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days, nor in those of our children, is it at all likely, that any other adventurer will arise to efface the impressions connected with that recollection, by more splendid achievements, than distinguished the greater part of his career. The kind of shame, too, that is felt by those who have been the victims or the instruments of a being so weak and fallible, will make it difficult for any successor to his ambition, so to overawe the minds of the world again; and will consequently diminish the dread, while it exasperates the hatred, with which presumptuous oppression ought always to be regarded.

If the downfal of Bonaparte teach this lesson, and fix this feeling in the minds of men, we should almost be tempted to say that the miseries he has inflicted are atoned for; and that his life, on the whole, will have been useful to mankind. Undoubtedly there is no other single source of wretchedness so prolific as that strange fascination by which atrocious guilt is converted into an object of admiration, and the honours due to the benefactors of the human race lavished most profusely on their destroyers. A sovereign who pursues schemes of conquest for the gratification of his personal ambition, is neither more nor less than a being who inflicts violent death upon thousands, and miseries still more agonising on millions, of innocent individuals, to relieve his own ennui, and divert the languors of worthless existence :-and, if it be true that the chief excitement to such exploits is found in the false Glory with which the madness of mankind has surrounded their successful performance, it will not be easy to calculate how much we are indebted to him whose his tory has contributed to dispel it.

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base and

Next to our delight at the overthrow of Bonaparte, is our exultation at the glory of England. It is a proud and honourable distinction to be able to say, in the end of such a contest, that we belong to the only nation that has never been conquered; to the nation that set the first example of successful resistance to the power that was desolating the world, and who always stood erect, though she sometimes stood alone, before it. From England alone, that power, to which all the rest had successively bowed, has won no trophies, and extorted no submission; on the contrary, she has been constantly baffled and disgraced whenever she has grappled directly with the might and energy of England, During the proudest part of her continental career, England drove her ships from the ocean, and annihilated her colonies and her commerce. The first French army that capitulated, capitulated to the English forces in Egypt; and Lord Wellington is the only commander against whom six Marshals of France have successively tried in vain to procure any advantage.

The efforts of England have not always been well directed,-nor her endeavours to rouse the other nations of Europe very wisely timed:-But she has set a magnificent ex* of unconquerable fortitude and unalter'ancy; and she may claim the proud

distinction of having kept alive the sacred flame of liberty and the spirit of national in dependence, when the chill of general appre hension, and the rushing whirlwind of conquest, had apparently extinguished them for ever, in the other nations of the earth. Ne course of prosperity, indeed, and no harves of ultimate success, can ever extinguish the regret of all the true friends of our nationa. glory and happiness, for the many preposterous, and the occasionally disreputable expe ditions, in which English blood was more than unprofitably wasted, and English character more than imprudently involved; not can the delightful assurance of our actual deliverance from danger efface the remembrance of the tremendous hazard to which we were so long exposed by the obstinate misgovernment of Ireland. These, however, were the sins of the Government. and do not at all detract from the excellent spirit of the People, to which, in its main bearings, it was necessary for the government to conform. That spirit was always, and we believe uzi versally, a spirit of strong attachment to the country, and of stern resolution to do a things, and to suffer all things in its cause ;mingled with more or less confidence, or more or less anxiety, according to the temper or the information of individuals, but sound, steady and erect we believe upon the whole, and equally determined to risk all for independence, whether it was believed to be in great or in little danger.

Of our own sentiments and professions. and of the consistency of our avowed principles, from the first to the last of this momentous period, it would be impertinent to speak at large, in discussing so great a theme as the honour of our common country. None of our readers, and none of our censors, can be more persuaded than we are of the extreme insignificance of such a discussion and not many of them can feel more completely indifferest about the aspersions with which we have been distinguished, or more fully convinced of the ultimate justice of public opinion. We shall make no answer therefore to the sneers and calumnies of which it has been though: worth while to make us the subject, except just to say, that if any man can read what we have written on public affairs, and entertain any serious doubt of our zeal for the safety, the honour, and the freedom of England, he must attach a different meaning to all these phrases from that which we have most sincerely believed to belong to them; and that, though we do not pretend to have either foreseen or foretold the happy events that have so lately astonished the world, we cannot fail to see in them the most gratifying confirmatior of the very doctrines we have been the longes and the most loudly abused for asserting.

