The subsequent history of France, up to the Restoration, in 1815, is well known. The riot, tumult, and brutal excesses - the reign of terror -the inconceivable atrocities of the incarnate fiends, into which the spirit of democracy had converted the whole French people-the military despotism in which they found repose the brilliancy of their foreign wars, and the humiliation of their subsequent defeats are matters with which we are all acquainted. It would be curious, if we had the opportunity, to trace the points of resemblance between the first Revolution and the one which has now occurred, so far as the latter has yet proceeded. Does the National Convention, for instance, publish a decree, "declaring that it will grant fraternity and assistance to all people wishing to recover their liberty, and charging the executive power to send the necessary orders to the generals to give succours to such people, and to defend those citizens who have suffered, or may suffer in the cause of liberty?" We have the following counterpart from M. Lamartine, in 1848: Lamoriciere, has within the last few days demanded an additional levy of 100,000 troops; and this, in addition to the 24,000 moveable and paid national guards, who were levied immediately on the establishment of the provisional government—a force which can differ in no respect from the troops of the line, except, perhaps, in the period of their enlistment. And not only in the political, but in the economical events of the two revolutions, would a great similarity be found. In both cases, as the natural consequence of popular excitement and public convulsion, public and private credit, more sensitive than the mimosa, is suspended — the banks refuse to discount- the manufacturers cease to work—the populace are thrown out of employment-the markets are imperfectly supplied, and scarcity, with all its horrors, begins to present itself. Every public fund that can be appropriated and made available, is seized upon; public works (almost necessarily unprofitable) are unavoidably resorted to, to provide employment for the people; taxes are anticipated by loans at a high rate of interestthey turn out insufficient in their produce for the outgoings of the state, and the country is reduced to bankruptcy-such were the consequences of the Revolution of 1789 — and such, with still greater rapidity, seem to be the results of that of 1848. Already, as we write, not only have the banking houses of Gouin and Co., Baudin and Co., and Lafitte and Co., failed — (how many more will have stopped before this reaches the hands of our readers, it is impossible to say) but the National Bank of France itself has stopped payment and, like the assignats of old which brought thousands to ruin, an issue of paper money is decreed by the Provisional Goverment-paper money, inconvertible, based upon nothing, provided for by nothing, unless it be by projected confiscations, or had property to be plundered. To be sure, the forced loans, as in 1793, from every man who issue is on no account to exceed fourteen millions sterling; but we would be glad to know on what rational principle it is to be expected, that the same necessity which occasioned the issue is to restrict it - or why these new-fledged statesmen, the most incompetent batch (with the exception of Dupont de L'Eure, and Arago,) that ever "The treaties of 1815 exist no longer as law chance threw together at one council-table, in the eyes of the French Republic; neverthe-should not again resort to this self-sustaining less, the territorial circumscriptions of these treaties are a fact which it admits as a basis, and as a point de depart in its relations with other "Thus we declare it openly. If the hour of the re-construction of some nationalities, oppressed in Europe or elsewhere, should appear to us to have sounded in the decrees of Providence-if Switzerland, our faithful ally since the time of Francis I., were constrained or threatened in the advance which she is effecting in her government, in order to lend additional strength to the fascine of democratic governments if the independent states of Italy were invaded-if any limits or obstacles were imposed on their internal transformations-if the right of alliance among themselves, in order to consolidate an Italian nation, were contested by main force the French Republic would believe itself entitled to arm itself, in order to protect these legitimate movements of the greatness and the nationality of states." Again; the National Assembly declared that France renounced the idea of extending her territories. M. Lamartine is, certainly, rather more equivocal on this head. The following is the closest imitation which he can bring himself to adopt : war on any one. "The French Republic will, then, not make It has no occasion to say that, if conditions of war are laid down to the French people, it will accept them. nations." financial system, whereby, as they have discovered (and what relief and delight must not the notable discovery have afforded them,) the power of the state in making money can counterbalance its necessities for expending it * We presume it is an elucidation of any thing that might be ambiguous in these sentiments, The governor of the Bank of France, in his letter that M. Lamartine's minister of war, General to the Provisional Government, tells them From - marking the striking parallel between the devoted heroism of Marie Antoinette, and of the Duchess of Orleans. Calm, and with dignity, this royal lady, upheld by a high sense of maternal duty, and by unflinching fortitude, braved the fury and the menaces of the streets, and the ruffianism, and the levelled pikes and muskets of the assembly, to assert the rights of the no less gallant boy who accompanied her. The high bearing of this noble princess, a stranger and a Protestant, is the only incident which illumines the dull mass of coarseness, treason, and vulgarity, which closed over the downfall of monarchy in France. But our space does not