СНАР ХІІІ.] LOUIS PHILIPPE ACCEPTS THE CROWN. the royal chair vacant, and took the lower seat on the right of the throne, while his second son took that on the left. His duchess and her daughters were present in a gallery, provided for the purpose; and every one remarked the expression of mournful gravity in the countenance of the anxious wife-the expression which has marked that countenance to this day. The chambers were not satisfied with considering the fourteenth article of the charter. There was much besides which must be changed; for what was needed now was not the charter with a new executive, but one declaratory of such new principles as would be a better safeguard than the last had been. The preamble, for instance, declared the charter to be a gift from the king to his people; and if this had ever been true, it was not so now. The whole must be revised. It was revised; and never, perhaps, had a work of so much importance been done so rapidly. The venerable Lafayette, commanderin-chief of the National Guard, kept watch over the deputies to prevent their being disturbed. Vast crowds outside shouted day and night for their various objects, and especially for the abolition of the hereditary peerage; but Lafayette stood between them and the legislature, and permitted no disturbing influences to penetrate to the chamber of deliberation. On the night of the 6th, the whole was prepared. The throne was declared, by the new preamble, vacant by the forfeiture of the whole elder branch of the Bourbons. By alterations in the charter, all Christian denominations of religion were ordained to be supported by the state; and in the following December, the Jewish religion was added. The censorship of the press was abolished for ever. The king was declared to have no power to suspend the laws, or to dispense with their execution. No foreign troops were to be taken into the service of the state without an express law. The age of eligibility to the chamber was fixed at thirty. These were the alterations; and the charter, thus amended, was placed under the protection of the National Guard and the citizens of the empire. By a special provision, the peerages conferred by the late king were annulled, and the question of a hereditary peerage was reserved for consideration in the session of 1831. Two peers degraded by this special provision were immediately reinstated— Marshal Soult and Admiral Duperre. Several peers recorded their protest against this act of the Lower Chamber which concerned them; and the whole peerage question stood over to the next session. There was not, perhaps, a more anxious mind in France than that of Lafayette between the 3d and the 9th of August. He was a republican, and he could now have established a republic; but whether France, as a whole, desired it, and whether the French people were fit for it, he could not decide; and the necessity of making a decision was an occasion of great anguish to him. He afterwards believed that he had decided wrong in offering the throne to Louis Philippe; and he never again knew what it was to have an easy mind. His last words, spoken from his pillow, were: He is a knave; and we are the victims of his knavery'-'C'est un fourbe; et nous 423 sommes les victimes de sa fourberie.' It was on the night of the 6th of August, as we have seen, that the deputies finished their work. Whether Lafayette hoped or feared delay in the Upper Chamber, there was none. On the 7th, the peers passed the measure-only ten being dissentient on any part but that relating to their own order. The old royalist Chateaubriand objected to the throne being declared vacant while the infant son of the Duke de Berri lived; but these were no times for a child to occupy the throne; and the exclusion of the whole of the elder branch of the Bourbons was a point on which the nation at large was determined. Lafayette's time for deliberation was past. On the 9th he had to assist in offering the constitution and the crown to Louis Philippe. The time was so short as to place the foreign ambassadors in great difficulty. They could not receive instructions from home; and at the ceremony, while every other part of the Chamber of Deputies was crowded, their gallery contained only ladies and a few attachés. The golden fleurs-de-lis had disappeared from the drapery about the throne, and four large tricolored flags were disposed behind it. Instead of the anointing of the sovereign, there was to be the solemnity of swearing to the charter. Ninety peers were present; and those absent were the seventy-six of the creation of the late king, and those who had protested against the new charter. The royalist deputies were all absent. At the opening of the business, the duke was seated on a chair in front of the throne, his head covered, and his sons standing on either hand. While thus seated, he asked that the declaration of the 7th of August, as agreed to by the peers, should be read, and then delivered to him, and then said, addressing the peers and the deputies: 'I have read with great attention the declaration of the Chamber of Deputies, and the act of agreement of the Chamber of Peers. I have weighed and meditated all their expressions. I accept, without restriction or reserve, the clauses and engagements which this declaration contains, and the title of King of the French which it confers upon me; and I am ready to swear to their observance.' Here he rose, and received in his left hand the form of the oath. The whole assembly rose, in solemn emotion; and the new king, baring his head, and raising his right hand, pronounced the oath in a firm, clear, and solemn voice: In the presence of God, I swear to observe faithfully the constitutional charter, with the modifications expressed in the declaration; to govern only through the laws, and according to the laws; to cause good and exact justice to be rendered to every one according to his right, and to act in all things with a single view to the interest, the happiness, and the glory of the French nation.' The diversity of the cries which composed the acclamation that followed was remarked by all, and derided by some who said that the very legislature did not know what to call the new king they had been in such a hurry to make. Long live the king!'