Europeans in general, and particularly in His Majesty's ship
_Conqueror_, which ship has lost about one-sixth of her
complement, nearly the whole of whom have died within the last
eight months), it is my opinion that the life of Napoleon
Bonaparte will be endangered by a longer residence in such a
climate as that of St. Helena, especially if that residence be
aggravated by a continuance of those disturbances and
irritations to which he has hitherto been subjected, and of
which it is the nature of his distemper to render him peculiarly
susceptible.--(Signed) BARRY E. O'MEARA, Surgeon R.N. To John
Wilson Croker, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty."

It is a terrible reflection to think that this note of warning should
have gone unheeded. A body of men with a spark of humane feeling would
have thrown political exigencies to the winds and defied all the
powers of earth and hell to prevent them from at once offering their
prisoner a home in the land of a generous people. What had they to
fear from a man whose political career ended when he gave himself up
to the captain of the _Bellerophon_, and whose health was now
shattered by disease and ill-usage? Had the common people of this
nation known all that was being perpetrated in their name, the Duke of
Wellington and all his myrmidons could not have withstood the revolt
against it, and were such treatment to be meted out to a political
prisoner of our day, the wrath of the nation might break forth in a
way that would teach tyrants a salutary lesson.

But this great man was at the mercy of a lot of little men. They were
too cowardly to shoot him, so they determined on a cunning dastardly
process of slow assassination. The pious bard who sings the praises of
Napoleon's executioners--Wellington and his coadjutors--and whose