'Oh, come, Sire, speak your mind.' 'I should be very sorry, M. Dupont' As you please, Sire, but pray do not embarrass yourself on my account.'-p. 78. This may be patriotism, but it is hardly good manners, even on M. Sarrans's own showing. The following must have been still more agreeable.

M. Odillon Barrot, who was prefect of police, had, in a public proclamation, talked disrespectfully of the measures of the government. The majority of the Cabinet were for removing him, but Lafayette and Dupont threatened to resign if Barrot should be dismissed. The king was obliged personally to interfere to endeavour to arrange the matter. I have spoken,' said he to Dupont, 'with M. de Lafayette on the subject. M. Barrot's dismissal is very disagreeable to him, but he at length sees that it is absolutely necessary, and will consent to it provided he is not to appear in the business.' Dupont, who had just heard, as he said, from Lafayette that he never would consent to it,' replied, warmly, You are mistaken, Sire, Lafayette never said so.' 'What, Sir,' cried the king, do you give me the lie?' 'I do not give you the lie, but I repeat that M. de Lafayette neither did nor could say what your majesty has repeated, for, not two hours ago, he told me the direct contrary, and M. de Lafayette is not a man to wheel round in that way.' M. Dupont de l'Eure,' replied the king, with gravity, you again give me the lie.' 'No, Sire, but I maintain the truth; but let us have done with it-I resign,' Then, M. Dupont, I shall let the world know why you resign. I shall state that it is because you have insulted me.' 'And I shall state the contrary.' I shall give you the lie.' 'Do so,' rejoined Dupont; and see which of the two the world will believe!" And this scene occurred not between two porters in a cellar of La Place Maubert, but between a king and the head of the law, in the constitutional Cabinet of the Tuileries!

6

We shall conclude these strange revelations by a still more curious anecdote.

a

Pending the proceedings against the ex-ministers, when, as Sarrans sneeringly observes, Louis Philippe and his cabinet were seized with a sudden fit of humanity, a general order was issued to suspend all capital punishments throughout France. It happened that a murder had been committed in a distant department by a mother and daughter on their husband and father, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity: they had been condemned, and were now in prison awaiting punishment. The local authorities, says Sarrans, pressed the execution, stating that there was so much exasperation against the malefactors, that, if the sentence were not promptly executed, they could not be responsible for the public peace. Dupont brought the case before the cabinet, who agreed unanimously

VOL. LII. NO. CIV.

2 P

unanimously on the necessity of making an example. Dupont then stated the case to the king, and finding him adverse, insisted on his hearing the matter debated before him in cabinet. He asked a week's delay, to prepare himself to hear them. During that week, the king, pale, feeble, and with a trembling voice, had never ceased repeating that he would rather resign his crown in all its newness, than sign a sentence of death. 'Really,' said M. Lafitte, "I pity the king. I think I am myself as goodnatured as another; but I cannot comprehend his extreme uneasiness.' At last the day for the discussion arrived. The king came with haggard eyes, trembling hands, and a feeble voice, and said, 'I am ready to hear you.' The Duke of Broglie spoke first, and left nothing for his colleagues to add; they were unanimous-the laws must be executed. After some minutes of melancholy silence the king said, "I know my duty,—you are unanimous-I submit.' M. Dupont then gently moved the warrant towards him for signature,—the king uttered a cry of horror, and pushed the paper away. 'Sire,' said Dupont, my heart is as tender as yours, but I am responsible for the execution of the laws, and we must finish this affair; besides, it is in some degree a kind of commutation of punishment that you are about to sign, for we propose that you should remit to one of the parties the mutilation with which the law aggravates the punishment of a parricide. Let us have done with delays, Sire, for justice has its necessities.' We do not think that this speech showed either a very tender heart or logical head -it failed at all events to subdue the king. He again requested a further delay of forty-eight hours. At last he signed. The day after, Lafitte, then prime minister, went into the closet,-the king had not closed his eyes all night,—he attempted to excuse what he called his weakness, but he could not articulate three words; his emotions increased, he lost his voice,-he burst into tears, and threw himself into the arms of M. Lafitte, exclaiming,My father-my father-died on the scaffold!'

6

M. Sarrans treats this new-born humanity in the king of the barricades, the king of the mitraille of St. Mery,-the king of the legal massacres of La Vendée,'—as a base hypocrisy, put on for the purpose of ultimately saving the lives of the ex-ministers. We believe no such thing-but might not this insinuation on the part of Sarrans justify a suspicion that Dupont insisted so vehemently for the execution of those wretched women with the view of forcing on the king a precedent for a capital execution? It would be very natural and very reasonable that the king should on this occasion have contemplated the possibility of his being soon called upon to exercise his authority in the case of M. de Polignac and his colleagues-persons whom he individually knew,

and

and whose errors he, with every other rational man, must have thought undeserving of death; but this contemplation would only serve to bring to his mind the case of his unhappy father, who, great as his crimes had been, undoubtedly was innocent of the facts for which he was condemned, and who perished-as M. de Polignac was in danger of doing-a victim to the blind fury of the populace. The association of ideas was therefore not merely natural, but inevitable; and even admitting M. Sarrans's suspicion that Louis Philippe was actuated by the desire to save the exministers, we see no reason-but the contrary-to suspect that he was not additionally influenced by the recollection of the fate of his unhappy father.