The last sentiment in which we think all candid observers of the late great events must cordially agree, is that of admiration and pure and unmingled approbation of the magnani mity, the prudence, the dignity and forbear ance of the Allies. There has been some thing in the manner of those extraordinary

ransactions as valuable as the substance of what has been achieved, and, if possible, still more meritorious. History records no instance of union so faithful and complete-of councils so firm of gallantry so generousof moderation so dignified and wise. In reading the addresses of the Allied Sovereigns to the people of Europe and of France; and, above all, in tracing every step of their demeanour after they got possession of the metropolis, we seem to be transported from the vulgar and disgusting realities of actual story, to the beautiful imaginations and exalted fictions of poetry and romance. The proclamation of the Emperor Alexander to the military men who might be in Paris on his arrival-his address to the Senate-the terms in which he has always spoken of his fallen adversary, are all conceived in the very highest strain of nobleness and wisdom. They have all the spirit, the courtesy, the generosity, of the age of chivalry; and all the liberality and mildness of that of philosophy. The disciple of Fenelon could not have conducted himself with more perfect amiableness and grandeur; and the fabulous hero of the loftiest and most philanthropic of moralists, has been equalled, if not outdone, by a Russian monarch, in the first flush and tumult of victory. The sublimity of the scene indeed, and the merit of the actors, will not be fairly appreciated, if we do not recollect that they were arbitrary sovereigns, who had been trained rather to consult their own feelings than the rights of mankind-who had been disturbed on their hereditary thrones by the wanton aggressions of the man who now lay at their mercy-and had seen their territories wasted, their people butchered, and their capitals pillaged, by him they had at last chased to his den, and upon whose capital, and whose people, they might now repay the insults that had been offered to theirs. They judged more magnanimously,

that the intelligence of its population entitled it to a share in its own government. Thes exerted themselves sincerely to mediate be tween the different parties that might be supposed to exist in the state; and treated each with a respect that taught its opponents that they might coalesce without being dishonoured. In this way the seeds of civil discord, which such a crisis could scarcely have failed to quicken, have, we trust, been almost entirely destroyed; and if France escapes the visitation of internal dissension, it will be chiefly owing to the considerate and magnanimous prudence of those very persons to whom Europe has been indebted for her deliverance.

In this high and unqualified praise, it is a singular satisfaction to us to be able to say, that our own Government seems fully entitled to participate. In the whole of those most important proceedings, the Ministry of England appears to have conducted itself with wisdom, moderation, and propriety. In spite of the vehement clamours of many in their own party, and the repugnance which was said to exist in higher quarters to any negotiation with Bonaparte, they are understood to have adhered with laudable firmness to the clear policy of not disjoining their country from that great confederacy, through which alone, either peace or victory, was rationally to be expect ed:-and, going heartily along with their allies, both in their unrivalled efforts and in their heroic forbearance, they too refrained from recognising the ancient family, till they were invited to return by the spontaneous voice of their own nation; and thus gave them the glory of being recalled by the appearance at last of affection, instead of being replaced by force; while the nation, which force would either have divided, or disgusted entire, did all that was wanted, as the free act of their own patriotism and wisdom. Considering the temper that had long been fostered, and the

