... He
had placed himself out of the pale of civil and social relations, and,
as the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world, he was delivered
over to public justice." And the old Prussian, burning with a desire to
avenge the indignities and injuries which he had inflicted on Prussia,
avowed his determination to execute him as an outlaw, if he should fall
into his hands. And it is still less worthwhile to inquire--though Lord
Holland in his place in Parliament did desire the House to consult the
judges on the point--whether, if Napoleon were a prisoner of war, he
"were not entitled to his _habeas corpus_, if detained after the
signature of a treaty of peace with all the powers, or any of which he
could be considered as the subject."
On the whole, the simplest view of the position and of our detention of
him, the view most reconcilable with the principles which regulate the
waging and the relinquishing a state of war, seems to be to consider
that Napoleon was a sovereign with whom we were at war; that that war
could only be terminated by a treaty of peace between ourselves and him;
that it rested with us to conclude, or to abstain from concluding, any
such treaty; and that, till we should conclude it, we had clearly a
right to detain him as a prisoner of war. It must, at the same time, be
admitted that modern history afforded no precedent for the detention of
a prisoner for his whole life (unless, indeed, Elizabeth's imprisonment
of the Queen of Scots may be considered as one), and that the most solid
justification for it was necessity.
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