had been any cause for his complaint, would have cost him his head, and would have been considered an overt act of treason in our own country. The court seems determined to employ only one set of agents, namely, those of the ancient regime. Nearly the whole of the new prefects are nobles, and other appointments have been made in the same spirit. The certainty of support has given to the partisans of the restored family an audacity which characterises the victory of a weak and prejudiced minority; already have accounts arrived that the massacre of the protestants has begun in the south-a strange contrast, when proceeding from the presumed friends of order, and of the ancient social system, with the forbearance and tranquillity that marked, on the return of Napoleon, the conduct of all the abettors of anarchy in those protestant provinces, in which the imprudence of the privileged classes, during the first reign of Louis

is a very ancient soporific, prescribed, time out of mind, against internal disturbances in England,, but has been tried so often, that it is to be hoped even the humblest of our countrymen will prefer some other remedy to one which may be fatal to their constitution. The continental nations are not habituated to such a repetition of the same applications. The name of Napoleon, the remembrances of recent injury and disgrace, the fear of their recurrence, which were resorted to before, cannot be employed again, to array them in opposition to a cause which is their own, and which they now appear to have discovered to be so. They will see, that nothing less than a foreign military force in the capital, and the citadels of France, is capable of curbing the rights of human nature in that country, and even their government will begin to find out more rea sonable causes and pretexts for war, amongst each other, than the suppression of those rights; they will also suspect that they are lending themselves too entirely to the triumphant ambition of the ancient rival of France, and to the accomplishment of her imputed schemes of continental aggrandisement. The alliance will dissolve-the first decisive triumph of the principles of national liberty will be witnessed in that country, where they struggled originally into life. The individuals of this or that family, or faction, will be borne down at once, without resistance, perhaps without violence, and lost for ever. The shock of parties, or of nations, internal differences and foreign wars, may, for a short time, confine the empire of reason and independence by the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine, just as it has been for more than a century circumscribed by the sea that washes the British Isles; but the spirit of the age will extend its reign beyond the boundaries prescribed for individual ambition, and, embracing state after state, establish at last its prevailing happy sway over the fairest portion of the civilised world. The power and duration of such moral communities, as were founded in the weaknesses and bad passions of human nature, and constituted by a Mahomet, a Hildebrand, or any other audacious or artful impostor, may induce us to encourage a hope, that a system, having no base but the rational rights, and no aim but the equal happiness of mankind, when once established, will last for ever. This hope, which has been before hypothetically indulged in the course of these letters, is here repeated, under circumstances less favourable to its accomplishment. An older politician may dismiss the dream through the ivory gate; but the millenial reign of the saints, not only the expectation, but the creed, of a sect once prevalent, is scarcely less visionary, although it must be confessed less brilliant, than the perpetual republic of the wise.

XVIII., might have been expected to have laid up some vengeance in store for the day of triumph.

I account for this difference in the same position in the con duct of men, to whom measures exactly the contrary to their real actions have been and are still imputed by all the friends of all old systems in every country and in every age, not from supposing, with Algernon Sydney, that there is something in the cause of pure monarchical institutions which has a worse influence on the passions of mankind than the adoption of principles more inclined to popular governments can produce; but from the cir cumstance of the pure royalists striving, at this time, against opinion, whilst the constitutionalists are but following the direction of the stream. The agitations of the former must necessarily be the most violent of the two, whether they make head against, or are borne backwards by the current. It is dangerous to carry a simile or metaphor so far as to give to the thing likened all the properties of the thing applied; but Mirabeau followed up this popular phrase by denouncing drowning against the mad attempt to swim up the torrent. Who is there now in Paris or France, I would ask it of my fifty thousand countrymen in this capital, who does not conceive that this obstinacy of the Bourbonists will prove that there was nothing forced or outrageous in the comparison? The excesses of that party who dared to wear the ensigns of gladness at the battle of Waterloo, and who continue still to congratulate themselves on the success of those arms which now watch in the antechamber of their monarch, and, whilst they run over with delight at the triumph of their personal passions, have not a sigh for France, the excesses of these men, the old emigrants and the young nobles, are such as have already consigned them to the contempt of every unprejudiced foreigner. A party of the latter description ended a compotation dedicated to the victories of their allies, by demolishing the looking-glasses and lustres of a coffee-house, the temple of republicanism and Napoleon. These worthy warriors, the heroes, as the Nain Jaune says, not of Mont St. Jean, but Montansier, have been active also in avenging themselves on the emblems, either real or suspected, of patriotism; and having made successful war on the violets, have now attacked the pinks. An order of the day, just issued from General Desolles, forbids the wearing of red pinks, which are to be extracted with all due form and legality at the guard house, but not forcibly torn away in the open streets by the unofficial hands of individual zeal, a measure which has already cost the lives of two or three body guards in the boulevards and coffee-houses. The hyacinth of the Duke of Orleans is equally proscribed. Are we in the circus of Constantinople, and in the 6th century? Mlle. Mars has also succeeded to the

hisses of Mlle. Bourgoign, and the theatres are now in occupation of the friends of the lilies, as they were before held by the enemies of that fatal flower. The great majority of the actors and artists are more than suspected admirers of the Emperor, and proceedings may be anticipated against the Institute as well as the play-houses. The arts must be punished for their alliance with usurpation. At one of the minor theatres, an actor, who had distinguished himself in the short defence of Paris, near St. Denis, as a rifleman of the national guard, was ordered, a night or two ago, upon some trifling occasion, to ask pardon, on his knees, before the audience. You will not believe that I attribute the excesses or follies of the royalists to the king-by no means; I only speak of the spirit and character of the partyI only wish to show you what is the complexion of the conduct adopted to reconcile disgrace and despotism to France. You may guess at the effect-Paris is in a state of disturbance which the days of the siege never exceeded-far from diminishing the measures of precaution, and laying aside the armed attitude of distrust, the allies have found it necessary to place double guards at the palaces, play-houses, and places of public resort; cannon enfilade the streets, but every menace is scarce sufficient to preserve the tranquillity of the Palais Royal and the Tuilleries.

