The Emperor ended the conversation, by saying: “Half a dozen such men as Fox and Cornwallis would be sufficient to establish the moral character of a nation.... With such men I should always have agreed; we should soon have settled our differences, and not only France would have been at peace with a nation at bottom most worthy of esteem, but we should have done great things together.”
HISTORY OF THE CONVENTION BY LACRETELLE.—STATISTICAL NOTICE OF THE OXEN OF THE ISLAND.—PUNS.—STATISTICS IN GENERAL.
Tuesday, 11th.—This has been one of those days of wind and rain so common here. The Emperor, about three o’clock, took advantage of a short interval to visit the garden. He sent for me; he had just been reading the history of the Convention by Lacretelle. It is, he observed, certainly not ill-written; but it is ill-digested, and makes no impression on the memory; the whole is a smooth surface without a single asperity to arrest attention. He does not thoroughly examine his subject: he has not done justice to many celebrated characters; he gives no adequate colouring to the crimes of several others, &c.
The rain obliged us to return, and we walked alone for a long time in the saloon and the dining room.
We had been informed, that there were four thousand oxen in the island, and that the annual consumption consisted of five hundred, of which number one hundred and fifty were appropriated to us, fifty to the colony, and three hundred to the shipping. It was added, that four years were requisite for the reproduction of the stock, and this formed a subject for our calculations; an employment for which the Emperor’s peculiar taste is well known.
The subsistence and consumption of these oxen are an important affair in the island. A single beast cannot be killed without the previous order of the governor, and it was stated by one of our people, that the owner of one of the houses or huts of the island, speaking to him on the subject, said: “It is reported, that you complain up yonder, and consider yourselves badly off; (he spoke of Longwood) but we are at a loss to make it out; for it is said that you have beef every day, while we cannot get it but three or four times a year, and even then we pay for it at the rate of fifteen or twenty pence a pound.” The Emperor, who laughed heartily at the story, observed, “You ought to have assured him, that it cost us more than a crown.”