Now the two hundred and sixtieth article of the penal code of the year 10 expressly forbad the constrained celebration of any holidays or shutting of shops, under pain of fine and imprisonment; but Mr. Ferrand, by his ordonnance, commanded the discontinuance of all labour, and necessarily the shutting of shops on Sundays and holidays; and also commanded that all individuals of every religion, tiendraient le devant de leur maisons dans toutes les rues ou devaient passer les processions du saint sacrement. This was a dangerous abuse of authority in a very delicate affair. The minister was guilty of a breach of office, and came under the penalties pronounced in the one hundred and twenty-seventh article of the penal code, against all officers of the police who interfered in the exercise of the legislative power. Every one recollects the murmurs these ordonnances produced in Paris, and it is worth while to observe, that when, four months afterwards, one of them was passed into a law, the court was unable to prevail upon the chambers to authorise the processions of the sacrament.

On the 10th of June, six days after the promulgation of the charter, which by its eighth article proclaimed the liberty of the press, appeared the ordonnance of the minister of the interior re-establishing the censorship. This was declared unconstitutional by a member of the chamber of peers; but the deputies, instead of protesting against this illegal measure, connived with the court in demanding a project of a law on this subject from the king, that is, from the minister, Montesquiou, who had been guilty of the infraction, and who was insolent enough, in presenting the required project, to offer as his motive" a wish to facilitate the liberty of the press." Messrs. Durbach and Raynourd in the chamber of deputies, with B. Constant, Soulety, and Souard, distinguished themselves in opposition to the censorship: all the journals, except the Gazette de France, took part against the minister, who, however, was able to pass the law, notwithstanding that it met with a violent opposition in the chamber of peers. The establishment of the censorship by an ordonnance was at first an open violation of the charter, and when carried into a law, shewed the determination of the court to stand by that violation. Considering that some of us have smarted in England on account of entertaining different notions of the nature of libel from our peers, and that no one can wish for a better advantage over another than did Job, when he exclaimed

"Oh that mine enemy had written a book!"

on these considerations I say, that the revision of the censorship

* Should arrange themselves in front of their respective houses, in all the streets through which the procession of the Consecrated Host (or of the holy sacrament) might pass.

may to some people seem almost preferable to the penalties of the chief justice. But I am talking only of the violations of the charter, of which there was a third flagrant example on the 15th of June and 15th of July, by two royal ordonnances, which fixed the mode of recruitment for the king's guard; whereas by the twelfth article of the charter the mode of recruiting both for the land and sea service was to be determined by a law; and the ordonnances were therefore unconstitutional, and subjected those who acted upon them to the pain of death, pronounced by the ninety-second article of the penal code against every one engaging in an illegal recruitment. The cannonniers of the marine were organized by another ordonnance of the 1st of July, which was also a violation of the twelfth article. On the 21st of June an ordonnance established a council of state, composed of a high commission court, a privy council, and five committees, and gave to the council a power of judging public functionaries; so that this council, which was regulated by another ordonnance of the 6th of July, was neither more nor less than an extraordinary tribunal, and forbidden by the 63d article of the charter, which says, "There cannot be created any extraordinary commissions or tribunals."

On the 27th of June, that most important article, the 15th of the charter, declaring the legislative power to reside in king, peers, and deputies, was broken through by an ordonnance, which annulled an impost law of the year 12, 22d of Ventôse, regulating certain port duties.

The 69th article of the charter declared that the soldiers in activity, the officers and soldiers in retreat, the widows, the officers and soldiers on the pension list, should preserve their ranks, honours, and pensions. Now, by an ordonnance of the 16th of December, the officers of all ranks, and military administrators not employed, as well as those on leave, were reduced to half-pay. Had this measure not been illegal, had it not been unjust, it would have been impolitic; and if at any time the crown should be fought for, fatal. The army exclaimed loudly against so crying an injustice; the nation at large regarded it as a gross violation of an express disposition of the charter, and a breach of the most solemn and repeated of the many promises employed in default of arms to open a way for the Bourbons into France. It was easy to see that the part of the king's conduct which required the utmost prudence was the treatment of the army, which in France is more national, both by its constitution and by the circumstances of the times, than in any other country. The great majority of all the male population having served at some time or the other, sympathise with the fortunes and character of a corps to which they consider themselves as still in some measure attached; and by a hap

py complacence fixing their recollections only on the glories, without counting the disasters of their brethren in arms, look upon the soldiery as the repositories of their honour, as the representatives, as the last hope, of their country.

