brought with it, it is certain that she submitted more entirely and implicitly to him than she did to Louis XVIII. in the first days of his apparent popularity. The interests of freedom and of the rights acquired by the revolution seemed once more identified with his ; and, miserable as that delusion was, the eagerness with which many persons rushed into it, showed sufficiently how very popular these interests still were in the country, and the mighty influence which might be gained or lost by consulting them. The danger to the restored Emperor, therefore, was wholly from without,-while that to Louis XVIII. had been wholly from within. He made head with his usual alacrity against that danger; dashed himself desperately against the iron lines of the English at Waterloo-and was broken to pieces and totally destroyed in the shock. The victory of foreigners, and the defeat of the French armies, again opened the way for Louis to the French throne,

After the impressive lesson which this second expulsion of the family must have taught, it is interesting to consider what measures they adopted to correct the errors, or supply the omissions, which had contributed to that catastrophe.

In the first place, instead of waiting beyond the frontier till the first shock of rage and humiliation attending the defeat was over, and the odium of the severe measures to which it necessarily led had subsided, and then coming in to share and mitigate the national afflictions,-his Majesty was advised to come back to Paris in the very midst of the allied forces, and thus directly to connect himself with all their obnoxious proceedings, and to exhibit himself, not only as profiting by the national discomfiture, which he unquestionably did, but as exulting and rejoicing in their calamities.

In the second place, before any treaty of peace was concluded with the nation, and while the national army had retired by convention, he set himself down in his capital, surrounded by two or three hundred thousand foreign soldiers, and there agreed to terms more humiliating and disadvantageous for France than ever had been imposed on her in the course of three hundred years of war and negociation: almost all her border garrisons and places of strength were to be given up to a foreign soldiery, and large payments were to be made to defray their expenses in this triumphant war. It was in this way that the country was to pay for the expense to which Europe had been put in bringing them back their King!-and his popularity must have been great indeed, if his return did not appear dearly bought with the blood of a hundred thousand Frenchmen-the unprecedented mortification of the national vanity the loss of twenty frontier townsand the stipulation of forty or fifty millions sterling of tribute to those allies of their sovereign.

execration of all friends to political freedom or national independence. To us, he has always appeared a most pernicious and detestable tyrant, without feeling, principle, or concern for human sufferings or honour-and such he appears to us still. Even they who now seem inclined to relent towards him, can find nothing better to say in his behalf, than that he is not worse than the run of other tyrants and conquerors-and we believe this to be true: but is that a reason why those who hate and oppose them, should feel any kindness and indulgence for him? For our part, we know nothing so hateful as a tyrant and a conqueror; and it is quite enough that he is admitted to belong to that fraternity. But it is proper to observe, that, though not worse perhaps in character than other tyrants, he has had far more power, and done far more mischief, than any other in recent times, and therefore deserves to be more hated. The sort of hankering after him, which we can trace among some of our good Whigs, proceeds, we have no doubt, from the circumstance of his being now abused and insulted by the servile tools of tyrants not much better than himself. But it is a gross perversion of a good principle, and does real injury to the cause it is meant to serve.

In this situation of affairs, and still overawed or protected by the foreign armies, the King immediately removed the whole of the prefects and provincial officers, and replaced them with men for the most part of violent royalist principles-many of them emigrants, utterly unknown and necessarily suspected in their districts-and almost all of them understood to be adverse to any limitations whatever on the royal authority. The pretext for this change was, that the former prefects had made no efforts to arrest the progress of Bonaparte; and that it was necessary to have officers upon whose fidelity his Majesty might confidently rely. But the charge of nonresistance to Bonaparte was equally applicable to the nation at large; and it must have been not a little alarming to the people to find, that no one was thought deserving of the King's confidence who had not professed hostility to their freedom.

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The next step, however, was more decisive. The legislaties bodies appointed by the Emperor were necessarily dissolved; and if, in the new nomination of peers, there was a jealous exclusion of almost all who had signalised themselves at any time by attachment to the principles of the revolution, this was no more than could be accounted for, and excused, by the prejudices and alarms of royalty, in a body depending entirely on its pleasure for its existence. In the election of the representatives, however, there was an interference of a more extraordinary and questionable character. These elections, it may not be known to all our readers, had been finally regulated by Bonaparte soon after his assumption of the government, about, fifteen years ago. The old aristocracy being entirely destroyed, was very early thought expedient to do something towards supplying its place; and, in order to reconcile this with the revolutionary right of universal suffrage, it was agreed that the primary electors of every department should nominate a certain number of persons, with considerable qualifications in respect of property, who should elect the representatives for the legislative body. The change introduced by Bonaparte was to make those last electors hold their functions for life-and thus to limit the right of interference in the body of the people, to merely filling up the vacancies which might from time to time arise in their body. That energetic sovereign, however, was not very fond of popular interference in any shapeand it had accordingly happened that, during the whole period of his power. no vacancies ever have been supplied; and, at the period of the King's last restoration, the electoral colleges, as they were called, were deficient of their complement by one third, or in some instances one half of their number. When the king came to issue, orders for returning a new Chamber of Deputies, it was suggested that the electoral colleges ought previously to be raised to their proper quota; but, instead or referring for this purpose to the primary electors, it was thought better just to order the prefects of the departments, who by this time were all decided royalists, to make up the complement, by nominating, of their own authority, such a number of trustworthy persons in the neighbourhood as might be required for that purpose.

