of St. Merri could have openly gained over to their side one regiment, and many only waited an example to join their colours, they would speedily have been in possession of the treasury, and the telegraph, and France was at their feet. No man knew this peculiarity in the political situation of the great nation better than Napoleon. He was little disquieted by the failure of the Russian campaign, till intelligence of the conspiracy of Mallet reached his ears; and that firmness which the loss of four hundred thousand men could not shake, was overturned by the news that the rebels in Paris had imprisoned the minister of police, and were within a hair's breadth of making themselves masters of the telegraph. tion of the National Guard from the Fauxbourg | metropolis. Having no root in the provinces St. Antoine, and other manufacturing districts being based on no great interests in the state of Paris, walked in regular military array, it depends entirely on the armed force of the keeping the step in that procession: no one capital-a well organized emeute, the defection could see them without being astonished how of a single regiment of guards, a few seditious the government survived the crisis. In truth, cries from the National Guard, the sight of a their existence hung by a thread;-for several favourite banner, a fortunate allusion to hearthours a feather would have cast the balance- stirring recollections, may at any moment conestablished a republican government, and sign it to destruction. If the insurgents of the plunged Europe in an interminable war. Till city of Paris can make themselves masters of six o'clock in the evening the insurgents were the Hotel de Ville, France is more than half continually advancing; and, at that hour, they conquered; if their forces are advanced to the had made themselves masters of about one- Marché des Innocens, the throne is in greater half of Paris, including the whole district to danger than if the Rhine had been crossed by the eastward of a line drawn from the Port two hundred thousand men: but if their flag St. Martin through the Hotel de Ville to the is hoisted on the Tuileries, the day is won, and Pantheon. At the first alarm the government France, with its eighty-four departments and surrounded the Fauxbourg St. Antoine with thirty-two millions of inhabitants, is at the troops, and would have perished, but for the disposal of the victorious faction. If the rebels fortunate cutting off of that great revolution-who sold their lives so dearly in the cloister ary quarter from the scene of active preparations. Though deprived of the expected co-operation in that district, however, the insurgents bravely maintained the combat; they entrenched themselves in the neighbourhood of the cloister of St. Merri, and among the narrow streets of that densely peopled quarter, maintained a doubtful struggle. The ministers, in alarm, sent for the king, with intelligence that his crown was at stake: above sixty thousand men, with an immense train of artillery, were brought to the spot; but still the issue seemed suspended. The National Guard of the city, for the most part, hung | back; the cries of others were openly in favour of the insurgents; if a single battalion, either of the line or the National Guard, at It is not surprising that Paris should have that crisis had openly joined the rebels, all acquired this unbridled sovereignty over the was lost. In this extremity a singular circum- rest of the country, if the condition in which stance changed the fortune of the day, and the provinces have been left by the Revolution fixed his tottering crown on the head of Louis is considered. You travel through one of the Philippe. The little farmers round Paris, who | departments—not a gentleman's house or a live by sending their milk and vegetables to chateau is to be seen. As far as the eye can the capital, found their business suspended by reach, the country is covered with sheets of the contest which was raging in the centre grain, or slopes covered with vines or vegeof the city, where the markets for their pro- tables, raised by the peasants who inhabit the duce are held; their stalls and paniers were villages, situated at the distance of a few miles seized by the rebels, and run up into barri- from each other. Does this immense expanse cades. Enraged at this invasion of their pro- belong to noblemen, gentlemen, or opulent perty and stoppage of their business, these proprietors capable of taking the lead in any little dealers joined their respective banners, common measures for the defence of the public and hastened with the National Guard of the liberties? On the contrary, it is partitioned Banlieue to the scene of action: they were out among an immense body of little proprieplentifully supplied with wine and spirits on tors, the great majority of whom are in a state the outside of the barrier; and before the ex- of extreme poverty, and who are chained to citation had subsided, were hurried over the the plough by the most imperious of all barricades, and determined the conflict. In its laws that of absolute necessity. Morning, last extremity the crown of Louis Philippe noon, and night, they are to be seen labouring was saved, neither by his boasted guards, nor in the fields, or returning weary and spent to the civic force of the metropolis, but the anger their humble homes. Is it possible from such of a body of hucksters, gardeners, and milk-a class to expect any combined effort in favour dealers, roused by the suspension of their humble occupations. of the emancipation of the provinces from the despotism of the capital? The thing is utterIt is this peculiarity in the situation of the ly impossible: as well might you look for an French government which renders it neces-organized struggle for freedom among the sary