however; and they judged more wisely-for tone that had been maintained among their their own glory, for the objects they had in warmest supporters at home, we think this view, and for the general interests of humani- conduct of the ministry entitled to the highest ty. By their generous forbearance, and sin-credit; and we give it our praise now, with gular moderation, they not only put their ad- the same freedom and sincerity with which versary in the wrong in the eyes of all Europe, we pledge ourselves to bestow our censure, but they made him appear little and ferocious whenever they do any thing that seems to call in comparison; and, while overbearing all for that less grateful exercise of our duty. opposition by superior force, and heroic resolution, they paid due honour to the valour by which they had been resisted, and gave no avoidable offence to that national pride which might have presented the greatest of all obstacles to their success. From the beginning to the end of their hostile operations, they avoided naming the name of the ancient family; and not in words merely, but in the whole strain and tenor of their conduct, respected the inherent right of the nation to choose its own government, and stipulated for nothing but what was indispensable for the safety of its neighbours. Born, as they were, to unlimited thrones, and accustomed in their own persons to the exercise of power that ad mitted but little control, they did not scruple to declare publicly, that France, at least, was entitled to a larger measure of freedom; and

Having now indulged ourselves, by expressing a few of the sentiments that are irresistibly suggested by the events that lie before us, we turn to our more laborious and appropriate vocation of speculating on the nature and consequences of those events. Is the restoration of the Bourbons the best possible issue of the long struggle that has preceded? Will it lead to the establishment of a free government in France? Will it be favourable to the the general ge interests of liberty in England and the rest of the world? These are great and momentous questions, which we are far from presuming to think we can answer explicitly, without the assistance of that great expositor-time. Yet we should think the man unworthy of the great felicity of having lived to the present day, who could help asking them of sin self; and we seem to stand in the particular pre- | new adventurer to preside over an entire new dicament of being obliged to try at least for constitution, republican or monarchical, as

an answer.

The first, we think, is the easiest; and we scarcely scruple to answer it at once in the affirmative. We know, indeed, that there are many who think, that a permanent change of dynasty might have afforded a better guarantee against the return of those ancient abuses which first gave rise to the revolution, and may again produce all its disasters; and that France, reduced within moderate limits, would, under such a dynasty, both have served better as a permanent warning to other states of the danger of such abuses, and been less likely to unite itself with any of the old corrupt governments, in schemes against the internal liberty or national independence of the great European communities. And we are far from underrating the value of these suggestions. But there are considerations of more urgent and immediate importance, that seem to leave no room for hesitation in the present position of affairs.

might be most agreeable to his supporters. The first would have been fraught with measureless evils to France, and dangers to all her neighbours;-but, fortunately, though it was tried, it was in its own nature imprac ticable: and Napoleon knew this well enough, when he rejected the propositions made to him at Chatillon. He knew well enough what stuff his Parisians and his Senators were made of; and what were the only terms upon which the nation would submit to his dominion. He knew that he had no real hold of the Afeetions of the people; and ruled but in their fears and their Vanity-that he held his throre, in short, only because he had identified his own greatness with the Glory of France, and surrounded himself with a vast army, drawa from all the nations of Europe, and so posted and divided as to be secured against any general spirit of revolt. The moment this army was ruined therefore, and he came back a beaten and humbled sovereign, he felt that his sovereignty was at an end. To me at all, it was necessary that he should rule wh glory, and with full possession of the meats of intimidation. As soon as these left him. his throne must have tottered to its fa Royalist factions and Republican factions would have arisen in every part of the mаtion-discontent and insurrection would have multiplied in the capital, and in the pro vinces and if not cut off by the arm of some new competitor, he must soon have commotion.

