on the contrary, has informed the Prince Regent of England, that to him and to his nation, after Divine Providence, he ascribed the restoration of his house to the throne of its ancestors; and when his countrymen flew to meet him, and with one voice decreed him the crown, he was made to answer, that he did not accept it from their hands-that it was the inheritance of his fathers: then were our hearts shut up-they were frozen.

In this manner was Louis introduced among us-by the most flagrant insult that an affectionate and feeling people can endure. And yet we had not computed our sacrifices, to recover the offspring of Louis IX. and Henry IV.; we had smoothed his passage to the throne by our promptness to confirm the measures, perhaps somewhat inconsiderate, of the provisional government. In the liveliness of our joy, we had spontaneously quitted our conquests; we had forgone our natural boundary, that flourishing country, Belgium, who panted for her coalition with France: a stroke of the pen has deprived us of these proud countries, which all the forces of Europe could not have wrested from us in ten years. Did Louis then find occasion to imitate those usurpers, who, when they cannot be kings by the consent of their people, assume the title by the grace of God? Did he not know that Napoleon reigned by the grace of God, that by the grace of God we lost him, that by the grace of God, the most powerful have always governed, and always will?

Louis was heralded by proclamations, which promised remissiou of the past, which promised to allow to every one his offices, his honors, his emoluments :-how have his counsellors kept his promise? By making him expel from the Senate all those, whom indeed he might have considered as guilty, unless he had promised forgetfulness; but not one of those at whom the popular odium was pointed; not one of those who, by their envenomed adulation to Napoleon, had reduced the French nation to the extremity of disgrace. Thus should sycophancy seem to be the first want of princes, under what title soever they may reign.

In like manner, uncommon earnestness was shewn to exclude from the subordinate appointments, those who might have been misled by their ardor for liberty. It is true that as yet they have not been proscribed in form, they are not yet given up to trial; but

even by the circumstance of their removal, they are marked, in their departments, for the animadversion of their fellow citizens, as being suspected, and unworthy of the confidence of government they are branded by the stamp of disgrace; and if the military are still somewhat mitigated, if their victories, which are only called impious, are seemingly pardoned, the reason is obvious. Oh! how many heroic deeds are consigned to oblivion, even if they escape the imputation of guilt!

The promises of a king should encourage every citizen; and yet, Suspicion is continually holding them in check;-it hovers over their lives, their honor, their estates. They distrust the after-thoughts of a prince, who, in so short a period, has been made to forfeit so many of his promises: they wish to believe, notwithstanding, that these erroneous measures do not proceed from him, but they are not the less injurious to the royal dignity. To pardon is not to forget, for oblivion conciliates all hearts, but pardon inflames them. If the persons of kings are justly sacred, their word is no less so, and should be unsullied by subterfuge. Is this the good faith which we fondly viewed as the noblest attribute of the blood of Bourbon?

When the authority of a king over his people is compared to that of a father over his children, the metaphor is ingenious, but it is far from the truth. It represents what should be, but by no means what is practicable, and still less what actually exists. A good father does not establish odious distinctions among his children in his character of father, he is inspired with sentiments which are the involuntary and unattainable overflow of nature, and cannot belong to a sovereign, who is no more than a governor : lastly, a father is not vindictive, he often pardons when he has threatened; but he never punishes after promising to forget.

It is impossible to conceal, that we are sensibly alive to this difference: the return of the lilies has not produced the expected result; the abolition of parties has not been effected: so far from it, those parties, of whom hardly a trace was left, are now revived -they scan and observe each other. There is neither alliance nor desertion treacherous attempts, baseness, retrograde policy, evasion of solemn engagements, have caused disquietude and suspicion: the government has not employed the auxiliaries at its disposal; it has revolted part of them against itself, by evincing its own hostility.

Those persons then are highly guilty or imprudent, who began by detaching all that had borne the name of patriot, that is to say, seven-eighths of the nation, from the cause of the prince; and by provoking the enmity of a large population, in contiguity with another, which they had incautiously treated with signal favor. If you wish now to appear at court with distinction, beware of saying that you are one of the twenty five millions of citizens, who defended their country with some courage against the invasion of enemies; for you will be told, that these twenty-five millions of pretended citizens are so many rebels, and that these pretended enemies are, and always were friends; but you must say that you have had the happiness of being a Chouan, or Vendean, or Emigrant, or Cossack, or Englishman; or, lastly, if you have lived in France, you only solicited the patronage of the ephemeral governments who ceded the restoration, in order to betray and undermine them: then your fidelity will be echoed to the skies, you will receive tender congratulations, decorations, and affectionate answers from all the royal family.

