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day previously. Even the summary then tardily given was of the most meagre and unsatisfactory description. This circumstance, it need not be stated, has produced the very worst effect in the capital and the provinces. Men show their discontent by a settled gloom and moodiness of manner very foreign to the nature of Frenchmen, but under the circumstances eloquently expressive. It may truly be said of the nation, collectively and individually, Dum tacent clamant.

Previous to the promulgation of this mock constitution the coming emperor had legislated on every possible question by arbitrary decrees having the force of laws. By decrees university professors as well as judicial functionaries were declared removable; by decrees the functions and attributions of the council of state, of the senate, and the legislative body, were regulated and prescribed; by decrees the livery and costume were settled. From the constitution to the coat-from the privilege of members down to the details of an embroidered white waistcoat-from the order of the day down to a button with an eagle impressed thereon, M. Bonaparte's fertile genius had happily provided. Nor were his ukases limited to the legislative bodies. The Roman-catholic and Reformed churches, the bar, the army, the navy, were all subjected to his imperious fiat. He fixed the age at which members of the court of cassation should retire, at which the judges of the courts of appeal, and tribunals of first instance, should make their bow to their brethren, or to the bar, and withdraw from the judicial bench, however perfect their faculties. The monarchy, for generations, had supposed the bar of France to be capable of managing its own affairs and competent to elect its own batonnier, an officer chosen generally by reason of seniority out of the order of advocates to protect the rights of the confraternity. But though this right was confirmed to the advocates of France by letters of Philip de Valois in April, 1342, yet M. Bonaparte utterly disregarded more than five centuries of prescription, and decreed by his own goodwill and pleasure, that the selection of the batonnier should no longer be by the general body of advocates but by the conseil de discipline. In this, as in nearly all other things, M. Bonaparte has followed the precedent of his uncle Napoleon, who interfered with and regulated by his ordonnances the bar of France.

On the 14th of December, 1810, there appeared under the title of a decree, a reglement sur l'exercice de la profession d'avocat et la discipline du barreau.' The articles were preceded by a pompous, and in Napoleonic fashion, a species, in style at least, of Asiatic preamble in honour of the profession. By the

19th Article the Conqueror affected to restore the order, but its discipline was not restored, and the decree never ceased to excite the remonstrances of the French bar. Napoleon entertained a strong prejudice amounting to aversion for the profession. And why? Because he detested independence in every form and shape. Projects of despotism and universal dominion can never be favourably received by a body distinguished by a spirit of controversy and free inquiry. Napoleon used to say, Je veux qu'on puisse couper la langue à un avocat qui s'en sert contre le gouvernement,' and he showed his spite to the order by throwing various impediments in their way, and not admitting one of them as a member of the legion of honour. The bar, it must be admitted, merited the dislike of the tyrant. It neither fawned on nor flattered him, but exercised its calling without regard to his threats, and often in express contradiction to his wishes. Bellart had, despite the frown of power, defended Madlle. Cicé; Bonnet had defended Moreau, surrounded by bristling bayonets, with consummate art, rare intrepidity, and powerful reasoning. Scores of eloquent and able men would have also presented themselves to defend the Duke d'Enghien, had he not been precipitately murdered without charge, indictment, or trial, in the ditch of Vincennes, in the misty twilight of the early morning. As the French bar was two and forty years ago, so it is now. Vatesmenil and Berryer, royalists attached to the elder branch of Bourbons; Barrot, an Orleanist; and Paillet, a man of independent mind and opinions, were all forward to lend the aid of their learning and experience to plead against the iniquitous confiscating decrees of the 22nd of January, directed against the property of the Orleans family.

Into this question it is not our purpose to enter at any length. But we may remark, that Louis Philippe d'Orleans, before he accepted the crown of France, had, as an individual, an undisputed and indisputable right to dispose of his private property, and to make any settlement of it he pleased in favour of his children. That sagacious prince shrewdly thought that it would be unfair to his family to peril their inheritance by allying it to anything so unstable as the throne of France. But after his decease in exile, after his discrowning, the inviolability of his private disposition of his estates has been disregarded, and by an infamous act of spoliation his children have been defrauded of their birthright. This open robbery is attempted to be cloaked over by another decree assigning ten millions of the proceeds to the society of Mutual Succour, ten millions to the amelioration of the lodgings of workmen, other portions to the support of poor curates, other portions to the support of a house of education for

DECREE AS TO ADVOCATES, ALMONERS' MUSTACHIOS, ETC. 567

orphans, and other portions to the support of veterans of the army. But to the eternal honour of the church and the army, they have exhibited a repugnance to receive the unhallowed gift, as though the receipt of the patrimony of the widow and the orphan must bring in its very touch taint and defilement, as well as what old soldiers and sailors call the worst of ill luck.' So, in the sight of a continent, of a world, can this man proffer robbery as a burnt-offering. The odious feature of the hypocritical and unprincipled author of the decrees is to mask over his rapacious spoliation with the veneer of charity. Under the sacred name of charity he would bribe both army and church to wink at his violation of all law and all justice. But though M. Bonaparte has had might, not right, on his side, yet the leading members of the bar are resolved to struggle for, if they cannot maintain, the principles of law and justice.

