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strict constructions, and his counsels were uniformly dissuasive against foreign wars. Yet the personal influence of Jefferson was far more enviable, for he enjoyed the unlimited confidence of his country--while Napoleon had no authority not conceded by fear; and the extortions of force are evil substitutes for that most fascinating of all sway-the ascendancy over equals. During the undisputed possession of that power, Napoleon seemed unconscious of its noblest attribute, the capacity to make man freer or happier; and no one great or lofty purpose of benefiting mankind, no generous sympathy for his race, ever disturbed that sepulchral selfishness, or appeased that scorn of humanity, which his successes almost justified.—But the life of Jefferson was a perpetual devotion, not to his own purposes, but to the pure and noble cause of public freedom. From the first dawning of his youth his undivided heart was given to the establishment of free principles--free institutions-freedom in all its varieties of untrammelled thought and independent action. His whole life was consecrated to the improvement and happiness of his fellow men; and his intense enthusiasm for knowledge and freedom was sustained to his dying hour. Their career was as strangely different in its close as in its character. power of Napoleon was won by the sword-maintained by the sword-lost by the sword. That colossal empire which he had exhausted fortune in rearing broke before the first shock of adversity. The most magnificently gorgeous of all the pageants of our times-when the august ceremonies of religion blessed and crowned that soldier-emperor, when the allegiance of the great captains who stood by his side, the applauses of assembled France in the presence of assenting Europe, the splendid pomp of war softened by the smiles of beauty, and all the decorations of all the arts, blended their enchantments as that imperial train swept up the aisles of Notre Dame-faded into the silent cabin of that lone island in a distant sea. The hundred thousands of soldiers who obeyed his voice-the will which made the destiny of men-the name whose humblest possessor might be a king-all shrunk into the feeble band who followed the captivity of their master. Of all his foreign triumphs not one remained, and in his first military conquest his own country, which he had adorned with the

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monuments of his fame, there is now no place even for the tomb of this desolate exile.-But the glory of Jefferson became even purer as the progress of years mellowed into veneration the love of his countrymen. He died in the midst of the free people whom he had lived to serve; and his only ceremonial, worthy equally of him and of them, was the simple sublimity of his funeral triumph. His power he retained as long as he desired it, and then voluntarily restored the trust, with a permanent addition-derived from Napoleon himself-far exceeding the widest limits of the French empire-that victory of peace which outweighs all the conquests of Napoleon, as one line of the declaration of independence is worth all his glory.

But he also is now gone. The genius, the various learning, the private virtues, the public honours, which illustrated and endeared his name, are gathered into the tomb, leaving to him only the fame, and to us only the remembrance, of them. Be that memory cherished without regret or sorrow. Our affection could hope nothing better for him than this long career of glorious and happy usefulness, closed before the infirmities of age had impaired its lustre ; and the grief that such a man is dead, may be well assuaged by the proud consolation that such a man has lived.

Biddle.

172.-CONDUCT OF LA FAYETTE IN THE REVOLUTION OF 1830.

Ar an early stage of the revolution of 1789, La Fayette had declared it as a principle that insurrection against tyrants was the most sacred of duties. He had borrowed this sentiment, perhaps, from the motto of JeffersonRebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." The principle itself is as sound as its enunciation is daring. Like all general maxims, it is susceptible of very dangerous abuses: the test of its truth is exclusively in the correctness of its application. As forming a part of the political creed of La Fayette, it has been severely criticised; nor can it be denied that, in the experience of the French Revolutions, the cases in which popular insurrection has been resorted to, for the extinction of existing authority, have been so frequent, so unjustifiable in their causes, so atrocious in

their execution, so destructive to liberty in their consequences, that the friends of freedom, who know that she can exist only under the supremacy of the law, have sometimes felt themselves constrained to shrink from the development of abstract truth, in the dread of the danger with which she is surrounded.