It is clear that Louis cannot at present trust himself alone in his capital-nay, scarcely out of his palace, in a city, where, if any where, he has a majority of the armed force in his favour. The accounts from the provinces represent them in a state of disquiet more violent than that of Paris. The population on the eastern frontiers is still in arms-many garrisons still hold out; General Clausel has published an order of the day at Bordeaux, on the 15th, forbidding the authorities to receive orders from Paris, that city being in the hands of the enemy, or from any but the Prince of Eckmühl. At Lyons a monument has been raised to the warriors who died for their independence at Waterloo. The regret will be a perpetual censure of the royalists. The vast force of the allies will, doubtless, succeed in subjugating the provinces as it captured the capital, and the French must consent to be treated as a conquered people: they would consent, if one of the conditions were not too humiliating even for the vanquished, and its consequences more perpetual than the modern privileges of conquest seem to them to allow. The king's ostensible ministers, at least M. Fouché, would endeavour to reconcile the people to their monarch, by showing them that, although his majesty returned by force, he intends to remain amongst them by mildness; and to make persuasion finish what fear began. Hence the convocation of the chamber, which

some royalists affected to say would not be called together, the king having found the nation not good enough to be entrusted with the representative system. To the opposite influence must we attribute the provisions of the proclamation before noticed, by which many of the beneficial consequences of appealing to the people appear to be sacrificed to the apprehensions of the court. That people are happy to hear of a parliament chosen from amongst themselves, but they are sorry to hear that only 396 members are to have that distinction: they are flattered by being called to participate in the government, but they are disgusted at being told, that a certain degree of wealth, the portion only of a comparatively small minority, is to be an indispensable requisite for legislation, and the sole presumption of honesty and talent, and that thus some departments will actually have no representative; and also, that, by giving the arrondissements a choice only of candidates, not of deputies, many local interests must be diregarded or misunderstood. The army is pleased that the legion of honour is preserved in the electoral colleges of departments; but it is equally dissatisfied at finding that a member, who does not pay 300 francs of contribution, although he should be a principal dignitary of that order, will be excluded from his privileges. Every patriot congratulates himself, that certain articles of the constitutional charter are to be revised; but he represses his joy when he recollects how the chamber, to whom is to be entrusted the liberties of himself and his posterity, will be composed, in the midst of whose bayonets it will sit, and who are to be its assistants in the other chamber, formed of men nominated by the court, and, at least, a majority of them previously secured. On the whole, then, the promise of a new national representation has gained the king no friends; but has rather renewed the charge of treachery and deceit, which the royalists take care to justify, by hinting that the chambers will enter fully into the views of the court, or will be finally dismissed.

One or two journals continue to speak the general sense of the nation on this subject. The Independent, edited by M. Jay, and under the influence, it is supposed, of M. Fouché, has not been silent; but its tone, in this as well as every other instance, is towards the king most respectful, and consonant with all it has hitherto said to reconcile the French to their monarch, and to make one more effort for constitutional independence, by an oblivion of differences, and by that union of loyalty and patriotism which alone can suit with the circumstances of the times.

CONCLUDING NOTE.

The Independent has been suppressed-we need not want a better proof of the real system which is intended to be pursued: one or two other journals have shared the same fate, and amongst them the Nain Jaune, for joking with the battle of Montansier. The principles of the Independent had subjected it to the attacks of the Napoleonists, or, rather, of those who thought the royalist government ought to be abandoned; or, according to a vulgar phrase, "given rope." It was guilty of no other indiscretion than telling the ministry how they might save the king. It need not be said that the liberty of the press is not now even a word. Those whom Mr. Cobbett calls, with great reason, whatever may be said of his phraseology, the base-souled editors of our court journals, blamed M. Fouché for his keeping the French papers in subjection, and for not suffering the truth to be told against himself and his friends; whereas the suppression of the Independent was no work of his, nor could have been so, as it was the organ of his own opinions. It was the other part of the police that stopped the voice of common sense. M. Fouché only prevented, and that but partially, the insertion in the court journals, edited by priests and nobles, of articles wholly inflammatory, and tending to encourage the civil discord which wanted not the fuel of denunciation and proscription. Our journalists were, at first, angry at the restrictions of the press; they then found out, after some Frenchmen had found it out first, that the liberty of the press, in the last reign, had occasioned the fall of Napoleon. It may be recollected that, in the time of that Emperor, the same well-informed persons said there was no liberty of the press, and that the Courier asserted, that any person found reading that paper, or the Times, was fined 100 Napoleons. They now find the liberty of the press too good for Frenchmen, to whom they deny every other good thing-and have pushed their folly so far as to sing pæans over the suspension of the French habeas corpus act. The appointment of M. Lainé to the chair of the lower chamber, of him who "would not shut the door against the hopes of the emigrants," of him who identified the will of the king with the law, shows how much is to be hoped from the new national representation, which, as far as I hear, is more base, and less representative of the people, than the other chamber, where certain intelligent members, appointed to preserve forms, maintain a respectable minority. The name of Count Lanjuinais will not be forgotten in the record destined to preserve the memories of those men