The king and the court could not indeed love liberty-few courts do; and they had much more excuse than most others for hating it. It was obvious that his policy consisted in connecting himself with the purest part of the revolutionists-in seeing only in the revolutions the abuses which it had destroyed-in keeping out of sight those claims which conveyed too obvious a condemnation of it-in conquering his most natural and justifiable repugnance to individuals, when the display of such a repugnance produced or confirmed the alienation of numerous classes and powerful interests; and, lastly, the hardest but most necessary part of the whole, in the suppression of gratitude, and the delay of justice itself, to those whose sufferings and fidelity deserved his affection, but who inspired the majority of Frenchmen with angry recollections and dangerous fears. It is needless to say that so arduous a scheme of policy, which would have required a considerable time for a fair experiment, and which, in the hands of an unmilitary prince, was likely enough, after all, to fail, was scarcely tried by this respectable and unfortunate monarch. The silly attack made by his ministers on the press rendered the government odious, without preventing the publication, or limiting the perusal of one libel. It answered no purpose, but that of giving some undeserved credit for its suppression to Bonaparte, who has other means of controlling the press than those which are supplied by laws and tribunals. Macdonald, who spoke against it with the most rigour and spirit in the House of Peers, was one of the last marshals who quitted the king if he has quitted him); and Constant, who wrote against it with such extraordinary talent and eloquence, was the last French writer of celebrity who threw himself into the breach, and defied the vengeance of the conqueror. The policy of some of the restored governments in other countries of Europe was extremely injurious to the Bourbon administration. Spain, governed by a Bourbon prince, threw discredit, or rather disgrace, upon all ancient governments. The conduct of Ferdinand at Valençay was notorious in France. It was well known that he had importuned Napoleon for a princess of the Imperial family, and that he wrote constant letters of congratulation to Joseph on his victories over the Spanish armies, whom Ferdinand called the rebel subjects of Joseph. It was known, that, besides all those imbecilities of superstition which disgraced his return,-besides the reestablishment of the Inquisition,-besides the exile, on various grounds or pretexts, of several thousand families, he had thrown into prison more than five thousand persons, for no other crime than that of administering or seeonding a government which all Europe had recognised,-which had resisted all the offers of Bonaparte, and under whom the resistance was made to which he owed his crown. Many cases of oppression were familiarly known in France, which are hitherto little spoken of in this country. Among them, that of M. Antillon deserves to be mentioned. That gentleman, a preeminent professor in an university, had distinguished himself both in the Cortes, of which he was a member, and by his writings, especially by several excellent works against the slave trade, of which he was the most determined enemy. The first care of King Ferdinand was to imprison such mischievous men. Early in June, he issued a warrant for the apprehension of M. Antillon, whom the officer appointed to execute the warrant found labouring under a severe and dangerous malady at his house in Arragon. Upon the representation of the physicians, the officer hesitated to remove the prisoner, and applied for farther instructions to the Captain General of Arragon. The Captain General suspended the execution of the order till

his Majesty's pleasure could be ascertained. The ministers immediately intimated to the viceroy the royal dissatisfaction at the delay. They commanded M. Antillon to be instantly conducted to Madrid. The order was executed; and M. Antillon died on the road shortly after he had begun his journey! Such is the narrative which we have received from persons who appear to us worthy of faith. If it be entirely false, it may easily be confuted. If it be exaggerated, it may with equal ease be reduced within the limits of the exact truth. Until it be confuted, we offer it as a specimen of the administration of the Spanish monarchy.

The Pope and the King of Sardinia seemed to be ambitious of rivalling Ferdinand in puerile superstition, if their limited means forbade them to aspire to rivalship in political oppression. They exerted every effort to give at colour to the opinion, that the restored governments were the enemies of civilisation and of reason, and that the great destroyer was necessary to pave the way for wise institutions, even at the expense of tyranny for a time. Spain was represented at Paris as a mirror, in which all nations might see the destiny prepared for them by restored princes, and the yoke which would be imposed on them if the sovereigns were not restrained by fear of their people. These impressions were not effaced even by the policy which induced Louis XVIII. to suffer the journals of Paris to discuss the administration of his cousin in Spain, as freely as those of London.

THE ARMY!-We have not time to develope all that is suggested by this terrible word. And it is unnecessary. The word conveys more than any commentary could unfold.

