THE affairs of France, and the tendency of political change among its inhabitants, can never be sufficiently made the subject of thought and discussion in this country. Paris is the great centre of Democracy: it is there, during the last half century, that that turbulent spirit has been engendered, which, under the varying forms of Revolutionary Propagandism and military ambition, has never ceased to agitate and distract the adjoining states; and it is thence that those terrific columns have so long issued which have struck the iron, not only into the bodies, but the souls of men, and overturned society as much by the seducing principles they diffused, as the redoubtable blows which they struck. All the revolutions and all the calamities of Europe since the year 1789, have emanated from that great fountain of democratic ambition; and though closed for a time by the strong hand of Wellington, it has again been opened by the infatuation of succeeding times, and like the genie in the Eastern tale, which was imprisoned by the seal of Solomon, it is spreading far and wide, when the signet was removed, and from amidst the mist with which it at first overspread the earth, the awful form of the giant is again appearing to mankind.

England, long the leader of European civilisation, and the first-born of modern freedom, has been content to fall back into the second line, behind the leaders of Revolution. The liberty which had struck its root a thousand years ago in the Saxon soil-the institutions which had stood the test of centuries of glory-the general protection which had overspread a northern land with riches unknown to the regions of the sun, were regarded with scorn by the advocates of French equality: and amidst the tears and the wretchedness of France, new theories were broached, as alluring in the outset to the imagination, as they are in the end ruinous to the happiness of man. Eng

land, however, was at first too strong for the spoiler; her ancient bulwarks long rolled back the attack; and it was not till infatuation had paralysed, and faction had blinded their defenders, that a vulnerable point was discovered, and that the poison of French principles, issuing from the revolt of the Barricades, so weakened the ancient garrison, that the venerable fabric was overturned.

As it is from France, therefore, that all our danger has arisen, so it is in France that our remedy, if a remedy exists, is to be sought. The illusions of French democracy have blinded the eyes and perverted the judgment of the English people: and till experience has demonstrated the vanity and falsehood of their principles, no adequate antidote to the poison will be found. It is by beholding the fruit of democracy in the quarter where it first arose, and where its triumph has been most complete,-by seeing those who first inhaled the poison, wasting away under its influence-by witnessing generations perishing under an exhalation more deadly than that which arises from the Upas-tree, that the nations who have been seduced can alone be restored to their former health, and the most terrible calamity which ever has fallen on modern Europe, be mitigated in its influence on future times.

After the battle of Waterloo and the capture of Paris, we, in common with all the world, were deceived as to the effects and the termination of the French Revolution. We thought the drama was finished, when the first act only was concluded: we flattered ourselves that regulated freedom was about to be established, when, in fact, the chains of servitude awaited a people who had proved themselves unworthy of its blessings. The Whigs, in particular, took advantage of this general mistake to divest the Revolution of its worst consequences, and blind men as to its ultimate effects. "The Revolution," it was said, certainly ran at first

into great excesses: but no man can doubt that its ultimate effects were eminently favourable to the cause of freedom. Compare France now with what it was in 1789, and no hesitation can exist as to the immense blessings it has conferred upon mankind." This language was universal, not only among the Whig, but the Liberal Party, in this country; and in this way all classes were blinded as to the ultimate tendency of that deplorable convulsion. It.was considered as a storm, terrible indeed, but salutary; and an insurrection of the people, stained by a degree of crime unexampled in the history of the world, held forth as the unavoidable ebullition of popular passion, not only unattended by any permanent disaster, but productive, in the end, of the utmost benefits to themselves and their children.

The unexampled prosperity of France under the Restoration went far to render this delusion more general and lasting. Travellers went from England to France, and they beheld a realm so prosperous that it was difficult to believe that the seeds of evil were germinating in its bo

som.

