present purpose has been to show how, after the mad intemperance of the revolution had settled down into repose, the patience of the French was worn out by tyranny, and how natural it was for a nation in which public opinion had lost its influence, but in which public spirit had not died away along with it, to feel great dissatisfaction with its ruler and to display it on the first occasion without thinking of the consequences which might follow. The choice between domestic despotism and the chance of foreign servitude is so cruel an option-and for a people who had made such enormous sacrifices too for liberty as the French had done, to find themselves in this dreadful predicament, was exactly calculated I think to produce that numbness of patriotism which appeared in this country on the invasion of the allies,

LETTER XII.

Paris, March 25th, 1820.

MY DEAR SIR,

The character of the imperial government, which I sketched in my last letter, was such, I apprehend, as might justify the conclusion, that the French had no very strong reason to believe its continuance necessary to secure to them the possession of their property, or the enjoyments of social life. So long as Napoleon gratified their exorbitant vanity by conquest, they were flattered into submission, and fancied they received a compensation for their sufferings. But when the vast coacervation of kingdoms, which he had gathered under his dominion, began to render his sceptre too cumbersome to be wielded with its former celerity; and when the protracted continuance of the Spanish war, by presenting the unusual spectacle of victory without conquest, exhausted the patience of the French, and set them to thinking on their actual condition, is it to be wondered at, that they exhibited some symptoms of fatigue? This they did do; and it was to relieve the public mind from the lassitude which the dullness of his career, after his marriage with Maria Louisa had occasioned, as well as to crush, by one gigantic effort, those remains of ancient Europe which offended the newness of his own royalty, that made the emperor resolve on the tremendous invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. No individual ever reached such an height of greatness as that which he occupied at that time; and among those who had observed the orb of his effulgent fortunes in its ascent to its meridian, none could have imagined its sudden fall from its immeasurable altitude. It is not, however, to the causes, but to the consequences of that rapid descent, that I wish to call your attention. The destruction of half a million of men, carried such grief and dismay into every family in France and its dependencies, that nothing but the

dread of the Emperor's power, combined with the redoubled vigilance and activity of his police, prevented the French nation from rising in rebellion during the ensuing winter, and destroying the imperial government, or limiting its tyranny. The conspiracy of Mallet (the success of which would have been a blessing to Europe) failed in consequence of those causes. Unfor tunately the disasters of the Russian campaign did not entirely destroy in France the imagined invincibleness of Napoleon. His overthrow was attributed to the inclemency of the season, rather than to the energy of the Russians. It was the doubtful results of the early conflicts of the campaign of 1815, that first encouraged the defection of his allies, and the defeat at Leipsic, after the desertion of the Saxons, only, that dissolved the phantom of terror by which he was governing Europe. The storm then came on too fast to admit of a conspiracy against his government at home, and a sympathy was excited in his favour by that eloquent appeal to the generous feelings of his subjects, in which he exclaimed, that he had raised up kings, and they had betrayed him—that he had created kingdoms and they had forsaken him; but that whilst supported by the French, he could never despair of victory.

Napoleon has been much censured for his obstinate adherence to what he considered the integrity of his empire; and it must be admitted, that a magnanimous attachment to France would have led him to submit to her retiring within her natural boundaries, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. But he had sworn to preserve the empire, and it is questionable whether he would have held his sceptre after a curtailment of his territories. After the Allies had conquered their own timidity, and ventured to cross the Rhine, it is sufficiently evident, that he considered it impossible for him to reign with honour to himself, or credit to the nation, without some brilliant achievement which might environ his throne with glory. There is no doubt, that if he had accepted the terms which were offered him at Chattillon, the murmurs of dissatisfaction with his tyranny would, in the repose of peace, have beaten very harshly indeed upon his ears. Those who think otherwise mistook the seeming for the real dispositions of the French at that time. The Emperor had tired them out. The element on which the ark of his power floated, was

