circumstances. His most faithful servants,