In the first place, the restoration of the Bourbons seems the natural and only certain end of that series of revolutionary movements, and that long and disastrous experiment which has so awfully overshadowed the freedom and happiness of the world. It naturally figures as the final completion of a cycle of convulsions and miseries; and presents itself to the imagination as the point at which the tempest-shaken vessel of the state again reaches the haven of tranquillity from the stormy ocean of revolution. Nor is it merely been overwhelmed in the tempest of ciud

to the imagination, or through the mediation of such figures, that this truth presents itself. To the coldest reason it is manifest, that by the restoration of the old line, the whole tremendous evils of a disputed title to the crown are at once obviated: For when the dynasty of Napoleon has once lost possession, it has lost all upon which its pretensions could ever have been founded, and may fairly be considered as annihilated and extinguished for ever. The novelty of a government is in all cases a prodigious inconvenience-but if it be substantially unpopular, and the remnants of an old government at hand, its insecurity becomes not only obvious but alarming: Since nothing but the combination of great severity and great success can give it even the appear ance of stability. Now, the government of Napoleon was not only new and oppressive, and consequently insecure, but it was absolutely dissolved and at an end, before the period had arrived at which alone the restoration of the Bourbons could be made a subject of deliberation.

The chains of the Continent, in fact, were broken at Leipsic; and the Despotic sceptre of the great nation cast down to the earth, as soon as the allies set foot as conquerors on its ancient territory. If the Bourbons were not then to be restored, there were only three other ways of settling the government. - To leave Bonaparte at the head of a limited and reduced monarchy-to vest the sovereignty 'n bis infant son-or to call or permit some

The second plan would have been less da gerous to other states, but still more impracti cable with a view to France itself. The nerveless arm of an infant could never have wielded the iron sceptre of Napoleon, and his weakness, and the utter want of native power or influence in the members of his family, would have invited all sorts of preten sions, and called forth to open day all the wild and terrific factions which the terror of hos father's power had chased for a season to thet dens of darkness. Jealousy of the influence of Austria, too, would have facilitated the de position of the baby despot; - and even if his state could have been upheld, it is plain that it could have been only by the faithful energy of his predecessor's ministers of oppressionand that the dynasty of Napoleon could on have maintained itself by the arts and the crimes of its founder.

The third expedient must plainly have been the most inexpedient and unmerciful of an, since, after the experience of the last twenty years, we may venture to say with confidence, that it could only have led, through a repe tion of those monstrous disorders over which reason has blushed and humanity sickened so long, to the dead repose of another military despotism.

The restoration of the Bourbons, therefore, we conceive, was an act, not merely of wh dom, but of necessity, or of that strong and obvious expediency, with a view either

Deuce or security, which in politics amounts foster associations favourable to royalty, or te to necessity. It is a separate, however, or at propagate kindly conceptions of the connes least an ulterior question, whether this res- tion of subject and king;-forgetting, above toration is likely to give a Free Government all, that along with her ancient monarchy, a to France, or to bring it back to the condition of its old arbitrary monarchy? a question certainly of great interest and curiosity, and upon which it does not appear to us that the politicians of this country are by any means agreed.

There are many, we think, who cannot be brought to understand that the restoration of the ancient line can mean any thing else but the restoration of the ancient constitution of the monarchy, who take it for granted, that they must return to the substantial exercise of all their former functions, and conceive, that all restraints upon the sovereign authori

new legislative body is associated in the gov ernment of France, that a constitution has been actually adopted, by which the powers of those monarchs may be effectually controlled; and that the illustrious person who has ascended the throne, has already bound himself to govern according to that constitution, and to assume no power with which it does not expressly invest him.

If Louis XVIII., then, trained in the school of misfortune, and seeing and feeling all the permanent changes which these twenty-five eventful years have wrought in the condition of his people;-if this monarch, mild and un

ty, and all stipulations in favour of public ambitious as he is understood to be in his