to watch the state of parties in Paris serfs of Russia or the ryots of Hindostan. with such intense anxiety, and renders the A certain intermixture of peasant 'proprie strife in its streets the signal for peace or war tors is essential to the well-being of society; all over the civilized world. The government and the want of such a class to a larger extent of France, despotic as it is over the remainder in England, is one of the circumstances most of the country, is entirely at the mercy of the to be lamented in its social condition. But of humble and needy constituents would in the end have found themselves overshadowed by the splendour of the court, the power of the metropolis, or the force of the army. In periods of agitation, when the public mind is in a ferment, and the chief powers of the state pulled in one direction, they would have been irresistible; but in times of tranquillity, when the voice of passion was silent, and that of interest constantly heard, they would have certainly given way. What is required in the representatives of the people, is a permanent resistance at all times to the various dangers which threaten the public freedom; in periods of democratic agitation, a firm resistance to precipitate innovation; in times of pacific enjoyment, a steady disregard of government there is a medium in all things. As much as the total want of little landowners is a serious evil, so much is the total want of any other class to be deprecated. In the time of the Duke de Gaeta, (1816,) that able statesman calculated that there were four millions of landed proprietors in France, and 14,000,000 of souls constituting their families, independent of the wages of labour.* At present the number is computed at twenty-five millions, and there are above ten millions of separate properties enrolled and rated for taxation in the government book. Generally speaking, they occupy the whole land in the country. Here and there an old chateau, still held by a remnant of the old noblesse, is to be seen; or a modern villa, inhabited in summer by an opulent banker from one of the great manu-seduction. Human nature is weak, and we facturing towns. But their number is too inconsiderable, they are too far separated from each other, to have any weight in the political scale. France is, in fact, a country of peasants, interspersed with a few great manufacturing towns, and ruled by a luxurious and corrupted capital. must not expect from any body of men, however constituted, a steady adherence to duty under such circumstances of varied trial and difficulty; but experience has proved, that it may be expected, with some probability, among an aristocratic body, because their interests are permanent, and equally endangered by Even the great manufacturing towns are each set of perils; but that it is utterly chimeriincapable of forming any counterpoise to the cal to look for it among the representatives of power of the capital. They are situated too a body of peasants or little proprietors, unfar from each other, they depend too complete- mingled with any considerable intermixture ly on orders from Paris, to be capable of of the higher classes of society. But the opposing any resistance to its authority. If Revolution has extinguished these classes in Rouen, Marseilles, Lyons, or Bourdeaux were France, and therefore it has not left the eleto attempt the struggle, the central governments out of which to frame a constitutional ment would quickly crush each singly, before monarchy. it could be aided by the other confederates. They tried to resist, under, the most favourable circumstances, in 1793, when the Convention were assailed by all the powers of Europe, when two-thirds of France joined their league, and the west was torn by the Vendean war, and totally failed. Any repetition of the at-in society the daily press is conducted in Engtempt is out of the question. These circumstances explain a fact singularly illustrative of the present state of parties in France, and the power to whom the ultimate appeal is made, viz. the eminent and illustrious persons by whom the daily press is conducted. Every one knows by what class land; it is in the hands of persons of great The representative system, the boast of ability, but in general of inferior grade in modern civilization, has been found by ex- society. If the leading political characters do perience to be incapable of affording any occasionally contribute an article, it is done remedy for this universal prostration of the under the veil of secrecy, and is seldom adprovinces. That system is admirably adapted mitted by the author, with whatever fame it for a country which contains a gradation of may have been attended. But in France the classes in society from the prince to the pea- case is quite the reverse. There the leading sant; but it must always fail where the in- political characters, the highest of the nobles, termediate classes are destroyed, and there the first men in the state, not only contribute exist only the government and the peasantry. regularly to the daily or periodical press, but Where this is the case, the latter body will avow and glory in their doing so. Not only always be found incapable of resisting the in- the leading literary characters, as Chateaufluence of the central authority. Who, in briand, Guizot, Thiers, and others, regularly every age, from the signing of Magna Charta, write for the daily press; but many of the have taken the lead in the support of English Peers of France conduct, or contribute to, the freedom? The barons, and great landed pro- public newspapers. The Gazette de France prietors, who possessed at once the resolution, and Quotidienne are supported by contribuinfluence, and power of combination, which tions from the royalist nobility; the Journal are indispensable