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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1830.*

Since the breaking out of the French Revolution, excepting, perhaps, the failure of Napoleon in Russia and the downfall of his enormous power, no event has occurred on the Continent of Europe that will stand in comparison with the late proceedings in Paris. The influence which they any kind of are calculated to exert, both upon the condition of the great people over whose name they have shed the lustre of an imperishable renown, and the more wide spreading consequences that must speedily flow from them in every other country, forcibly arrest our attention at the present moment, and demand a calm discussion. If all mankind are interested in this glorious achievement, Englishmen surely have of all others the deepest concern in its effects, not merely as well-wishers to the liberties of other nations but as feeling watchful of every encroachment upon their own; for with the fullest disposition charitably to construe the feelings and principles of our own rulers, we take it to be abundantly manifest, that the battle of English liberty has really been fought and won at Paris. Under the influence of these impressions, we advance to the contemplation of this mighty theme; and we deem it a sacred duty to view it, deliberately and candidly indeed, but with entire freedom, and without even the least respect of persons, or the most remote care to whom our remarks may prove offensive. Our purpose is certainly to speak the truth, and not to give offence; but if the truth prove unpalatable to any, be theirs the blame, not ours.

As soon as the Prince Polignac was called to the head of the French king's councils, the disposition to favour the Jesuits, to undo the effects of the Revolution, and to counteract the current of liberal opinions, long enough apparent in the conduct of Charles X. and his bigoted daughter-in-law, broke forth without any restraint, and kept no terms with any antagonist. The Dauphin, if indeed he really differed from his family in point of sense, and thus perceived the precipice towards which they were hurrying, was silenced, and borne along by the imperious passions of his fanatical consort. Among the old nobility who surrounded the throne, none had the wisdom to discern, or the virtue to point out, the perils which beset it. ruled supreme over the monarch, or divided their dominion with the DauThe priests phiness. Nor had they the sense to see, in their thirst for revenge, that the impetuosity of the pursuit might frustrate the attainment of their object. One or two military men, of Napoleon's school, were in some credit with the court; but their habitual disregard of the people, and confidence in the steadiness of the army, made them the worst of all advisers, while they gave encouragement to those who looked for their services, as tools at once unprincipled and submissive.

The description of the colleagues to whom the Prince was associated further betrayed alike the dispositions and the blindness of the court. Labourdonnaye was a man of honour and principle; but, from the sustained violence of his political opinions, all avowedly in favour of arbitrary power, and against every vestige of the revolutionary improvements, his name was regarded as the synonyme of the ancient régime, in church and in state— old parliaments-old feudal privileges--an insolent nobility—and a bloated *Réflexions sur la France; Vices de son Gouvernement; Causes du Mécontentement des Français sous le Ministère de Polignac, &c. October, 1830. Par M. St. Maurice. 8vo.- Vol. lii. page 1.

priesthood. His extreme violence in debate had marked him out still more for general dislike; and he was the object of unceasing animosity to one party, without securing the good will of the other, whose distrust was excited by his intolerant presumption, and unheeding temerity. A few unknown and insignificant men, such as Ranville, were the make-weights of the junto; but one there was, besides Labourdonnaye, for whom it would have been well could he have been unknown. General Bourmont was hated, if not despised, by the army; but his treachery to it was sufficient to win the confidence of the Bourbons; and, whether from the disposition, too common with kings, to trust those who are thrown as it were into their arms, by being left at their mercy, in the universal distrust and hatred of the rest of mankind, or because such an arrangement would insult and degrade the French army, this person was selected from among its gallant captains, and placed at the head of the war department. He had, moreover, served with the Dauphin in the shameful war against the liberties of Spain; and having enabled one branch of the Bourbons to trample upon freedom abroad, he might be employed in helping another to crush it at home.

The announcement of such names completed the impression which the elevation of Polignac was calculated to excite, and it spread consternation through all France. Reflecting men saw on the throne a prince of weak understanding, but furious bigotry, the declared enemy of all liberty, civil and religious, and blindly bent, under the dictation of his confessor, upon working out his own salvation, by rooting up every vestige of the blessings which his people had gained, at the price of so much suffering for a quarter of a century. Around him they perceived a younger brood of the selfsame character, 'who shut out all hope of better times, because the fanaticism of the old king's successors was quite as furious as his own. The chief minister was a weak and reckless bigot; a man of no pretensions to capacity, or knowledge, or experience; whose dulness and frivolity made his mind impervious to reason; whose fanaticism made it proof against fear. His colleagues were one or two obscure and desperate adventurers, the Coryphæus of the ultra royalists, and the deserter of his post on the eve of the battle which had inflicted on the French the unmitigated evils of the Restoration. Among the tools with which this portentous cabinet had to work, were some of the most unprincipled of Napoleon's generals, men grown grey in the career of cruelty, profligacy, and oppression; practising in the court of the Bourbons all the suppleness which they had learnt in their riper age under the despotism of the Usurper; and ready to rehearse once more, in the streets of the capital, the early lessons of butchery which had been familiar to their more tender years, under the Convention and the Directory. So prodigious a combination of evil designs, blind violence, and unprincipled instruments, had seldom been arrayed against the happiness of any people. The firmest beholder could not contemplate it without alarm, nor could the most sanguine descry any ground of hope, save in the chance of fatal errors being committed by such adversaries. These errors

