might attract the good-will of his powerful and dangerous neighbours, is more consonant with his schemes, his interest, and his character. The path to our esteem which he chose, was by no means injudicious. The abolition of negro slavery, and the instruction of the poor, have (to the honour of our legislature) been frequent and anxious subjects of deliberation in the House of Commons; and to mankind, whether individually or collectively, no species of flattery is more pleasing than that of assent and imitation. By his decree against the slave-trade, Buonaparte also placed himself in advantageous contrast with the Bourbons, making voluntarily that very sacrifice to gain British friendship, which they, secure in possessing it, had been prevailed upon by the mercantile interest of France to refuse to our express and earnest solicitation. But the British public entertained too just a suspicion of Buonaparte's sincerity, to give him the general credit for these measures, which it was probably his principal wish to obtain by their promulgation.

With Austria, Napoleon acted differently. He was aware no impression could be made on the Emperor Francis, or his minister Metternich, and that it became impossible that, with their consent, he should fulfil his promise of presenting his wife and son to the people on the Champ de Mai. Stratagem remained the only resource; and the Frenchmen at Vienna, with those in Maria Louisa's train, formed a scheme of carrying off the Empress of France and her child. Their manœuvres attracted the attention of the police. A French officer was arrested coming out of a window in the palace,

where he had spent part of the night in preparing for the execution of the plan. He imprudently offered the police such a bribe, as inferred, by its amount, the importance of his private business in the place. The plot was discovered and prevented, and the most public steps were immediately taken, to show that Austria consider. ed all ties with Buonaparte as dissol-, ved for ever. Maria Louisa, by her. father's commands, laid aside the arms and liveries of her husband, hitherto displayed by her attendants and carriages, and assumed those of the house of Austria. All French men and women in attendance upon her person, and that of the young Napoleon, were dismissed, and precautions taken for the security of both. The secret overtures, by which Buonaparte, abandoning Murat to his fate, and even offering to aid in suppressing him, proposed to extend and confirm the Austrian power in Italy, were coldly and peremptorily rejected. It has been said, that Austria was fixed to the general cause by the insults which Buonaparte had offered to her prime minister, as well as by her own interest and that of Europe.*

Thus baffled in his overtures alike and intrigues at foreign courts, Buonaparte was compelled to rest his newly-acquired power upon the attachment and energy of the French nation, which was now to be conciliated in every possible manner. His successful march from Cannes had of itself arranged under his banners many of those who had been the foremost to reprobate his attempt as treason to France, so long as it seemed impossible he should have the means of effecting it. Benjamin Constant,

who had pronounced against the return of the Exile of Elba so animated a philippic, accepted without a blush the office of Counsellor of State, which he offered him a few days after; read his palinode, and lent his valuable as sistance to the other statesmen and sçavants who were to form the new constitution of regenerated France. The journalists gave in their adhesion to the new order of things without a moment's hesitation, and the pens, which the week before denounced Buonaparte as an Ogre, who had de voured the youth of France, now wrote him down a hero and a liberator. Of sixty Parisian writers, engaged constantly or occasionally in composing for periodical publications, only five could be counted who remained faithful to the king. Most of the other men of letters showed the same disgraceful versatility. But it was not by the assistance of such political weather-cocks that Buonaparte could hope to prop his re-established throne. It was necessary to conciliate the people's hearts, and to increase and ani⚫ mate the strength and spirits of the army.

It was in the first task that he endeavoured to employ the service of his republican adherents, and his ministers Fouché and Carnot; and in the beginning of his brief reign, he certainly received and profited by many of their lessons. The unlimited liberty of the press was instantly accorded, and the censorship removed; but it was not long ere Buonaparte, by appointing inspectors of the book sellers, endeavoured in some degree to indemnify himself for the license he had given to the press. Indeed, his interest and inclination alike made him desire an extension of his powers at this interesting crisis, and we shall presently find him complaining of the inconvenient effects of the freedom which he had restored. But, however the union of the imperialists and

