and must have figured to French imaginations as among the most insignificant dependants of those weak and misguided monarchs who had been compelled to kiss the feet of the great republic-and whose kingdoms had been rent and scattered, and given away at the nod of its Imperial

master.

From this retirement, they came back at last,-not in consequence of any voluntary or internal movement of reviving loyalty, or impatience of actual oppression, not in obedience to the spontaneous call or invitation of any part of the people, or under any circumstances which could render their restoration glorious to the nation they were to govern, but in consequence of a series of disasters, by which its power and its triumphs were signally overthrown, and the deepest mortification inflicted on that national pride and vanity which had been their support under oppression, and their delight in their days of prosperity. This restoration was the obvious and immediate fruit of the victories of foreigners over the armics and provinces of France. It crowned the first triumphs of those who had been for twenty years the inveterate but baffled enemies of the country, and was confessedly brought about by the slaughter of her citizens, the desolation of her fields, and the humiliation of her national greatness. It formed part of the greatest train of calamities that had befallen the country from without in the memory of the existing generation, and must have been connected in the minds of all Frenchmen with ideas of defeat, degradation, and dishonour; ideas which received no softening, in this instance, from any part of the nation having been instrumental in bringing it about, or even from the recollection of any feat of arms or of heroic daring having been performed in their own cause, by those whose exaltation was the end and consummation of all this sufferIt was simply the case of France being invaded and conquered, and its government overthrown by Russian and Prussian armies, and of a prince who had not been heard of for twenty years, coming under their escort, and ascending the vacant throne.

It is plain, that under all these circumstances, there was no reason to suppose that there could be any active attachment to the person of the restored sovereign, or to his family, in the body of the nation; and that though their desire to obtain a settled government, and, above all, to disarm the present hostility of their victorious enemies, might induce them to receive him, and even to maintain him on the throne, he could have no personal claim on their regard or affection, and none of that hold of their habitual feelings, which, in regular monarchics, is so apt to identify the dignity of the sovereign with the honour of the country, and gives to patriotism or national partiality the name and the attributes of loyalty. All their habits, and feelings, and attachments naturally ran in another direction; and, with reference merely to the circumstances we have enumerated, we may safely say that they must have been at least neutral and null in behalf of Louis XVIII., and that he had every thing like loyalty to create in the breasts of a people to which he had been so long a stranger.

But these were not the only circumstances which belonged to his new situation, and that of the people he was to govern. The internal condition of France had been altered during his absence, at least as much as its exterior relations. The original possessors of property and rank, and official and personal eminence, had been all displaced along with the reigning family, and those various titles to power and influence been settled for twenty years upon other individuals. The whole frame and structure of

society had been accommodated to this change; and if some few individuals yet survived, to whom the soil of the achievement" might still be supposed to adhere, by far the greater part were in possession of their honours and emoluments upon legitimate titles. Innumerable multitudes had fairly bought, and diligently improved, the properties that had been originally confiscated in the heat and violence of the revolution; and almost all who had been promoted to office, or attained to distinction, had deserved the places they had reached, by the cultivation and exercise of their talents, or by eminent services rendered to what was universally acknowledged to be the settled government of the country. Still greater numbers, who remembered no other government, had innocently succeeded to the advantages thus acquired by their parents, and could not easily be persuaded that they were not entitled to retain them. Besides all this, it is never to be forgotten, that, along with many miseries and wrongs, the revolution had been productive of much substantial benefit to the great body of the people. Seignorial tyranny and ecclesiastical exaction had been entirely destroyed. The right of the nation at large to a voice in the enactment of its laws, and the measures of its government, had been distinctly recognised; and, above all, the capacity of all ranks of people, and of every individual indeed in the country, to be appointed to every situation of power or dignity within it, had not only been allowed, but had been acted upon in the most ample and conspicuous manner. The barrier between the noblesse and the lower orders was entirely thrown down, and the very traces of its existence effaced and trodden smooth almost every person in eminent station in France, had risen from that class of society to which all eminent station had been formerly interdicted, and whose condition had consequently received an accession of dignity and advantage that scarcely admitted of being over-rated.