as

liberty, must be looked upon with contempt and aversion, and be speedily swept away, vestiges of that tremendous revolution, the whole brood and progeny of which must be held in abhorrence at the Court of the new Monarch: And truly, when we remember what Mr. Fox has said, with so much solemnity, upon this subject, and call to mind the occasion, with reference to which he has declared, that "a Restoration is, for the most part, the most pernicious of all Revolutions," it is not easy to divest ourselves of apprehensions, that such may in some degree be the consequence of the events over which we are rejoicing. Yet the circumstances of the present case, we will confess, do not seem to us to warrant such apprehensions in their full extent; and our augury, upon the whole, is favourable upon this branch of the question also. They who think differently, and who hope, or fear, that things are to go back exactly to the state in which they were in 1788; and that all the sufferings, and all the sacrifices, of the intermediate period, are to be in vain, look only, it appears to us, to the naked fact, that the old line of kings is restored, and the ancient nobility re-established in their honours. They consider the case, as it would have been, if this restoration had been effected by the triumphant return of the emigrants from Coblentz in 1792-by the success of the Royalist arms in La Vendée-or by the general prevalence of a Royalist party, spontaneously regenerated over the kingdom:-Forgetting that the ancient family has only been recalled in a crisis brought on by foreign cesses; when the actual government was virtually dissolved, and no alternative left to the nation, but those which we have just enumerated; -forgetting that it is not restored unconditionally, and as a matter of right, but rather called anew to the throne, upon terms and stipulations, propounded in the name of a nation, free to receive or to reject it;-forget

as

character, is but faithful to his oath, grateful to his deliverers, and observant of the counsels of his most prudent and magnanimous Allies, he will feel, that he is not the lawful inheritor of the powers that belonged to his predecessor; that his crown is not the crown of Louis XVI.; and that to assert his privileges, would be to provoke his fate. By this time, he probably knows enough of the nature of his countrymen, perhaps we should say of mankind in general, not to rely too much on those warm expressions of love and loyalty, with which his accession has been hailed, and which would probably have been lavished with equal profusion on his antagonist, if vic. tory had again attended his arms, in this last and decisive contest. It is not improbable that he may be more acceptable to the body of the nation, than the despot he has supplanted; and that some recollections or traditions of a more generous loyalty than the sullen nature of that ungracious ruler either invited or admitted, have mingled themselves with the hopes of peace and of liberty, which must be the chief solid ingredients ts i in his welcome; and acting upon the constitutional vivacity of the people, and the servility of mobs, always ready to lackey the heels of the successful, have taken the form of ardent affection, and the most sincere devotedness and attachment. But we think it is very apparent, that there is no great love or spontaneous zeal for the Bourbons in the body of the French nation; that the joy so tardily manifested for their return, is mainly grounded upon the hope of conseevents, that there is no personal attachment, which will lead them to submit to any thing that may be supposed to be encroaching, or felt to be oppressive. It will probably require great temper and great management in the new sovereigns to exercise, without offence, the powers with which they are legitimately invested; but their danger will be great in

quential benefits to themselves suc

and, at all

ting that an interval of twenty-five long years deed, if they suddenly attempt to go beyond has separated the subjects from the Sovereign; them. With temper and circumspection, they and broken all those ties of habitual loyalty, may in time establish the solid foundations of

by which a people is most effectually bound to an hereditary monarch; and that those years, filled with ideas of democratic license, or despotic oppression, cannot have tended to

a splendid, though limited, throne; if they aspire again to be absolute, the probability is that they will soon cease to reign.

The restoration of the old Nobility seems, at first sight, a more kazardous operation than | yet more like the constitution adopted by than that of the ancient monarchs;-but the Bonaparte on his accession to the sovereign danger, there also, is more apparent than real. authority. He too had a Senate and a Legisla The various inclemencies of a twenty-five tive Body, and trial by jury, and universa. years' exile have sadly thinned the ranks of eligibility, and what was pretended to be those rash and sanguine spirits who assem- liberty of printing. The freedom of the peo bled at Coblentz in 1792, and may be pre-ple, in short, was as well guarded, in most sumed to have tamed the pride and lowered respects, by the words and the forms of that the pretensions of the few that remain. A constitution, as they are by those of this which

great multitude of families have become extinct, a still greater number had reconciled themselves to the Imperial Government, and the small remnant that have continued faithful to the fortunes of their Royal Master, will probably be satisfied with the conditions of his return. Thus dwindled in number,-decayed in fortune, e-an and divided by diversities of conduct that will not be speedily forgotten, we do not think that there is any great hazard of their attempting either to assert those privileges as a body, or to assume that tone, by which they formerly revolted the inferior classes of the state, and would now be considered as invading the just rights and constitutional dignity of the other citizens.

is now under consideration; and yet those words and forms were found to be no obstacle at all to the practical exercise and systematic establishment of the most efficient despotism that Europe has ever witnessed.

