point. There is no inclination in the army to try him again; he has been sufficiently tried: there is much less inclination in the people to repeat the experiment, although the faults of the royalist system will call down cries of "Vive "l'Empereur," as being a more decisive antiBourbon exclamation than those of "liberty and "the nation," for which it is supplied. Our cabinet will believe the accounts of the royalists, as usual, and, instead of exhorting the court of Paris to secure itself by moderation, will endeavour to save it by the removal or detention of one individual, whose existence in this or that latitude they will wisely suppose as the sole point on which depends the attachment or aversion of all France to its reigning govern

ment.

It was the intention, as you have seen, of Napoleon to retire to the united states of America. Notwithstanding he was placed under the protection of General Becker, the prefect Baron Ricard, and the maritime prefect Bonnefoux, had received orders from the court of Paris to prevent his escape, and did take measures to seize him. He gave himself up to the Bellerophon; he must therefore be considered as a prisoner of war, and should, doubtless, be treated as any other crowned head taken in the field. We have no right

to look upon him in any other light than a monarch who has failed in an enterprise to extend his dominions, and has become our captive by the fortune of war: neither justice nor generosity can allow us to add to his detention any rigours or degradations, savouring of punishment; much less can it be permitted that we should give him up to the knives of the Chouans, and the Brularts of the Bourbon court. What would be his fate, in that case, may be collected from the paragraph which follows the annunciation of his capture, in the Moniteur." And thus has “terminated an enterprise, conceived by Buona

parte, and executed by help of Messieurs Labédoyère, Ney, Bassano, Lavalette, Savary, "Bertrand, d'Erlon, Regnault de St. Jean

d'Angely, Lefevre Desnouettes, Boulay de la Meurthe, Defermont, Etienne, and the Ladies "Hortense, Souza, and Hamelin."

Although the Moniteur has resigned its official character to the court gazette, yet it is still in the hands of the government, and this paragraph may be considered a decided denunciation, and the names given a list of proscribed.—If M. de Vitrolles is the author of this article, he has forgotten that his life was saved at the intercession of the Princess Hortense, just as the Bourbons would forget that the Duke of Angouleme was

released by Napoleon. The royalists are deter mined still to believe, and make the world believe, that Napoleon was brought back by the schemes of traitors, not by their own indiscretion; and at last have ventured to designate, by name, the persons actually concerned in that preconcerted project: nothing more is wanting to show the total absurdity of such an imputation, which will be found to apply to each of the individuals here named, as much as to M. Etienne, the writer for the theatre, who has published the following letter to the editor of the Independant.

" SIR,

"An article of the Moniteur, of this day, de"signating me as one of the authors of the conIspiracy which has brought back Napoleon Buonaparte into France, and tending to pro"voke against me the heaviest penalties; I beg you to inform the public, that it is my inten"tion to prosecute, for slander, the author of "that article.

"I have the honour to be, &c.
"ETIENNE."

Not only the fifteen persons named in the Moniteur, but the vast majority of twenty-eight

millions of Frenchmen, are guilty of supporting that man when brought back; but I re-assert, that it is my fixed opinion, that no proof will ever be found of a previous conspiracy to restore him ;—what was done by the military men here named was done openly, and in consequence of the appearance of Napoleon in France, not of a pre-concerted plot. The king may shoot them, as well as all the individuals who joined Napoleon, before he himself quitted Lille, if he can; but we shall see what proofs their trials, if trials they have, will bring of a previous conspiracy*.

We have the best proof of the futility of this charge from the trial of Count Labédoyère, from the confessions of Marshal Ney, from the permission granted to M. Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely, and the Duke of Bassano, to retire from France. I will mention another proof, decisive to me-the Count Lavalette, director general of the posts under Napoleon, was put in the second list of proscribed; that is, of those who were not to be tried, but of those who were to retire to certain assigned places under superintendance. The count went to Fouché, and positively insisted upon being put in the first list, and so running the chance of his life; saying, he defied the court to prove any thing against him : now, it is natural, that if a conspiracy had existed, Lavalette should have been concerned in it, and the Duke of Bassano likewise.

Since writing the above, Marshal Ney has been shot; chiefly, it appears, upon the evidence of General Bourmont,

It is not at all unnatural that the restored dynasty should wish to punish those who signalized themselves, in the great national attempt to exclude them from the throne: and if the five or six military men of rank, who were the first to declare for Napoleon upon his advance from Cannes, shall be taken to the plain of Grenelle, there will be nothing unusual in the vengeance, nor, it may be said, unjust. Want of success in enterprises of this nature has always been so rewarded.

Et si le sceau de la victoire

N'eut consacré ces- demi dieux,

Alexander, aux yeux du vulgaire,
N'aurait été qu'un téméraire,

Et César un seditieux..

It does not follow that an entire oblivion of offences would not be more politic, as well as more generous. If the king be strong enough

who made many vague assertions respecting a conspiracy arranged by the minister at war and the marshals, which all the world knows not to have the shadow of truth. The court itself does not pretend to believe that Marshal Soult had any concern in the return of Napoleon. Marshal Ney would, it seems to me, have better consulted his own dignity and that of the national cause, if he had confessed himself guilty of being seduced by a wish of contributing to the recovery of the independence and glory of France, and had submitted, without any useless struggle, to the fate reserved,

VOL. II.

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