that they are for the benefit of great proprietors and the army, provided force and secrecy are employed in their execution, and prompt justice is executed on the factious. Bayonets support thrones. The soldier belongs to him who pays him. The party of the liberals is without a chief. That the people or the troops should revolt, they must find or hope for safety and guarantees. It is not a few groups of students, easy to be dispersed by a few shots or a few charges of cavalry, that will give those guarantees.' Here are precious maxims for a constitutional King. The great proprietors, that is, the oligarchy about the throne, are to be flattered and conciliated with the promise of power, and the army is to be corrupted by largesses, and then all will go well: for thrones are supported by bayonets,' not by the affection of the People. This rule of governing, to be sure, may not prove palatable to the millions who pay and suffer; but no matter; they are unarmed; they are base fellahs, born to till the ground, to discharge imposts, to beget slaves, and to die; and if they speak of their chartered rights, the bayonet, the sabre, and the guillotine will reduce them to silence and submission. We thank God that the people, and 'the troops' and a few groups of students,' of whom this memorialist speaks so contemptuously, gave a lesson to crowned heads on the 29th of July,' which will be remembered by the servile instruments of oppression in Europe, so long as a King cumbers the earth.

But the memorialist proceeds

in an equally significant strain. 'Strike,' says he,' strike with a firm hand the institutions which owe their birth to the Revolution, and by which it is perpetuated.' That is, suppress the Charter by force, and abolish all the just and equal laws of the last forty years: and he might as well have added, demolish half Paris and waste France with fire and sword; for it is the splendid monuments of one and the wide spreading prosperity of the other, qui perpétuent la révolution. The national representation is contrary to the genios, the manners and the character of a Nation frivolous and turbulent like ours. With fifty thousand advocates, the same number of attorneys and clerks, and such a host of physicians and surgeons imbued with revolutionary principles, the representative form of government, resulting from the Charter, is a continual struggle of parties, which engenders disorder, divides the country, and enfeebles the State. There is a repugnance, a natural antipathy between France and the representative system.

The Monarchy

requires, in order to be firm and preponderating without, as well as within, a Supreme Council, not two rival Chambers. The noblesse has incontestable rights to the administration of the State; and the clergy can no longer remain a stranger to the government of France.' It is impossible, in our apprehension, to conceive of principles more wretched, counsels more infatuated, or ignorance more profound, than these passages betray. We undertake not to justify or extenuate the horrors

and excesses of the French Revolution; but we must say that so long as Kings maintain that no faith is to be kept with their subjects and no oaths are binding in their favor, and that their fellow men are of no farther consideration but to be taillés et corvés á la miséricorde,' for the benefit of a few idle and profligate courtiers, - we cannot discipline our republican feelings into a state of very extreme sorrow that a terrible lesson of retributive and reciprocal justice should occasionally be visited on such implacable enemies of the whole human race.

Having thus seen what was the nature of the apprehensions entertained by the constitutional party, and how much cause there was for such apprehensions, we have but one more subject to advert to, before proceeding to the meeting of the Chambers. We mean, the probable issue of a decisive struggle. All that the liberals asked, and all that they professed to desire, was the conservation of the Charter and the appointment of a National Ministry. Yet it is undeniable that, so early as the close of 1829, very just calculations could be made regarding the probable event, if the King should tamper with the Charter and fail. Many hoped and desired that he would attempt a coup d'état, in the anticipation of its resulting in the gratification of their peculiar feelings and wishes. But even those, who believed in the expediency and success of a coup d'etat as a royalist measure, could not fail to reflect on its possible failure, and to look to what would be the consequence. The analogy, thus

far, strikingly perfect, between the history of the three last Stuarts in England, and the three last Bourbons in France, was continually followed out in private conversation to its final catastrophe, and not seldom alluded to in the newspapers, especialy those of Great Britain. We feel no hesitation in saying that the mere contemplation of this analogy had great influence in familiarizing the minds of men to the idea of the Duc d'Orleans as a kind of predestined substitute for Charles X. We shall not here anticipate the history of a later period, by undertaking to develope the various circumstances of family and personal popularity and public convenience which subsequently raised Louis Philippe to the throne. We speak only of the under current of public sentiment, the privately expressed opinion, the half formed fears or hopes, which might be discerned in France late in 1829, and before any actual collision had taken place between the People and the King personally.

