CHAPTER XI. FRANCE. Vicissitudes in France. - Polignac Ministry. -Public Opinion. La Fayette in Lyons. Breton Association.— Parisian Cafes. Pamphlets. Journals. Journalism. - Comite Directeur. -Jesuits. State of the Question. Meeting of the Chambers. Character of Parties. -- - IT has been the destiny of France, during the last half century, to fix the attention of the world by alternate scenes of degradation and glory; by astonishing vicissitudes of political condition; by the commission of the darkest public crimes, and by the exhibition of magnanimity and of enthusiasm in the pursuit of great national objects, seldom surpassed; and as the theatre in short, of those events, achievements, sacrifices, and revolutions in human affairs, whereon history delights to dwell. The incidents of 1830 have added another chapter of deep and absorbing interest to her already wonderful annals. Since the second Restoration, a period of comparatively long tranquillity, both internal and external, had elapsed, when the Revolution of the Three Days, and the subordinate events which preceded or accompanied it, came to interrupt the protracted calm and monotony of affairs, in the bosom of that people, so habituated to the contemplation of the most exciting changes, the most extreme and violent vibrations, in the combinations of its political condition. Tranquil the period may well be called, for France, which at home saw nothing more important than the assassination of a prince of the blood, the descent of the crown in the regular order of hereditary succession, an occasional uprising and consequent fusillade of the uneasy spirits among the people, the suppression or re-establishment of the liberty of the Press, the disbanding of the National Guards, a contested election, the funeral of a Manuel or a Foy, stormy discussions in the Chamber of Deputies, or capricious shiftings of the ministerial portfolios from one to another of the unstable tenants of office and which abroad saw nothing more important than the unopposed invasion of Spain, or the bloodless occupation of the Morea. In our own fortunate, peaceful, and prosperous land, where the stability and quiet of a happy form of government and of wise laws prevent the frequent occurrence of those profoundly interesting events, which electrify mankind, such things could not pass without filling a space, by no means insignificant, in our annals. But in France it is otherwise for what is a change of ministry, compared with a change of dynasty, the abolition of a law to the abolition of a constitution, the dispersion of a handful of turbulent students to the defeat of a noble army, the demise of a king to his dethronement, the doating ineptitude of a Louis or a Charles to the sublime aspirations and splendid errors of Napoleon? And the inglorious chase of the unresisting Constitutionalists of Spain - how little worth it could be to men, who had participated in the magnificent triumphs of Marengo and Jena, or the bloody reverses of Leipsic and Waterloo! But animation and vicissitude and preparation and anticipation have once more regained their sway over the course of pvblic affairs in France, and by consequence in the rest of Europe; and in resuming our narrative, we enter apon the record of events, which do not yield in importance or interest, to those which signalized the days of the Republic or the Empire. We closed the history of France for 1829 with an account of the formation of that ministry, which, in the brief period of eleven months from its appointment, was destined to overthrow the throne they were designed to strengthen and confirm. M. de Polignac had been transferred from the court of St James to the hotel of Foreign Affairs and invested with the responsible control of the government, first, as minister merely, and afterwards as President of the Council, in order to gain a name synonymous with incapacity as a statesman, and fatuity as a man. His associates were either, like MM. de Bourmont and La Bourdonnaye, the most supremely odious individuals in France, in the estimation of the great body of the Nation; or like MM. Courvoisier, Chabrol, and Montbel, and M. Guernon de Ranville, who soon took the place of La Bourdonnaye, were chiefly distinguished for their known or supposed devotion to the cause of ultra-royalty and the parti-prêtre. Such was the Cabinet, consisting of names in part but too notorious at the present hour, whose organization signalized the latter part of the year 1829; and it was received with those ominous and threatening bursts of public indignation, which clearly indicated an approaching crisis. If the Chamber of Deputies had been at this time in session, the Opposition would, of course, have chosen that as the theatre of their resistance to the new Cabinet, and the voice of France would there have been heard on this momentous subject. But Charles and his Camarilla had purposely selected this moment for a change of Ministry, in order to give the new Ministers time to mature their plans, and if possible acquire firmness in their places, before they should be called upon to face the Chamber of Deputies. If the opinions of the leading men of the Nation had not been long before fully made up, if the People themselves had stood in need of any regular and responsible concentration of public opinion for their information or guidance in this emergency, the King would have derived great advantage from this arrangement. For it is to be considered that France, with its thirty millions of inhabitants, possessed but one popular assembly, but one body in which the great intelligences of the times could in their own persons address the language of warning or persuasion to their fellow citizens. Provincial bodies, analogous to our state legislatures, unfortunately it had not; for, by a political oversight of the most fatal character, the ancient provinces, which at the Revolution offered so favorable a basis for a Federal Republic, had been sedulously and anxiously melted down in the revolutionary crucible into one homogeneous mass. Political meetings of an occasional nature, suited to the expression of opinion concerning the administration of public affairs, were either contrary to the laws, or unsanctioned by the usages of the French. The Press remained, and the Press alone, as the direct and legitimate channel for communicating to the People at large the views and feelings, the hopes and apprehensions, of the masterminds of the Nation. Happily the Press, that potent engine of pub lic movement and impulse, was at this time free, and was thus enabled to utter the decisions of the national will, and invoke the friends of liberty and order to stand fast each by the other in the great catastrophe that seemed impending. In what manner the Press discharged this most sacred duty we shall presently see; but that it was not the Press, which created the public excitement immediately consequent on the appoiutment of the Polignac ministry, is satisfactorily