All these were the fruits of the revolution-the dear-bought fruits of the dangers and sufferings, the crimes and anxieties, that had occurred in its progress-and now endeared them the more to those by whom they had been purchased at so vast a price. But the return of the Bourbons had always been considered as the triumph of a counter-revolution:-and it was obvious that the brother of Louis XVI., ascending the throne by the exclusive aid of a foreign army, could not he supposed to look with indulgence on any of those changes or institutions which had originated in the massacre and expulsion of his family, or upon any of those individuals whom he found in possession of the properties or offices which had formerly belonged to the faithful companions of his exile. A thousand amiable and a thousand excusable feelings stood in the way of any such indulgence and whatever forbearance the necessity of his situation, or the dictates of obvious policy might impose upon him, no man in France could doubt that he must wish to restore their estates and dignities to the emigrants, their privileges to the nobility, and all its original powers to the crown. To the body of the nation, however, a sovereign with such dispositions could not possibly be acceptable-nor could his accession be contemplated without feelings of general distrust and alarm. Speaking with a very moderate latitude, we might say that all the considerable men in France in March, 1814,-all who by station, or talent, or reputation, could guide its opinions, or determine its conduct, -had interests opposed to such an event, and felt that they would be placed by it either in the condition of offenders to be punished, or delinquents to be forgiven

This then was the situation in which the present sovereign of France stood at his first accession in April, 1814. There was not only no attachment or liking to him or his family in the bulk of the nation-but there were strong and very general interests and habits which rendered their return undesirable, and laid the foundation of a very wide spread feeling of alarm and jealousy in the body of the people. In these, and in many other respects, there was no resemblance whatever between our restoration in 1661 and that of the Bourbons in 1814. Property had not changed hands at all in England, during the time of the usurpation; and, with a few exceptions, the same individuals who held the chief permanent influence in the country at the breaking out of the war continued to possess it through the whole period that elapsed till the restoration. In France, every thing was radically altered, aud twenty years had done the work of several centuries

These distressing, but very obvious truths, were felt too by the princes themselves and their adherents; and, conscious that nothing but the total discomfiture of the national force, and the actual invasion and conquest of the country, could have opened their way to the throne, they felt that it was not by the assertion of their hereditary rights that it could now be maintained : -aware that they had been placed there by nothing but the success of the allied arms, and that these arms could not always be held out to support them, they were convinced of the necessity of creating a French interest in their behalf, and at all events of disarming the hostilities and suspicions to which they could not be ignorant they were liable. The only three points they had in their favour were, lst, the support of their victorious allies; 2dly, the ordinary patronage which belongs to all actual governments; and 3dly, the advantage of being the descendants of a former sovereign, by whose elevation the idea of an open competition, or of setting up the crown as a prize to be fought for, was excluded. Except these three considerations, every thing as we have seen was against them; and these were by no means of such decisive weight as might at first sight be imagined. The first, and by far the strongest, was evidently of a temporary nature, for though an unprecedented alliance of the great powers of Europe might seat a king on the throne of France, it was evidently absurd to suppose, that they should continue to hold him on it for an indefinite period of time, if he was not able to keep his seat by his own exertions. The second was the mere necessary result of actual possession, and sure, of course, to be transferred to any one by whom the possessor might be supplanted. The third did not necessarily point to the individuals actually called to the succession; and we suspect, has always had much less weight in France than the inhabitants of happier countries can easily believe. The evils of internal dissension and civil broils, which appear so terrible to those who contemplate them at a distance, seem to have little influence on those to whom they have been long familiar. The strong passions which they excite and gratify have a sort of attraction like the habit of intoxication or deep play; and we are persuaded, not only that both parties in France would at this moment risk all the horrors of another popular revolution, if they thought that by means of it they could completely demolish their antagonists; but that nothing else has contributed so much to pervert our judgment as to the affairs of that country, as our exaggerated estimates of the reluctance which those who have once suffered by civil commotions must feel for their renewal. Be this, however, as it may, the King felt in 1814 that the offer of the crown which was then made him originated mainly in a desire to get rid of the existing war with Europe; and

that it would never have been made, had the fortune of that contest been different. Accordingly, he did not claim it as his absolute and rightful inheritance, but accepted the offer that was made, and assented in substance to all the conditions with which it was qualified.

By this act, he became at once a constitutional king. He recognised in the body which made the offer the most conspicuous of all the revolutionary institutions, and gave a wise and unequivocal pledge of his willingness to recognise all that was still recognised by his subjects of the revolution itself, and the principles to which it had given birth. His professions, however, were naturally viewed with some degree of distrust; and coming back surrounded with those emigrants who had always treated the whole revolu tion as a mere rebellion and successful revolt, and openly declared their wishes for a complete restoration of the ancient monarchy with all its accompaniments, it was of the utmost necessity that his conduct should be in conformity with his professions, and that no single act should betray those dispositions or designs, the existence of which he could not fail to know was so generally and reasonably suspected. Let us see whether his acts were always thus guarded and unexceptionable.