allow us to dwell upon this longer; we are anxious to sketch the struggles of the democratical spirit from its birth to the present time. It has now attained full age - it has thrown off control-it has asserted its right of being held responsible for its actions, and has entered on its inheritance. Nor is the necessity for the state to provide | of resemblance in the two Revolutions, without employment for its population one whit less urgent now, than it was in 1789- the foreign wars, into which the first republic at once plunged, in its career of propagandism, provided a vent for the ill-humors and idleness of the social body, yet, even then, were they obliged to resort to public works — and so now, in 1848, do we find every resource of the state applied to finding employment for the people-24,000 paid National Guards, at 1s. 3d. a-day; 100,000 additional troops of the line; hundreds of laborers, engaged in repairing the palais national, (no longer palais royal) — in raising the level of the Champs de Mars, and in lowering the bed of the Seine. But the greatest public work is yet to be established, one which, we venture to say, will turn out to have been hitherto unrivalled in every quality for which public works are distinguished, in the amount of wages of the laborer, in the inefficiency of the workmen, and in the utter worthlessness of the undertaking. The National Assembly opens on the 29th of When the Republican spirit began to recover April; it is to consist of nine hundred deputies, after the Restoration, its only organs were the and the laborers of France are offered, nay, are Chamber of Deputies and the press - but both solicited to receive twenty-five francs a-day, for these were powerful agents. To corrupt the their work, in this great undertaking. This is one, and control or intimidate the other, were neither jest nor exaggeration — M. Ledru Rollin the only means by which the monarchy could be has addressed a circular, on the subject of the preserved. A charter had been given to the elections, to the several commissioners of the the people by Louis XVIII., but the succeeding Provisional Government through the country, in monarchs have ever found it impossible to mainwhich he directs them thus, as to their choice of tain their thrones without constantly violating candidates: "Let your mot d'ordre be new its spirit, and not unfrequently its express promen, and as much as possible from the ranks of visions. As the Chamber of Deputies was conthe people; the working classes, who form the stituted shortly after the Restoration, it consisted living strength of the nation, should choose, from of 258 members; every person being of thirty among them, men recommended by their intelli- years of age, and paying 200 francs (£12), digence, their morality, and their devotedness”. rect taxes, being entitled to the elective franand then follows a parcel of trash about "think-chise; but in 1820, the ministry, taking advaning men " and "Utopian ideas," &c., for these fellows spout with the selfsame disgusting cant that their predecessors did, in 1789. Sir Walter Scott gives us a specimen of Robespierre's rhodomontade, in order, as he says, "to show at how little expense of sense, taste, or talent, a man may be held an excellent orator, and become dictator of a great nation;" and he tells us, in connexion with it, the very appropriate story of the Mahomedan doctor, who assured Bruce that the Antichrist was to appear in the form of an ass, and that multitudes were to follow him to hell, attracted by the music of his braying Nor can we notice, however briefly, the points the 22nd February to the 15th March, the bank has discounted, in Paris, the sum of one hundred and ter millions. Of the one hundred and twenty-five millions which it owed to the treasury, it has paid seventy-seven millions. We do not include in that sum eleven millions placed at the disposal of the treasury in different banks, to meet the urgent necessities of the public service." tage of a temporary manifestation of loyalty on the occasion of the murder of the Duke de Berri, procured a law to be passed for adding 172 new deputies, to be chosen by one fourth of the electors, that fourth consisting of those who paid the largest amount of taxes. This measure considerably weakened the democratic influence, but still not sufficiently so to hold the revolutionary spirit within due bounds, and kings and their ministry have since found it easier to control the chamber by solicitations, intrigues, bribery, and other indirect means, than by any such organic changes in its constitution. It is by such practices, aided by the direct action of the government on the country, in the elections, that the chamber has, up to this day, been influenced or controlled. Upon the eve of a general election, the heads of the different state departments in Paris write to their subordinates in the country, admonishing them, that they are pledged, by virtue of their office, to the support of the king's government, and that it is upon the efficiency of this support that their own prospects depend. When we recollect that there are no municipal bodies, no influential proprietors, no public assemblies throughout France, except what are sanctioned by the government, it is only wonderful that the crown should have ever experienced any opposition whatsoever in the chamber, and, more especially, when we recollect how lavishly money was expended in corrupting the members, and how unblushingly it was received. The amount of influence which the government had in the chamber may be inferred from the statement made by M. Thiers when proposing his measure of reform, in 1846, namely, that there were then one hundred and eighty-four public functionaries having seats in that body; these attempts to control the chamber, when made by a legitimate sovereign, were, of course, rank despotism in the eyes of the republicans; yet hardly are they seated on the rickety stools of their provisional government, before a