This was accordingly done; and as those supplementary members were, of course, the most violent royalists which the prefect could find in his district, all the deputies, with a very few exceptions, proved to be of the same character; and, in some instances, the original body of electors refused to concur with these royal nominees, and left the election entirely in their hands. Such, we believe, is the true history and actual constitu

tion of that Chamber of Deputies which now exercises the legislative func tions in France, and has already signalised itself by so many marks of devotion to the cause of the Court. So far from fulfilling the appropriate duty of a representative of the commons of the land, by leaning towards the democratical side of the constitution, and maintaining a constant jealousy of royal encroachment, it is notorious that it is a great deal more royalist than either the king or his ministers; that the minister has been left in a small minority on the popular side in almost every question of a constitutional nature; and that the great difficulty on the part of the Court has been, not to secure its attachment, but to keep it within moderate limils. The Chamber of Peers, nominated at the same time by the King alone, as the bulwark and aristocratical fence of the monarchy, is far less monarchical than this popular assembly, which professes to represent that part of the state which is the most jealous of court influence. Out of 450 members, of whom scarcely so many as 400 have ever assembled, the common calculation is, that there are more than 150 violent royalists, who think that the emigrants should have all their property and privileges restored, and that all who had ever held office of any kind before April, 1814, ought to be exiled from the country; nearly 200 who go along with the ministry in more moderate projects, both of reward and of punishment, about 30 constitutionalists, and 15 or 20 old jacobins.

A body so constituted cannot well be supposed to be a fair representation of the public opinion, or to command much public respect by its proceedings. Accordingly, from the first hour of its convocation, it has been the custom with the great mass of the discontended, to make a mock of its pretensions, and to hold it out as in direct opposition to the general sentiments of the country. It is even understood, that the Court itself has been alarmed at the extravagance and excess of its loyalty; and that it actually was in contemplation to have dissolved it, and assembled another, by a more unexceptionable mode of election.

All that has passed since has been calculated to aggravate, rather than allay, the resentment and distrust occasioned by the course of policy we have been edeavouring to delineate. The removal of Fouché and Talleyrand from the ministry, for no other known offence than that of having belonged to the revolution, and having urged the necessity of conciliating a nation which could not be subdued; a number of arrests by the agents of government without the authority of law; and a law passed suspending all the provisions for personal liberty, with very little precaution; the continued suppression of the liberty of the press, and the continued partiality of the censors; the barbarous persecutiou of the Protestants, avowedly on the score of their general love of civil liberty; the mission of the princes into the provinces most noted for the violence of their royalist principles; the exclusive favour shown to priests and emigrants; and the general irritation produced by the presence of the armed allies of the King, and the humiliating restitutions upon which they have insisted; have all conspired to foster that spirit of discontent and impatience towards the government, of which the foundations had been laid by so many other causes.

We have hitherto spoken only of the public and overt acts of the govern ment, and of circumstances, the existence and effect of which seem equally undeniable; and if there were nothing more in the case, we should think the causes of a general and very dangerous discontent sufficiently accounted for. But the truth is, that those feelings are more embittered by circum