-Long live Philippe the Seventh!'-'Long live Philippe the First!' were the cries, which, however, soon mingled in one great shout of Long live the King of the French!' Others 6 thought it a good symbol of the absorption of ancient territorial regalities in the chieftainship of a people. The man has lived long; the king not so long. There was a picture of this ceremonial-of Louis Philippe swearing to the charter-which men thought would remain through many ages as a historical record of a great new era in the history of France. Men thought that their posterity in distant centuries would look upon the central figure of that picture-the bared head, the raised hand, the lettered parchment-and would regard them as the insignia of a new and lofty chieftainship, under which liberty and peace should be established in France. But already that picture has been torn from its frame in the royal palace, and carried out to be draggled in the dust, and cut to shreds. The act which it represented had rottenness in it; and one characteristic of the time which had set in was, as indeed it is of all times since the dark ages, that nothing abides that is not sound and true. Four marshals of France now brought the crown and sceptre, and other insignia of royalty, with which they invested the new king. As he returned with his family to the Palais Royal, escorted by the National Guard, the multitude extended to the remotest points within view; and, of that sea of heads, all eyes were fixed upon the citizen-king. At the same moment, the displaced family were taking their way, neglected and forlorn, to the coast -the very peasants on the road scarcely looking up at them as they passed. For a while-a very little while-all looked gay and bright about the new royal family-except the countenance of the mournful queen. She and her daughters visited in the hospitals the wounded of the days of July. The king invited to his table members of the deputations which came to congratulate him on his courage in accepting the crown. Sometimes there were officers of the National Guard, sometimes students from the colleges, sometimes municipal dignitaries from the provinces, sitting down to dinner with the king and his many children, like a large family-party. These children were idolised. Together with caricatures of the exiled family were handed about prints of the Orleans group, each member of which was made beautiful, noble, or graceful. All this was very natural. A fearful oppression had been removed; the revolution had been nobly conducted, and now there was a bright new hope to gladden many hearts. But under all this there were the elements of future trouble; and distress was already existing to a fearful extent. The pains and penalties of revolution were upon the people, and, amidst all the rejoicing, there was stagnation of trade, depression of commercial credit, and hunger among the operative classes. Higher in society, there was a beginning of that conflict between the parties of movement and resistance which is a necessary consequence of political convulsion. Before the end of the year, two administrations had been in power; the first containing originally but one member of the movement party, but being presently rendered a coalition government; and the second being perpetually in collision with the Chamber of Deputies. The executive was kept in continual anxiety by seditious movements which took place, in capital or country, at short intervals. The royal family, besides its share in all these interests, had to endure a great shock in the suicide of the Duke de Bourbon, the last of the Condés. He had been one of the Bourbon exiles, and retained the prejudices of his party; and whether his suicide was owing to his grief at the revolution, or to domestic miseries, it was most painful to the family of the new king, to one of whose sons he bequeathed the greater part of his wealth, under domestic influences of a dishonourable character. Thus, amidst much gloom and apprehension, closed the year of the revolution, leaving much to be done and endured during the next. In February, a most alarming disturbance took place in Paris, which ended in the sacking of a church, and the destruction of the archbishop's palace. The anniversary of the assassination of the Duke de Berri was kept by a religious service, notwithstanding a warning from the Archbishop of Paris of the danger of such an appeal to political passions. Some one fastened a print of the little Duke de Bourdeaux on the drapery of the funeralcar in the church, and placed over it a crown of everlastings. The crown was pulled to pieces by royalists who were anxious to wear its blossoms next their hearts. Murmurs spread, and the excitement was presently such as to call for the clearance of the church by the National Guard. But the people outside turned their indignation against the priest and the archbishop, who might have prevented this royalist scandal; and the mob rose against the church and the palace, and destroyed also the archbishop's country-house. One consequence of this riot was that the fleur-de-lis now disappeared altogether. It had been twined round the crosses in