XXIV. 1830. 1 Ante, c. Berlin, whose Rhenish provinces were more immediately CHAP. threatened by these designs of Chateaubriand and the Polignac Ministry.1 The recognition of the King of the French by Frederick-William, accordingly, was more xvii.; § 49. prompt and cordial than that even of the cabinet of Vienna. Count Lobau, who was sent to Berlin, met with the most cordial reception, at the very time when General Baudrand was receiving the same at the court of London; and all that was asked in return was the faith- 461, 462. ful observance of the treaties of 1815.2 2 Cap. ii. 51. of Louis Philippe : views of it. LOUIS PHILIPPE, who thus, by the force of circumstances, and the influence of dissimulation and fraud, Character obtained possession of the throne of France, is, of all recent sovereigns, the one concerning whose character opposite the most difference of opinion has prevailed. By some, who were impressed with the length and general success of his reign, he was regarded as a man of the greatest capacity; and the " Napoleon of peace" was triumphantly referred to as having achieved that which the "Napoleon of war" had sought in vain to effect. The prudent and cautious statesman who, during a considerable portion of his reign, guided the affairs of England,* had, it is well known, the highest opinion of his wisdom and judgment. By others, and especially the Royalists, whom he had dispossessed, and the Republicans, whom he had disappointed, he was regarded as a mere successful tyrant, who won a crown by perfidy, and maintained it by corruption, and in whom it was hard to say whether profound powers of dissimulation, or innate selfishness of disposition, were most conspicuous. And in the close of all, his conduct belied the assertions, and disappointed the expectations of both; for, when he fell from the throne, he neither exhibited the vigour which was anticipated by his admirers, nor the selfishness which was imputed to him by his enemies. In truth, however, he was consistent throughout; and * Sir R. Peel. 1830. 52. tion of its seeming contradic tions. CHAP. when his character comes to be surveyed in the historic XXIV. mirror, the same features are everywhere conspicuous. His elevation, his duration, and his fall, are seen to have Explana- been all brought about by the same qualities. He rose to greatness, and was so long maintained in it, because he was the man of the age; but that age was neither an age of heroism nor of virtue, but of selfishness. the Octavius of the French Revolution; and, like him, he succeeded its Cæsar by bringing into play, and himself possessing, the ruling qualities which invariably, after a long period of social convulsions, become predominant in the public mind. Those qualities are prudence and selfishness. The generous passions which commenced the conflagration have been burnt out, or become extinct by disappointment. The noble, the chivalrous, the highminded on all sides have perished in the conflict, as the boldest knights, the bravest regiments, disappear after a protracted warfare. The multitude alone remained, and the ruling principle with the multitude always is, in the long run, selfishness. They are capable of great and heroic efforts during a period of excitement; but with the first lull the sway of the selfish feelings always recommences. This was the character of the age of Augustus; this was the character of that emperor himself: this was the character of the age of Louis Philippe; and this was the character of the Citizen King. His leading characteristic was prudence, his ruling principle selfishness, his great power dissimulation, his chief weakness irresolution. Personally brave, and capable of heading a charge of cavalry or mounting a breach, he was, like many other men similarly endowed with physical courage, timorous in the extreme when it became necessary to take a decided line. His long-continued indecision, when the crown was tendered to him, was the exact counterpart of the timidity with which, in the end, he shrunk from an encounter for its preservation. In the interval between the two, he always exhibited firmness XXIV. 1830. and consistency of government, and occasionally decided CHAP. proofs of personal resolution; but that was because he was not required then to take a line; the line was chosen, and he had only to follow it out. Prudent and discerning in his estimate of others, he selected able men for his advisers; but, by the native powers of his understanding, he always preserved the ascendant over them, and imprinted a steady and consistent character on his government, though nominally directed by many different cabinets. His intellectual powers were his own; but the consistency and stability of his government are known to have been mainly owing to the influence and counsels of his sister, the Princess Amélie,-a princess endowed with uncommon moral courage and strength of mind, to whose advice he was chiefly indebted for his elevation to the throne, and whose loss was at once discerned in the facility with which he was precipitated from it. 54. of his life, they had his charac The vicissitudes of his life had exceeded everything that romance had figured, or imagination could have