the most intelligent "doctrinaires" of the present Chamber. I remember that conversation forming the subject of a letter to Sir Brook Taylor then at Berlin; and if he recollects, or has ever referred to that letter, he will remember that almost every thing was then predicted that since arrived, with this difference, that ten years were given to the development of events which two years decided. When a revolution has commenced its march, its steps are not to be numbered.

Monsieur de Martignac himself shared the general conviction, and thus expressed himself to a friend, who repeated the remark to me :—

"We do all that we can; but all that we can do is to conduct the monarchy down stairs, whereas it would otherwise be thrown out of the window."

However this might be, the only chance which the monarchy then had was by conceding to the popular voice in names, and thus to avoid or diminish the necessity of doing so too violently in things. A country, when it knows and approves of the general principles and opinions of a minister, will allow him a certain latitude in following those opinions out. The mere appointment of Lord Chatham appeased, in his time, the popular discontent; the mere appointment of Mr. Canning quieted, in his time, the agitation of the Catholic claims.

Change in the form of a government ceases very frequently to be demanded when we feel sure that the spirit animating the government is good. The nomination of the popular man lulls suspicion, as the nomination of the unpopular one awakens it. A change of men, from unpopular to popular ones, is in fact the only, the ordinary, and the reasonable resource which a representative government affords for its duration; and the cant, and nearly always hollow and perfidious cry of "measures and not men," merely shows, where it is sincere, a double ignorance of human nature and affairs. Many acts of a government it is almost impossible for any person out of the government to know; an administration with popular appearances may be

taking a subterraneous road to arbitrary power: if the general principles which a man has hitherto professed are hostile to your notions of right, and on his becoming a minister he seems to act in a manner favourable to your opinions, you are bound to mistrust him, for it is more likely that he is false to you than that he is false to himself. The statesman who, after a long political course, tells you suddenly that he means to sail on a new tack, is to be looked upon as a “Coster" in politics- —a swindler the more dangerous, for the smiling candour of his address. This is the sober way of viewing things; and this is the way which the public, with its broad and plain common sense, usually views them. Mark the example! M. de Polignac comes into office; the first act of the minister, dreaded for his Jesuitism, is the abolition of the unpopular office of "minister of religion,"—the king speaks of prosperous finances-the minister announces administrative amendments* and economical concessions.

But, afar from these favours and promises of amelioration, severe and stern, with folded arms and knit brow, the great body of the nation stood aloof, full in front of the throne and its proud prerogatives: stood, I say, the people, firm against compromise; imbodying all their feelings in one opinion; expressing them all in one remonstrance; replying to every argument of the government by one sentence:-"Remove the minister !"

They listened to no other concession; they demanded no other compliance; for to an unpopular principle there is a definite and prescribed resistance, but to an unpopular person there is none-there are no bounds to suspicion, no bounds to fear, no bounds to hatred: and the name of M. de Polignac gathered round it, and attracted into a focus, as it were, all the hostile, and angry, and dangerous feelings, that, differing one from the other, various and dispersed, were burning in the hearts of men, and which, in order to be irresistible, only wanted to be concentred.

* Some in the Diplomacy were particularly good.

Not a lip throughout the country that did not murmur in echo to that eloquent and terrible denunciation, "Malheureuse France! Malheureux Roi !"* and Lafayette, the old banner of republican feeling, was brought out once more amid popular acclamations; and the press that had fallen into temporary oblivion during the better days of Martignac, lifted up its masculine voice, and felt the majesty of a new mission; while the nation's representatives expressed their "solemn sorrow," and the nation itself quietly and publicly organized a resistance to any system of government contrary to "the national rights," and, let me add, to "the national will." Such was the awful aspect of those things in presence of which the king's ministry had to deliberate, when their maintenance in office was the king's decision. Seated on his throne, environed by all the pride and circumstance of royal superstition, Charles X. had (on the 2d of March, 1830) pronounced, with the studied accentuation of a theatrical display, his last address to the peers and representatives of France; to that address the famous majority of two hundred and twenty-one had made their historical response, while the monarch, with a fatal firmness, declared that the choice which alarmed his people was the irrevocable resolution of the crown. There was a long controversy in the cabinet. The government, however, could have but one course to pursue : a dissolution was the first step: on the second Chamber being as unfavourable as the one preceding it, and that it was so soon appeared, either the decision pronounced irrevocable was to be revoked, or an appeal to the people be succeeded by an appeal to the sword.

