Volume 74 / Part 8 — THE MARQUIS DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN.[25]

THE MARQUIS DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN.^[25]

FRANCE IN 1853.

The name of Larochejaquelein is not an obscure one. It was once familiar to the world. It was known and venerated wherever stainless honour, fidelity proof against all temptations and suffering, chivalrous valour, and patient courage amid dangers that do not try the nerves less that they want the excitement which sustains the soldier on the battle-field, were held in reverence. The two brothers who covered that name with glory of the purest kind were noble specimens of the old chivalry of France, when chivalry had well-nigh passed away; and the chronicler of their romantic gallantry and their heroic death was the gentle female who bore their name, and who bore it high, and who shared in their sufferings, their triumphs, and their defeats. We know of few compositions more interesting than the narrative of the Marchioness de Larochejaquelein, who, we are happy to find, still survives, her form bowed by age, but her heart as true as when, in early youth and beauty, she traversed on foot the ravines of the Bocage, or forded the canals of the Marais, and witnessed the sanguinary wars waged by the insurgents of La Vendée during the wildest period of the French Republic. It is curious that the most attractive records of the great revolutions which convulsed the two kingdoms of England and France, at periods so distant from each other, should respectively be the production of a female pen. The memoirs of Mrs Hutchinson and the narrative of Madame de Larochejaquelein are companions fit to be placed side by side with each other; and though the character of the two works is different, the interest they excite is identical. They both possess all the fascination of romance, but they are valuable in a degree which few romances can pretend to. It has been remarked, that until their publication the world was strangely in error on many of the important events to which they relate, and that they have been singularly useful in diminishing a great deal of the prejudice, and in dissipating the ignorance which had existed, particularly with reference to some of the principal actors in these terrible scenes. The character of the English heroine is shadowed forth in her history; it is more unbending, more masculine, more stern, perhaps, and commands admiration which the mind cannot refuse. But the heart is led away by the tenderness of the Frenchwoman; and her pathetic touches, while they add to the interest of her story, impart to it the impress of truth.

The nobleman who has just published a defence of his own political career during the eventful changes which France has again witnessed, is the son of that lady by a second marriage. His lineage is an ancient and honourable one. Sprung from the old house of Vergier de Larochejaquelein, he counts among his ancestors a Crusader whose arms form one of the many ornaments of the rich gallery of Versailles; two warriors who fell on the hard-fought field of Pavia, when “all was lost except honour;” a brother in arms and tent-companion of Henry IV., who was left “with his back to the field and his feet to the foe” on the plains of Arques; a mestre-de-camp, who met his death while in the act of boarding a pirate off St Domingo. His uncle was the general-in-chief in the Vendean army, and it was this gallant gentleman, on whose history Froissart would have loved to linger, who spoke this last address to his army, which is still remembered by the peasants of the Morbihan—“If I advance, follow me; if I retreat, slay me; if I fall, avenge me!” Another of this heroic family was a dashing officer of carabineers under the Empire; and on the battle-field of the Moskowa he maintained the old valour of the house of Larochejaquelein. Count Louis, the father of the present Marquis, refused to serve under Napoleon. When the flight from Elba roused Europe again from its brief tranquillity, the peasant soldiers of La Vendée gathered once more round the white banner of their chief. The insurrection was, however, soon put down, and Larochejaquelein, while in the act of leading on his men against the Imperial troops, fell with a bullet in his heart. This is an ancestry of which any man may be proud.

The present Marquis is the son of the Royalist chief of the Hundred Days, who had married the widow of his old companion in arms, the Marquis de Lescure. He was born in 1804, and at the early age of eleven was created a peer of France, under what is called the Second Restoration. He entered the military service in 1821, joined the army under the Duke d’Angoulême in 1823, and made the campaign of Spain. He was captain in the horse grenadiers of the Royal Guard in 1828, and, inheriting the military ardour which characterised his family, petitioned the king to be allowed to serve in the Greek war of independence, but was refused. He was permitted, however, to join the Russian army as a simple volunteer in the campaign of the Balkan against the Turks, “having nothing better to do,” as he himself said on one occasion in the Chamber of Deputies. Though a peer of France, he had not taken his seat in the Upper House when the revolution of 1830 broke out; and refusing to accept place, favour, or honours at the hands of the revolutionary government of July, he resigned his functions as peer of France. Endowed with remarkable activity of mind, he devoted himself for some time, and with much energy, to industrial pursuits, and gave up politics till 1842, when he was named a member of the Chamber of Deputies by the electoral college of Ploermel, in the Morbihan. During his parliamentary career he did not remain idle. He took a prominent part in most of the stormy discussions of the time: the various projects of replies to the addresses from the throne, the conscription reform law, prison reform, railroad bills, electoral reform, liberty of instruction, all found in him a ready, fluent, and vigorous, if not an eloquent debater. On all occasions he spoke out his mind frankly and boldly; and though on many occasions in opposition to his own party, as well as to the government, it is said that he never had a personal enemy in the Chamber. His conduct, when the paltry attempt was made by the servile adherents of the new régime to affix infamy on the Royalists who paid their homage to the descendant of their former master, on the occasion of the Count de Chambord’s visit to London in 1842, is beyond all praise. He rejected, with scornful indignation, the stigma attempted to be fixed on him by the Orleanists, who did not feel the sentiment of honour, and were incapable of appreciating it in others. He at once resigned his seat as deputy, and appealed from the outrage offered him by the Philippists to the judgment of the electors. The electors answered the appeal, and Ploermel sent him back to the Chamber, where he persevered in the same independent course. When the base arts of corruption employed by the government of July were to be dragged to the light of day, Larochejaquelein was never silent. “A corrupting and degrading selfishness pervades all parts of society,” he said, in the discussion of the budget in 1845. “I have, in common with the rest of the nation, given up all illusions about the constitutional forms of the state, and I have no longer any faith in their independence. On all sides, in all places, I behold the triumph of the base over the generous, of evil over good; and each day that passes by brings us nearer to a tremendous crisis—the future is indeed dark and threatening!” These prophetic words were destined to be soon realised—sooner, perhaps, than the speaker himself imagined.

