ions which then pervaded France. It appeared little better than mockery to speak of the love' which the French had always shown for their Kings,' in sight of the half finished monument of the Place Louis Quinze, where the statue of Liberty stood within the memory of all men, and where Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and Madame Elizabeth perished on the scaffold. It was a compliment to the French no less equivocal, for a Bourbon to pretend a 'just confidence' in them, when they had seized on all occasions to inspire that family with well founded distrust, by killing four of its males within forty years, and only tolerating the residue from dire necessity. And to talk of the 'sacred rights' of a throne, which was, by the confession of the Ministers themselves, already shaken to its foundations by the assaults of revolutionary violence; to propose to place the public liberties' under the safeguard of its crumbling fabric; and complacently to hold up the liberties of the People in contrast with the rights of royalty: all this would have been injudicious at any time, but at the present conjuncture was unspeakably ridiculous. It was, however, the denunciation of theperfidious insinuations,' of the malevolence' and of the

a decided majority of the Deputies, proposed an Address in reply to the Speech, expressive of their determined purpose. The debates in the French Chamber have always been prone to assume considerable vivacity of manner; but never, since the Restoration, had an occasion arisen, in which the greatness of the stake could better have sanctioned the most earnest appeals of parliamentary eloquence. The royalists, conscious as they must have been of the probable issue, did not abate one jot of their confidence in language. They pretended the Charter was a mere gift of royalty, not a consequence or effect of the Revolution; nay, that it was a voluntary and an unexpected gift. All France, said M. de Conny, is counter-revolutionary, and now asks nothing of the Ministers, but that they shall consolidate the Restoration, combat and destroy the spirit of faction, unite the elements of an aristocratic power, and restore to the Departments their moral life of which they have been deprived. M. Guernon de Ranville contended, that the attack of the Chamber on the royal prerogative exerted in the appointment of his Ministers, was an act of intolerable usurpation and antimonarchical tyranny. But the comfortable assurances of M. de Sainte-Marine were the most edifying. The great majority of the population,' said he,' the third party between the liberal faction and the Cabinet, consisting of thirtytwo millions of Frenchmen, enjoys the present, confides in the future, loves what exists, is fearful

of changes, and knows that a progressive system is a change, as well as a retrograde system. They cherish their King, they love to be governed by him, they repose confidence in his wisdom, and his love for his People. They wait for the acts of the ministers; and as the only thing that they now know is, that the King has chosen them, his choice is a presumption in their favor, and not a reason for their condemnation.' It is impossible, in any period of history, to find arrogant pretensions more strikingly contrasted with the real state of the facts.

At length the Address was carried against the Ministers, by a vote of two hundred and twentyone to one hundred and eightyone, and concluded thus:

'Sire, the Charter, which we owe to the wisdom of your august predecessor, and the benefits of which your majesty is firmly resolved to consolidate, consecrates as a right the intervention of the country in the discussion of the public interests. This intervention must be, it is in fact, indirect, wisely measured, circumscribed within limits exactly traced, and which we shall never suffer to be passed; but it is positive in its result, for it makes the permanent agreement of the political views of your Government with the wishes of your People an indispensable condition of the regular conduct of public affairs. Sire, our loyalty, our devotedness, condemn us to say that this agreement does not exist.

'An anxious distrust of the sentiments and reason of France is

now the fundamental idea of the administration. It afflicts your

People, because it insults them ; it excites their apprehension because it threatens their liberties.

This distrust cannot approach your noble heart. No, Sire, France no more desires anarchy than you desire despotism. She deserves your faith in her loyalty, as she reposes faith in your promises.

'Between those, who misunderstand a nation so calm, so faithful,

and us, who, with a profound conviction, come to confide to your bosom the sorrows of a People jealous of the esteem and confidence of their King, let the wisdom of your majesty pronounce. Your royal prerogatives have placed in your hands the means of securing between the powers of the State that constitutional harmony, which is the first and necessary condition of the strength of the throne, and of the grandeur of France.'

This Address by no means expressed, in all its parts, the concurring sentiments of all those who voted for its adoption. Many of them were avowed Republicans, who neither entertained that respect for the Monarch personally, nor for monarchy in the abstract, which is put forward in the Address. But such men felt willing to overlook expressions of that kind, and to adopt the whole as a measure of opposition. Had the King been capable, at this time or at any other, of calculating his own position and rightly estimating the disposition of the country, he might undoubtedly have saved

his throne for a while, and perhaps transmitted it peaceably to the Dauphin, by making the concessions, which the temper of the times demanded at his hands. A change of Ministers, a frank and sincere committing of himself to such projects of public improve ment as the liberal party proposed, might have left him the popular King of a great nation, if it deprived him of the dubious honors of being the chief of an aristocratical faction. But with the infatuation of another James II., he rushed headlong on to his destruction, in spite of the warning voice of wisdom and experience. He immediately communicated to the Deputies his fixed resolution to persist in sustaining the Ministers, and ordered the prorogation of the Chambers to the 1st of September: it being well understood that he intended soon to order a dissolution, thus taking the chances of a new election, or at least procrastinating the contemplated blow at the Charter.

