Page images
PDF
EPUB

although he should be a principal dignitary of that order, will be excluded from his privileges. Every patriot congratulates himself, that certain articles of the constitutional charter are to be revised; but he represses his joy when he recollects how the chamber, to whom is to be entrusted the liberties of himself and his posterity, will be composed, in the midst of whose bayonets it will sit, and who are to be its assistants in the other chamber, formed of men nominated by the court, and, at least, a majority of them previously secured. On the whole, then, the promise of a new national representation has gained the king no friends; but has rather renewed the charge of treachery and deceit, which the royalists take care to justify by hinting, that the chambers will enter fully into the views of the court, or will be finally dismissed.

One or two journals continue to speak the general sense of the nation on this subject. The Independent, edited by M. Jay, and under the influence, it is supposed, of M. Fouché, has not been silent; but its tone, in this as well as every other instance, is towards the king most respectful, and consonant with all it has hitherto said to reconcile the French to their monarch, and to make one more effort for constitutional inde

VOL. II.

pendence, by an oblivion of differences, and by that union of loyalty and patriotism which alone can suit with the circumstances of the times.

CONCLUDING NOTE.

The Independent has been suppressed-we need not want a better proof of the real system which is intended to be pursued: one or two other journals have shared the same fate, and amongst them the Nain Jaune, for joking with the battle of Montansier. The principles of the Independent had subjected it to the attacks. of the Napoleonists, or, rather, of those who thought the royalist government ought to be abandoned; or, according to a vulgar phrase,

given rope." It was guilty of no other indiscretion than telling the ministry how they might save the king. It need not be said that the liberty of the press is not now even a word. Those whom Mr. Cobbett calls, with great reason, whatever may be said of his phraseology, the base-souled editors of our court journals, blamed M. Fouché for his keeping the French papers in subjection, and for not suffering the truth to be told against himself and his friends; whereas the suppression of the Independent was no

work of his, nor could have been so, as it was the organ of his own opinions. It was the other part of the police that stopped the voice of common sense. M. Fouché only prevented, and that but partially, the insertion in the court journals, edited by priests and nobles, of articles wholly inflammatory, and tending to encourage the civil discord which wanted not the fuel of denunciation and proscription. Our journalists were, at first, angry at the restrictions of the press; they then found cut, after some Frenchman had found it out first, that the liberty of the press in the last reign had occasioned the fall of Napoleon. It may be recollected that, in the time of that Emperor, the same well-informed persons said there was no liberty of the press, and that the Courier asserted, that any person found reading that paper, or the Times, was fined 100 Napoleons. They now find the liberty of the press too good for Frenchmen, to whom they deny every other good thingand have pushed their folly so far as to sing pæans over the suspension of the French habeas corpus act. The appointment of M. Lainé to the chair of the lower chamber, of him who "would not shut the door against the "hopes of the emigrants," of him who identified the will of the king with the law, shows how Q 2

VOL. II.

much is to be hoped from the new national representation, which, as far as I hear, is more base, and less representative of the people, than the other chamber, where certain intelligent members, appointed to preserve forms, maintain a respectable minority. The name of Count Lanjuinais will not be forgotten in the record destined to preserve the memories of those men who have deserved well of their country in the days of her trouble. He does not despair; his repulsed patriotism is indefatigable. In the mean time every measure of the court seems directed by the fatality which crowned the last enterprise of Napoleon. The whole of France appears now convinced of the truth of that, of which the neighbours of the Tuileries were apprized in July, namely, the perilous position of the king. The atrocious murderers of the south condemn the forbearance which does not sharpen, instead of merely permitting, the use of their knives. The priests and royalist rabble of these countries regret the pious furies of the Angoulemes, and call for a Charles the Tenth. The association must make most dear to them the numerical successor of Charles the Ninth, and the rival of that wretched Vendome who was supported by the fanatics of the league. The same faction indulges in the same

complaints at Paris, and in every other department, where the breach between them and the vanquished majority is daily widening, and must finally split the kingdom into two countries, one of which will be the desolate abode of nobles and priests, served by the people whom the immediate presence of the allied armies shall be able, for a time, to repress; and the other composed of the portion of rebels more or less active, as the same foreign force shall be employed in their constraint. We do not know but that, at this moment, the high roads of the country, whose internal policy an Alfred might have admired, are just as impassable as the wilds of Curdistan. The patriots, of course, despair of extracting any real or permanent advantages from the forms of freedom granted by the king. The most moderate amongst them only continue to be inactive. I reckon for nothing the disturbances occasioned by the removal of the treasures of the Louvre, and defacing the monuments of the capital, which as many royalists as others, doubt. less, joined to inflame. The departments will care little about these injuries, which, though a severe wound to the vanity of the French, are no otherwise to be regarded than as they add to the conviction of the impotence of the king, who, with other advisers, might, perhaps, have ma

« PreviousContinue »