We have said that M. de Larochejaquelein was a frequent and a forcible speaker on important occasions. Without much claim to what is termed oratory, his language is fluent and full of energy; and he has scarcely uttered a few sentences, when you feel that he is a man of profound convictions—and this we hold to be a great, as it is a rare, merit in times like the present. His portly presence, open brow, and flowing hair—his quick, earnest, and impassioned gesticulation, remind you of the tribune of revolutionary days. The haughty movement of his head, and the scornful expression of his eye, when repelling some unjust accusation, give him an appearance of pride, which certainly is not characteristic of him, for in private life no one can be gentler or more unaffected. You see before you the gentleman of the old souche, not the marquis of the salon, or that trifling race which the wit of Molière has perpetuated. Had the Marquis de Larochejaquelein not been born an aristocrat, he would have been a tribune of the people. Whatever be his merits or demerits as a speaker or a politician, he possesses, at all events, the courage, the audacity of his opinions. He was devoted to the Bourbons of the elder branch (and they have not always paid his devotedness with gratitude), not for interest, but for honour, from family traditions; and were not the days of chivalry all but extinct in what was once a nation of cavaliers, and were men again to combat for dynasties in France, we are inclined to think that he would be among the first to place his lance in rest, as his ancestors did before him; and yet, if we are to judge from recent events, neither the hereditary devotedness of his family to the cause which was so often sealed with their blood, nor the sacrifices (and we are informed they are not few) which he himself has made to it, have won him the favour of the court of Frohsdorf. On the contrary, we believe that he has been exposed to all the persecution that petty malignity can set at work; and we know that attempts have, on many occasions, been made to ruin him among the primitive peasantry of La Vendée and the Morbihan. His position with reference to his own party became so intolerable, that he has considered it necessary to publish, in a small volume, a review of the state of parties in France in 1853, and which is, at the same time, a vindication of his own conduct.

The work is curious and instructive. It notices the events which have recently occurred in France; and though the causes which led to that very decided act of vigour known as the coup-d’état of December 1851, have been long since known to the public, and appreciated by impartial men, a narrative bearing the impress of truth, and penned by one of the actors in the drama, cannot fail to be interesting. We do not concur in all the views of M. de Larochejaquelein, nor do we agree in all his deductions; but we readily admit the truth of his sketch of political parties in France previous to the month of December, of the intrigues of the Orleanist faction, their hypocrisy and selfishness, their utter recklessness of consequences, provided but a chance was afforded them, no matter at what cost to the country, of recovering the power for which they had shown themselves unfit, and of which they were deprived almost without an effort. In all this we agree; and we confess we are not a little pleased at finding the opinions we have already had occasion to express on these points fully borne out by one who has so intimate a knowledge of affairs. We believe that the French press has, with one or two exceptions, passed over in silence the work of M. de Larochejaquelein; and we are not much surprised at that silence. It is some time since all political intercourse has ended between him and the persons who compose the court of Frohsdorf. These persons, we fear, too truly represent the extravagant opinions and the intolerant conduct of the men who contributed by their evil counsels to the overthrow of the legitimate monarchy. They are the same of whom it has been said, and said truly, that they returned from their long exile, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing; and were the Count de Chambord to be restored to the throne of his ancestors, their policy would again lead to its overthrow. We desire to speak with respect of the present chief of the house of Bourbon. We admire the dignity of his bearing; the position he has assumed with respect to the Orleans family; the proud refusal to make any sacrifice of what he considered to be a principle, even though that sacrifice increased the number of his partisans; the firmness with which he maintains his superiority over those who despoiled him—the innocent victim of base intriguers, and a successful insurrection—of his rights. But we fear that he allows himself to be too much influenced in certain matters by a coterie composed of persons of antiquated notions, and who do not appear to have any conception of the progress made in the social and political world during the last half-century. The errors of that coterie are exposed by M. de Larochejaquelein; and that exposure will not narrow the distance which separates him from his party, or rather from the court of Frohsdorf. The unpalatable truth he tells will not easily be forgiven; and the Legitimist organs of the press have considered it more prudent to pass them over without notice or contradiction. The organs of what is called the Fusion have been equally discreet, and with one or two exceptions the other journals have imitated their discretion, either because they considered his sketch not sufficiently Buonapartist to merit unqualified praise, or too much so for censure. The object of the Marquis de Larochejaquelein, who still professes to be a Legitimist in principle, is to show that he has been guilty of no inconsistency in giving in his adhesion to the imperial government, and that he has not discarded the opinions he always professed; that he has not denied the name he bears, nor renounced the political faith in which he was brought up, by accepting that régime, and taking, as a member of the Senate, the oaths of allegiance to the Emperor and the constitution. It is principally in this respect that the interest of the book consists, and we have noticed briefly and impartially the conduct of the writer, and that of a certain number of his fellow-Legitimists who have, equally with himself, comprehended the imminent danger their common country was exposed to, and availed themselves of the only means of safety left at their disposal.

The offence committed by M. de Larochejaquelein, and which the more intolerant of the Royalist party do not pardon, is not of recent date. He was a Legitimist, it is true, but he was also attached to constitutional government. He preferred a sovereign who inherited a crown from his ancestors, but he was likewise the supporter of representative institutions. But so many catastrophes—so many revolutions had passed over France—so many governments had been overthrown and institutions subverted, that all notions of right and justice, as of government, were completely lost. The actors in the first Republic denounced all monarchical forms, as not only incompatible with human rights, but actually opposed to common sense itself—in fact, something monstrous and unnatural. After convulsing all Europe, and utterly changing the country where it first broke into mad violence, that Revolution became exhausted from its very excesses; the Republic fell into contempt; but the terror inspired by it was such, that then, as in more recent days, people were glad to take shelter in any government that promised security to life and property. The great object of the Consulate, as of the Empire, was to obliterate the last traces of a system which had cost France so dear. That régime was so great and so dazzling that the loss of liberty was soon forgotten; and the yoke that pressed on the nation was the less galling because it was concealed in glory; and Frenchmen consoled themselves for not being free, because their master was a hero.

That brilliant meteor, after blinding the world with its splendour, and awing it by its power, fell into darkness. The ancient line was restored; and the Restoration in turn began by proclaiming the imperial rule as a usurpation; and Louis XVIII., in the charter of 1814, dated his reign, not from his return to France and the fall of Napoleon, but from the death of his nephew, the son of Louis XVI.;—as if the imperial epoch, with all its marvellous events, had never existed, and as if the account popularly, but erroneously, attributed to the famous Father Loriquet, was exact, that there had been no such government as the Republic, and that the man who was generally believed to have ruled the French nation despotically, but not ingloriously, for fourteen years, was in reality only Monsieur le Marquis de Buonaparte, lieutenant-general in the service of his most Christian Majesty.

