1 Napoleon and his system at all correct, such a preference would have been unnatural, would have been impossible. If you ask me for my opinion, it is, that the friends of the present imperial dynasty are right, in saying that the Bourbons are rejected by the vast majority of the nation. I believe that the rejection would not have been so sudden and decisive, had it not been matured by Napoleon; but I believe it would have been as fully displayed and more certainly secured. The circumstances under which the Bourbons were restored could not procure them the previous love of Frenchmen. The present government have been just enough to own that it was impossible these princes should not commit faults.-Nous n'entrons point ici, say they, in the Moniteur of the 18th, dans le detail immense des fautes qu'ils ont commises; il leur était impossible de n'en pas commettre, on aurait pu les compter d'avance.* But though the ministers of Napoleon may wish to make it appear that the royal government, under any circumstances, was incompatible with the honour and interests of France, we may presume to suppose that the king might have pursued a line of conduct, which would have fixed the crown upon his head, and rendered abortive any attempt to replace it on that of his dethroned predecessor. I do not say that the wisdom necessary for such conduct was much to be expected in a sovereign of sixty, unacquainted with the moral position of his subjects. But much had been said of the good sense and the instructed mind of the king, and it was to be hoped that he would have avoided the gross errors into which the events of his flight, and even his own confession, prove him too clearly to have fallen. His position was difficult, but his difficulties were not inextricable. His subjects, to be sure, were not of such a disposition as might enable him to expect a lenient judgment upon his wanderings; they were not the Frenchmen who respected the boots of a Bourbon, or who wept and prayed at the maladies of Louis the Fifteenth. If he could not challenge their esteem for his virtues, he was to hope no pardon nor toleration for his mistakes. Now that he is fallen, it is natural that, although the government has refused the task, some one should enter into the detail, however immense, of these mistakes; and, in fact, there have not been wanting those who have favoured their cotemporaries with a regular indictment, of many counts, drawn up against his late majesty, and who have endeavoured to give some ra tional account of the causes which led to the total abandon "We shall not enter here into the endless detail of the faults which they have committed; faults which, one might have foreseen it was impossible they should not commit. ment of the Bourbons. It is certainly necessary to distinguish between those faults, however real, discovered since the dethronement, and those whose existence was recognized, and was the subject of complaint, previously to that event; and which, therefore, may be supposed to have more immediately contributed to its completion-neither will any impartial man suffer his judgment tó be sunk under the weight or number of evidences produced hitherto almost ex parte, in a time when it is not probable that there should be many nor very strenuous defenders of the contrary cause: not that no defenders have been found, for I have this instant before my eyes two pamphlets, one of which bears the title of Apologie de Louis XVIII., and the other, Discussion des Torts qu'on impute à Louis XVIII. des Intentions qu'on lui suppose, et Réfutations des Reproches qui lui sont addressés. In endeavouring to give some account of the defects of the royal government, I must premise, that it is not my intention to examine how far the king himself may be personally arraigned, or how far only his family and ministers are to be considered the cause of public discontent. The voice of all parties agrees to give the title of a good sort of man to Louis; and Napoleon himself, in conversation with a friend of mine at Elba, applied to him the usual commendation" c'est un brave homme, trop bon pour les Français," adding, also, what I shall not here comment upon," et moi, j'etois trop bon." I am inclined, however, to think that the fault by general consent being thrown upon some branches of the family and upon certain of the ministers, it is rather in compliance with decency, and a tacit com pact, than from any conviction arising from a knowledge of facts, that the partizans of the present government and system have agreed in calling Louis only a weak monarch. The Duchess of Angoulême is charged with the errors arising from superstition, and the Duke of Berri with those consequent upon an undue disregard of the army; as if the king himself was not apparently, at least, a devotee, and had not recalled the Swiss guards. We must be just, even to these scions of royalty, who have not to accuse themselves of any conduct confessedly displeasing to the king, or discountenanced by him. His majesty may seem, indeed, to have displayed an address hardly amiable, in diverting the public odium from himself, and to have exercised a quality, whic, as may be deduced from the hints of enemies and friends, he possesses in an eminent degree. It is impossible to say whether, under more prosperous circum *He is a brave man,-too good for the French. stances, he would not have drawn a benefit from, and founded his whole course of system upon, that very line of conduct adopted by his family and his ministers, which himself and his personal partizans are now said sincerely to condemn.* The Count of Artois never acceded to the constitutional charter until the moment of peril: yet surely it was the duty of the king to insist upon the prince assenting to the observance of that constitution, which, if he meant to give only for himself, without binding even his immediate successor, he had done enough to insult and betray the French nation. More could not be wanted to cause his crown to pass away from him. It is universally suspected, that the princes, heirs to the throne, had, in reserve, as a title to future despotism, their non-signature of this charter; and as that policy, which was seen and understood by all Paris, could not escape the observation, so ought it to have met with the decided resentment, of the king. The royal family of France, like some of our great houses, who contrive to have one honest oppositionist amongst them in case of emergencies, were resolved to profit by a diversity of sentiment, and to find in their own body a patron for the increasing adher ents of the ancient