the churches and elsewhere, to symbolise the union of devotion and loyalty; and now it was found that if they were not separated, the cross would be made to share the fate of the 'flowers of kings.' The government charged itself with stripping the crosses of their lilies; the seal of state was altered, and the fleur-de-lis was proscribed thus soon after those who had worn it. Before the year was out, the chambers had decreed the perpetual banishment of the elder branch of the Bourbons, and the sale of all their effects within six months. The same measure was dealt out to the family of Napoleon. As for the other measures of the parliament, the most important regarded the constitution of the two chambers. The hereditary peerage was abolished; and the power of the king to nominate peers was restricted within certain defined classes of persons, under declared conditions of fortune and length of service. It is difficult to see what remained after this, to make a peerage desirable-at least, without a change of name. To sit in an Upper House, and be graced by the sovereign, might be an honour; but it is one altogether apart from all former ideas of peerage. It was easy to carry this bill through the Chamber of Deputies; but what was to be done next? There was no doubt of a majority in the Upper House against the abolition of the hereditary principle. It was necessary to create peers for the CHAP. XIII.] ELECTORAL LAW-PRESS PROSECUTIONS. occasion; and there was a creation of thirty-six. The liberals were as angry as the peers at this proceeding, which they considered illegal and tyrannical. The plea of the government was the singular nature of the emergency. The peers shewed their wrath in sullen silence; the liberals in clamour. During the whole proceeding, scarcely a sound was heard in the Upper Chamber. The voting was conducted, as nearly as possible, as it would have been in an assembly of the dumb. The majority by which the hereditary peerage was abolished in France was thirty-three. One touching incident which followed upon this act was that thirteen peers sent in to the president of their chamber, a week or two afterwards, their abdication of their rank and privileges. In their letters they assigned as their reason the abolition of the hereditary principle. The president received the letters, but refused to read them aloud. In considering the conduct of the British House of Lords with regard to the Reform Bill, it should be borne in mind what was passing in France. When there was a threat of a large creation of peers to carry the bill, it was by a natural association of ideas that British noblemen, seeing what was doing at Paris, apprehended the abolition of their hereditary dignities, and looked upon their eldest sons as too likely to become commoners, while the family titles and honours would either expire, or be given to some stranger, as the reward of public service, to pass at his death to some other stranger. That such were the apprehensions of some nobles at home, while the thing was actually done in France, there can be no doubt; nor ought there to be much wonder. 425 interesting to us now than to read the declarations on the principles of the politics of the day made by two men, conspicuous in that and in a later revolution-the king and M. Guizot. M. Guizot was a member of the king's first administration, and of his last. We find on record the opinions of both, in this first year of the revolution, on the character of the two great parties of the movement and of resistance. On the opening of the new chamber in July of this year, M. Guizot declared himself to be, where it was the business of the government to be, between these two parties. After declaring that the resistance the conservative-party would be gradually won upon by the blessings of good government, he said to the chamber: The other is the party that you have to deal with. That party, which I will not call the republican, but the bad revolutionary party, weakened and exhausted, is, at this time, thank God, incapable of repentance and amendment. The revolution of July is all that there was good, sound, and national in our first revolution; and the whole converted into a government. This is the struggle which you have to maintain, between the revolution of July-that is, between all that is good, sound, and national, from 1789 to 1830; and the bad revolutionary party-that is, the rump of our first revolution, or, all that there was of bad, unsound, and anti-national, from 1789 to 1830.' The king, in a speech in answer to a provincial address, in the early part of the year, had given his view of this matter, in terms familiar at this day to all who have ears: We endeavour to preserve the just medium (juste milieu), equally distant from the excesscs of popular power on the one hand, and the abuses of royal power on the other.' This phrase, un juste milieu, thus creditable in its origin, became discredited by subsequent events. It was from this moment indissolubly associated with the policy of the king and his cabinet; and it presently came to share their disgraces. After having for years heard it used as the nickname of a tampering and hypocritical despotism, it is interesting to revert to the origin of this familiar term. From this time a cursory view of the politics of France presents little but a painful spectacle of a disguised conflict between the king and his people. In 1832, the king began his prosecutions of the press, which were carried on for the rest of his reign to such an extent as makes the historical reader wonder that they were endured so long as they were. It was not only that newspapers were watched over and punished for their political articles, but