Next came the Revolution of July, which proclaimed that Charles X. had forfeited his right to the crown, for himself and his heirs—who, however, were admitted to have done nothing to merit that forfeiture—by the manner in which he interpreted the 14th article of the charter, which, nevertheless, authorised him “to make regulations and ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the state.”—(Charte Constitutionnelle de 1814.) Republican writers (Dictionnaire Politique, p. 216) admit that the aforesaid article left to the king “the dangerous privilege of being the sole judge of the necessity of the case;” though they refused to recognise that or any other article of a charter which had been octroyée, or issued by royal authority alone. The responsible advisers whom Charles X. consulted, were of opinion that his conduct in issuing the famous ordinances was legal. The Orleanist revolution denounced that act as a violation of the charter, and declared that Charles X. had broken some imaginary compact between him and his people, and had forfeited the crown. This was admitting, to all intents and purposes, the right of armed insurrection. The principle thus admitted by the new régime was often turned against itself; and the right of overthrowing the government was many times tried during the reign of Louis Philippe. Various insurrections broke forth, which were successively put down; but had any of them succeeded, Louis Philippe would long before 1848 have been accused, on equally just grounds, of a violation of the new charter, and consequent forfeiture of the crown, as his predecessor. At length his turn came; and at the very moment that most people believed the throne of July to be fixed on the surest basis, the insurrection of February in a few hours overthrew that which had already triumphed over so many previous dangers. Louis Philippe rose to power on the barricades of July;—that power was laid prostrate by the same means. He, in turn, was proclaimed a usurper of the people’s rights, a violater of public liberty, and condemned to execration. It is not strange, therefore, if the minds of men became bewildered amid so many conflicting doctrines. There no longer appeared any fixed standard by which to judge of authority. Monarchy in its absolute form was decried by some; constitutional monarchy by others. Monarchy under any denomination, or under any form whatever, was denounced by many as an outrage on human reason. Some maintained that a republican rule was hateful to the immense majority of the nation, and that France only desired a fair opportunity to declare its will. Under such circumstances what was to be done? The Royalists did not conceal that they only endured the Republic until an occasion offered for re-establishing their own form of government. Each party maintained that it, and it alone, represented the wants and wishes of the people; while the unhappy people, in whose name, and on whose behalf, all this had been done, stood by in silent dismay, and bent to the yoke which each faction that got uppermost imposed upon it. All was confusion, anarchy, chaos;—and the country, whose wellbeing was the pretext, rapidly approached the brink of ruin.

Under such circumstances, we again ask, what was to be done? The Marquis de Larochejaquelein thought that the only way of solving the problem was by an appeal to the very people in whose name every outrage was successively perpetrated; and calling upon it to declare, once for all, frankly and freely, what form of government it preferred—whether monarchy legitimate or constitutional, or a republic. From the day he took his seat in the Chamber of Deputies until the 2d December, when the National Assembly was dissolved by the coup-d’état, such was his constant theme. He denied the legitimacy of the Orleans monarchy of July, and refused to recognise the right of two hundred deputies, a portion of only one branch of the legislature, to exceed the terms of their mission, and to bestow sovereign power on any one. He expressed his belief that France would, if an occasion offered, return to the government of her legitimate sovereign, and he did not conceal that such was the motive for his appeal; but at all events he demanded that France should be consulted, and he pledged himself to abide by the issue. By such conduct he incurred the hatred of Legitimists and Orleanists;—of the former, because his doctrine was inconsistent with the principle of divine right; and of the latter, because the admission of such an appeal vitiated, ab initio, the right of the sovereign whom the two hundred deputies had, of their own sole act, given to the nation. We offer no opinion as to whether M. de Larochejaquelein would have attained his object had his plan been carried into effect, nor on the abstract fitness of such an appeal; but in so complete a dissolution of authority of every kind, and amid such a confusion of all ideas of government, it would be difficult to suggest any other experiment whereby the right of those who founded their claim on the will of the nation could be tested.

The first great offence committed by M. de Larochejaquelein consisted, as we have just seen, in his having so far deviated from the principle of divine right, as to recommend an “appeal to the nation;”—but the crime for which he can hope for no forgiveness from the court of Frohsdorf, is his having recognised the imperial government, and accepted the office of senator under it. M. de Larochejaquelein is of opinion, that after so many revolutions there was no chance for monarchy in France otherwise than by means of universal suffrage, by which the present government has been elected. He thought that the Legitimists, who had always maintained that they, and they alone, were acceptable to the nation, would run no risk in abating something of their amour propre, and in meeting the reaction half-way. If they were right, there was no fear of the result of such an appeal. The Orleanists, who were few in number and factious in conduct, would indeed be justified in shrinking from such an ordeal as the ratification of the act of two hundred deputies of the opposition; but in any case he despaired of a monarchical government in any form that attempted to establish itself on a narrower basis. “Let us now suppose,” he says (p. 190), “that monarchy were proclaimed in France otherwise than by universal suffrage, which no accredited leader of the old Royalist parties admitted. Of the three monarchical parties, two would have been in open hostility with the government, and would, as now, rely for aid on the Republicans—this time in open hostility, and with much more reason. It is, perhaps, from a feeling akin to paternal weakness that I invariably recur to this article of my political faith—If the question of Monarchy or Republic had been frankly put to the country under the Republican government, under the Republican constitution, all dynastic pretensions would vanish before traditional right, and the majority of the Republicans themselves would have submitted to the declared will of the nation. But no!—it was thought better to carry on intrigues up to the very day when the coup-d’état of the 2d December became a social and political necessity; instead of cherishing carefully that liberty which we claimed for the national will, the parties I refer to preferred reserving themselves for chances which had only the effect of prolonging our intestine divisions.”

M. de Larochejaquelein explains why he has given his adhesion to the present government, elected, as it has been, by means of that very appeal to the nation which he had, with certainly the hope of a different result, always advocated. “If I am asked,” he says (p. 214), “the reason of the humble support I give to the present government, my answer is very simple: I see before me a strong government, which has rendered real service to my country, and at this moment I do not see any other that can possibly succeed to it. The faults that have been committed are so numerous—revolutions have so exhausted our strength—events have such complete power over us—that, I confess, my reason forces me to accept the vote of eight millions of my fellow-citizens. Nevertheless, I have never been more convinced than I now am, of the excellence of the hereditary principle. Let us suppose the Emperor to have issue—he has also relations. Let us suppose the Count de Chambord to have issue—but the princes of the house of Orleans are numerous. Under such circumstances, France would be exposed for centuries to the danger resulting from the dissensions of the monarchical parties disputing among each other the possession of the crown. Hereditary right, respected by France for her own sake, saved her from the evils which perhaps were the fate of future generations, and spared us the repetition of those trials which we have already so severely felt. I will be frank. The reason that many Legitimists support the government is, that they do not wish on any account, or any terms, either Orleanism or anarchy—the one being, in their opinion, the consequence of the other. Were there no other motive than to destroy the chance of either, the persons I speak of are of opinion that they ought not to refuse taking part in the affairs of their country. Europe is equally interested with us that the principle of the Revolution should not be represented on the throne of France by a new family usurpation, for there is no sovereign that such usurpation should not alarm.”

