Bourbons. He declared, by the mouth of his chancellor, two months after his return, that he held his crown "from God and his fathers only." The vanity of the monarch here wounded the pride of the people, and, said an eloquent Frenchman, “alors nos cœurs se sont reserrés." It was that declaration of the king which caused the French to think that the Bourbons had neither learned, nor unlearned, any thing from adversity.

Appearances, it is true, were at that time deceptive, even to wise and sagacious men. The apparent satisfaction of the French at the downfall of the conqueror; the unbounded elation of the royalists at the suddenness of their unexpected triumphi and the harmonious aspiration of all the nations after peace, seemed to justify the belief, that a political millenium was at hand, and that those who fancied themselves delegated by divine Providence to govern France, might safely do so after their own fashion. It was the confidence inspired by these circumstances, that led the king into some impolitic measures, and among others, the substitution of the white, for the tri-coloured or national flag and cockade. Symbols are of no use beyond the ideas they inspire; and as the tri-coloured flag was associated in the minds of the French, with what was most glorious in their history, it was an act of exceeding vanity to wound their pride by rejecting it. If the most gallant monarch France ever saw, sacrificed his religion to the opinion of his subjects, his descendant might have been surely justifiable in sacrificing the lily to the eagle. Yet it would have required almost superhuman abilities, to have acted with perfect propriety, in the situation in which Louis was placed; and it must be admitted, that few legitimate princes would have acted more discreetly.

There were then many good people in France, who shuddered at the name of liberty, because they regarded the revolu tion as a practical illustration of its effects, and who therefore exerted themselves to sway away the king's mind from the adoption of free principles. The flock of Emigrés were of course hostile to freedom, because they regarded it as the cause of their misfortunes. The imperial courtiers and the successful jacobins were covetous of retaining their disgraceful honours, and therefore combined with the emigrés in recommending the adoption of absolute government. The phrase legitimate king

in contradistinction to one by the will of the people, was luckily invented by Talleyrand who knowing the potent spell of a happy phrase in France, from having seen the nation successively mad after "liberty and equality," after a "republic, one and indivisible," and finally after "honour and glory," now fancied it would become equally enamoured of "legitimacy and Louis le desiré."

After the charter was established, there was nothing but a most religious observance of it, and an unrelenting effort to put the other institutions of the kingdom in harmony with it, that could have atoned for the ungracious manner in which it was given, or have calmed that painful inquietude, nay, contagious vivacity of apprehension for the future, which began to pervade all ranks of society. If the government, instead of causing the legisla ture to spend its time in the discussion of idle and unmeaning frivolities, had called its attention to the urgent necessities of the kingdom; to laws for the security of person, the liberty of the press, the independence of elections, the responsibility of ministers, the recruitment of the army, the trial by jury, the choice of municipal officers, &c.; if this, I say, had been the course heartily pursued by the government, the sparks of allegiance which existed every where, might have been fanned into a flame, the heat of which would have produced a fusion of all parties into one. But on the assembling of the Chambers in June, 1814, a party, headed by some ministers, and supported by the favorites of the palace, formed itself, and assumed the appellation of royalists, when no adversaries of royalty appeared. This faction entered a formal protest against the charter, as a violation of the imperishable rights of future kings, and did not disguise a wish to see it subverted. Secret societies were formed, says Count Lanjuinais, of nobles, priests, magistrates, and office-hunters, who derided the charter as a mere second edict of Nantz, to be abolished at pleasure; these clubs eulogized the old regime, spoke contemptuously of the present, and panted after what they called a real restoration.

The ministry usurped the legislative right of making laws, and issued them under the name of ordinances, for the revival of old laws, or the violation of those which did not suit their purposes. An unresponsible council of state, not recog