Cities teeming with inhabitants, and resplendent with architectural decoration-fields smiling with plenty, or waving with gold-vineyards clothing the slopes-and sails whitening the ocean, gave the impression of the highest degree of public prosperity, and effectually concealed the poison which was lurking in the system, and was destined to destroy the very elements of freedom in no distant age. France was free under the Restoration. She possessed a degree of liberty, and enjoyed a prosperity, unknown since the days of Clovis; and the English, deceived by these brilliant appearances, fondly believed that another State had been admitted within the pale of constitutional freedomthat the guilt of the Revolution had been expiated by the destruction of its authors-and that, how bloody soever had been the commencement of the drama, it had terminated in the happiness even of the guilty actors on the stage.

But this is not the system of nature. The sudden extinction of vice and triumph of virtue is the dream of the poet, or the hope of the mo

ralist, but not the march of human events. Seed sown in the political, as the natural world, must yield its destined fruit; and it is not by a single generation that the ultimate effects, either of good or evil, of great public changes, are to be experienced. The moral government of mankind, too often hid to the philosopher and the statesman, is familiar to the peasant, who draws his principles from a higher source. It was announced three thousand years ago on Mount Sinai, and we are witnessing a signal instance of its eternal application. "For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of those that hate me; and shew mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." under this law of nature that France is now passing. The crying injustice of the Revolutionists-the torrents of blood which were shedthe fearful confiscation of property which was accomplished-the universal irreligion which prevailedare now beginning to work out their inevitable effects; and France, as the punishment for the crimes she committed in the infancy of freedom, is destined to an old age of bondage. The revolt of the Barricades, the subject of such unmeasured exultation to the Liberals all over the world, is the commencement of another act in the drama of the Revolution-of servitude without the alloy of glory, and tyranny unmitigated by a ray of hope.

It is

The great changes introduced by the National Assembly were, the destruction of the Nobility, and the ruin of the Church. These are the measures which excited the transports of the Revolutionists throughout the globe; and these are the changes which have rendered liberty impracticable in France, and have doomed that guilty country to the chains and ignominy of the Byzantine empire.

"The passion of France," says Napoleon, "being more for equality than liberty, and the principle of the Revolution being founded on the equality of all classes, there was, after its termination, an absolute want of aristocracy. If a Republic was difficult to constitute on any solid basis without an aristocracy, the difficulty was far greater for a

Monarchy. To make a constitution in a country, while it is destitute of any species of aristocracy, is to attempt to navigate on a single ele ment. The French Revolution has undertaken the solution of a problem as insoluble as that of directing the course of balloons."* "A Monarchy," says Lord Bacon," where there is no nobility at all, is ever a pure and absolute tyranny; for nobility attempers sovereignty, and draws the eyes of the people somewhat aside from the line royal." + In the profound observations of these great men is to be found the key to the present state of France, and the explanation of the fact that, since the revolt of the Barricades, its inhabitants have been subjected to different species of servitude, but never enjoyed one hour of freedom. They have groaned alternately under the despotism of the Parisian populace and of Marshal Soult's soldiers-of the heroes of the Barricades, and the Prætorian guards, who consigned these heroes to dungeons; but never tasted that freedom which they enjoyed under the sway of the Restoration.

:

The addition to the burdens of France since the three glorious days has been prodigious. The national expenditure has been raised from L.40,000,000 to above L.60,000,000 a-year, and the army from 180,000 to more than 400,000 soldiers and what has France gained in exchange for these enormous impositions? A military government, which derides the principles of freedom which it invoked to obtain its elevationwhich prosecutes the press with unrelenting rigour-which carries arrest and imprisonment, with severity unexampled since the Reign of Terror, into the bosom of familieswhich imprisoned, in June, 1832, 1500 citizens-and has recently erected the gloomy fortress of St Michel in the midst of the sea, with its dungeons and oubliettes, framed by the jealousy of Louis XI., into a Bastile, capable of containing a hundred times as many State prisoners as that which fell on the 14th July, 178). There the heroes of the Barricades, stigmatized as rebels for

* Napoleon, i. 145.