jacobins had been cemented by mu tual hatred of the Bourbons, and was still kept together by apprehension of their adherents within, and their allies in the exterior, seeds of discord were soon visible between the empe ror and the popular leaders. While the former was eager once more to wield with full energy the sceptre he had recovered, the latter were continually reminding him, that he had only assumed it in a limited and restricted capacity, as the head of a free government, exercising indeed its executive power, but under the restraint of a popular constitution. Napoleon, in the frequent disputes which arose on these important points, was obliged to concede to the demagogues the principles which they insisted upon. But then, for the safety of the state, involved in foreign and domestic dangers, he contended it was necessary to invest the chief magistrate with a vi gour beyond the law, a dictatorial authority, temporary in its duration, but nearly absolute in its extent, as had been the manner in the free states of antiquity, when the republic was in imminent danger. Carnot and Fouché, on the other hand, considered, that although it seemed easy and natural to confer such power at the present moment, the resumption of it by the nation, when it was once vested in the hands of Buonaparte, would be a most hopeless experiment. The emperor, therefore, and his ministers, proceeded to their mutual tasks with no mutual confidence; but, on the contrary, with jealousy, thinly veiled by an affectation of deference on the side of Buonaparte, and respect on that of his counsellors.

These appearances of dissention did not escape the eyes of the watchful Parisians, and augured ill for the subsistence of the existing league between the two parties, whose coalition had now placed them uppermost. The royalists did not fail to profit by these

circumstances. Aware that the principles of the popular party would oblige them to oppose any arbitrary measures on the emperor's part, they took upon them to act with the greater confidence. The king had issued from Ghent proclamations, one of which forbade the payment of taxes to the usurped government; while others conveyed to France, and to the army, the hostile intentions of united Europe, provoked by the recall of him who had occasioned its distresses. "Europe," said one of these papers, "will acknowledge no other king of France but ourselves. Twelve hundred thou sand men are about to march to assure the repose of the world, and a second time to deliver our fine country." It was announced, that, undeceived by the tricks of the usurper's policy, the sovereigns of Europe did not consider the French nation as an accomplice in the attempts of the army; and that the peaceful labourers would be protected, wherever their invading arms should find Frenchmen faithful to their king. The weight of war was denounced against those provinces, which, on the approach of the allies, should fail to return to their duty. The allied sovereigns made war, it was announced, only against rebels; the subjects of Louis had nothing to dread. And to conclude, the king declared, that on his return to his capital, which was considered as an approaching event, the services of the loyal should be recompensed, and that he himself would labour to banish even the very appear ance of those disasters, which had withdrawn from their allegiance some of the French people.

In the uncertain and alarmed state of the capital, the moderate and temperate tone of the royal proclamations was highly calculated to serve the cause of Louis XVIII. His agents, equally secret and alert, contrived to

placard them successively over the whole city of Paris, to the surprise and discredit of Fouché's police. A newspaper, entitled the Lily, was printed by a secret committee of the royalists, and circulated by thrusting it under the doors of the inhabitants during the night. In the better classes of society, where it was difficult to say whether Buonaparte was most feared or hated, there were handed round a variety of lampoons, satires, and pasquinades, in prose and verse, turning his person, ministers, and government into the most bitter ridicule. Others attacked his cause by eloquent invective, of which the following is no bad specimen. "Buonaparte can henceforth deceive nobody in France; for of all the parties which have survived our civil discords, the most credulous already perceive his perfidy. A few of those irritable, impassioned, and, above all, credulous men, because they are generally ge nerous and sensible, a few of those men, I say, who have been dreaming during twenty years of an imaginary republic, and who have pursued their illusions through all governments and all anarchies, felt their hopes revive at the cry of liberty, which the mob, in the train of Buonaparte, raised on his passage to Paris. They forgot that Buonaparte is the sworn enemy of liberty, the assas sin of the republic, and the first vio lator of those sacred rights, of which they had so dearly paid the purchase.

They forgot that Buonaparte spoke also of liberty, when he destroyed the national representation of St Cloud.

They forgot that it was in the name of the French republic, that Buonaparte had established the most insolent despotism of which mankind had ever supported the yoke. They forgot that Buonaparte had attempted to suppress all the sentiments which

united the citizens to the country, to extinguish all the lights of civilization, to paralyse every means of education. -They forgot that Buonaparte had proscribed every liberal and philosophic idea, under the title of ideology; that he consecrated the most destructive principles of despotism in books avowed by his ministers; that he promised feudal privileges to his sbiri, and gave sovereignty to his satraps. -They forgot that heaven and hell are not more distant, than those most extremes of all the series of ideas which occupy the human mind-Buonaparte and liberty.-They forgot that the very word liberty, so cruelly proscribed under the iron reign of the usurper, only gladdened our ears for the first time, after twelve years of humiliation and despair, on the happy restoration of Louis XVIII. Ah! miserable impostor, would you have spoken of liberty, had not Louis XVIII. brought back liberty and peace!"*