But we must conclude; the long extract from the journal has already carried us far beyond the limits which we should otherwise have assigned to this subject. M. Sarrans's work, though written with great partiality and bitterness, and occasional malignity, contains a mass of undeniable facts and reasoning exceedingly important to the history of the July Revolution. M. Sarrans accumulates evidence against Louis Philippe personally of inconsistency in his principles, and ingratitude towards his partisans, and he proves that the reign of the Citizen-king has been, and continues to be, more convulsed, more bloody, more despotic, than any similar period in the whole half century of revolution, the Reign of Terror hardly excepted; but he has not shaken our opinion that it is highly unjust to throw, as he and his party do, all the blame of these errors, misfortunes, and crimes, upon the king and his government. The real source of the evil is the Three Glorious Days and the principles which they brought into fashion. Louis Philippe has had all along but one alternative-either to abandon the government to the anarchists, or to repress the anarchists with the strong hand of power. We may lament, and we do most sincerely lament, the deplorable scenes of which France has been and is the theatre-the prosecutions, persecutions, imprisonments, massacres, which have desolated her principal cities, and particularly Paris; but-tu l'as voulu, George Dandin—it is the just price and inevitable punishment of rash revolt and blind innovation. Louis Philippe's only error as king was his first-the acceptance of the crown. We do not retract our former opinion, that for that step there may have been some cogent and even laudable motivesthe imminent danger of a bloody anarchy on one side, and, on the other, the hope of preserving the crown in the house of Bourbon; but we fear the day will if it has not already-come, when Louis Philippe and his family will deplore that he should have been, by any circumstances, induced to deviate from the straight road of honour and duty, and to forget the allegiance which he had 2 P 2

SO

so often and so solemnly sworn to the heads of his family. We can well believe that he would now, to repeat his own phrase, gladly exchange his citizen royalty to be a citizen shopkeeper in the Rue St. Honoré under the republic;' but how much more gladly would he find himself again Duke of Orleans under the light and indulgent authority of the legitimate sovereign! We believe him, in spite of M. Sarrans's sneers, to be a man of humanity; what then must he not feel for all the blood shed in those monthly revolts which ensanguine his country!

Occupied and alarmed with our own internal difficulties and dangers, we pay too little attention to the state of France. Does the English public know that there are at this moment. more gaols and more prisoners in France than at any period of her history, except the short reign of Robespierre? Does the English public know that there now are, and have been for above six months, many hundreds of state prisoners, incarcerated under circumstances of illegality and severity which the annals of the old Bastille cannot exceed, and that these unhappy persons are, by every means which can evade the rigour of their gaolers, imploring, but hitherto in vain, to be brought to trial? Does the English public know that—since the publication of M. Sarrans's work—-in consequence of an émeute in last April, a massacre was perpetrated in Paris by the troops of the line under the special excitement of their officers, which was, under all its frightful circumstances, as horrible as the massacres of the Abbaye? Does the English public know that in one house only-No. 12 of the Rue Transnonain--twelve persons-paralytic old men-young childrenwomen in their night-clothes-and men rising half dressed from their beds and all, we need hardly add, as innocent as sleepwere murdered outright by la force publique with every aggravation of brutality—one old man's corpse having FIFTY-ONE ball and bayonet wounds-that these dreadful scenes took place on the night of the 13th of April, and that now, in the month of November, there has been neither justification for innocence, nor punishment for guilt, nor vengeance for blood? And the city of Paris-so inured has it become to such samples of liberty and order'-seems to think as little about it as the city of London. But the king, in whose name, and in whose supposed defence these dreadful deeds were done-ought his heart to be more at ease, his eye less haggard, his nights less sleepless, than when he had to sanction the legal execution of a parricide? We are well aware that such scenes sometimes occur in war, by marauders and plunderers, and in towns taken by storm, and we know that, when the fury of a soldiery is once excited, it is difficult to restrain it; but when did it ever before happen that a great capital

was

was placed by its own government in a state of siege-stormed by its own garrison—and men, women, and children put to the sword, naked or in their beds, by the police of the city? We really wonder that a humane and enlightened man like Louis Philippe does not abdicate at all risks a crown which he finds can only be maintained by such a series of horrors-horrors, for which he may not be personally blameable, but of which he is, ostensibly, the cause for they are the fruits-the inevitable consequences of the struggle between the principles on which his authority is founded and the authority itself. In vain has he tried-by fifteen or sixteen changes of ministry, in which he has employed men of all shades, from the Republican Dupont, to the Carlist Argout-to form a consistent and coherent cabinet; equally vain will be his recent combination of a dozen third-rate lawyers under the experienced mediocrity of the Duke of Bassano! M. de Bassano may be, for aught we know, personally a respectable man; but even in his best days-under his earliest masters, the Directory and Buonaparte his chief merit was diligence in business, and moderation of character. He has not probably become, by increase of years, bolder, firmer, or more capable of holding the helm of the state in such a stormy crisis. His administration, therefore, gives us no hopes; it must be feeble, and it will be short,-and may, we fear, tend rather to aggravate than lessen the difficulties of Louis Philippe, unless, indeed, its extreme weakness should be another step in the unconstitutional system (which he has all along partially followed) of governing by himself, and relying on, not his ministers, but his army. But in their present anomalous and conflicting state, matters cannot remain. France must again pass through a despotism—a republic—or a restoration, and probably all these-before she can settle down into a constitution which shall command the undivided respect and rational obedience of the nation. Neither the sovereignty of the people, nor the power of the sword, can ever be the basis of a permanent government!

POSTSCRIPT. Nov. 19.

Before our prophecy of the brevity of the Duke of Bassano's administration could reach our readers, it was already fulfilled :after Three inglorious Days the new ministry expired, without apparent cause or effect, and with no other result than the having heaped on Louis Philippe and his system additional contempt and odium, and increased difficulty and danger. But all our interest in these affairs has been absorbed by the simultaneous dissolution of our own ministry-a dissolution which every one

foresaw