The reign of Louis Philippe was the reign of the bourgeoisie—of the revolutionary shopkeepers of Paris. The scepticism of the eighteenth century had extended to morals—the mockery that assailed religion gradually undermined society—and all notions about virtue, honour, independence, were destroyed by a blighting incredulity. We are no believers in what is termed the perfectibility of human nature, but we do not think that, even with the most mercantile people of the world, a love of gain is incompatible with ideas of personal and national honour. The all-powerful bourgeoisie of the Orleanist régime was not a good specimen of that class; it carried into political life the characteristics of its social life. Insolent and overbearing in prosperity, it was fawning and mean in adversity. A difference is always observable between the bearing of a gentleman—and by the term we refer as much to moral as to social superiority, as the gentleman of nature may be found in all classes—and the mere upstart, and in France it was perhaps more striking than elsewhere. Dignified humility, lofty submission, obedience that implies no forgetfulness, no sacrifice of self-respect, loyalty which cannot be degraded even in political servitude, a sense of personal honour which despotism cannot wound, are far different from the pertness of the parvenu, the nervous pedantry of the doctrinaire, or the fawning of the sycophant. The one inclines low, with a consciousness of just subordination to high station; but after so inclining he stands up with erect face: the other falls to the dust prostrate. The aristocratic courtier will offer the incense of his adulation, but his censer is not rudely flung in the eyes of his royal master, and his homage is not without grace and dignity. His words may be soft and insinuating, but he will not change his nature. To use the language of one who knew both classes well, he may stoop to pick up his master’s hat or handkerchief, but it is the act of polite attention to superior rank, and not the mercenary subserviency of a valet; and there is an air of equality about it which shocks no one, and does not offend the personage to whom it is paid. We rather think that, generally speaking, a prince prefers selecting his ministers from the class of plebeians, because he believes he shall be served by them as mere mercenaries; while the others he must treat as servants of his crown, and no otherwise. It is mentioned as one of the anecdotes of the Court of Louis Philippe, whose fault was want of dignity, that, one day, wishing to gain over to some project of family interest, on which he had set his heart, one of his ministers, he offered him, in a familiar, off-hand, and half-contemptuous manner, a portion of the fruit he was at the moment eating. The minister appeared much flattered, bowed low, and accepted the royal gift. We are not aware whether the bribe produced the effect intended, but we much doubt if the citizen-king would have treated with such disdainful familiarity a Montmorency, a Noailles, or a Molé.

The effect produced by the exclusiveness of the July régime was such as might have been expected. It was inculcated that the primary object of man’s existence was the gratification of his meaner passion;—success in the pursuit of wealth without any close examination as to the means by which it was acquired, was regarded as the summum bonum; the enrichissez-vous so often repeated in the banquet and electioneering speeches of even the most eminent of Louis Philippe’s ministers (though we readily admit that no such incentive influenced the person who so spoke) were the leading maxims of that system. Fidelity to principles, faith in high and noble aspirations, were rather sneered at as the ravings of the imagination, suited perhaps to the age of romance; and strong attachment to traditions was referred to as a folly unworthy of men of sense. The bourgeois were often assured that they alone were the sovereign; that they alone were eminent in eloquence and in thought; that to them alone belonged the gifts of the earth; that they alone, provided they were men of substance, were superior in the social as in the moral scale; that to them belonged all distinctions as a matter of right; that they only were fit to occupy eminent posts in every branch of the administration, and in fact that in their hands were exclusively placed the destinies of the state. They who thus extravagantly exalted the pursuit of mere material interests, were destined to pay dearly for the lessons they had taught. Faith and reverence for the past had been held up to contempt by the new school of statesmen; but the doctrines that had been inculcated for the overthrow of the former dynasty, were equally applicable to the modern one, and the Revolution of February was the consequence. Empty and dogmatic, the real bourgeois—the bourgeois whose stupidity or conceit makes him sure good material in the hands of the revolutionists—has nevertheless pretensions to nothing less than universal knowledge. Jealous of all superior to him in social position, and insolent to those below him, he would drag down the former to his own level, but would not permit the latter to rise to it. With the examples yet before him, and the preceptors he had to guide him, he could not be a bourgeois such as July encouraged, without being somewhat of an infidel. The reverence for religious forms that characterised his fathers, was in his opinion fit for times of ignorance, but not for the enlightened nineteenth century. He had dipped here and there into the Philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire; he could sneer at the Mosaic chronology; be witty on the description of Noah’s Ark; was incredulous about the Deluge; and laughed outright at the Passage of the Red Sea. He had read the Origine de tous les Cultes of Dupuis, and could quote whole pages from Volney. He was therefore a philosopher. With those severer studies he mingled the lighter graces of wit and poetry, and for these accomplishments he was indebted to the doggrel of the “philosopher of Ferney” in Joan of Arc; the Guerre des Dieux of Parny, and the looser songs of Beranger. To show that he thoroughly appreciated these great masters, and that he was superior to popular prejudice, he would not enter the doors of a church, as the observances of religion were only fit for women and children. To prove his independence, and to give “a lesson to the government,” he would not pay the just respect, which degrades no man, to the accredited representative of authority; but he would fall on his knees to worship the merest political mountebank. He incessantly clamoured about equality, and decried the aristocracy if he happened to see a carriage, with a coronet or armorial bearings, roll by him; but his pride was up if a struggling artist or poor man of letters addressed him otherwise than with cap in hand. The noisy advocate of social and political liberty, there was no greater despot in his domestic circle. His house-porter crouched before him, and his servants grew dumb when they heard the creak of his shoe. Railing against the “upper classes,” his ambition was to scrape acquaintance with some decayed viscount, some equivocal marquis; and if he had a visit from some one who bore a title, the coroneted card lay for whole months in full view on the central table of his drawing-room, or was stuck in the most conspicuous part of the looking-glass frame. His personal pomposity was increased the more he was disposed to corpulence, and his boldness was decisive proof of the superiority of his intellect. Our worthy bourgeois was rather hard to be pleased. When the political world was tranquil, he passed his leisure hours in running down the government; and though no one had more experienced the mischief of agitation, he generally voted for its most dangerous adversaries: not because he approved of their principles, or that the ministerial candidates were not honourable men, but because he was determined to let no opportunity pass of making the king and his government feel that he, M. St Godibert, was not pleased with them, and would “give them a lesson.” These lessons occasionally cost the teacher very dear; and when agitation, warmed by himself into incipient insurrection, grew dangerous, he was sure to be the first to accuse the government of having excited it for its own special purposes. When insurrection was defeated, he again blamed the government for excessive lenity in the punishment of those who disturbed the public peace; and when all peril was over, and a complete lull ensued, then he accused the same government of excessive cruelty to those who a day or two before were the infame canaille, but who now were his frères egarés—his deluded brethren and fellow-citizens.

These were the men who served as the instruments to bring about the Revolution of July, and these were they who were feasted and flattered until they were led to believe themselves the only beings on earth worthy of consideration. Such specimens were of course to be met with as employés in the various ministerial departments. Nothing could be more insolent, or more griping, than the general run of those underlings. The recommendation “enrichissez-vous,” coming, as it did, from the first minister of the crown, was not forgotten;—he was one of the few who did not carry out for himself his own theory; but we fear that the love of power, which was in him a passion, induced him to tolerate, or at least not to prevent, the scandalous jobbing which it was known was going on—for it is not credible that such things could be done in secret. A government where such men enjoy, in consequence of their position, a great though underhand influence, is humiliating for an honourable man to live under. There is something more respectable in the audacity with which the insurgent flings out his crimson flag, and eyes, as he passes through the richest quarters of Paris, the trembling bourgeois, whose fine mansion he has already marked out, than in the system which admits as its principal instruments the rapacious and insolent underlings, who too often had the ministerial ear under the Orleans régime.