For some time prior to July there hung upon the public mind a heavy cloud, which, with the fatal inspiration of calamitous times, every one felt to be charged with the dread burden of great events. The mysterious stillness which brooded over the royal

* Words of a celebrated article published at the time in the Journal des Débats.

† See Appendix.

councils rather excited than dulled expectation; and when the two famous ordonnances appeared, there was nobody out of the diplomacy who had been deceived. They who best know Charles X. know that the greater part of his life had been passed in schemes of similar catastrophes. The first victim to the events of 1789, the long years of his exile had gone by amid meditations on the manner in which those events might have been averted; and with a royal confidence in his own ability, he always imagined that he was peculiarly fit for essaying those perilous shocks of fortune by which a crown is lost or made secure. From the moment, then, that M. de Martignac came into office, Charles X. had looked to the famous XIVth Article as the basis of a daring plan, which, if the conciliatory plans of his minister were unsuccessful, would release majesty in a more summary manner from the vulgar opposition of the commons.

With more ability than is usually attributed to him, he saw at once, on the retreat of M. de Villèle, the future difficulties of his situation; he saw that he should be asked for great concessions-that he might be obliged to make a great resistance. Certain concessions he was prepared to make, larger ones he was resolved to refuse. Trying the milder system first, "Let it fail," said Charles X., "and fail I think it will, and I will take a minister of my own choice, of my own faction, in whom I can entirely rely. I will have at my disposal the whole force of royalty. The country may possibly yield when I display that force; if not, I am determined to use it." "La Chambre joue un gros jeu," said he, after receiving the address of the two hundred and twenty-one, “il pourra bien lui en cuire de blesser ainsi ma couronne!" And thus, amid a series of events which we may call fortuitous, but

ART. 14. DE LA CHARTE.-Le roi est le chef suprême de l'état; il commande les forces de terre et de mer, déclare la guerre, fait les traités de paix, d'alliance, et de commerce, nomme à tous les emplois d'administration publique, et fait les réglemens et ordonnances nécessaires pour l'exécution des lois et la sûreté de l'état.

which were so intertwined in the great mesh of human affairs as to make one almost believe that each was the necessary consequence of the other; thus, the two principles which had once contended came again into conflict, and a new example was bequeathed to posterity of the wisdom of the philosopher who, many years previous to our first revolution, declared that “all restorations were impossible." I acknowledge, for my own part, that the more I linger over this period of history, the more I marvel; not that "the Restoration" should have at length perished, but that it should have so long endured. A frank and honest recognition of the great principles of civil liberty, and a practical policy in accordance with those principles, must have led to the declaration and acknowledgment that the monarch held his crown from the people, and not the people their liberties from the crown. This would have been, in point of fact, the revolution, the revolution of July. It would have separated the monarch altogether from the emigration, from the nobility, from the priesthood; it would have put down the maxim-that wise emanation of kingcraft, "That the king had never ceased to reign."

But in this sentence the Restoration was contained; and, let us confess the truth, without it the descendant of St. Louis and Henry IV., brought into France by foreign bayonets, had far less right than "General Bonaparte" to the French throne. With this sentence, then, the hereditary Restoration was unjust; with it, a large and open system of liberty was impossible. Between these two difficulties the monarchy was kept in a state of miserable fluctuation.

"Act up to the constitution you have granted!" said one set of men. But no sooner did the sovereign prepare to do this, than he found himself at war with the principle on which that liberty was given.

"Assert and maintain the prerogative, which, after all, only gave these free concessions as a favour," said another party and, lo! the crown found itself in conflict with its own concessions.

Thrice a mean-way system of moderation was tried