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And this it is, to extinguish the spirit of party, and to consider all Frenchmen as brothers, who have sworn never to recal their ancient quarrels. But who cannot see whither this leads us? Who does not see that we are under training for the gradual disgrace of all who have been concerned in the revolution, for the abolition of all which is tinctured with liberality, for the restoration of the national domains, for the renovation of all those prejudices which destroy national character? According to the tactics invariably employed on such occasions, those only are attacked at first, who have been the most noted, in order to come by degrees to others, and to finish by including in the same proscription, ail who, from far or near, have been implicated in the revolution; to recede, if possible, to the feudal system, to the revival of slavery, and those prosperous days of the Holy Inquisition, whose glories are dawning anew on the provinces of Spain.

The French revolution was a compost of heroism and cruelty, of sublime traits, and monstrous disorders: but, all the families that remained in France were obliged to take a part, more or less active, in that revolution: all have made sacrifices more or less severe: all have sent their children to the defence of their country,

and that defence was glorious: all were therefore interested that success should crown the enterprise. But the contrary took place; and then those very persons, who had been most adverse to the revolution, endeavour to represent it in the most unfavorable light. Glorious events are forgotten or distorted: an affected contempt is lavished on those acts of devotedness which have been unsuccessful, and an indignant clamor is raised against those who have in any way participated in past measures.

If we had retained any memorial of so many labors and victories, we should have regarded it as a trophy, to which our recollections would have clung: 'accordingly, the abandonment of all our conquests was eagerly exacted, lest we should preserve some token of the glory we had acquired before the restoration; but yet this obnoxious fame, though felt as the disgrace of the opposite party, had become our idol: it mingled with every thought of the heroes who were disabled by their wounds, every hope of the youths who were beginning their career, it meets an unlookedfor blow; and we find a void in our hearts, like that of a lover, whose passion has lost its object: he finds a theme for anguish in all he sees or bears. This feeling makes our situation unsettled and painful: all minds dread to reflect on this inmost ulcer of the heart; notwithstanding twenty years of constant triumph, we consider ourselves degraded, by the loss of a single cast, on the fortune of which, unhappily, our honor and our fate were suspended.

But this state of anxiety could not last. We cannot but deplore the infatuation of a party so very inconsiderable, which, having been associated with a glory beyond the reach of calumny, affects to depreciate all that constitutes it, and seems to have been only restored to the bosom of its mother-country, in order to degrade what before it wounded: But this powerful nation will soon dispel the stupor she experienced at the sudden phantom of a coalition without former example, or the principle of future renewal: she has already regained her courage. Those, who were thought to be annihilated, are only dispersed; and if such another crusade were organized, the great people, heretofore so unguardedly confident, will know by this experience how to obviate the incapacity and the treason which gave them to their foes' discretion. We cannot long be imposed on by a handful of forgotten emigrants, who have

only returned to gather the benefits of a victory in which they had no concern; who are no longer supported by that confederacy which patronised them, and who feel themselves nearly lost among a countless population, instructed in liberal views. It would be bad policy to betray any arbitrary pretensions: their own interest, the interest of all, requires the abolition of party feuds.

Our common safety must be sought in the constitutional charter it contains security for us all, if we do not suffer it to be invaded; but for this purpose, the Sovereign ear must be accessible to truth, nor should the King be swayed by his sycophants, to pervert the arrangements of that law which originated from himself. The two chambers must maintain the character they have occasionally supported; the elections now pending must not be decided by fraud and cabal. The real patriots, I mean those who have fought bravely for their country and their homes, are incalculably superior in number; it belongs to them to return a fitting national representation; they have only to prefer those citizens, who are noted for their stedfest integrity; the fathers of families, the grantees of national domains, men who have every incentive to uphold the honor of their country, until the recurrence of anarchy and despotism shall be alike impossible.

Far be from me, every sentiment which might inflame new troubles; on the contrary, I earnestly deprecate those which the encouragement of party spirit may promote. It is certain that parties had no longer a being, when Napoleon fell; it is certain that they have now. Assuredly, they did not take rise with the ancient republicans: it is not they who are so profusely libelling themselves in the Journals, nor do they clandestinely disseminate violent invectives on the constitutional charter; it is not they who advise his Majesty to forfeit his royal pledge, and to evade the fulfilment of promises favorable to themselves.

Wherefore is that solemn promise slighted, by the distinctions, the marked personal distinctions, which are made between such as followed the King into exile, and those who adhered to the fortunes of their natal soil? This distinction might be natural, while the parties were listed on opposite sides; but it should have been abolished, when the royal adherents repassed the narrow frith that divid. ed them from their country, which once more supported its fugitive

NO. IX.

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VOL. V.

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