con- Vicissitudes ceived. The gallery of portraits in the sumptuous halls and impress of the Palais Royal exhibited him with truth, alternately affixed to a young prince basking in the sunshine of rank and opu- ter. lence at Paris, a soldier combating under the tricolor flag at Valmy, a schoolmaster instructing his humble scholars in Switzerland, a fugitive in misery in America, a sovereign on the throne of France. These extraordinary changes had made him as thoroughly acquainted with the ruling principles of human nature in all grades, as the misfortunes of his own house, the recollection of his father guillotined, had with the perils by which, in his exalted rank, he was environed. Essentially ruled by the selfish, he was incapable of feeling the generous emotions; like all egotists, he was ungrateful. Thankfulness finds a place only in a warm heart. He was long deterred from accepting the crown by the prospect of the risk with which it would be attended to himself, but not for one moment by the reflection that, in taking it, he was 1830. CHAP. becoming a traitor to his sovereign, a renegade to his XXIV. order, a recreant to his benefactor. His hypocrisy, to the last moment, to Charles X., was equalled only by his stern and hard-hearted rigour to his family, when he had an opportunity of making some return for their benefactions. His government was extremely expensive; it at once added a third to the expenditure of Charles X., as the Long Parliament had done to that of Charles I.; and it was mainly based on corruption. This, however, is not to be imputed to him as a fault, further than as being a direct consequence of the way in which he obtained the throne. When the "unbought loyalty of men" has come to an end, government has no hold but of their selfish desires, and must rule by them; and when the "cheap defence of nations" has terminated, the costly empire of force must commence. As a set-off to these dark stains upon his moral character, there are many bright spots on his political one. He stood between Europe and the plague of revolution, and, by the temperance of his language and wisdom of his measures, at once conciliated the absolute Continental sovereigns, when they might have been expected to be hostile, and overawed the discontented in his own country when they were most threatening. 55. difficulties he had to But although Louis Philippe was thus universally acExtreme quiesced in in France, and received, in a manner beyond with which all hope, favourably by the whole sovereigns of Europe, contend. yet was his situation at home full of danger; and he was called to a task which the greatest abilities, and the most consummate wisdom, might have despaired of accomplishing. A revolutionary monarch, he was called to coerce revolution; raised to the throne under the shadow of the tricolor flag, he was obliged to restrain the desire which the sight of it awakened; a king elevated by the bourgeoisie, he was under the necessity of greatly augmenting the national expenses, and thwarting the passion for economy which is the ruling principle of that class. Indebted for his throne to the heroes of the barricades, he could XXIV. 1830. not maintain it but by continually disappointing their CHAP. expectations. His whole reign, accordingly, was a constant denial of its origin; his whole efforts, and they were many and able, were directed to restrain the passions by which he had been elevated, and extinguish the party to which he owed his greatness. Government could not, by possibility, be established on a more insecure basis, and, accordingly, the rancour with which he soon came to be regarded much exceeded any which had been manifested to Charles X. If the weight of these circumstances is considered, it will not appear extraordinary that Louis Philippe was in the end overturned; but the wonder will rather be that he succeeded in maintaining himself so long upon the throne. 56. in the Coun violence of putation. The thorns were not long of showing themselves. In the Cabinet itself dissension was soon apparent. Dissensions Lafitte, accustomed, by his previous intimacy with the cil, and Orléans family, to the language and manners of courts, the National was measured and respectful in his language, but M. de Guard deLafayette had the utmost difficulty in coercing the violence and rudeness of his Republican allies. M. Dupont de l'Eure, in particular, distinguished himself by the vehemence of his democratic ideas, and his constant prophecies of disaster if his projects were not all carried into execution. The Republican journals loudly proclaimed that "the country was ruined" whenever he succeeded in carrying anything before him in the Council. Every day Lafayette was besieged with deputations from the national guards of all the principal towns of France. Most of them were not yet dressed in uniform, but appeared in the republican blouse, ornamented only with a bunch of tricolor ribbons. Though worn out with cabinet councils of four or five Hours' duration, Louis Philippe was obliged to receive these rude deputations, some of which showed by their haughty manner that they regarded themselves as masters, rather than servants, of the 3, 9. crown.1 1 Cap. iii. |