ABSTRACT
First published in The Examiner, VII, 27 February 1814, pp. 129–31. This article continues in the next week’s Examiner (6 March, pp. 145–6) and comes within a substantial series of 1814 Political Examiners focused on Napoleon (see headnote above, p. 314). By February 1814 Napoleon’s forces were in full retreat from Allied forces, and his downfall, which came two months later, seemed inevitable. Hunt views this state of affairs as an occasion not simply to rejoice in an opponent’s collapse, but rather as an opportunity to extend his reflections from the previous year on the internal decay suffered by despotic governments. His intriguing turn to literary analysis in this Political Examiner, when he addresses related themes in Maria Edgeworth’s recently published novel, Patronage, also reinforces his continuing emphasis on the political impact of literary endeavour (see headnote above, pp. 309–10).