despotism tenfold more oppressive — a despotism which has been acknowledged and dreaded by every one from Aristotle to De Tocqueville- the despotism of the "tyrant majority," already begins to display itself. In the circular of M. Ledru Rollin, to which we have adverted, he charges his subordinates thus: -“Cause on all points of your department the meeting of electoral committees; examine closely the qualification of the candidates, and stop at those only who appear to present the strongest guaranties of republican opinion, and the greatest chance of success. Republican sentiments ought to be strongly forwarded; and for this purpose all political functions must be allotted to men sure, and of republican principles." Not a vestige of independent thought or action will shortly be found in republican France. But it was by the press of France (chiefly, of course, of the metropolis) that the revolutionary battle was fought; and it was against this mighty engine that the whole hostility of government was directed. Licentious, anarchical, and revolutionary, as it undoubtedly was, we cannot withhold from it the praise which is due to dauntless courage and unconquerable determination, aided by a very fair share of ability; and this when obliged to contend against an amount of oppression and persecution which is absolutely without a parallel; nor must we forget if it did too frequently err on the side of revolution, that it was in a struggle against a government which, in the effort to maintain its own existence, was invariably persisting in violating, both in spirit and in letter, the constitution of the country. The history of this struggle, which resulted in the triumph of the press and the overthrow of the Bourbons, in 1830, is most extraordinary; and as the press was all through the great engine by which the battle of democracy was fought, it is immediately connected with our subject. Louis XVIII. entered his capital in May, 1814; and, in the July following, the Abbé Montesquiou, by the king's directions, procured a law to be passed enacting that all writings of less than twenty sheets should be subject to censorship, and that if thought defamatory, seditious, or immoral, they might be repressed. This censorship was repealed in 1819, but only to be reenacted the succeeding year, in which year also, we may observe, that a law was passed for permitting the arrest and imprisonment of any person suspected of plotting against the king or state, whereby the liberty of the subject was transferred from the ordinary courts and juries of the country to the king's privy council. Neither censorship nor incessant prosecutions were, however, found sufficient to subdue the energies of the press; and, in 1822, it was found necessary to go still further, and a law was passed that no periodical writing whatsoever should be published without the authority of the king being first obtained; and that in case its tendency (not any particular article, but the general tendency of the paper) should appear to be injurious to the public peace, to religion, to the authority of the king, or the stability of the constitutional institutions, the royal courts (in which there was no jury, and the judges of which were appointed by the crown) should, on hearing the parties and the king's attorney-general, suspend or suppress it. On the accession of Charles X., in 1824, he abolished the censorship, but retained the last-mentioned act, and proposed others even still more stringent some few years afterwards, continuing all the time an unintermitting series of prosecutions, in many instances on the most frivolous grounds. The public at last began openly to take up the cause of the journalists, and cries of "à bas les ministres" are the startling sounds which greet the king when he reviews the National Guards of Paris; in vain it is that the National Guards are disbanded; it but adds the additional discontent of 40,000 men, and supplies 40,000 stands of arms to the rioters of the barricades; in vain it is that the censorship is reimposed, it but exasperates the general indignation; in vain it is that all laws against the press are abolished in 1829; it but gives voice and power to democracy. The journals had already begun to hint at a change of dynasty, and the year 1830 was ushered in by the prosecution of the Globe, to which M. Guizot was a known contributor, for an article entitled "France and the Bourbons in 1830," which, as it has all the character of that statesman's writing, and has been singularly confirmed by the recent occurrences, we give an extract from:— "Of all the crises through which we have passed since 1814, the present is, without doubt, the most decisive for the House of Bourbon. It is, to reckon rightly, the fourth attempt at a counter-revolution. It is curious and profitable to observe what part the nation has performed in all these rash experiments; how it has been progressively instructed and strengthened, while the party which is dragging down royalty with itself has been misled and weakened; how, at every counter-revolutionary effort, the same melancholy and fatal idea of the separation of the throne and the country has presented itself, but on each occasion getting strength accepted by a greater number of minds, at first concealed as a secret intrigue or feeling of hostility, afterwards disclosed in public as an opinion, and thus proceeding until, if heaven avert it not, and if the old enemies of liberty still proceed further, this opinion will become the resolution of a party with popular assent." franchise to that class of voters exclusively who had acquired the donble vote by the law of 1820. To these ordinances the editors of twelve newspapers, headed by M. Thiers, next day publish their defiance. A force is sent to break the printing-presses; the populace of Paris rise in tumult in their defence; Marshal Marmont is entrusted with the command of the forces, and the Revolution of 1830 breaks forth. And here again, as of course, was the