As for the representative system in France during the period of which we speak, it was a farce. Two hundred thousand electors, for a population of thirty-three or thirty-four millions, was not much better than an oligarchy, and the worst of all oligarchies, for its corruption was its bond of union, as was proved by the disclosures made to the world towards the conclusion of Louis Philippe’s reign, when some of the highest functionaries were dragged before the tribunals for mal-practices; and we believe that there were other persons who did not regret that the Revolution of February came to save them from public disgrace. A minister who wishes to be regarded as a philosopher and a statesman, should try to purify his age rather than corrupt it; and it is as immoral as impolitic to encourage the baser passions of men in order to keep yourself in power, however clean your own conscience, and virtuous your purposes. Such things might be palliated in so loose a politician as Walpole; but they would shock and disgust were they, by the remotest chance, to be found in so austere a moralist as Guizot.

Some time previous to the coup-d’état of 1851, a new scheme was formed by the Orleanists, who were tired of the forced leisure to which the successful imitation, in February 1848, of the example set by themselves in 1830, condemned them. The object of this new project was the complete reconciliation of the elder and younger branches of the Bourbon family, and of the two important sections of the Royalist party, with a view to a restoration, on the expiry of the presidential power in May 1852, by a coup-d’état on the part of the majority of the National Assembly, a successful rising of the people or the army, or, in fact, any other means that offered. None of those eventualities were, it is true, expressed in the journals that acted as organs of the party, but they were so understood by all the initiated. Each party looked forward to the term fixed by the constitution for Louis Napoleon to lay down his power, for the triumph of its cause. The Mountain took no pains to conceal its designs; and not unfrequently, amid the stormy debates which raged in the Assembly, the “second Sunday in May” 1852 was declared to be the date when full vengeance was to be exacted from Legitimists, Orleanists, Buonapartists, and “reactionists” of every kind and colour. As that fatal term approached, the Orleanists, who surpass all others in intrigue, and such of the Legitimists as were credulous enough to trust them, and simple enough to be led by them, did their utmost to rouse the revolutionary demon in the Chamber, and on several occasions openly coalesced with the Terrorists. The Republicans suspected, as every one who knew him must have suspected, the sincerity of M. Thiers; and though they were fully aware of his real motive for seeking admittance into their ranks, their passions would not allow them to refuse the co-operation of any ally, and they relied, besides, on their own courage and energy against treachery when the important moment arrived. On the other hand, the Royalists were full of confidence in their success, if the preliminary and indispensable condition of reconciliation were adopted, and they agreed that France would not again submit to the brutal tyranny of some three hundred Socialists. Their ordinary language was, that, even at the worst, the “promised land” would at length be reached through the Red Sea—the “promised land” being, of course, the Royalist restoration; and the “Red Sea” the massacre and pillage it would be necessary for France to traverse before it was attained. The leaders of the Royalists, superior in all the arts of intrigue to their more brutal rivals, were vastly inferior to them in energy of action. During a brief régime of terror they would disappear, if necessary, and remain in some place of safety until France, exhausted and panic-stricken, threw herself into their arms, when they would at once establish a dictatorship. Louis Napoleon was, in their opinion, the obstacle easiest to be got rid of; they would leave his account to be settled by the Republicans, in case they themselves had not previously got him out of the way. As for any difficulties on this latter point, they considered that it was absurd to think of them. Louis Napoleon had, according to them, fallen into such contempt with the army and the nation, that not a finger would be raised to save him. M. Thiers, and other great statesmen like him, had, not merely in the saloons of Paris, and in his own particular circle, but openly in the Salle des pas Perdus, and the corridors of the National Assembly, sneered at him as “a poor creature;” and the redoubted General Changarnier himself—on whom, by the way, the eyes of the whole world were fixed—had more than once insulted him in the Chamber, and in his official quarters in the Tuileries. Louis Napoleon, therefore, was so utterly scorned as to be made the butt for continual sarcasm in the saloons of an old foreign intriguante, long resident in Paris; and this was his last degradation. The only doubt was, whether imprisonment at Vincennes would not be investing such a miserable being with too much importance. The ditch of Vincennes would be much better, and if a few ignorant persons thought him of consequence, why, an ounce of lead would quiet their fears. Some of the more judicious and far-seeing of the political leaders of the day, very properly considered that the main object they had in view would be materially advanced, if, as we have said, a reconciliation could be effected between the partisans of the Count de Chambord and the Orleanists. The idea originated with the latter. A meeting was held of about a dozen persons at first, in order to explain the plan which had been formed, and to organise what was termed a “fusionist agitation.” Other meetings, more numerously attended, were held at brief intervals; and it was resolved to send out agents to influential persons in the departments to win them over to the cause of the fusion—the fusion having for object the restoration of the Bourbons; and the parties who were engaged in it were precisely the same men who, in the press and in the Assembly, expressed their preference for the government as established in February, and who denounced the man who was suspected of an intention to attack the immaculate purity of the young and as yet innocent Republic. The first step of the fusionists was directed to the chief of the house of Bourbon and the princes of Orleans. But the Count de Chambord refused to sacrifice a particle of what he considered to be his just rights. He was King of France, and the only representative of legitimate royalty of his family, and he would consent to no divided allegiance. The princes of Orleans had been princes of the blood before their father had usurped the crown, and they must remain so. Past wrongs and injuries he was not unwilling to forgive; he would not be very exacting in matters of secondary importance, but on the great principle that the sovereignty resided in him since the abdication of the Duke d’Angoulême, which followed that of Charles X., he would hear of no compromise. On the other hand, the princes of Orleans would not admit of any act which had the effect of making their father a usurper; they were the more induced to do so that they were receiving from their agents in France, and particularly in Paris, assurances that great popular sympathy existed for them; and in fact, that to the house of Orleans alone the nation was looking for salvation! At the same time it was known that the Prince de Joinville was doing something on his own account with reference to the presidency of the Republic. Relying on the popularity he enjoyed to a greater degree than any of his family, he seems to have entertained some hopes of success. With the prudence which characterised his father, he would not, however, commit himself to any declaration; would neither deny nor admit that he was a candidate for the presidency; would neither avow nor disavow the acts of his friends; he might profit by their exertions, but if they failed, he would leave them to all the consequences of their defeat, and, in the latter case, would very probably disavow them. This, it will be admitted, was not very frank, or straightforward, or princely. It can scarcely be believed that the Prince de Joinville had all at once become a Republican; and it is not unfair to conclude, that, if successful, he would have employed his position as President to the restoration of his family. The mistrust of the house of Orleans that had characterised the elder Bourbons—and its history proves how their mistrust was justified—was increased by that conduct; and the Count de Chambord was disgusted with the policy which permitted, without disavowal, the name of his cousin to be spoken of by his partisans in Paris as the candidate for the future presidency of the Republic. M. Thiers did not, after all, approve of the fusion. It was sufficient that the suggestion of a reconciliation had proceeded from a rival of whom he had been always jealous, for that clever and restless intriguer to set his face against it. His utmost energies were devoted to secure the establishment of a regency in the person of the Duchess of Orleans, mother of the Count de Paris, whose confidential adviser he was, and whose minister he hoped to be. A restoration by means of the fusion would seriously interfere with his private plans, and he gave it therefore his most decided opposition. To secure at any cost the services of the man who at that time commanded the army of Paris, and whose influence over the vast military force of the Republic was long believed to be unbounded, was a great object. That man had unquestionably rendered services to order. But his head had been turned by adulation arising from gratitude for past and hopes of future services; and he at length came to believe that on him alone depended the fate of France. He was flattered with the idea that the part of Monk was reserved for him; and to enhance the value of his co-operation, he coquetted with both parties, and affected an air of mysterious reserve, which rendered him equally impenetrable to all. That reserve was carried on so long that it began to be whispered that General Changarnier would, when matters came to the point, declare neither for the one party nor the other, but would offer himself as candidate for the Presidency. This rumour was absurd; and the silence of the general, who was Legitimist by tradition rather than from principle, and an Orleanist from interest and habit, was nothing more than the usual coquetry in which he apparently took much delight. In fact, he remained dreaming away till the coup-d’état rudely woke him and others from their slumber. Of the possibility of a fusion of interests between these parties, or of a sincere reconciliation between the elder and younger branches of the royal family, we entertain very serious doubts.