Many readers will say, that this word alone might have been substituted for the whole of what we have written. Short and dogmatical explanations of great events are at once agreeable to the pride of intellect, and very suitable to the narrow capacity and indolent minds of ordinary men. To explain a revolution by a maxim, has an imposing appearance of decisive character and practical good sense. But great revolutions are always produced by the action of some causes, and by the absence of others, without the full consideration of which it is impssible to form a true judgment of their origin. In the case before us, we must consider as well what might have prevented, as what actually produced the catastrophe. The spirit of a soldiery inured to victory, and indignant at defeat; the discontent of officers whose victories were gained over the allies of the government whom they now served; the ambition of generals whose companions had obtained principalities and kingdoms; the disrespect of a conquering army for an unwarlike sovereign; the military habits spread over the whole population of France. -did certainly constitute a source of danger to the restored monarch, against which no wisdom could devise, or even conceive a perfect security. But to retard is, in such cases, to gain a chance of preventing. Every delay had at least a tendency to unsoldier the army. Time was the ally of tranquillity. Two years of quiet might have given the people of France a superiority over the soldiery, and thus might have insured Europe against military barbarism. It is truc, that the frame of society produced by the revolution, which we have attempted to describe, contributed to render perhaps the larger, certainly the more active, part of the civil population not cordially affected to the authority of the Bourbons. Even in this very difficult case much had been accomplished to appease the alarms, and (what was harder) to soothe the wounded pride of that numerous body who de

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VOL IV.

rived new wealth or consequence from the revolution. But the wisest policy of this sort required a long time, and an undisturbed operation. The moderate administration of Louis might have accomplished, in a great degree, the work of conciliation. But it was indispensable that it should have been secure against violent interruption for a reasonable period, and that it should not have been brought into a state of continual odium and suspicion by the contemptible folly of some powers in their internal administration, and by the detestable ambition of others in their projects of foreign policy. It was essential that the French people should not be goaded into daily rage at the treaty which confined them within their own ancient limits, by the spectacle of the great military powers bartering republics, confiscating monarchies, adding provinces and kingdoms to their vast dominions. Notwithstanding the natural sources of internal danger, if even some of these unfavourable causes had been absent, the life of Napoleon Bonaparte (supposing him to have been as vigilantly watched as it would have been just and easy to watch him) might have proved a security to the throne of the Bourbons, by preventing any other military chief from offering himself to the army till they had subsided into a part of the people, and imbibed sentiments compatible with the peace and order of civil life.

As things stand at present, the prospects of the world are sufficiently gloomy, and the course of safety and honour by no means very plain before us. Two things, however, seem clear in the midst of the darkness; one, that a crusade in behalf of the Bourbons and the old monarchy is as palpably hopeless as it is manifestly unjust; and the other, that that course of policy is the wisest and most auspicious, which tends most to reclaim the population of France from its military habits, and to withhold it from those scenes of adventure in which its military spirit has been formed.

THE STATE OF PUBLIC FEELING IN FRANCE AFTER THE FIRST AND SECOND RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS.*

We are almost thankful that we have neither time nor space left even for the enumeration of the many mighty themes that are folded up in the little word France, which we have placed at the top of this page. Undoubtedly, there never was a moment when the reasonable settlement of France was so important to itself, to its neighbours, and to posterity-nor one in which it was so little to be looked for; never a moment in which the temptation to admonish and to predict with regard to it was so strong and at the same time so full of peril. In the whole history of the world, perhaps, there has been no conjuncture in which it was so difficult to determine what was to be wished-so impossible to say what was to be expect ed. With reference to that unhappy country, all parties are confounded,

* Examen Rapide du Gouvernement des Bourbons en France, depuis le Mois d'Avril 1814, jusqu'au Mois de Mai 1815. Seconde Edition. 8vo.

Des Revolutionnaires et du Ministère Actuel. Par M.---8vo.-Vol. xxv. page 501. October, 1815.

and all principles set in opposition; and its actual situation presents, not so much a choice of evils and dangers as a variety among which choice itself is bewildered.

With these difficulties, however, it is not our intention to grapple-at least on the present occasion; nor shall we enter into any question as to the wrongs which France may have suffered from her own rulers, or from other nations-or the rights to which she may yet be entitled to lay claim in either quarter. We enquire not, at present, what treatment she has deserved, or of what government she is capable-what evils she may occasion by her example, or of what dangers she may become the source by our mismanagement. These are topics, indeed, of incalculable interest, not only to her, but to us, and to all the world;-but they are by far too large to be entered upon here; and we have not as yet either lights or courage to treat of them as they ought to be treated. In the little, therefore, which we propose now to say, we shall merely endeavour to give a short explanation of the immediate hazards to which the peace of that country seems to be actually exposed; and to suggest a few observations on the course of policy which it will be fitting that this country should pursue, in the event of certain emergencies which can no longer be considered as unlikely.