The conduct of the imperial troops in the campaign of 1814 was such as to excite the admiration of the allies. Never were the valour, discipline, and skill of very inferior numbers more brilliantly displayed than in the battles of Champ-Aubert, Montmirail, Vauchamp, Mormans, Montereau, Craone, Rheims, Arcy sur Aube, and St. Dizier; and, in despite of the fatal termination of the war, the citizens and peasantry, who witnessed these gallant struggles, still dwell upon the theme with pride and delight. The army of Napoleon amounted to no more than 85,000 at the utmost, computing all the regular troops, excepting those of Marshal Soult; and with these the French Emperor was so near obtaining a final success over the multitude of his opponents, that, before the allies moved for the last time upon Paris, the order was given, and was in force for twenty-four hours, for a retreat to the Rhine. Of this fact assurance was given me, from indubitable authority at Paris, a few days after the capitulation, and my informant added, that the second in command in the Austrian army told him, when the advance was resolved upon, that he expected to be marched prisoner into the French capital. The head-quarters of the Emperor of Austria were by chance separated from those of the grand army, so that the inclination of the Prince Schwartzenberg to retreat could not be backed by a precise order from his master; and when that general insisted upon waiting for instructions from his court, the Emperor Alexander, affirming the distance would cause too great a delay, took the responsibility of the advance upon himself, and the movement was com menced, in precise opposition to the wishes of the commander in chief and the whole Austrian army. The allies found themselves at Paris they knew not how. A general opinion prevails, that the assertions of Napoleon relative to the conduct of the Duke of Ragusa are founded in truth, and at any rate the army is saved, in the eyes of their countrymen, between the supposition of treachery on the part of the generals, and of a justifiable resolution to terminate the contest by the sacrifice of the dynasty for which it had already made such splendid efforts. In short, the French considered the honour of their armies untarnished by the issue of the campaign of 1814; and they were therefore inclined to contemplate the reduction of their pay and force as a treason of the restored family, in unison with their whole system, and with their declared wish to efface from the memory of their contemporaries, and the page of history, all the twenty-five years of misfortunes, or, in other words, the triumphs of republican and imperial France.

At the same time there were many patriotic and thinking persons who would have found some excuse for this step in the poverty of the royal treasury, and in the difficulty of supporting an army calculated for forty-four millions of subjects in a kingdom reduced to a population of twenty-eight millions; had there not been repeated proofs of profusion in other instances, and had not the restored family betrayed, in many ways, a settled disregard of this great national body. Every saloon in Paris abounds with stories of the insults and the vulgar pleasantries of the Duke of Berri, addressed to many officers of distinguished merit. Does he inquire of one, in what campaign he served? and is told in all;'-In what capacity? aid-de-camp to the Emperor:'-he turns upon his heel with a contemptuous smile, and the officer is noticed no more. Does he learn from another that he has served twenty-five years? Vingt-cinq ans de brigandage,* is his reply. Do the old guard displease that great commander the Duke of Angoulême in performing some manœuvre ? they are told that they must go to England, and learn their exercise. Lastly, is a colonel to be degraded? the Duke of Berri tears off his epaulets with his own hand-another time he strikes a soldier on the parade. The Swiss regiments return to the Tuilleries; but, in addition to this foreign guard, six thousand nobles, the very old and the very young, tricked out in fancy dresses, which draw down the fatal curse of ridicule, compose a household force, the laughter of the citizens, and the envy of the army. The old imperial guard, outrageously banished from the capital, and suddenly recalled at the beginning of the ministry of Marshal Soult, are scarcely on their route towards Paris, when fresh jealousies create fresh orders, and the indignant veterans are marched back to their quarters. Certain Chouan chiefs are sent into Brittany, and there distribute decorations and recompenses to those rebels whom the armies had routed and quelled. Another Chouan lays a plan for enrolling a sort of sacred battalion against the plots of the army, and, though apparently prosecuted for this treason, is never punished. Lastly, the invaders of France, destroyed by the army at Quiberon, are to have a monument raised on the spot, as a perpetual commemoration of their loyalty, and the treason of the troops by whom they fell. The apologists and defenders of the king lament and admit the imprudencies I have just detailed. Connected with this debasement of the army was the suppression of the establishments for the female orphans of the legion of honour, which the king was, however, obliged to restore, and the reduction of the pay of the invalids; add to this also the evident

attempt to degrade the decoration of the legion, by the profusion with which the crosses were granted to the lowest agents of government, even to the clerks of the post-office, and the care with which the higher ministers laid them aside. The deductions drawn from this conduct were most unfavourable to the royal cause, and left no doubt in the mind of the military, nor of the nation, that the honourable existence of the French army was considered as incompatible with the system of the new court. In fact, when the Duke de Feltre went to England, he assured the Regent's ministers, that the standing army, which had been fixed at 240,000, did not amount to more than 84,000——— he did not add what is said here, but for which I will not vouch, that M. de Talleyrand and another of the Bourbon ministers had pocketed the difference of pay required for the nominal and actual amount of the troops. No wonder then, that in addition to the complaints of the army against their actual distresses, their imaginary injuries contributed to increase their disgust, and that of the nation, towards the House of Bourbon; and that every talent, whether of the pen or pencil, was called into play to overwhelm with ridicule and contempt the warriors of the court. I must not forget to mention, that the reduction of the army was scarcely so unpopular as the attempt to new model it, by renewing the regiments, and chiefly by the appointment of nearly five thousand officers, either old emigrants or young nobles, totally devoid of all military character or merit. The abolition of the national colours, and the adoption of the flag of La Vendée, though it afflicted the nation, was more particularly affecting to the army, who saw in this step the same determination

to tear from them all memorial of their former existence. The imperial guard burnt their eagles, and drank their ashes; some regiments concealed, and all regretted, their cockades. The friends of the court affected to consider the mere change of a flag as a trifle, and, in spite of all experience, did not recollect that nothing is a trifle to which any importance, however imaginary, is attached by a whole nation. They shewed that the king was determined to illegitimatize all proceedings, as he had said in his letter to the sovereigns, as far back as the assembly of the states-general, aye even his own, or that he forgot that he had worn the tricoloured cockade himself from the 11th of July, 1789, to the 21st of June, 1792. The provisional government, which acted in general with great prudence, made this sacrifice to the Count of Artois, the day before they surrendered their power into his hands, and must in this their last decree be considered as acting in conformity with the express wishes of the Bourbon princes, two of whom were then advancing to Paris, having unfurled the white flag.

Besides the violations of the charter already mentioned, may