party, a new department was created for the Baron Capelle, by separating the charge of the canals, highways, and public works, from the duties of minister of the interior. Courvoisier and Chabrol retired. By this arrangement, the premier was supposed to have acquired an accession of eloquence, in the person of Chantelauze-of dexterity, in the Baron Capelle-and of courage, in the Count de Peyronnet. The report on which the treasonable edicts proceed, may be taken as a specimen of the eloquence of the cabinet, in their collective capacity; and their dexterity is evinced by the fact, that on the 24th of July, at the moment when that report, and these ordinances, must either have been prepared, or in the act of preparation, the sign manual of the king, and the countersign of his advisers, were affixed to the lettres closes addressed to the peers and the deputies, requiring them to attend his majesty, at the opening of the session, on the 3d of August and whatever may be said of the other qualities possessed by the ministers individually, there seems, at least, to have been no want of that fatal courage evinced in every line of their atrocious ordinances.

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22

CHAPTER II.

Containing at full length the Report of the Ministry, and the Royal Ordinances of the 25th July, 1830.

THAT the ordinances of the 25th of July, which were the immediate and exciting cause of the glorious revolution, may be placed in that conspicuous point of view best fitted to gibbet them for future fame, the present chapter is exclusively reserved for their reception, and for that of the joint report of the cabinet from which they proceeded.

"SIRE,

REPORT, &c.

"Your ministers would be little worthy of the confidence with which your majesty honours them, if they longer delayed to place before your eyes a view of our internal situation, and to point out to your high wisdom the dangers of the periodical press.

"At no time for these fifteen years has this situation presented itself under a more serious and more afflicting aspect. Notwithstanding an actual prosperity, of which our annals afford no example, signs of disorganization and symptoms of anarchy manifest themselves at almost every point of the kingdom.

"The successive causes which have concurred to weaken the springs of the monarchical government tend now to impair and to change the nature of it. Stripped of its moral force, authority, both in the capital and the provinces, no longer contends, but at a disadvantage, with the factions. Pernicious and subversive doctrines, loudly professed, are spread and propagated among all classes of the population. Alarms, too generally credited, agitate people's minds, and trouble society. On all sides the present is called upon for pledges of security for the future.

“An active, ardent, indefatigable malevolence, labours to ruin all the foundations of order, and to snatch from France the happiness she enjoys under the sceptre of her kings. Skilful in turning to advantage all discontents, and in exciting all hatreds, it foments among the people a spirit of distrust and hostility towards power, and endeavours to sow everywhere the seeds of trouble and civil war; and already, Sire, recent events have proved that political passions, hitherto confined to the upper portion of society, begin to penetrate the depths of it, and to stir up the popular classes. It is proved also, that these masses can never move without danger, even to those who endeavour to rouse them from repose.

"A multitude of facts collected in the course of the electoral operations confirm these data, and would offer us the too certain presage of new commotions, if it were not in the power of your majesty to avert the misfor

tune.

"Everywhere also, if we observe with attention,

there exists a necessity for order, for strength, and for durability; and the agitations which appear to be the most opposed to that necessity, are in reality only the expression and the testimony of its existence.

"It must be acknowledged that these agitations, which cannot be increased without great dangers, are almost exclusively produced and excited by the liberty of the press. A law on the elections, no less fruitful of disorders, has doubtless concurred in maintaining them; but it would be denying what is evident, to refuse to perceive in the journals the principal focus of a corruption, the progress of which is every day more sensible, and the first source of the calamities which threaten the kingdom.

“Experience, Sire, speaks more loudly than theory. Men who are doubtless enlightened, and whose good faith is not suspected, led away by the ill-understood example of a neighbouring people, may have believed that the advantages of the periodical press would balance its inconveniences, and that its excesses would be neutralized by contrary excesses. It is not so: the proof is decisive, and the question is now settled in the public mind.

"At all times, in fact, the periodical press has been, AND IT IS IN ITS NATURE TO BE, only an instrument of DISORDER and SEDITION.

"What numerous and irrefragable proofs may be brought in support of this truth! It is by the violent and incessant action of the press that the too sudden and too frequent variations of our internal policy are to be explained. It has not permitted a regular and stable system of government to be established in France, nor any constant attention to be devoted to the introduction, into all the branches of the administration, of those ameliorations of which they are susceptible. All the ministries since 1814, though formed under divers influences, and

subject to opposite directions, have been exposed to the same attacks and to the same licence of the passions. Sacrifices of every kind, concessions of power, alliances of party-nothing has been able to save them from this common destiny.

"This comparison alone, so fertile in reflections, would suffice to assign to the press its true, its invariable character. It endeavours, by constant, persevering, daily-repeated efforts, to relax all the bonds of obedience. and subordination, to weaken all the springs of public authority, to degrade and debase it in the opinion of the people, to create against it everywhere embarrassment and resistance.

"Its art consists not in substituting for a too easy submission of mind a prudent liberty of examination, but in reducing to a problem the most positive truths; not in exciting upon political questions frank and useful controversy, but in placing them in a false light, and solving them by sophistry.

"The press has thus excited confusion in the most upright minds,—has shaken the most firm convictions, and produced, in the midst of society, a confusion of principles which lends itself to the most fatal attempts. It is by anarchy in doctrine, that it paves the way for anarchy in the state. It is worthy of remark, Sire, that the periodical press has not even fulfilled its most essential condition, that of publicity! It is strange, but a thing that may be said with truth, that there is no publicity in France, taking this word in its just and strict sense. In this state of things, facts, when they are not entirely fictitious, do not come to the knowledge. of several millions of readers, except when mutilated and disfigured in the most odious manner. A thick cloud, raised by the journals, conceals the truth, and in a manner intercepts the light between the government and the people. The kings your predecessors,