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Some hopes were at first entertained, by the appointment of the Duke of Otranto to the ministry of police. The patriots (by this name I designate all those, who, whatever they may think of the principles of the revolution, feel the results of it to be impregnable, whether republicans, constitutionalists, Napoleonists, quovis sub nomine, conceived that this condescension, on the part of the king, was a security against any sanguinary measure, undertaken on pretence and under the name of justice. M. Fouché be gan his mediation by attempting to reconcile the king to the national cockade; he knew the importance of this trifle; and the king, who is qualified for the third class of the institute, though not for the throne, might have recollected that La Bruyere had said, "vous pouvez au"jourd'hui ôter à Paris ses franchises, ses droits, "ses privilèges, mais demain ne songez pas à même "reformer ses enseignes." The minister wished to spare his countrymen the disgrace of showing two orders, differing only one day in their date, pasted side by side, which I saw myself; the one proscribing the white cockade, and the other denouncing the tri-coloured. The national guard of the third legion protested against the declaration of the chiefs and majors of legion, which only added to the scandal; and as to the wish of 25,000 Parisians, for those of the guard attached

to the Bourbons do not amount to a greater number, M. Fouché was justified in not taking such a minority into consideration.

You may easily believe that all the rumours against the Duke of Otranto have been redoubled by his acceptance of office under the returned king; chiefly, it must be owned, amongst that class who are not at all acquainted with the true state of affairs, and who joined in the outcry against him for the convention of Paris; which, as I have before mentioned, was the work of the army. It is not to be believed, that ambition or meaner avarice had prompted this celebrated person to accept a post, in which there is so little chance of aggrandisement, either of character or fortune; and which, without any of the charms of distinction, must draw upon him not only the redoubled hatred of his former enemies, but the suspicion of his friends, and the malicious envy of those who wish to see the monarch surrounded by the pure champions of Coblentz, by those who talk of les Français, as if they were foreigners to them, unallied, unconnected, the objects of disgust and fear. As little can it be supposed, that M. Fouché has sought for this situation, in order to betray his master into measures which may be fatal to his crown. This language may be held by the patrons of vengeance, who see no security nor honour, but in

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the prompt punishment of every one who has not, to use their own expression," followed the right line;" and who would rather their monarch should reign over solitudes than cities defiled by the children and champions of the revolution. It may be held by the ignorant garretteers of the Strand, and their no less absurd disciples, the admirers of the apes of the imitators of the writers whose best pages seem but the ropy drivellings, which a brain, such as that of Mr. Burke, might have purged from the dregs of dotage-who are resolved that no good can come out of Nazareth; and, in spite of all experience, see in the merciful, moderate, constitutional minister of 1815, the sanguinary anarchical jacobin of 93, the enemy of kings and priests, of gods and men. As to the imputed treachery of his counsel, any one must feel him absolved, who knows France, and who is aware that if she is to be preserved for Louis, it must be by conciliatory measures, not by re-action; a simple word to our ears, but which in this country implies deaths, dungeons, confiscations, exiles, proscription, and disgrace, in all its hideous forms. An exclusive adoption of the principles and conduct of the old French monarchy, which some suppose might have been politic at the first restoration, becomes impossible at present, when such a policy must embrace the punishment of

so many thousands, it may be said millions, who have had the fatal opportunity of displaying their revolutionary attachments during the last three months. The conduct which might have been borne perhaps immediately subsequent to the despotism of Napoleon, cannot be hazarded after the comparative liberty of his last short reign; when the great body of the nation was flattered by a recurrence to those principles, which first launched them upon their revolutionary career; and when Napoleon was regarded only as the foremost champion of their recovered independence. If the king is betrayed, it will not be by M. Fouché, nor by those men, who having grown old amidst their countrymen, are the companions of their faults and their repentance, of their glory and their defeat. Louis may have a more dangerous traitor in his own breast, or in his family; or amongst his friends, amongst those who have forgot nothing, and have learnt nothing, who have lived in vain themselves, and for whom the rest of mankind have lived in vain; who would be the Richelieus of France, forgetting they are not the cotemporaries of Louis the Thirteenth. The Duke of Otranto may have to reconcile himself to the friends of liberty in England, to whom his conduct may appear at least equivocal; although, to my mind, it should rather be quoted in proof of the moderation and

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wisdom, by which the patriots of France are contented to obtain the object of their wishes; and, instead of a perverse, obstinate, unaccommodating attachment to names or individuals, or listening to the suggestions of pride and shame, still labour on in the rational pursuit of that constitutional independence, which, whether it be obtained under a Louis or a Napoleon, under the auspices of victory, or during the day of distress, may be no less valuable in itself, and handed down as a possession in perpetuity to their more fortunate and happier descendants. yourself what appears in your eyes the duty of an honest citizen, of a well-wisher to France: would you not endeavour to stifle your personal animosities against the dynasty, triumphant indeed in the misfortune of your country, but still the medium of reconciliation between your nation and the remainder of Europe, the guarantee of a peace which may leave time for the improvement of your social institutions? would you not take advantage of the difficulties which impede their establishment of despotism, (to which they may perhaps incline,) and wring from their weakness that which a stronger monarch might be enabled to refuse? Instead of meditating schemes of vengeance, which could only end in civil wars or massacres, would you not endeavour to give a pledge in your own person of the pos

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