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sibility of mutual reconcilement, and of the amalgamation of all party distinctions and opinions in one patriotic union, bent upon the formation of a government, tending to moderate all passions, to protect all rights, to secure and encourage the exercise of all social duties; and to put a final close to the long revolution, by the perpetual establishment of every practical benefit, which that revolution was originally intended and calculated to procure? The insignificance of the monarch being the first object of every constitutionalist, would you not think it as unreasonable to make him the object of your hatred as of your love? I am not called upon, however, to be the apologist of M. Fouché*; and I shall only add, that it is but just to withhold any censure of his conduct, until it shall appear that he has lent his name and authority to any act decisively anti-national, and in opposition to the professions and tenor of his latter career. The majority of the king's cabinet is composed of men, whose opinions may be supposed to tend

→ Since writing this, I have been assured, from a quarter to which I cannot but pay every deference, that Fouché was in correspondence with the king when at Ghent, and that the proscription list was arranged between him and Talleyrand so early as April. I cannot, however, the less refuse to record what was my impression when at Paris, nor on what arguments I founded it-neither shall I declare that impression to be removed.

towards those of the Duke of Otranto, and are an additional excuse for his acceptance of office. I have not yet learnt that he can be convicted of any previous arrangement with the Bourbons, or that he did not endeavour to obtain the most favourable terms for his defeated fellow citizens which the conquerors would consent to impose.

But it is now known, that at the first interview with the British commander in chief, the plenipotentiaries saw that the return of the king was the inevitable consequence of the defeat of the nation. One of the plenipotentiaries, General Andreossy, communicated this intelligence to his relation, M. "There is no resource

but to take the king, we have no choice," said he, immediately after he had seen the Duke of Wellington, whose continuation of hostilities added a most fearful confirmation to the presumption. Little more satisfactory were the conferences at Haguenau, the report concerning which reflects but little credit upon the ingenuity of the allies, if the fidelity of the reporters may be relied upon. In the last sitting of the representatives, General Sebastiani declared, that the account of the mission communicated by the government did not tally with that handed in by the plenipotentiaries; and he positively asserted, that the ministers of the allies confined their declarations of non-interference to the form

of government, the choice of a sovereign not being touched upon. The Duke of Otranto knew this most certainly, but he was obliged to temporise with the federates of the capital, and not to inform them at once of that truth which might have caused some desperate act of despair. The miserable prevarication of the sovereigns is scarcely worth notice. How could they suppose that they should be able to interfere with the form of government, and that any body suspected even their fears and follies of indulging such a design, after they had replaced the Bourbons on the throne? Besides, if they had chosen a sovereign, they had also chosen a government for France; at least they had excluded her from one form, to which she had before shown herself sufficiently attached. The truth is, that the exception to the eighth article of the treaty of the 25th of March, by the English cabinet, was a shameful mockery of France and of all Europe; and, so far from being stipulated in order to prevent an excuse for aggression on the part of Great Britain and the allies, was only intended either to separate the people from the Emperor, or to serve, in case of a defeat, that we might not appear bound to carry on the war for the reestablishment of the Bourbons, should we find such a scheme impracticable. I must repeat what I said in a former letter, that Lord Clan

carty's reasonable guarantees always left loopholes large enough to secure a retreat from our apparent promise of non-interference, and, indeed, to excuse any measures, even if extended to dismemberment, which the allies might choose to call cautionary. You have seen that the head of the British ministry was the very person to announce the insignificance and unobservance of the exception made by himself. If the allies had intended to adhere to their declaration, they could not have had a better opportunity, or have been furnished with excuses to the house of Bourbon so sufficient as were afforded them by the attitude assumed by France after she had deposed the Emperor. But the plenipotentiaries at Haguenau must have seen at once, that their enemies were determined to mistake the question, and to misunderstand the real state of France. Either the allies believed that the Bourbons were the choice of the greater part of the nation, and that it was their duty to crush the last efforts of an audacious minority, or they must have been persuaded that the mass of Frenchmen were culpable, and that no extremities were to be spared, to extirpate the jacobinical heresy of these political Albigeois.

The plenipotentiaries, on arriving at Hague

VOL. II.

nau on the 1st of July, were not admitted to the sovereigns themselves, nor to their ministers, but were introduced to commissaries appointed to receive their communications. Count Walmoden was named for Austria, Count Capo d'Istria for Russia, and General Knesebeck for Prussia. Lord Stewart, it seems, was not invested with any direct powers, but invited to attend the conferences, where, I have been since assured, from Mr. Lt, one of the plenipotentiaries, his behaviour was worthy of the author of the famous Paris dispatches, in which the hands of the Emperor Alexander were literally devoured. The French commissioners were seated on one side of the chamber of meeting, and those of the allies on the other. Whether his unofficial character pointed out such a position, I know not, but so it was, my lord's chair was placed a foot or two in front of the combined counts, and its occupier, during the conference, acted in a manner savouring rather of military than diplomatic discipline. Mr. Lt and his friends stared; nay, they could scarcely restrain a smile at the perfect insignificance of the three, who were assiduously kept where their chairs had been placed, in the back ground, and were encouraged or restrained in their questions accord

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