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He began by calling himself Louis XVIII., though no sovereign after Louis XVI. had ever been aknowleged by the nation; and the first hour of his accession he said was the twenty-first year of his reign. There were obvious motives and temptations to the use of this style; but it could not fail to starile and alarm the nation, who certainly never meant to acknowledge that they had owed him allegiance for twenty years before his arrival among them, or that he had a right to be king at all, independant of their invitation and consent. He then, without taking any notice of that invitation, which he had, however, accepted, declared that he owed his throne, after God, to the Prince Regent of England. He ordered a monument to be erected to the memory of the emigrants who had fallen at Quiberon fighting against their countrymen, in an attempt to re-establish the whole ancient privileges of the crown and the nobles; and immediately after ennobled, by a speciał grant, the family of Georges Cadoudal, who had come into the country with the avowed purpose of assassinating its former sovereign. In presenting the constitutional charter to the House of Representatives, his chancellor described it, in his official speech, as the voluntary limitation of a power in itself unlimited." The liberty of the press, which had been solemnly promised on his arrival, was afterwards retracted; and, what was of far more consequence, under the censurate to which it was then subjected all sorts of invectives against the revolution and every thing to which it had given birth, as well as the most direct reclamations of the privileges and properties of the emigrants, were allowed to be printed without challenge, while an unrelenting interdict was put upon all that bore an opposite character. most indiscreet language upon those subjects was openly held by many persons who were known to be high in the royal favour; and Monsieur, the King's brother, went so far as to say, in a public address to the emigrants of the south, that though little had been done for them as yet, "we hope, in time, to obtain for you a more complete justice." The consequence of all this was, that many individuals spoke confidently of the properties which formerly belonged to their families as being still theirs; and that, in consequence of the fears suggested by those proceedings, very many of the holders of these properties offered them for a third part of their value to these new claimants, who, in several instances, rejected the compromise

with disdain.

About the same time a royal edict was promulgated for the formation of schools, and the revival of the regulations of 1750, for the education of the young nobility; and subscriptions were opened for their support, in which no name but that of ancient family could be admitted; while it was observed, that the nomination to foreign embassies, and other situations of dignity, was confined almost exclusively to persons of the same description.

To these most alarming indications of the spirit of the new government, were added some more substantial, though less provoking, infractions of the charter thus ungraciously promulgated. The abolition of the droits réunis had been promised with much parade and solemnity; and shortly after, the payment was exacted with more than usual rigour. The charter had de-, clared, that no tax or impost of any sort should be levied without the consent of the legislature; and a variety of taxes, in particular those upon newspapers, upon letters of naturalisation, and for defraying the judiciary establishment, were levied by a mere order of the chancellor. In like manner, the charter had declared, that all the courts of justice should remain as they were, until altered by a special law; but the King, after proposing a law to the Chamber of Representatives for new-modelling the Cour de Cassation, by far the most important of them all, and finding that it was not likely to be adopted, adjourned the Chamber, and re-organised the court of his own authority-diminishing the number of judges, and changing several even upon that reduced establishment-besides many other acts of a similar character, which could not be explained without a longer detail.

We say nothing at present as to the justice or injustice of these acts. Some of them may have been thought unavoidable, and some may admit of another justification; but from whatever motive, good or bad, they were performed, it seems impossible to deny, that they were calculated to give very general disgust and alarm to the body of the nation-to offend all those who had become considerable under the former government, and to deaden the hopes of those who had expected more freedom and impartiality from that which was begun. The consequence accordingly was, that the people began to regard their new princes with distrust, anger, and disdain. Many who had at first supported them, became sullen and alienated. Those who had been neutral, were turned into decided enemies; and such as bad always been hostile, became clamorous and forward in their opposition,

In this state of the public mind, Bonaparte landed from Elba: and it is in vain to disguise that is was this state of the public mind, and this alone, that made it possible for him to advance triumphantly to Paris. Some concert and preparation there probably was,-but no detailed plan for his march; and the success of the entreprise was evidently trusted in the main, to the zeal and discontent of the soldiery, and to the general indifference, despondency and alienation which the conduct of the new government had inspired. France had no occasion, certainly, to love or to trust this mighty conqueror*; and yet, with all the hazard of an unprovided war which his return

We could more easily account, however, for the love of his own subjects whom he had trained to profitable servility or profligate ambition, than for the strange partiality which has lately indicated itself for him among some of those who profess to be lovers of liberty in this country. It is a fine thing, no doubt, to be generous to a fallen foe, and not to insult that which we were lately compelled to fear; and, upon this principle, we cordially approve of all the decencies and external civilities that have been observed in the recent treatment of this imperial captive. It is to our own honour and dignity, however, and not to his merits, that these observances are due; and we are altogether unable to conceive how his mere downfall should convert him into an object of regard or affection, who was generally admitted, in the days of his exaltation, to deserve the