The decree to regulate the Reformed churches is fully as intrusive, and more preposterous than the decree in reference to the batonnier of the order of advocates. The commission to regulate this affair consists of two bankers, an admiral, a councillor of state, three deputies, one of the mayors of Paris, one or two merchants, and the postmaster-general. In this there may be some spite against the Pastor Coquerel, or some other Huguenot pastor. As the decree in reference to the batonniers and conseils de discipline was well known to be directed against Senard, an ex-minister of the Republic, there is no reason why the decree in reference to the Huguenot synod may not be directed against some recalcitrant pastor who will not bend the knee to a man, who, thanks to the army and police, now occupies the Elysée, and may a little longer encumber the soil of France. The religion of the majority of Frenchmen is as summarily interfered with as the religion of the minority. M. Bonaparte evidently fancies himself the head of the church, and its great legislator. By his sic voleo he establishes what are called aumoniers de derniers prières, and allocates a salary for their support. Nothing is too hot or too heavy for this virtuous man calling himself Prince President.' His decrees extend to railroads, to benefit societies, to burial clubs, to the sinking fund, to registries for servants, to the Chapter of St. Denis, to the electric telegraph, to marriages in the Society Islands, to the beards of university professors, who are forbidden to wear mustachios, imperials, and hirsute tufts on upper or nether lip, or on any portion of the human face divine, where whiskers grow not according to the order of nature.

6

The lust of the man for personal dominion-his itch for interfering in everything, sacred and profane, is as remarkable as his

loose personal morality, as his gross habits of personal profusion. His modesty, like that of General Tom Thumb, is evidently, he conceives, the flambeau to his merit.' 'I am ready to do everything for France,' he exclaims, and nothing for myself!' Amiable and self-sacrificing man! Is it nothing, then, to be in the receipt of an income of 480,000l. a year; to be lodged, lighted, and warmed at the expense of the state; to have to pay nothing to wife or to children, like Louis Philippe, and to enjoy St. Cloud, Trianon, the Elysée, Meudon, Versailles, Pau, Compiegne, Fontainebleau, and, last not least, the Tuileries-all kept up at the expense of the state? Is it nothing to exclusively enjoy the droit de chasse in the forests of Fontainebleau, Compiegne, Marly, and St. Germain? The last sovereign of France had out of his civil list to provide for his queen, for his sons, who were profuse in their expenditure, for the keep and repair of his palaces; and in these disbursements he is supposed to have expended three millions more than he received; but M. Bonaparte has no charge but his personal expenditure, and for this his liveried legislative lackeys have voted him 480,000l. per annum. While we write, the ordinary revenue of France is more than seven millions less than the expenditure. How much less than the expenditure will it be if the President should last another trimestre, or if the empire should be proclaimed, as is by many supposed, in this present month of May?

Every discourse of M. Bonaparte since the 2nd of December has pointed to an imperial throne, and the retainers of the Elysée have sought to prepare the public mind for the event. Since the 2nd of December, M. Bonaparte has rendered no account of his policy, nor has he in any way submitted his conduct to the nation's approval. Indeed, now that he has got a council of state, a senate, and a corps legislatif perfectly subservient, he seems to have thrown off all restraint. The ex-king, Jerome Bonaparte, as president of the senate, maintained in his address to that body all the ideas of Bonapartism. He talked of the treachery by which the empire was overthrown, and of the coalition by which the event was brought about, as a crime. This key-note was followed by the Prince President,' who, having now irrevocably secured his income, discovers that he is the heir to the emperor by hereditary right. It is of no earthly use to such a being as this to state that the empire was not hereditary, that four of the European powers, in congress assembled, at Chatillon,* provided for certain contingencies, and that some of these contingencies arising, Bonaparte, on his return from Elba, was put hors la loi by all of the European powers in their Declaration at

* Koch Traités de 1814 et 15, vol. iii. 322, 438, 439.

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Vienna of the 13th March, 1815,-it is of no earthly use to refer to the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris of the 30th May, 1814, or the abdication signed at Fontainebleau by Napoleon himself. Not one of these public acts would be recognised by the disturber of Boulogne as having the least binding force, albeit their stringency is acknowledged by the whole of Europe. It may, however, be satisfactory for other purposes here to cite, word for word, the proposition unanimously agreed to at Vienna. Here are the very words, drawn up by M. Metternich, which received unanimous adhesion:

'En rompant ainsi la convention qui l'avait établi à l'ile d'Elbe, Bonaparte détruit le seul titre légal auquel son existence se trouvait attachée. En reparaissant en France avec des projets de trouble et bouleversement il s'est privé lui-même de la protection des lois, et a manifesté à la face de l'univers qu'il ne saurait y avoir avec lui ni paix ni trève, Les puissances declarent en conséquence que Napoléon Bonaparte s'est placé hors des relations civiles et sociales, et que, comme ennemi et perturbateur du repos du monde, il s'est livré à la vindicte publique.'

Whether the powers who pronounced Napoleon an outlaw, a perturbator, and an enemy of the repose of the world, and pointed him out to universal vengeance, are likely to acknowledge hereditary rights in one who is not, and has not the least pretensions to be, the heir of the European outlaw, is a question so plain, that it is not necessary to discuss it in this place.

But that everything now points to empire on the part of M. Bonaparte and his adherents is abundantly evident. Everything imperial is now aped. The footmen of M. Bonaparte's kinsman and functionary, M. Lucien Murat, are already clothed in scarlet and gold, the livery of Joachim Murat's household when king of Naples. As Napoleon the uncle sought to alarm France in 1803 and the beginning of 1804 with royalist plots and the revival of Jacobinism, so does M. Bonaparte, the putative nephew, in 1852 talk of Romanist machinations and the revival of socialism. In 1804 there was a Bulletin de Paris, an organ of the uncle, as there is now of the nephew, one of the editors of which was, eight-and-forty years ago, Regnaud de St. Jean d'Augely. The son of this Regnaud de St. Jean d'Augely is now a senator and a functionary playing at the same game for empire for his principal as his father played nearly half a century ago. Bonaparte the uncle affected to discredit and deny the idea that he was looking for supreme power; but at the very time he was uttering these self-sacrificing protestations, the public criers were directed by his agents to go through the streets selling a pamphlet, written