that paragraphs in ridicule or censure of the king himself were laid hold of, and the authors sub The new electoral law, the French Reform Bill, was the most important subject of all that had occurred since the days of July. The number of electors to the Chamber of Deputies had hitherto been about 94,000 for the whole kingdom; and their qualification had consisted in the payment of yearly taxes to the amount of 300 francs (£12). The ministers proposed to double the number, taking the electors from the largest tax-payers. The project was not approved; and, after much debate, the bill that was carried provided a constituency somewhat exceeding 200,000, in a population of 30,000,000; the qualification being lowered to the payment of £9 per annum in taxes. That a constituency so small should have satisfied a people who had achieved a revolution for the sake of it, indicates that the principle of a representative system of government was little understood as yet in France. There was one, however, who understood it but too well; and that was the king. He now sanctioned the law; and from this first year of his reign to its last day, he was employed injected to cruel imprisonment. It required no small virtually narrowing the constituency, and extending his own power over it by means of patronage, till, in the imminent peril that the representation would become as mere a mockery as in the time of his predecessor, his strong hand of power was snatched away from the institution which he had grasped for his own purposes. In 1831, however, he accepted the new electoral law, and congratulated his people on the enlargement of their representative rights. Nothing in the record of this period is more courage to brave such hatred as the king incurred when, for a libel against himself, he snatched a young man from his bride and his home, and shut him up for a term of years—the victim fainting three times while his head was shaved on his entering his prison after sentence. When such punishments were inflicted by tens, by fifties, the king could not expect to be beloved, even by those to whom the name of public order was most sacred. And he shewed no sign of a desire to be beloved, but only to preserve order by the means which seemed to him best. The excuse of his libellers was, that he merged his function of king in that of minister; that he did not reign, but govern; and that he had therefore no right to complain of the same amount of criticism and comment which would be put up with by any one of his ministers. He chose, however, to be both minister and king, and he compelled others, as well as himself, to take the consequences. Within three years of the accession of Louis Philippe, the number of prosecutions of the press on the part of the government was 411. Out of this number, there were 143 condemnations. This was not exactly the method of government that the nation had hoped to obtain by their revolution; but they bore with more than could previously have been expected. They were weary of changes and tumults, and thankful to be spared the expense and burden of war. In the hope that the resources of the country would improve under a peace-policy, like that of Louis Philippe, the great middle classes of France were willing to bear with much, in order to gain time, and wait for natural change. The discontents of the injured therefore shewed themselves in acts without concert -in attacks on the king's life, and libels against his character; and in occasional insurrections. Among the most formidable of these were two in 1832-one in Paris, on occasion of the funeral of General Lamarque, and supposed to be the work of the republican party; and the other in La Vendée, for the purpose of restoring the old branch of the Bourbons in the person of the Duc de Bourdeaux, whose mother conducted the insurrection. During the revolt in Paris, the capital was declared in a state of siege; on the legality of which there were endless discussions afterwards-hurtful to the influence of the government. The provincial insurrection was put down, and the Duchess de Berri taken prisoner. The affair ended in a manner most mortifying to the exiled family, and ludicrous in all other eyes. The devoted mother, the widow of the murdered prince, the pathetic symbol in her own person of the woes of the banished line, gave birth to an infant in prison, and was thereby compelled to avow a private marriage in Italy. Everybody laughed at this proof of a divided devotion, and the heroine was allowed, on her recovery, to go where she would. She did not go to Holyrood, to meet the reproaches of the sufferers whom she had made ridiculous. It was after these revolts that the vigilant among French patriots observed with uneasiness the stealthy progress of measures for fortifying Paris. Strong works were rising in commanding positions round the capital; and when inquiry was made, the name of Napoleon was put forth by Marshal Soult. Napoleon had resolved to fortify Paris, and had fixed on CHAP. XIIL] CHARACTERISTICS OF THE REIGN. these very positions. But then, it was answered, that was during the hundred days, when he had reason to apprehend attacks from all the world. France was not now in apparent danger of invasion from any quarter; and the vigilant intimated their suspicion that these fortifications were intended to be held, not for, but against Paris. In 1833, the minister required from the chamber, when he brought in his budget, a grant of 2,000,000 francs (above £83,000) for carrying on the works. The deputies protested against a series of detached forts, and demanded that, if there were any fortifications at all, they should be in the form of circuit-walls, which might be manned, against a