In the revolution of the three days of 1830, it was the steady, calm, but inflexible adherence of La Fayette to this maxim which decided the fate of the Bourbons. After the struggles of the people had commenced, and even while liberty and power were grappling with each other for life or death, the deputies elect to the legislative assembly, then at Paris, held several meetings at the house of their colleague, Lafitte, and elsewhere, at which the question of resistance against the ordinances was warmly debated, and aversion to that resistance by force was the sentiment predominant in the minds of a majority of the members. The hearts of some of the most ardent patriots quailed within them at the thought of another overthrow of the monarchy. All the horrible recollections of the reign of terror, the massacre of the prisons in September, the butcheries of the guillotine from year to year, the headless trunks of Brissot, and Danton, and Robespierre, and last, not least, the iron crown and sceptre of Napoleon himself, rose in hideous succession before them, and haunted their imaginations. They detested the ordinances, but hoped that, by negotiation and remonstrance with the recreant king, it might yet be possible to obtain the revocation of them, and the substitution of a more liberal ministry. This deliberation was not concluded till La Fayette appeared among them. From that moment the die was cast. They had till then no military leader. Louis Philippe, of Orleans, had not then been seen among them.

In all the changes of government in France, from the first assembly of notables, to that day, there never had been an act of authority presenting a case for the fair and just application of the duty of resistance against oppression, so clear, so unquestionable, so flagrant as this. The violations of the charter were so gross and palpable, that the most determined foyalist could not deny them. The mask had been laid aside. The sword of despotism had been drawn, and the scabbard cast away. A king, openly

forsworn, had forfeited every claim to allegiance; and the only resource of the nation against him was resistance by force. This was the opinion of La Fayette, and he declared himself ready to take the command of the National Guard, should the wish of the people, already declared thus to place him at the head of this spontaneous movement, be confirmed by his colleagues of the legislative assembly. The appointment was accordingly conferred upon him, and the second day afterwards Charles the Tenth and his family were fugitives to a foreign land.

France was without a government. She might then have constituted herself a republic; and such was, undoubtedly, the aspiration of a very large portion of her population. But with another, and yet larger portion of her people, the name of republic was identified with the memory of Robespierre. It was held in execration; there was imminent danger, if not absolute certainty, that the attempt to organize a republic would have been the signal for a new civil war. The name of a republic, too, was hateful to all the neighbours of France; to the confederacy of emperors and kings which had twice replaced the Bourbons upon the throne, and who might be propitiated under the disappointment and mortification of the result, by the retention of the name of king, and the substitution of the semblance of a Bourbon for the reality.

The people of France, like the Cardinal de Retz, more than two centuries before, wanted a descendant from Henry the Fourth, who could speak the language of the Parisian populace, and who had known what it was to be a plebeian. They found him in the person of Louis Philippe, of Orleans. La Fayette himself was compelled to compromise with his principles, purely and simply republican, and to accept him, first as lieutenant general of the kingdom, and then as hereditary king. There was, perhaps, in this determination, besides the motives which operated upon others, a consideration of disinterested delicacy, which could be applicable only to himself. If the republic should be proclaimed, he knew that the chief magistracy could be delegated only to himself. It must have been a chief magistracy for life, which, at his age, could only have been for a short term of years. Independent of the extreme dangers and difficulties to him

self, to his family, and to his country, in which the posi tion which he would have occupied might have involved them, the inquiry could not escape his forecast, who, upon his demise, could be his successor? and what must be the position occupied by him? If, at that moment, he had but spoken the word, he might have closed his career with a crown upon his head, and with a withering blast upon his name to the end of time.

With the Duke of Orleans himself, he used no concealment or disguise. When the crown was offered to that prince, and he looked to La Fayette for consultation, "You know (said he) that I am of the American school, and partial to the Constitution of the United States." So, it seems, was Louis Philippe. "I think with you," said he. "It is impossible to pass two years in the United States, without being convinced that their government is the best in the world. But do you think it suited to our present circumstances and condition!" No, replied La Fayette. They require a monarchy surrounded by popular institutions. So thought, also, Louis Philippe; and he accepted the crown under the conditions upon which it was tendered to him.

La Fayette retained the command of the National Guard so long as it was essential to the settlement of the new order of things, on the basis of order and of freedom; so long as it was essential to control the stormy and excited passions of the Parisian people; so long as was necessary to save the ministers of the guilty but fallen monarch from the rash and revengeful resentments of their conquerors. When this was accomplished, and the people had been preserved from the calamity of shedding in peace the blood of war, he once more resigned his command, retired in privacy to La Grange, and resumed his post as a deputy in the legislative assembly, which he continued to hold till the close of life. J. Q. ADAMS.

173.

-A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON, AGED THREE YEARS
AND FIVE MONTHS.

THOU happy, happy elf!

(But, stop, first let me kiss away that tear,`

Thou tiny image of myself!

(My love, he's poking peas into his ear!)

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