VOL. XXXIV. NO. CCX,

their accession to the great revolt of June, 1832, mourn and pine in forgotten solitude, doomed to perpetual imprisonment amidst the silence of the ocean; while the remnant of their party at Paris, crushed by the Prætorian guards of the military despot, seek, in the excesses of sensual pleasure, the means of forgetting the thraldom and servitude of their country.

The irreligion of the people since the Revolution, the direct consequence of the long cessation of public worship during its continuance, and the confiscation of the property of the Church by its ardent enthusiasts, is the second great feature of modern France, and it too is utterly inconsistent with any thing like public freedom. Who ever heard of a nation of atheists or deists having any liberty? or who ever heard of freedom existing among a people of whom the influential classes were of an infidel character? But the French are now essentially an irreligious people, and if there is any one proposition more certain in politics than another, it is that such a disposition is not only inconsistent with liberty, but is the first step to despotism. For what is it that stimulates and upholds the spirit of freedom, but a sense of public duty, and a feeling of moral obligation which leads men to sacrifice their separate interests and private gratifications on the altar of their country? Infidelity and corruption dry up the fountains of this elevated feeling by leading to nothing but a continued regard to the enjoyments and the luxuries of present existence. Men who do not believe in futurity, or who yield to it only a cold and unwilling assent, which has no practical influence on their character, never have been and never will be, capable of the sustained efforts which the establishment of freedom requires. It can be produced only by the elevated and spiritual feeling which leads them to sacrifice the present to the future, whereas the whole tendency of infidel profligacy is to sacrifice the future to the present. This single point is decisive; whenever this corner has been turn

Bacon's Essays, 14. G

ed by a nation, its subsequent history is a rapid descent to servitude and degradation. Liberty has often arisen from the enthusiasm of the fanatic, but never from the selfishness of the infidel: Tyranny has had many supporters, but none so effectual as the destroyers of national faith. Constitutional freedom became hopeless in France from the moment that the property of the Church was confiscated, and its members were exiled and scattered by a presumptuous and faithless genera

tion.

The forms of a free monarchy were given to France at the Restoration, and the deluded world thought they were fitted to receive it, and anticipated a succession of ages of liberty and glory to the people under the shadow of the fabric cemented by the blood and the tears of the Revolution. What prevented freedom from taking root? What overturned a constitution apparently as firm and stable as that of England? What but the natural fruits of the injustice and violence of the Revolution-the vehement desires excited by unbridled passion-the extravagant expectations awakened by reckless innovation-the fatal ascendency given to plebeian ambition? The Constituent Assembly knocked away the scaffolding by which alone freedom can be erected in an old State, when they annihilated the Church, destined to coerce the passions, and the Nobility, fitted to moderate the ambition of the people. What counterpoise can exist, after their destruction, to the frenzy of the people in one age, the tyranny of the soldiery in a second, or the corrupted enjoyments of a Court in a third? Where will you find, among thirty millions of men, the greater part of whom are of equal fortune and consideration, the elements of resistance to four hundred thousand soldiers, or the means of withstanding the seduction of a Government, having at its disposal a revenue of sixty millions sterling ayear? How can you long expect to find, among a youth ardent in the pursuit of pleasure, insatiable in the desire for gratification, corrupted and irreligious in its principles, the enduring fortitude and high resolve which can maintain for centuries a

contest, not only with the power, but the enjoyments at the disposal of Government; and resist alike the storms of adverse, and the seductions of prosperous fortune? As well might you expect to find military courage among the Sybarites, enervated by the luxuries of Naples, or public virtue among the Pachalics of Oriental despotism.