The house of Orleans had been, from the time of the Regent, of infamous memory, fatal to the elder Bourbons. It was the evil genius that haunted them from the cradle to the grave. The government of Louis Philippe repaid the benefits conferred on the house of Orleans with ingratitude. One of its earliest acts was the introduction of a measure for the perpetual banishment of the elder Bourbons, and for the compulsory sale of the property they held in France. They who have been shocked, and, we readily admit, justly shocked, at the decree of the 22d January 1852, confiscating to the state the appanages which, according to the usages of the French monarchy, should have reverted to the state at the accession of a prince of the royal family, and at the compulsory sale of the Orleans property, may have forgotten that that decree was but an imitation of the legislative enactment of the 10th April 1832. We condemn, on principle, such acts of confiscation; they are replete with injustice; but we cannot help feeling that the decree of the 22d January 1852, all bad as it was, was an act of retribution. Signal ingratitude is seldom left unpunished; and while we reprobate the conduct of Louis Napoleon, we cannot say that the house of Orleans was wholly undeserving of the treatment it met with. The sentence of perpetual exile, and confiscation of property, was passed by the Restoration on the Buonaparte family. That family owed no gratitude to the Bourbons; but the princes of Orleans were bound by the strongest ties of gratitude to them. On the 10th April 1832, the law was promulgated relative to the elder branch of the Bourbons and the family of Napoleon. The law bore, of course, the signature Louis Philippe, and the counter-signature of M. Barthe, Louis Philippe’s Minister of Justice. The 1st, 2d, 3d, and 6th articles were as follows: “1st, The territory of France and of its colonies is interdicted for ever to Charles X., deposed as he is from the royal dignity in virtue of the declaration of the 7th August 1830; it is also interdicted to his descendants, and to the husbands and wives of his descendants. 2d, The persons mentioned in the preceding article shall not enjoy in France any civil rights; they shall not possess any property real or personal; they shall not acquire any, gratuitous or otherwise. 3d, The aforesaid persons are bound to sell, in a definitive manner, the whole of the property, without exception, which they possess in France. That sale shall be effected, for the unencumbered property, within the year dating from the promulgation of the present law; and for the property susceptible of liquidation, within the year dating from the period at which the right of possession shall have been irrevocably fixed. 6th, The provisions of the first and second articles of the present law are applicable to the ascendants and descendants of Napoleon, to his uncles and aunts, his nephews and nieces; to his brothers, their wives and their descendants; to his sisters and their husbands.” This law against the benefactors and the kinsmen of Louis Philippe was not enacted in the first heat of animosity, and the first impulse of revenge for real or fancied wrongs, which, immediately following a great revolution, might have been alleged as a palliation. It was enacted one year and nine months after the Revolution of July, when the passions of political parties, so far as they affected the unfortunate Charles X. and his family, had time to cool down. A high-minded man would have preferred forfeiting even the crown of France, glorious though it be, to putting his signature to such a document. The public and private virtues of the Orleans family have been enlarged upon even to satiety. State reasons may be alleged as an excuse for things which morality condemns; but the vaunted qualities of that family should have placed them above any such justification. State reasons may be alleged for the perpetration of any enormity. We have no doubt that Catherine II. could allege them for the partition of Poland; and the Emperor Nicholas justifies his present conduct towards the Ottoman Empire quite as satisfactorily. Pretensions to virtues far superior to those of ordinary men should, however, place those who are so gifted out of ordinary rules. We have said that we reprobate the decree of the 22d January 1852, but we have no doubt that Louis Napoleon justified that arbitrary act by the law of 1832. The house of Orleans renewed the sentence of perpetual banishment against the family of Napoleon, and of incapability to possess property in the French territory. Louis Philippe owed a heavy debt of gratitude to Charles X. and his family; we have seen how that debt was paid off; no such obligation bound the Buonapartes to the house of Orleans.

But there existed another obstacle in the way of reconciliation between the elder and younger branches of the Bourbons—another outrage which it is scarcely in human nature to forget. The Orleanist party had protested in 1820 against the legitimacy of the present Count de Chambord. In that year a document appeared in London, entitled “Protest of the Duke of Orleans.” It was headed as follows: “His Royal Highness declares that he protests formally against the minutes of the 29th September last, which pretend to establish that the child named Charles Ferdinand Dieu-Donné is the legitimate son of the Duchess of Berri. The Duke of Orleans will produce, in fitting time and place, witnesses who can prove the origin of that child and its mother. He will produce all the papers necessary to show that the Duchess of Berri has never been enceinte since the unfortunate death of her husband, and he will point out the authors of the machination of which that very weak-minded princess has been the instrument. Until such time as the favourable moment arrives for disclosing the whole of that intrigue, the Duke of Orleans cannot do otherwise than call attention to the fantastical scene which, according to the above-mentioned minutes, has been played at the Pavilion Marsan (the apartment of the Duchess of Berri at the Tuileries.)” The paper then repeats the whole of the account of the accouchement as it appeared in the Journal de Paris, the confidential journal of the government, and shows the alleged contradictions in it, with the view of proving that the whole was an imposture. The Protest and the accompanying details to which we have alluded, were republished in the Courrier Français of the 2d August 1830; and the Courrier Français was devoted to the Orleanist dynasty.

But those are not the only humiliations which the elder Bourbons have suffered from the family of Orleans; and when we are told that the son of the Duchess of Berri is about to take to his bosom the sons of the man who laid bare to the world’s mockery the weakness of his mother, we are called upon to believe that that son has become lost to every manly sentiment. We doubt much if this be the case. There can be no sincerity on the part of the Orleanists who first suggested the fusion. They well know that, in the event of a Legitimist restoration, the men who overthrew the throne of his grandfather and drove him into exile, who resisted all attempts to restore them to their country, can never be his advisers—if he be what we hope he is. Could the Duchess of Berri receive at her levee the purchasers of the Jew Deutz, or those who signed and gave to publication the medical report of Blaye? It is a vile intrigue, got up for the sole benefit of the Orleanists. It was not out of love for the house of Bourbon, but from hatred to Louis Napoleon, that the fusion originated; and we agree with M. de Larochejaquelein when he says that “the Orleanists and Legitimists, not being able to effect a fusion of love, try to effect one of hatred, with the predetermined resolution to tear each other to pieces hereafter, and with a violence all the greater from the consciousness that one party was tricked by the other, if indeed both were not tricked.”

