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ing with conflagration, and at length flooded with the gore of her citizens; as in the memorable year 1780, when only the firmness of the sovereign, in commanding his troops to act in defence of the peace, saved the capital from total destruction.

We will close this chapter with an anecdote, trifling in itself, but important as it serves to shew the deep interest which the very lowest ranks of the British public take in the concerns of the state; a circumstance arising solely out of the freedom with which public measures are submitted to their discussion, and to which the wisest and best-informed foreigners are disposed to ascribe the peculiar energy of our national character. When the order for embarking the Guards for Flanders, which followed immediately

upon the landing of Buonaparte, was in the act of being carried into execution, a grenadier of the Coldstream was observed taking a friendly farewell of a cobler with whom he had been quartered. They had exhausted their parting draught, and were shaking hands cordially. "God bless you, my good fellow," said the soldier; " do you look after the corn bill at home, and leave me to manage Buonaparte." The first impulse of the reader may be to laugh; but as both men were perfectly serious in the division of their public duty, we may estimate, from this trifling circumstance, the quantity of patriotism in a state where the meanest individual considers her safety and fame as intrusted to his charge, and dependent on his efforts.

CHAP. VI.

Internal State of France.-Defects of the Administration.Count de Blacas.State of Parties.-Royalists, comprehending the Nobles, and Clergy, and Vendeans.-Tumult at the Funeral of Mademoiselle de Raucour.-Sepulchral Honours paid to Louis XVI. and his Queen.-Jealous Fears of the Possessors of National Domains.-Republicans.Buonapartists.-Discontents of the Army.-Constitutionalists.—Purchasers of National Domains.-Resemblance between the State of France and of England after the Restoration.

FRANCE, so long the centre of those successive revolutions which had disturbed the tranquillity of Europe, appeared now to be in the situation of an exhausted volcano. The thunders of the eruption seemed over, but its former ravages were still visible, and it was manifest to every reflecting mind, that many years must pass away ere their traces could be obliterated. The very extravagance of those hopes, which were naturally entertained upon the restoration of the royal family, like too early and too luxuriant a show of blossom, diminished the chance of their ripening into the expected fruit, and exasperated the disappointment of the over-sanguine expectants.

Yet symptoms of recovering prosperity began to appear in this rich country. The manufactures of Rouen, Lyons, and other French towns, were resumed with a zeal and readiness which alarmed their competitors in Great Britain. Capital, which has such a wonderful capacity of escaping like

quicksilver from the grasp of arbitrary power, and re-uniting and re-appearing when the prospect of profit and of security call it forth to action, began again to put in motion commercial speculations. Marseilles, Nantes, and Havre, resumed the appearance of tra ding cities, and again sent merchant vessels to sea. The cellars of Bourdeaux were once more emptied of her wines and brandies, and her warehouses replenished in lieu of them with colonial produce. Nor was it a matter of indifference to Paris at least, that crowds of foreigners, and particularly of English, rushed thither to spend large sums of money, and augment in no small proportion the reviving circulation of wealth. But this hopeful commencement was checked and counterbalanced by many circumstances of discontent and disappointment, some arising out of the nature of things, and totally uncontroulable by human wisdom, and others out of the errors of the government, and the

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evil passions and contending interests of the governed.

The sort of enthusiasm with which the Bourbons had been at first wel comed, soon faded into indifference, and indifference was succeeded by doubt, and suspicion, and dislike, The fabulist, in the apologue of the frogs who demanded a king, has described the sensation produced by a tyrant succeeding to a mild and over-easy monarch. But it was reserved to France to exhibit the counterpart of the fable, and to show how the aquatic nation would have probably demeaned themselves had the indulgence of Jupiter again substituted a mere passive type of monarchy, and banished King Stork to some remote islet. In the person of Louis XVIII. himself, the French could indeed find nothing to censure, nor any thing to contemn, excepting those corporeal infirmities, which disease inflicts upon some, and age upon all. Even the revolutionists yielded their unwilling assent to his merits-An excellent temper,-a sound judgment,-a cultivated understanding, a disposition to make every sacrifice for the welfare of the people,-even honour and good faith in his engagements, his worst enemies were compelled to allow him. He possessed also a readiness of good-humoured repartee, which uses to weigh much with the French nation, and that overflowing and kindly quality of the heart, which they express by the word bonhommie. He had one quality, and only one of the original monarch of the frogs, but it was the very quality on which the veneration due to King Log suffered shipwreck,-an inertness arising from the bodily infirmity at which we have hinted, which prevented his dazzling the eyes of his frivolous subjects, by assuming the dress and activity of his warlike predecessor, and something like a corresponding want of firmness and deci.

sion in the measures of his government. "Send him back to us," said an Englishman, who had listened impatiently to a Parisian, as he lamented betwixt pity and scorn the king's incapacity to mount on horseback,"send the excellent old man back to us, and you shall have a king will suit you better-we will send you young Astley the equestrian, the best horseman in Europe." But however just the reproof, it is no less certain that the bodily infirmities of Louis, and the want of personal activity which necessarily attended them, were of great prejudice to his affairs at this critical period. The gifted eye of Burke had foreseen, when few but himself anticipated the possibility of the restoration of the royal family, that personal activity would be a quality in the highest degree essential to the restored monarch. "A king of France," he said, "ought, speaking literally, to spend six hours in the day upon horseback." The necessity of this proved as true as most of his other prophecies; for the deficiency was most severely felt in the king's affairs.