nized by the charter, was created aud afterwards converted into a tribunal, whose members were removeable at the royal pleasure. The charter had provided that the judges appointed by the king should hold their office during good behaviour, but in order to elude this guarantee of liberty, it was determined to leave the present incumbents in office indefinitely, so that a dread of removal might teach them servility; and as these judges, in spite of their dependence growing out of this miserable subterfuge, might not be sufficiently subservient for the despatch of state business, special tribunals, (the odious cours prevótales of the empire,) were re-established. The liberty of the press was next destroyed, a monopoly of journals given to the ministry, and by a retroactive law, the approving the naturalization of all adopted citizens was given to the king. One third of the population of France is estimated to be interested in the national property sold during the revolution, and yet the government had the imprudence to let their censors of the press suggest the propriety of confiscating those estates back again. Negociations were next opened at Rome, for a new Concordat, which was to annul the existing one, and to leave the purchasers of church property dependent for their estates on the will of the Pope. In the Chamber of Peers, it was proposed to tax the nation, or the proprietors of confiscated property, three hundred millons of francs, to indemnify the emigrés for their losses. The minister of war proposed to erect a monument to the French who fell at Quiberon, in arms against France, and a general of the Vandeans, says Lanjuinais, went into Brittany, to hunt up such of his old companions, as might be worthy of honorary or pecuniary rewards, for the zeal they had shown in the furious close of civil butchery." The republican, not the Jacobin, members of the Senate, and the Institute, were eliminated out of those bodies, and in spite of the oblivion commanded by the charter, a free exhumation of all revolutionary votes and opinions was allowed to the royalist journals. The Jesuits were encouraged to march over the country to preach intolerance and despotism, to the annoyance, and alarm of three millions of protestants. The proud and haughty carriage of the noblesse, both at court and in the provinces, and their affected disdain of the new nobility, served to offend and

alienate many from the new government. The giddiness of their vanity, was deaf to the remonstrances of reason, and an insulting superiority was every where assumed. When lady Jersey asked a lady of the old noblesse, the names of certain dutchesses at court, she replied, "Nous ne connoissons pas ces femmes-ce sont des mareshales." The legion of honour was continued, but its pride was soon wounded by a profuse multiplication of its numbers, and an ordinance soon after put in question the support hitherto given to the female orphans of such of its members, as had died for their country. The army

was next offended by a retrenchment of the expenses of the Invalides; by the disbanding of a thousand of the mutilated inhabitants of this hospital, because their native countries no longer belonged to France; and the sending fifteen hundred others on pitiful pensions to their homes. The places in the ecole militaire were given to the "faithful noblesse," whose names were new to those who had achieved the hundred triumphs of France; whilst the pride of the new nobility was injudiciously shocked, by the ennobling of the family of Georges Cadoudal, who had come into France with the notorious design of assassinating the emperor. Public schools were likewise erected, into which none but the children of ancient families could be admitted; and the spirit of civilization, too, all over the world, was next offended by the re-establishment of the slave trade.

Such were the imprudencies and follies of the new government in the first year of the restoration; and yet the French are stigmatized as a fickle and capricious people, for showing no enthusiasm in support of it, when Napoleon returned from Elba.That the king was beguiled into these aberrations from sound policy by many amiable and respectable feelings, I have no doubt; but when the pride of a great nation is wounded by the acts of its government, it seldom stops to inquire into the private motives which might extenuate the offence.

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LETTER XIII.

Paris, March 28th, 1820.

MY DEAR SIR,

In my last letter I endeavoured to shew you that the first emotion of the public mind in France on the restoration of the Bourbons was that of astonishment mingled with pleasure; and that the vague inquietude which ensued was fretted into fermentation only by the vexations and alarms which the new government most injudiciously scattered over the country. I wished you to observe how the imposition of the charter had prevented it at first from captivating the regards, or entwining itself around the affections of the nation; and how afterwards the negligent execution, (not to say wanton violation) of its articles, produced a general discontent which was hindered only from exploding by the want of a rallying point, and by the ignorance in which the discontented were of their own numbers. It is, in fact, exceedingly difficult in France to collect the sentiments of the general public on any subject. The channels for a free circulation of opinions do not exist, and the slavery of the press, by rendering contradiction impossible, causes all reports to be heard with distrust. Hence the nation when full of discontent is like an électric machine when charged-all looks quiet and free from menace the moment before the conducting body approaches for the shock; and hence the origin of that reputation for political fickleness which the French have acquired from the exilition with which their public resentment has several times exploded.

No nation was ever trained to greater celerity of thought and action than the French under the imperial regime, and of this the new government should never have lost sight. But instead of attempting to keep alive the vivacity of the public mind by the fascinations of liberty, they substituted the narcotick phantom of legitimacy in lieu of Bonaparte's goddess of glory, which

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