We suppose there are none of our readers so enviably ignorant, or sanguine, as not to know and believe, that notwithstanding the second restoration of their ancient line of princes, opinions are still deeply and dreadfully divided in that distracted country-that the elements of the fiercest dissension are still fermenting in her bosom-and that in the minds both of his friends and his enemies, it is confessedly a matter of doubt and uncertainty, whether the present sovereign will be able to maintain himself many months longer on the throne which he has so recently ascended.

Of the actual extent of the discontents that undoubtedly prevail, it would be presumptuous for any one in this country to pretend to make any thing like a precise estimate-since it is certain that it is not all known in that where they are actually raging; and it is undoubtedly one of the most alarming symptoms of the present disorders of France, that with a prodigious exasperation and violence in both parties, they seem to be mutually in the most complete and incurable ignorance of their relative strength and organisation. With us the channels by which public opinion is collected and conveyed are every where visible and conspicuous. They have been worn deep and regular by the long continued agency of undisguised communications; and constitute a system by which the amount and direction of the general sentiment may at any time be ascertained with a precision quite sufficient for all practical purposes. In France, however, this sort of communication has never been openly permitted; and, for the last twenty years, the same circumstances which have most powerfully excited and impressed the opinions of the great mass of the nation, have also effectually repressed their expression; while the apparent earnestness with which certain opinions haye been expressed on extraordinary occasions, and the levity with which they have been as solemnly disavowed, make it doubly difficult to rely on the few indications which the nature of the government permitted, or the genius of the people supplied. There is no organization, in short, in the structure of their society, for the transmission of political sentiments through the great mass of the community; and the temper and habits of the people are such, as to make us distrust the conclusions which might be drawn from the scanty specimens that occasionally appear. Thus it has hap

pened, that almost all their great internal movements have been ventured upon in the dark; and that, with them, more than with any other people, a few daring spirits have so often succeeded in forcing the bulk of the nation upon courses not more against their interests than their inclinationsbecause there were no safe or ready means of ascertaining how few they were, or what a great majority was inclined to oppose their usurpation and from the same circumstances it happens, that, even with the best means of information on the spot, no correct or satisfactory account of the national temper can now be obtained; and that little else can be learned with certainty from the immediate communication of the most intelligent persons in both parties, than that there exist every where the grossest contradictions, and the most monstrous exaggerations; and that men of all principles are utterly blinded by their strong passions and sanguine imaginations

In these circumstances, it is evident that no reliance can be placed upon the most confident assertions of either party with regard to the true spirit and disposition of the nation at large, and that our opinion of it must be formed by inference from certain prominent and admitted facts in their history and situation, and from a comparison of the principles and motives which they mutually avow or impute to each other. The slightest glance at their history, at all events, will at once demonstrate the existence, and display the deep sunk and wide spreading roots of that dislike and distrust of the reigning family, which it would require so much management to obviate, or so much power to disregard.

In the first place, it is now near twenty-five years since they were driven from the sovereignty and the country;-during all which time, its affairs have been conducted without reference to them, or their pretensions. But from this great fact alone, it is obvious, that more than five sixths of the active population of France must have come into existence since the name of the Bourbons had ceased to be heard of in that country; and even those who had attained to manhood before their disappearance, can only have heard of them, during that long interval, as objects of contempt or hostility. Some kinder and more respectful remembrances might be secretly cherished, and some more loyal vows breathed for their welfare, in the woods of La Vendée, or the alleys of Bourdeaux ;-but the public and general voice of France had unquestionably, during all that time, designated them only as objects of scorn and aversion;-and it is equally undeniable, that the state of things which followed upon their expulsion, however fruitful it might be of crimes and barren of substantial comforts, yet gave rise to a series of events, incalculably flattering to the national vanity, and captivating beyond measure to the selfish ambition of the bold and aspiring part of the society.

It is necessary also to remember, that the princes, by whose removal this great flood of glory seemed to be let in upon the nation, had neither endeared nor distinguished themselves by any great or dazzling exploit, or trait of magnanimity, by which their memory might have been exalted in popular recollection, and they themselves brought to mind, with loyal and penitential regrets, when discontents were occasionally roused by the exactions of a sterner master. They had emigrated ingloriously in pursuit of personal safety; and had never headed, nor animated, by their presence. any of the attempts which their adherents for some time made with so gallant a desperation for their restoration. They had taken refuge, too, and generally resided among the bitter and beaten enemies of the nation ;