stances of which it is impossible to produce the same evidence, and in the reality of which it is conséquently impossible to have the same assurance. It is notorious, however, all over France, that it is not so much against the King himself, as against those members of his family who are most about his person, that the suspicions and resentment of the nation are directed; and that by far the most formidable exasperation has been produced by the impressions which unhappily prevail as to the principles and deportment of the princes next in succession to the throne. Monsieur, though principally bent upon the restoration of the church to its primitive power and splendour, is said to profess openly his preference of an absolute monarchy, and to speak with undisguised hostility of all representative assemblies, and other checks on the royal authority. The Duc d'Angoulême, bred up in the same principles, has had his zeal for them inflamed by the enthusiastic temper of his wife, who has all the spirit of a martyr for the cause, and many apologies for that spirit which its martyrs could not always claim. At Bourdeaux and Nismes, and in various parts of the south, self-created bands are said to have risen up, breathing vengeance against all who have taken any part in the revolution, and contending for the restoration of the old monarchy. Their royalism is so exalted, that they will not wear the white cockade, which they say has been contaminated by the touch of republicans and regicides; but adorn themselves in the colours of the Duchesse d'Angoulême, whose champions they profess to be. The Duc de Berri is still more unpopular than any of the other three. To their implacable hostility to every thing that owes its birth to the revolution; he is said to add a harshness and arrogance of manner, which has given deep and indelible offence. These illustrious persons, and their immediate confidants and advisers, are positively asserted to hold language of the most unequivocal kind in their own circles, under the very roof of the Tuileries; and to discourse with considerable openness, of the necessity of putting to death all who had any share in the condemnation of Louis XVI., and of seizing the property and banishing the persons of all who had ever held or accepted any employment whatsoever under any of the revolutionary governments;-to effect all which, they are said to contemplate the formation of a pure royalist army in La Vendée and the South, by means of which, after the factious have been disposed of, they propose to redeem the national honour by taking vengeance on the English and other foreigners who have taken such an ungenerous advantage of their weakness to spoil and disable the country.

For the truth of these imputations, of course, we do not pretend to vouch; nor do we even profess to have grounds sufficient absolutely to settle our own belief with regard to them; but we do vouch for the fact, that such imputations are very generally made and believed at Paris, and that by persons whose means of information and general veracity are held to be equally unquestionable. It is no less certain, that the same impressions are very widely diffused through the body of the nation, and have been greatly strengthened and exasperated by the late mission of the Duc d'Angoulême into the South, and that of the Duc de Berri to La Vendée. Of their effect in promoting the previous animosity and alarm, it is needless to say any thing.

To what practical end this animosity tends, it is not, perhaps, quite so easy to determine. In one point, however, all but the high-flying royalists seem to be agreed, that they never will submit to a government which does not cordially recognise all that is now defended by any body in the revo

lution,-guarantee without grudging all the popular rights and privileges which have been acquired by the revolution,-and acknowledge as ornaments and benefactors to the nation many of those who distinguished themselves in the service of France, while it would have been held both criminal and ridiculous to talk of the rights of the Bourbons. Many seem now persuaded, that it is in vain to hope for such a government under the present monarch, or his immediate successors; and that the first opportunity must be taken again to expel them from the country. Others are of opinion, that if the King, who is by no means personally obnoxious, would emancipate himself from the yoke of the princes, and take into his councils men acquainted with the present situation of France, he might still retrieve his past errors, and maintain himself on the throne for the remainder of his days. The scheme of a republic seems to be universally abandoned—at all events it is universally disavowed. The star of Napoleon, too, seems to be generally considered as set; and though there have been rumours of a design to bring forward his son, under the auspices of Austria, yet this is understood to be, as yet at least, nothing more than an angry and undigested conception of some of the discontented military leaders, and never likely to make any considerable party in the country, which it would naturally throw, during the minority of the young Emperor, into the hated hands of Austria, or subject to the sanguinary competitions of rival generals and armies.

At present we are inclined to think, that the general voice of the discontented would be for the Duke of Orleans; and that his appointment to a limited monarchy would satisfy a greater majority of all parties, and appease far more jealousies and alarms, than any other measure that could be suggested. Such a choice would ensure these three great advantages to the nation. In the first place, they would have a king who owed his crown unequivocally to the will of the country, and consequently could claim nothing as his right by birth, nor dispute the legitimacy of any of the conditions under which it was given. In the second place, they would have a king connected with the revolution by his parentage and early education, and therefore not liable to be tempted by family affection, or to be suspected of being tempted to look upon those concerned in the revolution with feelings of hatred or revenge;-and, finally, they would have a king so near in blood to the lineal successor to the throne, and so little entitled to the dignity for his personal services or exertions, as to mark a considerable veneration for the principle of hereditary succession,-to conciliate the moderate royalists on the one hand, and to prevent this limited exercise of choice, in an emergency so new and important, from affording any encouragement to the perilous experiment of an elective monarchy; or, in other words, a crown set up as a prize to be fought for by all the daring and ambitious spirits in the country.

These considerations are so forcible, and, at the same time, so obvious, that we cannot help believing, that if things do not mend greatly before the death of the King, whose health and habits do not promise a long course of existence ;—or if, even during his life, discontents should rise so high as to produce another subversion of the government, by far the most likely, and, upon the whole, the most desirable issue, will be the transference of the sceptre to the Duke of Orleans, upon conditions more favourable to general liberty than have yet been admitted by a French Sovereign.

We are far from intending to insinuate, that that illustrious person has