foreign enemy, by the National Guard or the citizens. The government held to its right to fortify the towns of the kingdom in its own way, without being called to account about the method; and the chamber refused the amount by a large majority. The works, however, proceeded; the vigilance of the citizens increased; there was reason to apprehend a forcible demolition of these works-raised by invisible funds; and at length the workmen were dismissed, and all was quiet for a time. In the affairs of government, however, there was no quiet. There were several changes of ministry during the year 1834; more suppression of journals and political societies; more riots in Paris and Lyon; and at one time, some danger of a war with the United States, about a money-claim which France at last hastened to satisfy, to avoid war. The king made more and more advances towards being the sole ruler of the country, with mere servants under him in the name of ministers. The substantial middle class grew more and more afraid of disturbance, the longer they enjoyed the blessings of external order. They escaped the qualms of a consciousness of their having bartered freedom for quiet, by endeavouring, as much as possible, to avoid the whole subject of politics. Those who felt the despotism, in their consciences, intellects, and affections, became disheartened under this apathy and contentedness of the middle classes, and stirred less and less under the incubus. It was no wonder that the king himself, and large classes of his people, and almost all foreigners, believed that his system was completely succeeding; that he had found out the way to govern the French; and that his reign would be memorable in history as the close of a long period of disturbance-memorable for its strengthening success from the beginning onwards, and for its peaceful close. Yet there were men in England at that date-sensible and moderate men-who said that Louis Philippe might possibly, though not probably, die a king; but that, if he did, he would be the last; and that no son of his would ever be King of the French. At the close of this period, however, he seems himself to have been satisfied with his progress, and sincerely believing that he was doing what was best for the people under his care. By a rapid and perpetual extension of functionarism-by planting officials all over the country to do the work of central departments seated in Paris-he was casting a net over France, by means of which he could draw the representation into his own hands, 427 and govern with ever-improving unity of plan-still and always for the nation's own good. Thus it seems to have been with France at the close of 1834. In the course of this year, a silent censor was removed a witness of old times whose presence was a perpetual rebuke to a citizen-king engaged in fortifying Paris. Lafayette died in May, and was laid in the ground without commotion-owing partly to the strong force of soldiery sent to the spot on the pretext of military honours to the deceased, and partly to the timidity and apathy which had grown on the middle classes. A vast multitude, orderly and silent, attended the funeral; and there was no discourse at the grave. It was left to other countries to pronounce his funeral discourse; and it was done, as by one impulse, by all whom he had assisted to political freedom, from the western boundaries of America to the depths of Germany. The reputation of Lafayette, both in its nature and extent, is as striking a tribute to virtue as can be furnished by any age. In him were collected all virtues but those which require high intellectual power for their development; and he was at least as much adored as any such idols of the time as had more intellectual power and less virtue. It was a misfortune to the world that his magnanimity had not as much of strength as it had of purity; for he was repeatedly placed in those critical positions when an individual will, put forth at a moment's warning, decides the destiny of a nation. On such occasions, he shewed himself weak; and through the same irresolution, such services as he rendered to his country were of a somewhat desultory nature, and seldom fully successful. But the love in which he was held shewed that, for once, a man was estimated by the true rule-by what he was, and not by what he did. He could not achieve great enterprises; but he could meet danger anywhere, endure loathsome imprisonment at Olmütz, protest against wrong in the French Convention, fight under Washington for American independence, decline the headship of the republic in France, in order to put the crown on the head of Louis Philippe; and when he found that he had therein committed an error, retire to his farm, to end his life in humility and silence. He could pass through a life of seventy-six years without shewing a sign of selfish ambition, or any other kind of cupidity. He traversed a purgatory of human passions without a singe from any flame, or a single flutter of fear in his heart; the angel of compassion walking with him as his guard in that furnace. His goodness so clothes his whole image to men's eyes, that they forget his rank, and do not inquire for his talents; and in our age and state of society, this is the strongest possible testimony to the nobleness of his character. Lafayette was born of a noble family in Auvergne, in 1757, and early married a lady of rank equal to his own. He died, in his seventyseventh year, on the 20th of May 1834. At the very first revolutionary stir in Europe, Belgium began to move. The arbitrary union of Holland and Belgium had never answered; and Belgium was now bent on its being dissolved. There was no power of compulsion existing which could |