Charles X. was now at war with France. The nation had declared, in every form wherein such a resolution could be impressed upon the King, that his Government should not go on so long as the present Ministers remained in office; and he had as resolutely declared that he would on no condition relinquish his Ministers. An appeal to arms must even then have been foreseen as the probable, nay, almost the necessary issue of such a contention. But the provisions of the last Budget would enable the

Government to continue in being until the next September, without the aid of a new vote of supplies for the interim, at least so far as to meet the ordinary expenses of the State. It is true that the expedition against Algiers required the concurrence of the Chambers; but the Ministers calculated, wisely enough perhaps, that if they carried their main object, of overturning the Charter, they should have no difficulty in disposing of the objections to any slight irregularity in the plan of the Algerine war. In the grand effort they were making to abridge the liberties of the people, they must, of course, either succeed or fail; there was no middle result. If they succeeded, the power would be in their hands, and all would go smoothly: if they failed, the trifling crime of neglecting one of the forms of law would be swallowed up in the monstrous one of attempting to alter the constitution of government. Until the month of September, therefore, they could avert the final crisis, which they dreaded to meet, as much as they desired it should take place; and thus much time remained to them for essaying the force of intrigue, manœuvre, and corruption, and maturing their plans of eventually entering upon civil war with the prospect of victory.

During the whole period which elapsed before the downfal of the dynasty, the Kingdom was agitated to its very centre by the progress of the expedition against Algiers and the course of the elections for a new Chamber. But

disscussions of the actual predicament of the Ministers, and of the complexion assumed by this great political question since the presentation of the Address, were not the less unremittedly pursued in the public journals. The same question had arisen in England, it will be remembered, in the reign of George III.,when Mr Pitt was appointed to office against the voice of a majority of the House of Commons. Notwithstanding the vote of the House demanding his removal, the King adhered firmly to the selection he had made, and treated it as a matter narrowly affecting his prerogative, in the same way as Charles X. regarded it in like circumstances. Mr Pitt also maintained his ground by fair argument, until the sentiment of the Nation was with him, and then, and not till then, advised a dissolution, and the return of a new House of Commons. If Polignac had intended or desired to govern wisely and to the public satisfaction in the sense of the Charter, he might have adopted the same course not without some hope of success.

But unfortu

nately for him, his object was to revolutionize the Government; or, as M. de Conny would phrase it, consolidate the Restoration; and of course he could not stand upon the Charter, and by moderation and prudence in the conduct of public affairs give the lie to the prediction of the liberals, and thus secure the support of the Nation.

But while M. de Polignac could, undeniably, find such a precedent as the remarkable one of Mr Pitt, to sanction his con

tinuance in office in spite of an adverse vote of the elective branch of the Legislature; and if his purposes had been constitutional and fair like Mr Pitt's, might have ventured to repeat the experiment; yet even in the latter case such a course would have been wholly indefensible, considering the question as one for a patriotic Minister to decide, with reference to the welfare of his King and his country. It was mere madness to stake the existence of the Monarchy itself upon a metaphysical abstraction, a point of transcendental right, not worthy to be weighed an instant of time in the balance with the exigencies of the public service. For, to recur once more to the example of England, whose constitution M. de Polignac said was the study of his life, how often has it happened there that Ministers had resigned because they had lost the confidence of Parliament : how often have Kings retained in, or appointed to, office, some individuals unacceptable to themselves because he possessed the confidence of Parliament. It is, in fact, the experience of every day.

True, the King by his pre rogative, has the right to select such Ministers as he sees fit, and those Ministers may remain in office, whether they are agreeable to Parliament or not. But, on the other hand, Parliament has just as good an extreme right to reject all the propositions of the Ministers, whether relating to money matters or anything else. The objection to such a procedure, on the part of either, is that

the country suffers meanwhile. And with just as much reason as Charles alleged that, to vote against his Ministers as such, was an attack on his prerogative in their appointment, with the same propriety might the Chambers allege that, in demanding of them a vote of supplies whether they had confidence in the Ministers or not, the King was invading their privilege by the Charter. As a question of abstract right, therefore, it was absurd for the King to assume the ground he did; because it should have been considered and decided as a question of public good and of political expediency. Both parties had a right to insist, and each had certainly as good a right to recede. By refusing to yield, the King embarrassed the public business and filled the country with contention, discord, and civil war; by gracefully yielding he would have prevented all this injury to the country, and would have preserved the throne to himself, instead of throwing it away upon an idle punctilio of personal pride.

We stated, in mentioning the prorogation of the Chambers, that the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies was expected soon to follow. In anticipation of this event, the liberal party had been busy in preparing for a desperate contest. The Ministers appeared to think that the imposing spectacle of the preparations against Algiers was enough to conciliate for them the good will of the electors; and on the 17th of May an ordinance was published dissolving the present Cham

6

bers, ordering the meeting of the Electoral Colleges for the 23d of June and the 3d of July, and that of the two Chambers on the Sd of August. From this time to the conclusion of the elections,' says Dr Lardner's valuable Retrospect, a scene of political activity, and paroxysms of political energy, were exhibited, which are seldom witnessed even in times of revolution. The names of the two hundred and twentyone, who voted the hostile Address, had been published. Their courage and constitutional principles had been applauded to the skies for two months in almost every journal in the Kingdom; and their re-election was now called for, not only as a reward for their patriotism, but as a defiance of their enemies. Manuals of the electoral laws were printed by a liberal association in all the liberal papers, and purposely scattered among all the electors of the Provinces. The Committee for managing the elections in Paris sent around their lists of candidates for all the Electoral Colleges. Committees were also formed in every Department or Electoral District, to watch the proceedings of the Prefects and other agents of Government, to examine the lists of electors, to restore the names of persons who had a right to vote, to detect fraud or imposition in those who had not, and to prosecute before the tribunals all infractions of the electoral laws by the aid or through the connivance of the administration. The Ministry, on their side, were equally active, but their efforts