The Legitimists are no match for their rivals in cunning—in the lower arts of Machiavellism—in what is vulgarly but expressively termed la politique de cuisine. In 1848 the former occupied a much better position than the latter. The régime they had combated for eighteen long years was at length overthrown, and the comparison between the fall of their sovereign and that of the “citizen” king was infinitely in favour of the former.

Charles X. retired slowly before his enemies, and with all the dignity of a defeat which is not dishonourable, nor dishonouring. In the most critical moments, and when menaced with great danger, he never forgot who and what he was. He assumed no disguise; he put on no menial livery; and to the last moment of his embarkation for the land of his exile, his friends had no cause to blush for him. He was throughout a king—“Ay, every inch a king!” Whatever the faults he may have committed when on the throne—and we are free to admit that his rule was far from faultless—there was no loss of personal dignity in his descent from it. If the revolution of February succeeded without the co-operation of the Legitimists, it was not against them that it was directed, nor was it the Legitimists who were to be conquered. And yet, in the course of a very few months, the party became completely subordinate to their more clever and more unscrupulous rivals. It is true that in the first movement, when anarchy was wildest, the instinct of self-preservation from the evils which menaced society itself, bound all men of order, without reference to party, against the common enemy, Socialism. But it is difficult to understand, when the impossibility of a Republican system was recognised, when the necessity of substituting another form of government was evident to all, how the Legitimists allowed themselves to be seduced by their enemies. A snare in the form of the “fusion” was laid for them, and they easily fell into it. It would be a waste of time to detail all the manœuvres, the negotiations, the conferences, the schemes for the realisation of that idea. There was nothing positive or real at bottom. Everything was left to chance. It was soon evident that neither of the parties was sincere; each tried to deceive the other. Some of the more confident, or the more audacious, suggested that propositions should be made to Louis Napoleon himself; and among the Legitimists there were found persons silly enough to believe that he would, notwithstanding all the chances in his favour, derived from the spontaneous election of the 10th December 1848, gladly co-operate in the restoration of a prince of the house of Bourbon. The name of General Changarnier was proposed as the person to whom the dictatorship was to be intrusted until such time as the Royalist restoration was accomplished. A dictatorship was the great object with all parties: the Socialists, in order that France should be regenerated according to their peculiar ideas; the “moderate Republicans” would have selected General Cavaignac, as they did after the insurrection of June, and would have tried once more to force their system on a terrified population; the Legitimists and Orleanists looked to a dictatorship as the surest means toward a Royalist restoration, though it was not decided among them who was to be the future sovereign. The Orleanists counted much on their cleverness to beat their allies out of the field—allies in the moment of uncertainty and danger, but foes to be got rid of at any cost when the booty came to be divided. “In 1849,” says M. de Larochejaquelein, “I was one of those who wished at least to maintain the Republic, in order to insure the union of all that was reasonable and patriotic in the country; to call on France to put an end, once for all, to revolutions; and our object was to form the electoral committee, known afterwards by the name of the Committee of the Rue de Poitiers. I had been chosen by the Legitimists; but when we met, I requested to have it explained to me for what reason the committee was only composed of Orleanists and Legitimists. It appeared to me fitting and proper that the more judicious and moderate Republicans should form at least a third part of our committee, as we had at heart hopes of a different kind. I was told that the committee did not wish for Republicans, simply because it did not wish for the Republic. I demanded why, out of sixty members of the committee, forty-five belonged to the Orleanists, and only fifteen to the Legitimist party. An ex-minister replied that, though the party of legitimacy was, no doubt, honourable, yet that it formed a very small minority, while the other was in fact the nation. Not being of that opinion, I withdrew, and I declined being made use of as an instrument for the restoration to the throne of France of the revolutionary monarchy of 1830.” The division and weakness of those parties is further illustrated in this passage: “There remained another means of which the intimate confidants of the Count de Chambord were dupes—a plan which was never admitted except by them, and the impossibility of which was evident—namely, to bring about a restoration through the instrumentality of the Legislative Assembly itself. Without understanding what they were doing, the parliamentary Legitimists of 1850 directed all their efforts to renew the act of 1830, when 219 deputies, without right of any kind, and with the most flagrant disregard of their duty, presumed to change the form of Government. The Assembly was divided into so many parties that it was in vain to hope for a majority for that object. It is true that towards the close of the Assembly all parties made a desperate attempt to combat Buonapartism; but the moment that a serious proposition was made to substitute a government for that of the President, it was found that concord did not and could not exist between two of the great parties who composed that Assembly.”

M. de Larochejaquelein gives some interesting details of the secret intrigues of the Orleanists to win over the Legitimists to the “fusion;” and it is amusing to find how both parties were deeply engaged in the duty of allotting crowns and imposing conditions on pretenders, up to the very eve of the coup-d’état. We had already become acquainted, through the channel of the public press, with the intrigues which made the presidency of Louis Napoleon one continued agitation, and we are not sorry to have the testimony of one who was an eye and an ear witness of the whole. “I appeal,” says M. de Larochejaquelein, “to the good faith of all political men—Is it, or is it not, true, that the idea of the most confidential advisers of the house of Orleans was to induce the Count de Chambord to abdicate in favour of the Count de Paris? Is it, or is it not true, that they urged the adoption of the Count de Paris by the Count de Chambord, even to the prejudice of the issue of the latter, supposing that he had any? Is it, or is it not true, that on the eve of the 2d December, certain persons who were the most influential, who stood highest in favour at Claremont, made that monstrous proposition in the Salle des Conferences of the National Assembly, and that it produced a great effect on the Legitimist members of the Assembly? Is it, or is it not true, that the Sceptics of the party replied, with surprising impertinence, Yes, no doubt we earnestly desire the fusion! What then? But it is not our interest to oppose it. You (the Legitimists) have for a long time kept yourselves apart from public affairs. The country belongs to us. Your principle is the best; we do not dispute the fact; but, above all, it is certain that your principle (legitimacy) is necessary for us to adopt. Your prince (the Count de Chambord) may return with our royal family. He is its chief; agreed. But at the end of six months he will see what his position really is. He will see that it is impossible for him to govern with you, and without us. He has no children; he has too deep a sense of religion to be ambitious; he loves France too much to wish her to be given up to commotions which would expose her to new revolutions. He will prefer the castle of Chambord as a residence to the Tuileries. You may be certain that we shall treat him well, and we shall all be contented. The principle itself will be respected, and we shall govern France.” Such were the propositions, and such the language of the partisans of the Orleans family to the Legitimists. Not a word, of course, was said of Louis Napoleon; and these profound statesmen were thus disposing in sure confidence of the fruit of their schemes only a few hours before they were scattered like chaff before the wind by the man on whom they disdained even to pass a thought! The Orleanists were still tormented by one fear; they trembled lest the proposition so often presented to the Assembly by M. de Larochejaquelein should again be renewed at that critical moment which preceded the expiration of the presidency of Louis Napoleon. The President of the Assembly, M. Dupin, the principal agent of the Orleans family, urged, and with more than usual energy, that body to refuse its authorisation for the printing of M. Leo de Laborde’s proposition, namely, that France should, at the important moment when every faction was struggling for supremacy, be consulted as to whether she desired, or not, the re-establishment of her traditional monarchy. M. Dupin treated the question as if it were one of life or death to himself. He threw off all restraint, and resisted with his utmost efforts any measure resembling an appeal to the nation, or embodying the principle of legitimacy. “And even at the present moment,” says M. de Larochejaquelein, “the language of the Orleanists is this: ‘We find that the fusion is the best instrument of hostility against the government of Louis Napoleon, and for that object we must effect it. But if the Count de Chambord should ever become a widower, he must not think of forming a new matrimonial engagement. Should he happen to have children, he must no longer count on our support.’”