to such an attempt. Even des Debats is conducted by a Peer of France. the Reform Bill, the last and greatest triumph So far from being considered as a discredit, or of democratic ambition, was forced through a thing to be concealed, these eminent men the legislature, by the aid of a large and opu- pride themselves on the influence they thus lent portion of the aristocracy. If the Revo- have on public opinion. The reason is oblution of 1642 or 1688 had destroyed this in-vious; they are the speakers before the real termediate body in the state, the representative system would speedily have fallen into contempt. The humble, needy representatives *Duc de Gaeta, ii. 334. National Assembly of France, the National Guard and armed force of Paris. Consideration and dignity will ever attend the persons whose exertions directly lead to the possession of political power. When, in the progress of democratic changes, the Reformed Parliament | vigour, and despotic authority, to which there. of England has sunk as low in public estima- has been nothing comparable since the days tion as the Chamber of Deputies in France, of Napoleon. The facility with which it overthe dukes and earls of England, if such a turned the great democratic revolt at the cloister class exist, will become the editors of news- of St. Merri, in June, 1832, and at Lyons in Nopapers, and pride themselves on the occupa-vember, 1831, both of which were greatly more. tion. formidable than that of the Three Days, is a sufficient proof of this assertion. The deeds of despotism, the rigorous acts of government, which are now in daily operation under the citizen king, could never have been attempted during the restoration. Charles X. declared Paris in a state of siege, and issued an edict against the liberty of the press; and in a few days, in consequence, he was precipitated from his throne: Marshal Soult declared Paris in a state of siege, and still more rigidly fettered the press; and the act of vigour confirmed instead of weakening his sovereign's authority, It is the daily complaint of the republican press, that the acts of government are now infinitely more rigorous than they have ever been since the fall of Napoleon, and that the nation under the restoration would never have tolerated the vexatious restraints which are now imposed upon its freedom. To give one or two examples from the newspapers lying before us. The taxation of France is extremely heavy, and has been increased to a most extraordinary degree since the Revolution of July. In a table below,* will be found a return of the budgets of the last ten years, lately published in Paris by authority of government. From this it appears that the expenditure of the last year of Charles X., was 950,000,000 francs, or about £39,000,000 sterling, while that of the first year of Louis Philippe, was above 1,500,000,000 francs, or £60,000,000. Thus, while the Three Glorious Days diminished every man's property by a third, it added to the national burdens by a half. Such are the blessings of democratic ascendency. The taxation of France has become an evil of the very greatest magnitude, and with every addition made to democratic power, it has become worse. The property-tax is thirteen per cent. on the annual value; but by the arbitrary and unfair way in which valuations are taken, it frequently amounts to twenty, sometimes to thirty per cent. on what is really received by the proprietor. Professional persons, whose income is fluctuating, pay an income-tax on a graduated scale; and the indirect taxes bring in about 500,000,000 francs, or £20,000,000 sterling. The direct taxes amount to about 350,000,000 francs, or £14,000,000 sterling; a much heavier burden than the income-tax was on England, for the national income of England is much greater than that of France. As the result of their democratic efforts, the French have fixed on themselves national burdens, nearly three times as heavy as those which were so much complained of in the time of Louis XVI.;t and greatly more oppressive than those which the revolutionary war has imposed on the English people. | Yesterday evening, twenty-eight persons, accused of seditious practices, were arrested and sent to prison by the agents of the police. Never did tyranny advance with such rapid strides as it is doing at the present time." Tribune, Aug. 20. "Yesterday night, eighteen more persons, accused of republican practices, were sent to prison. How long will the citizens of Paris permit a despotism to exist among them, to which there has been nothing comparable since the days of Napoleon ?"-Tribune, Aug. 21. "More barracks are in course of being erected in the neighbourhood of Graulle. If matters go on much longer at this rate, Paris will contain more soldiers than citizens." Tribune, Aug. 23. If Charles X. or Louis XVIII. had adventured upon the extraordinary steps of sending state prisoners by the hundred to the castle of mount St. Michael in Normandy, or erecting an additional prison of vast dimensions near Pêre la Chaise, to receive the overflowings of the other jails in Paris, maintaining forty or fifty thousand men constantly in garrison in the capital, or placing a girdle of fortified bastiles round its walls, the vehemence of the public clamour would either have rendered necessary the abandonment of the measures, or straight Nor is this all. In addition to this enormous increase of taxation, the Revolution of July has occasioned the sale of a very large portion of the royal domains. In every part of France the crown lands and forests have been alienated to a very great extent; and the words which so often meet a traveller's eyes, "Biens patrimoniaux de la Couronne à vendre," indicate too clearly how universally the ruthless hand of the spoiler has been laid on the remaining public