your unhappy kinsman in his prison? If so, you shall have permission to do so."

There was a certain significance in the tone in which this proposition was made, that conveyed more than the words implied, and after the supplicants had conferred a moment together, the Prince de Montmorency said:

"The Maréchal d'Isinghien and myself will avail ourselves of your highness's permission to visit the prisoner."

"You will do well," rejoined the Regent. "Perhaps you may be able to reconcile him to his doom."

"We will try," said Montmorency.

And bowing profoundly, the whole party took their departure. As soon as they were gone, Nocé, who had been standing at the back of the cabinet, came forward.

"Your highness has displayed more firmness than I expected,” he remarked.

"I cannot commute De Horn's sentence," replied the Regent. "I would rather displease the nobles than the people. I gave Montmorency a hint, and I hope he will act upon it."

"I am sure he will," said Nocé. "But I doubt whether De Horn has the courage to save himself from this ignominious death. Your highness must admit I am a good physiognomist. I foretold that this young man would come to a violent end."

"I begin to think your prediction will be fulfilled,” replied the Regent.

THE PROJECTED FUSION OF LEGITIMACY AND

IMPERIALISM.*

THE great boast of the existing government in France is that it has restored tranquillity to a country disturbed by revolutions, and its great ambition is to permanently establish the dynasty which has been enabled to bring about so happy a state of things. Thoughtful minds have, however, been often asking themselves if it is necessary to attain that object, or, indeed, if the prospects of such an eventuality will not be seriously jeopardised by incessant hostility against an opinion whose pride it is to represent in the same country the respect for the memory of all that is great in the history of France, up to the advent of the first Napoleon, and a faithful regard for the secular laws of the country.

There is no doubt that there has been much in the attitude assumed by the Legitimists which has been calculated to engender hostile feelings. A reserve, tinged at times with contempt, in which many who are worthy of holding high offices in the State have held themselves, refusals to take the oath of allegiance, and abstention from electoral contests, have all contributed to hurt the vanity of an authority which looks upon itself as one of the permanent institutions of the country.

But, on the other hand, it has been pertinently asked whether in the light of the general interests of society, nay, even of the interests of the government itself, these inconveniences are not more than compensated for by the moral force which the simple fact of the existence of a Legitimist party imparts to the cause of order? A country in which the monarchy has realised so many great things would surely be pitied had it left neither reminiscences or adherents. It would, indeed, be a most afflicting spectacle if the proscribed inheritors of the sovereignty of olden times had not still some devoted and faithful hearts in the country created by their fathers. What hopes could the founder of a new dynasty, even if animated by the most generous intentions, base upon a people among whom the most brilliant services should be so easily forgotten? The ingratitude insisted upon towards all the traditions of the past might be extended in a similar manner to the present, the more so, indeed, as the present has not the traditions of the past to fall back upon.

The Legitimist party represents a great element of social Conservatism, the basis of which is that an hereditary authority and the inviolability of the law of succession is an essential condition of government. The moment that a new dynasty wishes to confirm itself in power by hereditary succession, it is attempting to establish its rights upon the principles of legitimacy. Yet there cannot be two parties legitimateeither the old or the new must be an imposture, and public opinion will of itself always decide clearly and distinctly which is in the right. A government may be accepted for the time being as the representative of order, and the uncertainties that envelop the future may necessitate that that condition of order should not be imprudently disturbed; and yet the * L'Empire et les Légitimistes. Par Charles Muller.

VOL. LVI.

principle upon which all durable and real government should be founded may not be lost sight of, not only by the adherents to a traditional state of things, but by the masses themselves. When this is the case, all the probabilities are that this dormant sense of justice and right must inevitably some day or other surge to the surface.

We see the Church in the present day obtaining possession of a vast proportion of the landed property of France. This, in the day of trial, will superadd another influence to the moral and religious means always at its disposal. A long period of quiet is gradually placing the majority of civil employments in the hands of Legitimists-for the time being simple supporters of order. The greater number of men in arms may be Imperialist or Republican, or anything, but there are many names in the service, especially among its chiefs, that are historical in France, and history points to only one conclusion. Attempts may be made to counterbalance such a party by raising up soldiers of fortune, or by resuscitating historical titles among those in whom the blood of the Montmorencys, or other antique families, does not flow; but with a nation essentially chivalrous, such alternatives can have no influence beyond the uneducated populations of cities. In the country, or among the educated classes of towns and cities, they cannot be objected to, but they are not accepted for a moment.

Here is a new dynasty founded by the national will. Is it, it has been asked, everything for that dynasty to have been proclaimed once, or even twice or thrice, by millions of voices? Called upon in our revolutionary times to pronounce upon the question of the form of government, the French people have never hesitated to condemn the republican theory or to repudiate the sovereign right which has been attributed to it of periodically electing its chief. Nor, it has been said, would the guarantee of security, which it sought to obtain by re-establishing the Imperial dynasty, have found itself realised if it were admitted that the order of succession regulated by the Imperial constitution could be put to the question by a new scrutiny. Yet by what possible logic can a dynasty elected by the sovereignty of the people claim to perpetuate itself by usurping the privileges of legitimacy, and disregarding those principles by which it was elected? The people are taught that, for a certain purpose, they have sovereign rights. They exercise these to ensure an election, but having once exercised them, like the insect that loves and dies, they must abrogate them for those very fundamental laws which they trampled upon when exercising their short-lived sovereignty. An emperor, it may be said, is a being of a different order to a president, and, having been elected, he can establish a principle of legitimacy. At all events, he surrounds himself with ministerial, legislative, and military adherents to strengthen himself in such a line of proceeding, while the people are not blind to the fact that they have gained nothing by their quondam sovereignty but the power to elect a ruler, who adopts, for the benefit of his dynasty, those very principles of hereditary succession which they were called upon to ignore on the occasion of his election.