The constitution which the king had solemnly sanctioned, although it could not be termed perfect, was in most respects adapted to France in its existing state, and contained not only the elements of a free and representative government, but the means of gradual improvement, as circumstances should require and experience should point out, The charter, as it was called, recognized, in the most formal manner, what Britons consider as their most sacred rights. 1. It established three branches of the legislature, by king, peers, and a house of representatives, whose concurrence was required in framing laws, 2. It guaranteed personal liberty, and toleration concerning religious faith. 3. It recognized the liberty of the press. 4. The ministers were held respon

sible and subject to be tried by the Chamber of Peers, on the indictment of the House of Representatives. 5. The representatives had the sole right of proposing taxes. 6. The judges were recognized as holding their offices permanent; new courts and commissions were declared illegal, and the institution of juries was sanctioned. Theoretically, therefore, the principles of the charter were admitted to be excellent. But a very ill-timed question was stirred concerning the mode in which the constitution had been established.

It will be remembered that the senate of Buonaparte, in calling the king to enjoy the crown under a constitution of their own framing, at tempted to burthen their invitation by a sordid and selfish arrangement, by which they were to secure the revenues of the senatorial order to them and theirs for ever; in consideration of which, and upon condition of his acknowledging certain principles laid down in their plan, they agreed to call Louis XVIII. to the throne. The King refused to acknowledge the right of the senate, either to dictate the terms on which he should ascend a throne, his own by hereditary descent, and to which he had never forfeited his claim; or to engross the endowments provided to their order by Buonaparte, as their own exclusive property. He therefore assumed the crown as the lineal and true representative of him by whom it was last worn; and issued his own constitutional charter as a concession which the spirit of the times demanded, and which he had himself no desire to withhold. The objections to this mode of proceeding were, practically speaking, of no consequence. It signified nothing to the people of France, whether the constitution was proposed to the king by the national representatives, or by the king to them, so

that it contained, in an irrevocable form, a full ratification of the national liberties. But for the king to have acknowledged himself the creature of the senate's election would have been at once to recognize every ephemeral tyranny which had started up and fretted its part on the revolutionary stage; and to have sanctioned all subsequent attempts at innovation, since they who make kings and authorities must have the inherent right to dethrone them. It should not be forgotten how the British nation acted on the great occasions of the Restoration and Revolution; recognising, at either crisis, the right of blood to succeed to the crown, whether vacant by the murder of Charles I., or the abdication of James II. In principle, too, it may be observed, that in all modern European nations, the King is nominally the source both of law and justice, and that statutes are promulgated, and sentences executed in his name, without inferring that he has the despotic right either to make the one, or to alter the other. Although, therefore, the constitution of France emanated in the usual form of a royal charter, the king was no more empowered to recal or innovate its provisions, than King John to abrogate those of the English Magna Charta. Monsieur, the king's brother, had promised in his name, upon his solemn entrance to Paris, that Louis would recognise the basis of the constitution prepared by the senate. This pledge was fully redeemed by the charter, and wise men would have been more anxious to secure the benefits which it promised, than scrupulously to cavil on the mode in which they had been conferred. In fact, Louis had adopted not only the form most consonant to ancient usage, but that which he thought most likely to satisfy both the royalists and the revolutionary party. He ascended the

throne as his natural right, and having done so, he willingly granted to the people, in an irrevocable form, the substantial principles of a free constitution. But both parties were rather displeased at what they considered as lost, than gratified at what they gained by this arrangement. The royalists considered the constitution with its concessions, as a voluntary abandonment of the royal prerogative, while the revolutionary party exclaimed, that the receiving the charter from the king as an act of his will, was in itself a badge of servitude; and that the same authority which had granted these privileges, might, if recognised, be supposed to reserve the privilege of diminishing or resuming them at pleasure. And thus it is, that folly, party-spirit, pride, and pas sion, can misrepresent the best measures, and so far poison the public mind, that the very granting the object of their desires shall be made the subject of new complaints.

The formation of the ministry gave rise to more serious grounds of apprehension and censure. The various offices of administration were, upon the restoration, left in possession of persons selected from those who had been named by the provisional government. All the members of the provisional state council were called to be royal ministers of the state. Many of these, though possessed of reputed talents, were men hackneyed in the changes of the revolution; and were not, and could not, be entrusted with the king's confidence beyond the bounds of the province which each administered. Talleyrand, minister for foreign affairs, whose talents and experience might have given him claim to the situation of prime minister, was unpopular, from his political ver satility; and it was judged, after a time, most expedient to send him to

the congress at Vienna, that his diplomatic skill might be employed in arranging the exterior relations of France with the other powers of Europe. Dupont was promoted to the situation of minister at war, owing, perhaps, to the persecution he had undergone from Buonaparte, in consequence of his surrender at Baylen to the Spaniards. Soult was afterwards called to this important office, how recommended, it would be vain to enquire; certainly not by his having, in the preceding year, fought the battle of Thoulouse, after he was in possession of the fact of Buonaparte's abdication. This appointment was the more remarkable, as Soult, like Davoust, had not, like the other marshals, been promoted to the House of peers. The charge of the finances was entrusted to Abbé Louis, named to that office by the provisional go vernment, and who had held several situations of trust under Buonaparte. D'Ambray, a royalist, was made chancellor of France. Ferrand and Count Blacas d'Aulps, also royalists, were nominated to the confidential situations of director of the posts, and minister of the household. Berenger, director of the Caisse d'amortissement under Buonaparte, was now constituted director-general of the indirect taxes. But the chief trust of the affairs of finance was believed to rest upon the Ex-Abbé Montesquieu, formerly a member of the constituent assembly, now named minister for the interior. Beugnot, by the experience which he had acquired as minister of finance in the Grand Duchy of Berg, became director of police. The other ministerial posts were filled with persons of a similar description; nor had the king, in his ostensible council, any friend of his exile, excepting Messieurs D'Ambray, Ferrand, and Blacas d'Aulps. The consequence of this arrangement was,

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