estates of the realm. Notwithstanding this, however, the charac-way precipitated them from the throne. All ter of the French government has been essentially changed by the Revolution of the Barricades. It possesses now a degree of power, the parties now admit that France possessed as much real freedom as was consistent with public order under the Bourbons; there is not one which pretends that any of that liberty is still enjoyed. They are completely at variance, indeed, as to the necessity of its removal; republicans maintaining that an unnecessary and odious despotism has been established; the juste milieu, that a powerful government is the only remaining barrier between France and democratic anarchy, and, as such, is absolutely indispensable for the preservation of order; but all are agreed that the constitu tional freedom of the Restoration no longer | from the usurpation of the executive authority exists. An attentive observation of the present state of France is all that is requisite to show the causes of these apparently anomalous facts;of the tempered rule, limited authority, and constitutional sway of the Bourbons, in spite of the absolute frame of government which they received from Napoleon and the Revolution; and the despotic rigour and irresistible force of the present dynasty, notwithstanding the democratic transports which seated it upon the throne. Such a survey will, at the same time, throw a great and important light upon the final effect of the first Revolution on the cause of freedom, and go far to vindicate the government of that superintending wisdom, which, even in this world, compels vice to work out its own deserved and memorable punishment. The practical and efficient control upon the executive authority, in every state, is to be found in the jealousy of the middling and | lower orders of the rule of the higher, who are in possession of the reins of power. This is the force which really coerces the government in every state; it is to be found in the tumults of Constantinople, or the anarchy of Persia, as well as in the constitutional opposition of the British parliament. The representative system only gives a regular and constitutional channel to the restraining power, without which society might degenerate into the anarchy of Poland, or be disgraced by the strife of the Seraglio. As long as this jealousy remains entire among the people, and the fabric of government is sufficiently strong to resist its attacks on any of its necessary functions-as long as it is a drag on its movements, not the ruling power, the operations of the executive are subjected to a degree of restraint which constitutes a limited monarchy, and diffuses general freedom. This is the natural and healthful state of society; where the people, disqualified by their multitude and their habits from the task of government, fall into their proper sphere of observing and controlling its movements; and the aristocracy, disqualified by their limited number from the power of effectually controlling the executive, if possessed by the people, occupy their appropriate station in forming part of the government, and supporting the throne. The popular body is as unfit to govern the state, as the aristocracy is to defend its liberties against a democratic executive. History has many instances to exhibit, of liberty existing for ages with a senate holding the reins, and a populace checking its encroachments; it has not one to show of the same blessing being found under a democracy in possession of the executive, with the defence of public freedom intrusted to a displaced aristocracy. From the Revolution of 1688 to that of 1832, the annals of England presented the perfect specimen of public freedom flourishing under the first form of government; it remains to be seen whether it will subsist for any length of time under the second. Experience, accordingly, has demonstrated, what theory had long asserted, that the overthrow of the liberty of all free states has arisen by the democracy; and that, as long as the "Le leurre du despotisme qui commence est toujours," says Guizot, "d'offrir aux hommes les trompeurs avantages d'une honteuse egalité."* Had the first Revolution of France, like the great rebellion of England, merely passed over the state without uprooting all its institutions, and destroying every branch of its aristocracy, there can be little doubt that a constitutional monarchy might have been established in France, and possibly a hundred and forty years of liberty and happiness formed, as in Britain, the maturity of its national strength. But the total destruction of all these classes in the bloody convulsion, and the division of their estates among an innumerable host of little proprietors, rendered the formation of such a monarchy impossible, because one of the elements was awanting which is indispensable to its existence, and no counterpoise remained to the power of the democracy at one time, or of the executive at another. You might as well make gunpowder without sulphur, as rear up constitutional freedom without an hereditary aristocracy to coerce the people and restrain the throne. "A monarchy," says Bacon, "without an aristocracy, is ever an absclute despotism, for a nobility attempers somewhat the reverence for the line royal." "The Fevolution," says Napoleon, "left France absolutely without an aristocracy; and this rendered the formation of a mixed constitution impossible. The government had no lever to rest upon to * Guizot, Essais sur l'histoire de France 13. direct the people; it was compelled to navigate in a single element. The French Revolution has attempted a problem as insoluble as the direction of balloons!"