civil system. Some go the length of asserting that Louis could not be friendly to a free constitution, the continuation of which he took no pains to secure beyond the term of his own reign; and they add, that he began his career with an open violation of the conditions upon which he was called to ascend the throne of France. He accepted at Hartwell the terms which he disputed at St. Ouen; and, indeed, I myself recollect perfectly well, that on the morning of his entry into Paris, it was a question amongst some zealous royalists, whether his Majesty would condescend to grace the triumph of the day, unless upon the express retraction on the part of the existing chambers of the conditions which they had been insolent enough, originally, to exact from their lawful monarch. You have read the letters on this subject in the Moniteur of the 15th of this month, and must there see how early the conspiracy was begun against the people. Louis did enter boldly, declaring that he reserved the right of nominating or rejecting certain articles of the constitution, which, when in England, he had swallowed whole. It is a most absurd pretext of panegyric of this monarch, that he bestowed upon France the constitutional charter as if the chambers and provisional government had not previously demanded such a guarantee for national liberty, and as if, after acceding to, he had not shamefully disregarded, this guarantee. Mr. Carnot is right; the commerce and intercourse *See Appendix, No. 2. between princes and people consists in a perpetual struggle for the increase and retrenchment of power: kings have never willingly encroached upon their own sovereignty, nor made their people more free at the expence of their own prerogatives. Liberty has always been wrung from their hard hands-no thanks to them-and all the benefits of this kind ever conferred by a sovereign should be called by their true name, the extortion of a right rather than the grant of a favour. When King John was forced to make some few provisions for the happiness of his subjects, he complained to his brother potentates that he had been robbed. Louis, like all other monarchs, seems to have looked upon his people as if they had surrendered at discretion to him; and as if, therefore, even his inactivity was a generous forbearance, whilst his dispositions for what they might think something like their independence should be regarded as an instance of bounty and benevolence, unexampled and undeserved. Follow me through another letter, and you shall see this bounty and benevolence, and "to what they mount." LETTER V. Paris, April THE people in all countries are liable and apt to betray themselves by their generous feelings; and even if in any multitude there be only a small proportion in whom these feelings predominate, that minority will generally become preponderate, by the mere force of shame, which forbids opposition to actions that have for their pretext and origin motives universally approved and admired by the moral sense of mankind. This, in the struggle between kings and subjects, gives an infinite advantage to the former party, who can make use of, and appeal to, every passion of the human breast; can take advantage of all good as well as all bad dispositions in others, whilst they themselves, acting from one only feeling and character of mind, are the better enabled steadily to pursue a single, unvarying, scheme of action. The abhorrence of anarchy, and the facilities afforded by the modern prejudices in favour of a monarchical government, are considerations so powerful in the state of civilization to which the European world has long arrived, that the dethronement of one king is generally followed by the election of another, whose successor, if set aside, may be replaced by the heir of the former unfortunate monarch. It is impossible but that a favourable feeling should exist towards a sovereign ascending the throne under these circumstances; and on that account I consider the reign of a revolutionary or restored king as likely to prove very dangerous to liberty, although he may have owed his crown to the most noble exertion of the rights of man. The person in this predicament is regarded either with gratitude for what he has done to second the people, or with fondness, if he has done nothing, as being their own choice; and, if he be adroit, can easily turn either of these affections to his own account: still more easy is his task, if he assume his authority upon the implied consent and apparent necessities of a nation, as the only close and cure of anarchy. Excepting the English, I know of no nation that have been wise enough to guard against their gratitude, and to depose one king, without investing another with all or more of that authority which they found intolerable in his predecessor. The patriots of 1688 were able to control their sense of obligation, and were too sensible and just, to lose by the encouragement of one virtuous propensity those advantages which their other good and great qualities had set within their reach. They regarded King William as sufficiently recompensed by the crown of three kingdoms, restricted according to their wishes, for all his great services; and the discontent and disgust which their conditions excited, even in this great and liberal prince, are a sufficient proof that there is in all those who have tasted of sovereign sway a strange notion of a certain right of dominion, either inherent in their persons, or acquired by their exploits, which neither good sense, great virtue, nor long experience, productive otherwise of the most generous principles and rational maximns, are able completely to eradicate and wholly to destroy-strange persuasion! as if any possible benefit conferred upon me should tempt me to resign the smallest portion of that freedom of action which is necessary for individual dignity, and which is found, by the fact of its existence, not incompatible with the social interests of the nation to which I belong!! In this case I lose by the deposition of my tyrant; I exchange my just hatred and honourable opposition to despotism for an acquiescence in it, nay, even for a love for it, in the person of another, whom my own necessities and his good qualities have induced me to call to my aid! The English, in bargaining with William, had the advantage of knowing, by very recent experience, how much they must gain by bestowing the crown upon one, who, having none of the absurd but powerful pretensions of legitimacy, should be able to plead no rights nor pretexts, not conveyed by themselves and created by their own sole choice. |