we will not say rescued, but enabled the people to rescue, their country. For a while there were no grounds of discontent or of opposition afforded by the proceedings of the new ministry; and, accordingly, the slavish doctrine, so full of mischief, and so calculated to gain the favour of feeble, thoughtless and spiritless natures, was every day echoed in our ears, "Measures, not men." We were told not to condemn the ministry without

a trial; we were bid to wait until they should do some act deserving of reprobation; we were asked what harm they had done, or attempted, that justified such an universal clamour as was raised against them? Only be quiet for a little while," it was said significantly," and you may find their measures exactly such as you would yourself approve." But the more reflecting and sagacious did not choose to wait until it should be too late to resist with effect-too late for any thing, except to be laughed at by the deceiver. They knew full well, that if you suffer men unworthy of confidence to rule, they can always choose their own time for undermining your defences; that they may, by slow degrees, by carrying little encroachments at a time, gain a power no longer to be resisted; that, if opposition is delayed until their time comes-until they shall do some act deserving of reprobation-they may be enabled to do the act, and may leave you, its vietims, nothing for your consolation except to reprobate. The French had the sense to prefer effectual prevention while it was yet time, to unavailing blame when the time was past; they rejected the kind, and judicious, and, as it was termed, temperate counsel of their worst enemies on both sides of the Channel; and they raised all over the country one loud cry for the removal of a ministry at once odious and contemptible. The firmness of the court was not shaken by this universal expression of public opinion; the vain feeble creature who had become prime minister held his ground; the Chambers were dissolved, that a new election might improve their subserviency; and the friends of despotic power, in both France and England, fondly and foolishly hoped that the day was their own. Every engine of influence was set in motion; praise to whom praise was due, honours to whom honours, threats to whom threats, and bribes to whom bribes. The existence, at least the peaceful existence, of the dynasty was staked upon the issue of the contest; and no pains were spared, and no scruples were allowed to intervene, and no means were either neglected, or despised, or rejected, which might further the return of a more complying legislature. The constant cry of " Measures, not Men," was repeated that cry which so often bewilders honest, weak men in England, and leads to such remediless mischief, and stands in the way of so much solid improvement, enabling the enemies of all amendment in every branch of our system to maintain their ground, and resist every good measure that cry which, beyond every other, is in its operation self-contradictory, and in its effects self-destructive, inasmuch as, under the vain and flimsy pretext of making measures every thing, the means are afforded of frustrating all measures, and making all good intentions nothing. This ery, so plausible, so perilous among the ignorant, so well adapted to mislead the unwary and inexperienced, was echoed wherever two or three were gathered together to vote for deputies, or electors, or presidents. It was every where attempted; thanks to the good sense and the firmness of the people, it every where signally failed; and they wisely chose the men who where most sure to promote the measures which the public safety demanded, by wresting the power of putting that safety in jeopardy from the men who were bent upon the worst of measures, and those measures would inevitably carry, if power were left in their hands. This hypocritical, this canting pretext, sustained a defeat every where, from which it has not yet recovered; and a representative body was elected, resolutely bent upon doing its duty in the only manly, rational, and effectual manner by which France could be rescued,

and her liberties saved.