Hence arise the attempts made in recent times to prove that the interests of Legitimacy and of Imperialism are identical. M. Muller, who is one of the advanced guard of this impracticable order of ideas, says: "Heaven refused the joy of posterity to the grandson of Charles X., and

govern

the attitude assumed by the House of Orleans has been the cause that in the eyes of an immense number of Legitimists, the Count of Chambord is in the present day the only and last personification of the old right of the Capetians. It appears to me so much the more easy for the ment of Napoleon III. to admit and to respect this fidelity, preserved, as a matter of honour, for a dynasty of eight centuries duration, as he has not to reproach himself with having torn the crown from the head of a royal infant, to whom a double abdication had left, in 1830, the inheritance of the ancient monarchy. The throne usurped by Louis Philippe, and overthrown eighteen years afterwards by a demagogic revolution, was abandoned when the people raised it up again in favour of the nephew of Napoleon I. Between the Legitimists and the Empire there exist, then, none of those causes of radical dissent, none of those reasons for a persistent and passionate animosity, which notwithstanding all attempts at fusion, and notwithstanding the generous forgiveness so often proffered by the elder to the younger branch of the Bourbons, establish an impassable gulf between the Legitimists and the Orleanists; and so far from being an obstacle to the accomplishment of the destinies of the Napoleon dynasty, the Legitimist party may become one day the firmest support of the new monarchy."

M. Muller is manifestly a traitor in the camp. We do not know who or what he is, but we can picture to ourselves some wealthy manufacturer, ashamed to disavow his perchance traditional Legitimist tendencies; or, if acquired, his avowed Legitimist opinions; aware also that similar opinions are entertained by the majority of the landed proprietors, where such are not the "gentlemen" of the day, as also by the great industrials of the land; yet desirous for some easily divined reasons to conciliate the powers that be, and in order to effect this, conjuring up a possible fusion of Legitimacy with Imperialism! It is easy in doing this to sacrifice the elder branch, which has no issue; but laying aside the peculiar political position of the younger branch, has it no history, and what becomes of the principles of legitimacy, if its claims are to be passed over for those of the offspring of the new dynasty?

True Legitimists know perfectly well that the two alternatives thus attempted to be reconciled are separated by a vast abyss, and that the principles of each are so opposed that the future depends on the triumph or defeat of one or the other. But the partisans of a patched up and impossible conciliation of interests and principles declare that the Legitimist element does not exist in the Senate, in the legislative body, in the general councils, in the mayoralties and the prefectures, in such proportions as to be any way hostile to the empire, and that the empire is not surrounded by a crowd of friends and servants who are only too ready to betray it, in pure abhorrence of the principles of '89, of which it is the expression. Why allude then to the possibility of the existence of such a state of things at all? Qui s'excuse, s'accuse; and for a pretended Legitimist to discuss the amount of Legitimist hostility in the highest positions of the State, is to admit that it exists there, and wears even a threatening aspect.

It has been further said by the advocates of a fusion, that the distinction attempted to be established between the Orleanists, who vindicate the reforms accomplished by the revolution, and the Legitimists of the old

régime has no real basis. If so, why abandon the younger branch as the legitimate representatives of young France, in order to conciliate the retrograde party with Imperialism?

It would be just as fair, it is argued, to suppose that the opinions of the Republicans are represented by the eccentricities of a Proudhon or a Pierre Leroux, as to suppose that the Legitimists of the old régime desire to return to the practices of the middle ages. There is not a party in France that protests in the present day against the principles of common rights, against the ideas of civil and political equality, which are the basis of the new social organisation; there is no party that would advocate the re-establishment of privileged classes, the restoration of tithes, and other feudal impositions; nor is there a party which would dream of contesting liberty of worship, the right of all Frenchmen to civil employments, the necessity of a national representation to vote taxation, and the obligation on the part of the chief of the state, whatever may be his name or origin, to conform himself to the laws of the country.

If it were attempted to reconstruct society on its old bases, the materials for such a reconstruction could no longer be found. The old nobility preserves, and will long preserve in its social relations, in its salons, in its marriages, the prestige which in all times and all countries has attached itself to old families, but its importance and its pretensions will, for the future, we are told, never go beyond that! The families entitled to the particle "de" before their names are swamped by the new "gentlemen," who are by no means anxious that minute inquiries should be made into their rights of using the said particle. This may be so far true, but it is at once illogical and absurd to argue that because modern legitimacy is not retrogressive, that its principles will admit of a fusion. with a government which, based on the sovereignty of the people, attempts to override that sovereignty on legitimate principles, or that the true French "gentlemen" can preserve their relations and popular prestige, and yet have neither moral, social, or political influence. To attempt to re-establish the old order of things in France by any legitimate dynasty, as they existed before '89, would be to re-enact the parallels of the second Charles and James in this country. None but an emperor or a dictator could afford even to make the attempt, and hence it is that the educated portion of the French are at this moment perfectly aware that their liberties would be more secure under a constitutional monarchy than they are under an irresponsible Imperialism. Such is undoubtedly the conviction of all who can look around them, read, or think, and when that conviction shall assume a practical form, has become a mere question of time. If it pleases the existing government to break with its alliances, to betray its friends, as the Orleanists did on the occasion of the Spanish marriages the most fatal error committed by an astute old diplomatistafterwards Mr. Smith, of Newhaven-to act with total disregard of candour and good faith, and thereby forfeit the reliance and respect of those who have hitherto placed confidence in him, the day may be considerably hastened, as it has happened before under similar circum

stances.

The present difficulties of Europe may be clearly defined to have their origin solely in the struggle that is going on between the claims of the people for constitutional rule, and the attempts made by existing rulers