What then shall we say? Since the same institutions, and the same sort of balance of power, give at one time too much weight to the Crown, and at another too much indulgence to popular feeling, shall we conclude that all sorts of institutions and balances are indifferent or nugatory? or only, that their efficacy depends greatly on the circumstances to which they are applied, and on the actual balance and relation in which the different orders of the state previously stood to each other? The last, we think, is the only sane conclusion; and it is by attending to the conditions which it involves, that we shall best be enabled to conjecture, whether an expenment, that has twice failed already in 80 SIDnal a manner, is now likely to be attended with success.

We do not see any thing, therefore, in the restoration itself, either of the Prince or of his nobles, that seems to us very dangerous to the freedom of the people, or very likely to pervert those constitutional provisions by which it is understood that their freedom is to be secured. Yet we did not need the example that France herself has so often afforded, to make us distrustful of constitutions on paper; -and are not only far from feeling assured of the practical benefits that are to result from this new experiment, but are perfectly convinced that all the benefit that does result, must be ascribed, not to the wisdom of the actual institutions, but to the continued opera-extent. New to the exercise of this power. tion of the extraordinary circumstances, by and jealous of its security so long as any of

which these institutions have been suggested, and by the permanent pressure of which alone their operation can yet be secured. The bases of the new constitution sound well certainly; and may be advantageously contrasted with the famous declaration of the rights of man, which initiated the labours of the Constituent Assembly. But the truth is, that the bases of most paper constitutions sound well; and that principles not much less wise and liberal than those which we now hope to see reduced into practice, have been laid down in most of the constitutions which have proved utterly ineffectual within the last twenty-five years, to repress popular disorder or despotic usurpation in this very country. The constitution now adopted by Louis XVIII. is not very unlike that which was imposed on his unfortunate predecessor, in the Champs de Mars in 1790; and it certainly leaves less power to the crown than was conceded by that first arrangement. Yet the power vested in Louis XVI. was found quite inadequate to protect the regal office against the encroachments of an insane democracy; and the throne was overthrown by the sudden irruption of the popular part of the government. On the other band, it is still more remarkable that the contitution now about to be put on its trial, is

When a limited monarchy was proposed for France in 1790, the whole body of the nation had just emancipated itself by force from a state of political vassalage, and had begun to feel the delight and intoxication of that consciousness of power, which always tempts at first to so many experiments on its reality and

those institutions remained which had so long repressed or withheld it, they first improvi dently subverted all that was left of their ancient establishments; and then, from the same impetuosity of inexperience, they split inte factions, that began with abuse, and ended in bloodshed; and, setting out with an extreme zeal for reason and humanity, plunged them selves very speedily in the very abyss of atrocity and folly. In such a violent state of the public mind, no institutions had any chance of being permanent. The root of the evil was in the suddenness of the extrication of such volume of political energy, or rather, perhaps in the arrangements by which it had been so long pent up and compressed. The only tree policy would have been for those among the ancient leaders, whose interest or judgmert enabled them to see the hazards upon which the new-sprung enthusiasts were rushinghave thrown themselves into their ranks;-10 have united cordially with those who were least insane or intemperate; and, by goingalong with them at all hazards, to have retarded the impetuosity of their movements, and watched the first opportunity to bring them back to briety and reason. Instead of this, they aban doned them, with demonstrations of contemp and hostility, to the career upon which the

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