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The new Chambers met, with the eyes of the whole civilised world anxiously bent towards them. The first step showed how much the government had gained by the dissolution. In England, had the most weak and despised ministry that ever ruled the state dissolved the Parliament, and a new House of Commons been returned, the most adverse to their continuance in office, we much fear that a thousand follies-squeamishness in some-alarm in others-politeness towards individuals in one-indolence and idleness in another-the wish not to offend the court or the minister before it was necessary-the love, or the pretence, or the cant of candourthe desire of being, of appearing, moderate-the influence of wives and daughters loving courts and parties-the slowness to commit themselves unnecessarily fox-hunting, if the weather was mild-Newmarket the alternate weeks-customary residence till Christmas in the country-a condescending visit and shooting performed by some duke-a gracious one accorded by some prince-letters, half-chiding, half-tender, from some lady of influence and activity-would, altogether, have made the attempt quite hopeless to bring forward, in the very beginning of the session, all the force gained by the opposition during the elections. A new speaker might be proposed; the man least popular with the House, least suited for the station. But in vain would the leaders of the Opposition expect their followers to muster on so fitting an occasion, and display their strength, so as at one blow to crush the common adversary. The question is too personal"-"It is beginning too early to oppose the government"-"Wait till some measure is brought forward"-"Why take the field before even the King's speech"-"Wait till after the holidays"-"Any measure of economical reform I will support"-" I am against Negro Slavery, in a temperate way”—“I would even give Manchester members"-" This looks too like a party measure;"-such would have been the answers of the stout and independent members of an English opposition, to the proposition not to let an incapable minister dictate to a strong and a discontented parliament. Such are the causes of misrule in England, by ministers with neither influence in or out of doors-such are the glaring, rather let us say, such have hitherto been the glaring, the inexpiable breaches of all public duty, committed by men chosen to protect the interest of the people, and professing themselves to be the independent friends of right government. From the tools of the ministry, of course, nothing is expected, and no blame is imputed to them. On the contrary, they are steady to their purpose, and ever at their post. Their employer finds them worthy of their hire; the government has no right to complain of them; it is the people that have a right to complain; it is the pretended friends of the people that are wanting to their employers; it is the loud pretender to patriotism and independence that slumbers at his post, or is never found near it, and wilfully suffers the men to domineer whom he was sent to oppose, and the measures to languish and to fail, which on the hustings he vowed to support. Hence it is, that the weakest of cabinets has ceased to dread even the most powerful opposition; and that the least popular of monarchs has found it an easy matter to choose his ministers, almost with as little regard to the public voice, as if he were choosing his household servants.

Not such was the manly, and ever to be respected, demeanour of the French opposition. No silly, effeminate fear of being thought hasty, or rash, or factious no preference of personal to public considerations-no listening to the voice either of sloth, or flattery, or cant-could turn these sagacious.

meeting a tyrant is in the field and the fight. They were tried, and were not found wanting. The wretches who had framed the Ordinance backed it with armed men. The slaves of Napoleon, now of the Bourbon despot, headed the mercenaries, which Switzerland infamously hires out to shed the blood of freemen for the lucre of gain-an enormity which well deserves that those sordid states should be annihilated as an independent power. The Swiss fought against the people; but few indeed of the French soldiers could be induced to join in the fray. Now was seen that glorious sight which has filled all Europe with ceaseless admiration, and will hand down the name of Parisian to the gratitude of the latest posterity. The peaceable citizens of the capital closed their shops; left their daily vacations; barricaded the streets; tore up the pavements; armed and unarmed confronted the enemy, and poured on every side the swift destruction that awaits troops acting in a town thickly peopled by men determined to be free. The awful lesson now taught to all soldiers-the bright example now held up to all freemenis the more worthy of being had in perpetual remembrance, because there was no discipline, no concert, no skill of any kind displayed, or required. All men had one common object, to slay the troops that dared oppose them -to embrace those soldiers that still remembered they were citizens. Several regiments of the line at once refused to act; but few joined the people. The refusal, however, was of the last importance, for it spread among the ranks of the whole army, filling the tyrants with despair, and animating the people to new feats of valour. The courage of these gallant men surpassed all belief. Many rushed upon the loaded guns that were pointed with savage barbarity by the bloodthirsty tyrants down streets crowded to excess. The old and the young vied with men of mature years, and women bore their share in the strife. From behind the barricades, the boys of the Polytechnic School, braving the cannon, and only seeking shelter from the musketry and the bayonets, maintained a constant fire. The multitude loaded and handed them their guns; and so steady was their aim, that of one regiment, they killed five hundred men, and all the officers save three. The slaughter of the people, indeed, was great but as many of the mercenaries were made to bite the dust. The victory declared every where for the citizens; the soldiers retreated; the National Guard was formed as in 1789, and under the command of the same gallant and venerable chief, the patriarch of the revolution in both the old world and the new;—and the Bourbons ceased to reign.

But where were the vile authors of this atrocity, while slaughter reigned on every side? Where were the men who had let loose the soldiery upon the multitude, to maintain their own power? Where were they, those "firm and vigorous statesmen," whose courage had been extolled in all the haunts of despotism? Where were they, when the danger was near, and there was a possibility of their lives being made the forfeit of their unheardof crimes? This question no man can answer. No man knows where the person of the wretched Polignac was, while the battle raged which he had ordered to begin. This only is known, that he was no where seen in the battle, and that he and his colleagues all fled to a distance from the scene of action, in various directions. Some of them have since been taken; and if they are suffered to escape condign punishment, a premium is held out to treason against the liberties of the people, while all men know that unsuc cessful efforts on behalf of those liberties lead to an inevitable fate.

The conduct of the French people on this occasion was truly above all

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