the national vanity, and when that was no longer swollen by

success, the ark grounded. The efforts which the nation afterwards made to set it afloat, were inspired by patriotism rather than loyalty. It was the dread of national ruin-it was the shame of submission to foreigners, and not attachment to Napoleon, that opposed some resistance to the Allies between the Rhine and Paris. If he could have defeated those armies and chased them out of France, and been killed by the last ball they fired on the frontiers, the nation might have rejoiced, and Europe been the happier for it. The people of this country were then so heartily exhausted by civil commotion and foreign war, that a spontaneous acquiescence in the authority of young Napoleon would have followed the death of his father; and they were so tired of despotism, and the scheme of universal conquest, that their enthusiasm would have reverted into plans of internal improvement, and the star of civil liberty might have been substituted by them in lieu of that meteor of glory by which they had been so unhappily misled. Fate, however, decreed it otherwise. Napoleon, although playing the deepest game his masterly abilities ever planned, in acting offensively with his little army against a host of invaders on every side, forgot the absolute ascendancy of Paris over France. Whether he considered the march on the capital too desperate a resolution to be embraced by Blucher, as in reality it would have been, but for his interception of a despatch to the empress, communicating the impossibility of defending it; or whether he fancied the claims of the Bourbons entirely forgotten, and relied on his matrimonial connection with Austria, as a security for his sceptre; or whether he still counted on the vigorous support of the nation, I know not; but surely it was a great mistake as it turned out, to order the Empress to retire to Orleans, if Paris should prove untenable. He stood in need of a powerful mediator, whose blood and rank might have conciliated the regards, and appeased the resentments of his enemies; and if Maria Louisa had been a princess of tolerable spirit, she might by remaining in Paris have preserved him his crown. The resolution of dethroning him was not taken until a week after the surrender of Paris, and the flight of the empress to the Loire. The former event having speedily followed the latter, has led many to consider it as its necessary consequence. The terrible sufferings of the allies in the plains of St. Denis, and the ruin which would have

resulted to them from the failure of Blucher's last charge on Montmartre, heightened their apprehensions of the resistance of the French; so that it was only after the flight of the executive branch of the administration, and the disposition shown by the Senate to get rid of Napoleon, that the emperor of Russia, assembled on the night of the 5th of April, the members of the provisional government, to inquire into the dispositions of the French nation. Napoleon was then at the head of 50,000 men and 200 pieces of artillery at Fontainebleau; and if his former tyranny had not completely paralized the independent spirit of the French, he might have still triumphed over his enemies. But it was now too late--the loyalty and zeal of the nation were gone, and therefore in that hour of tremendous affliction, they exhibited the singular spectacle of neutrality! They were tired of Bonaparte-they cared nothing for the Bourbons, and were reconciled to taking these back, only because it nominally saved France from the odium of being conquered. The senate decreed the décheance of Napoleon; he sent a deputation of Mareshals to require as the condition of his abdication the establishment of the regency of Maria Louisa; she was absent; there was no one to support her in the councilTalleyrand broached the new doctrine of legitimacy; Dessolles recommended the recal of the Bourbons, and the emperor Alexander embraced that resolution.

It was said by Mr. Fox, in reflecting on the shameful servility, which followed the recal of the Stuarts, that a restoration is the most pernicious of all revolutions. So unquestionably it is, whenever, it is an act of spontaneous repentance for the imagined sin of rebellion, against the indefeisible right of a particular family. Such a revolution, not only gives a solemn sanction to past errours and abuses, but it justifies the exercise of all manner of tyranny, in order to prevent the recurrence of the like evils in future. But there is a vast difference, between the voluntary uncoerced invitation to a king, to return to the throne of his ancestors, and that equivocal assent to his return, which may be produced by the combined influence of displeasure at present misgovernment, and the pressure of foreign bayonets. When king Charles went back into England, the contentment was so general, that it seemed, says lord Clarendon, as if the whole kingdom had gathered to meet him, to give loud thanks to God for his presence, and