One of the hallucinations under which the Orleanists laboured was, that Louis Napoleon was in his heart devoted to them exclusively; and that when the fusion was consummated, he would transfer his power to them. That delusion survived even the coup-d’état. M. de Larochejaquelein admits, in common with all rational men, that the coup-d’état was the salvation of society itself, and they who were loudest in their applause of it were the Orleanists. “The most ardent in their approbation,” the noble writer remarks, “were the Orleanists, because they were convinced that the President was, perhaps without meaning it, working for them. The decrees of the 22d January undeceived them. From that moment they became divided into two camps, that of the extreme opponents, and that of the men who accept the government, but who yet cherish a spirit of hostility to it, more or less openly declared.”

We have often thought it extraordinary why those Legitimists who had freely taken the oaths of allegiance to Louis Philippe refused them to Louis Napoleon; and on what grounds those who yielded prompt obedience to a revolutionary system, established by some two hundred deputies, should, while demanding an appeal to the people, decline to recognise a power which is the issue of the national will. M. de Larochejaquelein professes to be unable to account for the fact. “It would be curious,” he says, “to find out the reasons on which they found that refusal. I confess that I cannot explain a proceeding of the kind, and which is so advantageous to the revolution of July. It is true that the Legitimists must be pained at seeing their hopes baffled once more; but were it only in a social point of view, they ought to give their co-operation to the government. By keeping apart, they leave the place open to the men whom they had for so many years combated, and they commit the injustice of placing on an equality the usurpation of 1830 with the election of the Emperor successively by six, by seven, and by eight millions of suffrages. Prince Louis Napoleon had overthrown nothing which was endeared to us; it was not he who had persecuted the princes who were the object of our reverence and of our devotedness; it was not he who placed the revolution on a throne; but it was he who combated the revolution. He had, in the opinion of the immense majority of the people, rendered a signal service to France by effacing beforehand the fatal term of May 1852. He made an appeal to all honest men, without distinction of party, to aid him in saving the country. The majority of Legitimists could not well disregard the will of the nation; they submitted to the verdict without sacrificing their principles.” We need not say that we approve of the policy which has preferred the good of their country to the mere gratification of party feeling or personal ambition; and we see no inconsistency in the accepting a government that has fulfilled the conditions which, in the eyes of these persons, alone justified their adhesion.

As for the Orleanists, they began in intrigue, have continued in it, and we have no reason to suppose that they will ever change. Place and power are, with very few exceptions, their object. The Palais Royal was, during the Restoration, the favourite resort, the headquarters of all the malcontents of the day: all who stirred up opposition to the government, all who intrigued against Louis XVIII. or Charles X., were welcome to the palace of “our cousin of Orleans.” They were not true even to the government of their own choice; they had overthrown one dynasty, and because M. Thiers or M. Odillon Barrot wanted the place, which M. Guizot preferred exposing the country to convulsion rather than be torn from, another dynasty was flung down after it. The tactics of the party have been always pretty much the same; revolution was evoked by them to the hypocritical cry of Vive la Charte, or Vive la Constitution. They were the men who organised, in 1829, the formidable associations against the payment of the taxes. At that time, also, as twenty years later, banquets were got up; and at one of those scenes of feasting, 221 crowns, in honour of the 221 deputies of the opposition, adorned the hall; and that nothing should be wanting to complete the resemblance, it was M. Odillon Barrot who made the speech on the 4th July 1830, which was the prelude to the fall of Charles X.—the same great citizen whose banquettings and whose orations helped to destroy the throne of Orleans in 1848—the same demagogue whose conceit led him to suppose that he alone could lay the fiend he had evoked. There was nothing too low for them to stoop to, no instrument too mean for them to reject. It was that faction that brought about the revolution of July, it was the same that helped on that of February, and it was the coalition of the fusionists with the Mountain that provoked the coup-d’état of December 1851. Where were all those eminent statesmen, those solemn orators, those sour pedants, those profound thinkers, those philosophers, those great citizens, when the widowed Duchess of Orleans faced the mob, who had been rendered infuriate by the men who were afterwards unable or afraid to control them?

It has been made a matter of reproach to Louis Napoleon, that the persons who enjoy his confidence, or preside at his councils, are obscure adventurers, of no moral or social influence; and that no man of eminence, worth, or standing, will accept either power or place in a government so degraded. This, we rather think, is too sweeping an assertion. We should like to know what was the social, moral, or political eminence of M. Thiers, when the Revolution of July brought him first into notice. If we cast our eye over the list of senators under the imperial régime, we find names there that may stand a comparison with many in the late Chamber of Peers; and as for corruption, we may point to the events that immediately preceded the Revolution of February, when some of the highest had to answer for acts which were anything but moral. It is true that some of the leading men who directed the policy of the country under Louis Philippe have taken no active part in public affairs under the imperial government. But when we hear all this talk about “eminent men” refusing office, and declining all participation in the government of the day, we are tempted to ask how had those “eminent men” managed the business of the country when they had its sole direction and control? Their government, with immense resources at its command, and after eighteen years of profound peace, was upset in a few hours by a contemptible street row.

We are not aware that M. de Larochejaquelein has been answered by any of the parties whose intrigues he has exposed. We think it would be difficult to answer him; his sketch carries with it internal evidence of its correctness. It is no answer, so far as the truth of his allegations is concerned, that he has abandoned the party with which he had been connected. We believe that he has had to undergo the petty persecutions of the coterie of Frohsdorf, who have resorted to every stratagem to destroy whatever influence his name may still carry with it in La Vendée; and, judging from his present production, he is of opinion that that coterie is not worth any man’s making any extraordinary sacrifices for them. But whatever be the motives that have influenced his conduct, or whatever the value of his “appeal to the people,” we are bound to admit, that so far he has acted consistently with his theory.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.