* When Napoleon seized the helm, therefore, he had no alternative but to see revolutionary anarchy continue in the state, or coerce the people by a military despotism. He chose the latter; and under his firm and resolute government, France enjoyed a degree of prosperity and happiness unknown since the fall of the monarchy. Those who reproach him with departing from the principles of the Revolution, and rearing up a military throne by means of a scaffolding of democratic construction, would do well to show how he could otherwise have discharged the first of duties in governments, the giving protection and security to the people; how a mixed and tempered constitution could be established, when the violence of the people had totally destroyed their natural and hereditary rulers; and how the passions of a populace, long excited by the uncontrolled riot in power, were to be coerced by a senate composed of salaried dignitaries, destitute either of property or importance, and a body of ignoble deputies, hardly elevated, either in station or acquirements, above the citizens to whom they owed their election. restraint is ever most fervent, and from their energy that the firmest principles of freedom and the greatest excesses of democracy have equally arisen. But the younger generations of France were, to a degree unprecedented in modern times, mowed down by the revolu tionary wars. After seventeen years of more than ordinary consumption of human life, came the dreadful campaigns of 1812, 1813, and 1814; in the first of which, between Spain and Russia, not less than 700,000 men perished by the sword or sickness, while, in the two latter, the extraordinary levy of 1,200,000 men was almost entirely destroyed. By these prodigious efforts, France was literally exhausted; these copious bleedings reduced the body politic to a state of almost lethargic torpor; and, accordingly, neither the invasion and disasters of 1814, nor the return of Napoleon in 1815, could rouse the mass of the nation to any thing like a state of general excitement. During the first years of the Bourbons' reign, accordingly, they had to rule over a people whose fierce passions had been tamed by unprecedented misfortunes, and hot blood drained off by a merciless sword; and it was not till the course of time, and the ceaseless powers of population had in some degree repaired the void, that that general impatience and restlessness began to be manifested which arises from the difficulty of finding employment, and is the common precursor of political changes. The overthrow of Napoleon's power by the arms of Europe, for a time established a constitutional throne in France, and gave its inhabitants fifteen years of undeserved freedom | and happiness. But this freedom rested on an 2. The government of Napoleon, despotic unstable equilibrium; it had not struck its and unfettered in its original construction, roots into the substratum of society; it was after the 18th Brumaire, had become, in proliable to be overturned by the first shock of cess of time, the most arbitrary and powerful adverse fortune. As it was, however, it con- of any in Europe. Between the destruction tributed, in a most essential manner, to deceive of all ancient, provincial, and corporate authe world, to veil the irreparable conse-thorities, by the successive revolutionary asquences of the first convulsion,-and make semblies, and the complete centralization of mankind believe that it was possible, on the all the powers and influence of the state in the basis of irreligion, robbery, and murder, to government at Paris, which took place during rear up the fair fabric of regulated freedom. | his government, there was not a vestige of We have to thank the Revolution of the Bar-popular power left in France. The people ricades for drawing aside the veil,-for dis-had been accustomed, for fourteen years, to playing the consequences of national delinquency on future ages; and beneath the fair colours of the whited sepulchre, exhibiting the foul appearances of premature corruption and decay. What gave temporary freedom to France under the Restoration was the prodigious exhaustion of the democratic spirit by the calamities which attended the close of Napoleon's reign; the habits of submission to which his iron government had accustomed the people; the terror produced by the double conquest of Paris by the Allies, the insecure and obnoxious tenure by which the Bourbons held their authority, and the pacific character and personal weakness of that race of sovereigns themselves. 1. The exhaustion of France by the calamities which hurled Napoleon from the throne, undoubtedly had a most powerful effect in coercing for a time the fierce and turbulent passions of the people. It is in the young that the spirit of liberty and the impatience of * Napoleon's Memoirs. submit to the prefets, sous-prefets, mayors, adjoints, and other authorities appointed by the central government at Paris, and they had in a great degree lost the recollection of the intoxicating powers which they exercised during the Revolution. The habit of submission to an absolute government, which enforced its mandates by 800,000 soldiers, and had three hundred thousand civil offices ins gift, had in a great degree prepared the country for slavery. To the direction of this immense and strongly constructed machine the Bourbons. succeeded; and it went on for a number of years working of itself, without the people generally being conscious of the helm having passed from the firm and able grasp of Napoleon to the inexperienced and feeble hands of his legitimate successors. Louis XVIII., indeed, gave a charter to his subjects: "Vive la Charte" became the cry of the supporters of his throne: deputies were chosen, who met at Paris; a Chamber of Peers was established, and the forms of a constitutional monarchy prevailed. But it is not by conferring the forms of a limited monarchy that its spirit can |