The disaffection spread among certain classes of the lower ranks. The market-women (dames des halles), so formidable during the time of the Fronde, and in the early years of the revolution, for their opposition to the court, were now royalists, and, of course, clamorous on the side of the party they espoused. They invented, or some loyal rhymer composed for them, a song, the burden of which (Donnez nous notre paire des gants, equivalent in pronunciation to notre Pere de Ghent) demanded back the king, as their Father of Ghent. They ridiculed, scolded, and mobbed the commissaries of police, who endeavoured to stop these musical expressions of disaffection; surrounded the chief of their number, danced around him, and chaunted the obnoxious burden, until Fouché being ashamed

to belie the new doctrines of liberty, of thought, speech, and publication, his agents were instructed to leave these amazons undisturbed on account of their political sentiments.

The police laboured with as little effect to stop the circulation of a variety of pamphlets, secretly printed and dispersed by the royalists, under the title of the "Cry of Alarm," the "Cry of Honour," and a series of addresses to the army, to the national guard, to the youth of France, &c. which, published under the assumed name of Lasmuldi Royaumant, appeared posted, almost every morning, on the walls of the metropolis, and on its most public streets and squares. These daring measures greatly incommoded the ministers, who were unwilling to recur to any strong measures for restraining the liberty of the press, which was one of the blessings which Buonaparte came to insure to the nation. They arrested, nevertheless, Le Normand and other printers, besides a female, who had been active in distributing the royal manifestoes. She was detained for some time in custody at her own lodgings, that the police might take note of those who came to visit her, and have an opportunity of arresting and searching their persons. A number of per. sons, suspected of royalism, were commanded to leave Paris; and several other arbitrary ineasures made plain what was said of the minister of po lice by Lecompte, the editor of Le Censeur, that if he loved liberty, it was only liberty after the manner of Monsieur Fouché. A quarrel between this editor (who had been an active promoter of Buonaparte's interest before his return) threw some curious light on the manner in which journals are managed in France. Lecompte was a loud, and probably

a sincere advocate of freedom, and soon published some severe remarks on the undue weight which the army were like to exercise in the new set

tlement of the state. The journal was instantly seized by the police, while, at the same time, the Moniteur announced that it had been restored to the editors. This was boldly denied by Lecompte in his next number, on which he was called before the prefect, alternately threatened and wheedled, upbraided with indif. ference to the cause of the emperor, and requested to think of something in which the government might serve him. To this he firmly replied, that he desired only permission to profit by the stipulated liberty of the press, and he had the courage to make public the whole affair. Such incidents indicated an alienation from Buona parte on the part of the republican party, who, indeed, stood only connected with him by the ties which bind two enemies, embarked in the same vessel, to contribute their joint efforts to save her from shipwreck. They began to express aloud their regret, that France should incur the risk of a dreadful invasion for the sake of one man, and circulated a report that the emperor intended to consummate his sacrifices for the public, by resigning his crown to his son (and they might have added, to his jacobin ministry) at the approaching Champ de Mai. Lecompte, already mentioned, gave this suggestion publicly in his newspaper. But it was not at the head of an entire army of three hundred thousand men that Buonaparte was accessible to hints of this nature.

While the name of Buonaparte was execrated among the persons of rank and property, and pronounced with doubt and suspicion by the philosophers and constitutionalists, he him

self seemed to adopt the celebrated classical maxim,

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.

Since he could not form an interest in the saloons, he resolved to raise the suburbs, and add, by the furious and rude character of their inhabitants, to the terrors, if not to the dignity of his reign. For a time, crowds of artisans of the lowest order assem bled under the windows of the Tuilleries, and demanded to see the emperor, whom, on his appearance, they greeted with shouts, as le grand entrepreneur, or general employer of the class of artisans, in language where the coarse phraseology of their rank was adorned with such flowers of rhetoric, as the times of terror had coined. Latterly, the numbers of this assembly were maintained by a distribution of a few sous to the shouters. Occa→ sionally, the royalists contrived to mingle among this motley crew, and suggest to them questions and demands the most insulting to Buonaparte. It was on such an occasion, and through such malicious insinuations, when the crowd became persuaded, that Maria Louisa, whose journey from Vienna had been announced so often, was actually arrived, and that they might obtain a sight of her by being sufficiently clamorous. Accordingly, they demanded the presence of the empress with so much vehemence, that Buonaparte was obliged to appear, and though sensible of the irony which had prompted the sovereign people to strain their throats in this ill-timed request, thought it best to pacify them with an assurance, that she would certainly appear in May.

However disgusted with these degrading exhibitions, Buonaparte saw