proved by the reception given to La Fayette at this period, in the south of France. Since the Revolution of the Three Days, so many personal details and anecdotes in illustration of that event have been spread before the world in the newspapers, that all men now understand the elevated position occupied by General La Fayette in his own country. They have seen the extraodinary influence exercised by him, a simple Deputy, in giving direction to the march of opinions and of action. It was the accumulated result of reiterated acts of lofty patriotism at home, brightened by the reflected splendor of his illustrious reputation in another hemisphere. He had returned to France, after the American war, the youthful hero of a new-born empire. With the characteristic ardor of his nature, he threw himself into that Revolution, which in its outset promised so much for the lasting good c France. When bad men seized upon the helm of state, and La Fayette was compelled to fly from a country reeling with the wild vertigo of revolutionary mad re ness, he became the martyr of liberty, as the prisoner of him, who worthily rules the Croats and Huns on the borders of European civilization; of him, who, not content with the infamy which attached to the name of Austria, as the kidnapper and base jailer of Richard Cœur de Lion, suffered that name to be in like manner disgraced once more, by peating the same petty outrage against the laws of hospitality and honor in the person of La Fayette. When restored to personal freedom and to his country, he proudly and conscientiously refused that homage to the victorious child of the Revolution, which many n émigré professor of ultra roy, alism had condescended to pay, but which La Fayette could not bestow even upon the great Julius' when' false to Rome. Consistent in his untiring zeal for national liberty at the latter epoch of the Restoration, he of course earned the honor of being hated by the Bourbons in proportion as he was beloved by France. Meantime he revisited America, and retrod, in one continued ovation, such as never royal progress or march of oriental pomp had exhibited, the scenes of his early usefulness and glory. Bringing back to his native country a treasure of heartfelt blessings and heaped-up tokens of eternal gratitude, to show the world how republicans loved to honor their benefactor, he reappeared among the children of young France as the patriarch of the revolution, holding in 1829 the liberal opinions of 1789, unshaken by misfortune or change, and standing as it were the im movable god Terminus, to indicate the limits between liberty and despotism. Such at this moment was the general position of La Fayette, such his absolute popularity as an individual. His intimate connexion with America was incidentally the occasion of a considerable enhancement of the charm attached to his name. Col. Le Vasseur's Journal of his patron's visit to America had recently been published, and was eagerly read and greatly admired, as well for its own intrinsic merits, as onaccount of the flattering picture it gives of the political condition of the United States. We in America, who judge of this work in the translation, and who are familiar with all the subjects it discusses, cannot fully appreciate the excellence and value of it as composed for the meridian of France. The highly talented and most estimable author of the Journal, who courageously perilled his life in the combat of the Three Days, and bore off in honorable wounds the brave man's badge of glory, wrote the book for France, who needed the examples and information it contained, not for America, who already possessed them in all their original fullness. This publication therefore so opportunely made, while it directly added to the celebrity of La Fayette, operated in the same way indirectly, by reviving the sympathies of enlightened Frenchmen in the prosperity of republican America, and gathering those sympathies around La Fayette as the visible representative of transatlantic freedom. These explanations are necessary to the understanding of the fact we are about to relate; at the same time that they will serve to elucidate the deference paid to La Fayette, as we shall hereafter see, in the preparation and accomplishment of the revolution of the Three Days. When the ordinances nominating the new Ministers appeared in the Moniteur, La Fayette was on the way to the south of France, to visit his patrimonial estates in his native province of Auvergne, which had been restored to him under the law of indemnity; and his journey was extended to the delightful residence of his grand-daughter, Madame Adolphe Perrier, amid the rich valleys of Dauphiny and the Isère. Nothing, except the circumstances of his welcome to America, could exceed the enthusiasm with which La Fayette was fêté by the inhabitants of the towns through which he passed. The people seized with extreme avidity upon this occasion for testifying their admiration of a great man, and their sense of the actual complexion of the political affairs of the country. The occasion was most auspicious in both respects. Thirtyeight years had rolled rapidly away since La Fayette was last among them; and what a mighty mass of overpowering reflection belonged to that period in the flight of time! The bright hopes of the first constitution, the lurid splendors of the Republic, the maddening excitements of the Empire, the two Restorations with all their train of humiliating consequences, arose in quick succes sion before the imagination.Louis XIV., the rash tribunes of the Republic, Napoleon, and another Louis, had all passed off like a dream, and the contest for the secure possession of constitutional freedom, formerly waged by the people of 1791, was now, after so many bloody but fruitless sacrifices, renewedly waging by the people of 1829 with untiring resolution and pertinacity. There lived a man, bearing the name of Charles Capet, and the title of King of France, to whom the dreadful lessons of the age seemed as water spilled on the ground, or seed scattered on the surface of the ocean; and who in sight of the red soil of the Place de la Révolution on the one hand, and the bronze columns of the Place Vendôme on the other, was meditating to deprive France, as she believed, of the liberties dearly bought with her blood. La Fayette, the champion of freedom in 1791, reappeared among them again, the champion of freedom in 1829; and he seemed as one risen from the dead, the resuscitated memorial of a by-gone era, a revenue from among the beatified spirits of the early days of revolutionized France, come to encourage the zealous, to fix the wavering, to stimulate the phleg matic, and to deliver a mission of gratulation and hope to a regenerated race. What fitter opportunity could be found for speaking out the universal indignation felt by the people at the appointment of a ministry, whose very existence in office they considered as a declared conspiracy against the Charter? |