We know the fact to be that, at the period in question, the Orleans family occupied this singular position, in the supposition of an impending revolution: They were the first choice of but few, they were the second choice of nearly all. The Republicans regarded the succession of the Duc d'Orleans as the next best thing to the establishment of a Republic; the Bonapartists admitted that it would be next best to the restoration of the rights of the young Napoleon; and the Bourbonists felt that it would be

next best to the coutinuance in power of Charles or Louis Antoine, or young Henri. The Republicans would prefer it, now, to the reigning family or to the son of Marie Louise; the Royalists to Napoleon or a Republic; and the Bonapartists to a Republic probably, certainly to the Bourbons, whose thorough adherents formed a very small fraction of the Nation, and that fraction neither the most intelligent nor the most influential. And thus Louis Philippe, while, if he relied for success on choice by absolute preference, had little chance of reaching the throne, had the fairest prospects as the choice by compromise and political necessity.

Such was the state of public affairs, when the royal ordinance appeared on the 7th of January, appointing the 2d of March ensuing for the assembling of the Chambers. It could no longer be said that the King intended to dissolve the Chambers, and thus save the Ministers from the inconvenience of meeting the Representatives of the Nation. The question now was, what the Chambers would do, and what the Ministers, in case the Legislature should go so far as to insist on a change of Ministry as the condition of a vote of supplies. Meanwhile, after six months of inactive irresolution, of almost absolute quiescence, of timid, fearful movement in the mere vicious circles of bureaucratic formality, the Ministers had really ventured to do something, to take a step in of fice of some kind. As to the internal affairs of the Kingdom they had gone so far as to conclude to

face the Chambers; and they even made a couple of moves in relation to external affairs.

The wise rulers of Europe, who had crushed the power of the Sublime Porte by mere inadvertence, and called into being a Republic on the shores of the Mediterranean by mistake, were sorely puzzled to decide how to retrace their steps with becoming solemnity and gravity, so as not to encounter too much reproval from an injured fellowking, nor too much ridicule from scoffing and irreverent liberals. Among other ingenious manoeuvres to this affect, they were now busy in selecting some unprovided member of the royal clique, to be imposed upon Greece, with as little consideration for the wishes of the interested parties, as they had formerly shown in subjecting Genoa to the King of Sardinia, Belgium to William of Nassau, or France to the Bourbons. The fact at length became known, that the choice of the Allies had fallen upon Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg, and was made the subject matter of most vehement declamation against M. de Polignac, in consequence of the relation Leopold stood in as to Great Britain. All that had been said at first against Polignac, as being under English influence, as being the tool of Wellington, and so forth, was now renewed with tenfold fury. What, said they; did the French fight the battle of Navarino, did they expend their blood and treasure in driving Ibrahim from the Morea, that the son-in-law of George IV., uncle and nearest male relation of the Princess Vic

toria, the dependent pensioner of England, should be King of Greece? It seemed to their excited minds incontrovertible proof of the subservience of the Prince de Polignac to the ambitious views of Great Britain, and continued to be the subject of angry discussion, until other more deeply interesting topics came to supply its place.