The swords of Alexander and Wellington were thrown into the balance in 1815, and for fifteen years they preserved the equilibrium. The recollection of the Cossacks and the Prussians, of the Moscow retreat, and the disaster of Leipsic, of the rout of Vittoria, and the carnage of Waterloo, long restrained the ardour, and subdued the passions of the Parisian populace. The moral impression produced by these great events, supplied for a time the want of a third estate in the realm, and concealed the truth, now painfully apparent, that by having destroyed the aristocracy and the church, the political and religious weights in the machine, the balance of its parts has been rendered impossible, and nothing left but the intemperance of the populace, and the despotism of the throne, in fierce and unequal hostility. In such a contest, in an old State, it is not difficult to perceive which party will ultimately prove victorious. During the first burst of popular fervour, the populace may overturn every species of established authority, but all institutions founded on passion, are necessarily ephemeral in their duration. After the consequences of democratic fervour have developed themselves, and public suffering has tamed the passions of the people, the transition is necessary and immediate to absolute despotism, and in its degradation the national history finally closes. The French Revolution has left only to the people of that country the alternative of American equality or Asiatic servitude; it is not difficult to see in which the history of an old, corrupt, and irreligious people must finally terminate.

These considerations are naturally suggested by the astonishing change which has taken place in the public mind in Paris, and over all France, since the great triumph of Revolu

tionary principles by the revolt of the Barricades. This change is so great and so bewildering, that it almost induces the belief that we have passed at once into a different age of the world; from the fervour of Gracchus, to the corruption and profligacy of the Byzantine empire. The republican transports, the dreams of liberty, the fervour of democracy, have now as completely passed off as if a century had rolled away since the triumph of the Barricades; and in the bitter suffering which has followed that event, have been washed away, as by the waters of Lethe, all recollections of the public enthusiasm by which it was occasioned. The French people, ever prone, from the liveliness and fickleness of their dis. position, to extraordinary and unforeseen changes, have, in these latter days, fairly outstripped themselves in volatility of character. Democracy, the principles of the Barricades, are already at as low a discount among them as ever they were in the days of Imperial Rome; and the immuring the heroes of July in the dungeons of St Michel, excites as little attention as if the Bastile had never been stormed amidst the transports of France, or the cloister of St Mary never been carried, a year ago, by as great a force as combated Russia and Austria on the field of Austerlitz.* Even the forms of a constitutional monarchy seem to be fast sinking into oblivion; the debates in the Chamber of Deputies excite hardly any attention; almost every thing there passes unanimous ly; and the authority of Government is almost as irresistible as it was in the days of Napoleon or Louis XIV. Of all the works which give an account of the present state of society and public feeling in France since the revolt of the Barricades, there is none more valuable than the essay now before us. General Donnadieu was one of the many Frenchmen who were thrown into the career of arms by the convulsion of 1793, and he served with distinction in the Republican armies till the accession of Napoleon in 1799. He was highly esteemed by that great commander, but on account of the independence

of his principles, and the unbending firmness of his character, he was not so much employed as he otherwise would have been by the Imperial Government. On the restoration of the Bourbons, he became a warm supporter of the Constitutional Monarchy, as affording the only chance of freedom to France which yet remained; and he often raised his warning voice in vain in the Chamber of Deputies, to point out the danger of the course which infatuated advisers recommended to that noble and beneficent, but unhappy family. He has now proclaimed to all Europe, in the able and interesting work under review, the inevitable tendency of the measures which the insane advocates of Revolution are daily pursuing on both sides of the Channel; and faithful to the principles of freedom in the close, as the opening of life, denounces the conduct of the tyranny which has been elevated on the shoulders of the democracy, as fearlessly as he opposed that which was dreaded from the bayonets of the European Powers in the outset of the Revolution.

Of the consequences of the destruction of the aristocracy, that great and irremediable work of the National Assembly, our author gives the following account: how applicable, alas! to the corresponding insanity which now pervades the public mind in this country!

"God forbid that I should accuse the Constituent Assembly: many virtues, and the most generous sentiments, existed in its bosom; but its situation was beyond its strength. The ruling feeling among its members was admiration for the English Constitution; that had long been a fashionable mania, like all those which prevail in our country, in the most serious, as the most trivial affairs. Every one forgot that we were not English; that we were not situated in an isle detached from the Continental States; that we were neither an industrious nor a mercantile State; that our character, our necessities, our affections, all conspired to bind us peculiarly to the soil; finally, that on that soil an aristocracy no longer existed. In the delirium of popular enthusiasm, every