The Ministers had now begun in earnest to set about an expedition against the Dey of Algiers, with whom France had long been at issue, without taking any very decided measures to bring the controversy to a close. Had they undertaken the expedition in good faith, and with singleness of heart, solely for the vindication of the honor of France, it might have been serviceable to the reputation of themselves and their master. But they had been so baited by the liberal party, that they could undertake nothing, they could think of nothing, except as it bore upon the question of their ministerial popularity, and the success of their conspiracy against the Charter. Therefore, instead of going to war with Algiers in order to punish a violent horde of pirates, as England had done not long before; instead of going to war in Africa to make a rich and valuable conquest, as England was doing every few years in Asia; instead of pursuing either of these objects, M. de Polignac entered upon war as an electioneering manœuvre, hoping to divert public attention from his domestic plans by giving it new occupation abroad and to strengthen himself in the public favor, by providing food

to gratify the passion for military glory, which so generally prevails in France. But, detecting and exposing his purpose with their customary readiness and address, the liberal party converted even this far fetched scheme of popularity into an additional ground of public condemnation and disgrace.

Events now began to assume that rapid march, which had been so long preparing by the discussions and agitations, whereof we have thus far been occupied in giving an account. The Legislature met at the appointed time; and the remarkable part it performed may warrant some details as to the parties which composed it, and the prominent men in each party. While every one knew familiarly the general division of each Chamber, attentive observers could go further, and single out fractions of the several great parties, sometimes almost as hostile to each other, as the primary parties themselves. Beginning with the Chamber of Deputies as the popular and elective branch, we shall then add a few words concerning the Chamber of Peers. Conspicuous in the Chamber as the professed friends of the crown was the Contre-Opposition, the administration party, that is, commonly known from their local position as the Right. In this section you might see some, who, independent royalists, having come to the Chambers with sentiments rather unfavorable to the constitutional system, had learned to admit the necessity of it for the safety of the throne, as well as for the tranquillity of France. These men formed a valuable ingredient

of the Chamber. They were They were constitutionalists in good faith, always inclining, nevertheless, to strengthen the royal prerogative. They spoke a constitutional language, respected the Charter, and had resigned themselves to follow its forms, without seeking to infringe or nullify it. In the same general division were men, who, feeling as if the great question still was between Royalty and the Revolution, were disposed to sustain the Government in its political weakness, but who, guided by conscientious motives,stood ready to repulse all jesuitical influence, and to demand economy in the public expenditures and a proper consideration of the public welfare. There, also, it is certain, were some men whose whole souls were given up to the contre révolution in its purity and simplicity, who had reproached all past administrations for not rushing fast enough in a retrograde career, who hailed with joy the advent of Ministers after their own heart, and whose only fear was lest a lingering scruple of timidity or indecision, should so check the liberticide dispositions of M. de Polignac, as to save the Charter yet a little while. And associated with these last were some few fanatical congréganistes, urging the Government to give free scope and career to the movements of the Jesuits. Such were the Contre-Opposition.

From the very commencement, a large third of the Chamber had consisted of the old and constant friends of liberty, headed by the men who had ever been true to France. We may be sure their

numbers had not diminished under the conceding ministry of Martignac, nor their zeal under the non-conceding ministry of Polignac. These Deputies, strong by their talents still more than by their numbers, might be regarded as the type of a true national representation. You saw there the choice spirits of France; illustrations of every class; the delegation of the genuine interests of the Nation; les glories of the army, of science, of literature, of philosophy, of the bar; the eminent names among the great landholders, the capitalists, and the manufacturers; the old celebritys of the year '89 and the new one since aggregated to their noble phalanx. Whatever shades of division might exist among these soldiers of the Charter, however they might individually desire to infuse more or less of liberty into the institutions of their country, they were fimly united in one thing, and that was, determined hostility to the Polignac Ministry, their measures, principles and intentions.

Neutrality and moderation in politics, however patriotic the motive of the individual professing these qualities may be, are never held in high favor in a great national crisis. Neutrality is apt to be considered the retreat of timeserving men, who have not independence enough to throw themselves frankly into the ranks of any decided party. Unquestionably, however, the right and left Centres of the Chamber contained many worthy men, who could not be accused either of timidity or of calculation in assuming a