treason of the French soldiery exhibited. This desertion of the soldiery is, as we have already said, the true cause of the facility with which the French revolutions have been accomplished, and it forcibly illustrates the perfidy of the French race. The veteran battalion, a force consisting of 1, 100 men, surrendered at the first summons; the 50th regiment of the line refused to act; the 5th regiment, posted at the Chamber of Deputies, withdrew from their position; at length two regiments of the line in the Place Vendôme join the people; the revolt becomes general, and further resistance is hopeless. Nay, so entirely can these Frenchmen calculate on each other's treason, that the Marquis de Semonville, the grand referendary of the Chamber of Peers, deliberately proposed to Marshal Marmont to stop the fighting, "by making prisoners of the king's ministers;" and he says "that he saw the marshal twice, with vehemence, refuse his officers leave to use cannon," the only hope plainly that remained in the general defection of the troops of the line. M. Arago, too, tampers with Marmont, and says, "that he found the marshal entirely concurring with him as to the ordonnances." He scattered his troops so injudiciously through the streets, that on the first day they were wholly inefficient. On the evening of that day the king directs him "to persevere, to assemble his forces in the open places, and to act with masses." But why should Marshal Marmont expose himself to the reproach of being loyal to his king?- why should he let himself be eclipsed by Marshal Ney? He, too, swore allegiance to his sovereign, the predecessor and brother of this same Charles. He vauntingly promised him, when entrusted with his army, that he would bring back Bonaparte to Paris in an iron cage; but scarcely had he gone half way, when he published a proclamation, an For this article the editor was fined 2,000 francs, and imprisoned for four months. In the National, to which M. Thiers and M. Lamartine were contributors, a similar article appeared, for which the editor was also prosecuted and convicted; and several other prosecutions were instituted. The king opened the Chambers in March, and is met by a hostile address, drawn up by M. Dupont de L'Eure and others, in which it is alleged that "an unjust distrust of the sentiments and reason of France is the fundamental idea of the king's administration." This address was voted by a majority of 221 to 181. The chamber is again dissolved; every resource of power and corruption is brought to bear upon the country; but in vain. The opposition press is equally active and equally hostile; and the result is, a majority of from 60 to 70 against the ministers. The king now saw that the only chance which was left him for maintaining his throne was by a determined act of arbitrary power, supported, if necessary, by military force. The fourteenth article of the Charter ran thus:"Le Roi nomme à tous les emplois d'administration publique, et fait les réglements et ordonnances necessaire pour l'exé-nouncing that the cause of the Bourbons had cution des lois et la sûrete de l'Etat." Under this article, which Louis Philippe, in his opening speech, denounced as "having been so hatefully interpreted," the king issued his three famous ordinances, the one prohibiting any periodical to be published without the license of the crown, the second dissolving the newly-elected chambers, and the third restricting the elective fallen, and joined with the invader; and yet Ney got the death of a soldier, instead of being hanged to a lamp-post, as he should have been.* *There is a general impression that Ney's execution was in violation of the amnesty which was accorded by Louis on the surrender of Paris. The opinion is, that this amnesty embraced all political of fenders; whereas it was, that "in general" all persons guilty of political offences should be pardoned. It was but poor satisfaction to Charles that the dauphin took Marmont's sword from him at St. Cloud, and branded him for a foul traitor, as he was. Once more, then, did ill-fated France experience the inevitable consequences of a revolution -consequences precisely similar to those from which she is now suffering-stoppage of credit, factories thrown idle, crowds of unemployed artisans, grants for public works, and perpetually recurring riots in her great cities. Then, as now, did the popular party insist that France should assist the cause of the revolution in all countries; then, as now, did they proclaim that the treaties of 1815 were nullities. The evils of revolution were by no means, however, so great as in 1789, and nothing as compared with what they promise now to be; for the government was at once settled; Louis Philippe, the citizen king, was appointed to the throne that throne which he declared, on his accession, should be surrounded with republican institutions, and which, before many years, he was forced to convert into a perfect despotism—a despotism more stern than that of his predecessors, by reason of the increased strength and confidence of the democratical spirit with which it had to contend. In fact, he was foisted on the throne by the management of Lafitte, Lafayette, and a few others of the constitution-mongers, and his appointment was never acceptable to the great bulk of the French people. This conflict, however, could not long continue; the failure of the government, in nearly three fourths of the prosecutions, was but emboldening the democratical spirit. The king was determined to crush the evil he could not control, and in 1834, having obtained a docile chamber, he had a law passed, declaring all political offences of the press to be offences against the state, the effect of which enactment was to transfer such cases from the regular courts and juries, to the Chamber of Peers, by whom alone offences against the state were cognizable; and this he followed up by other very severe enactments against any one who should, directly or indirectly, express even a wish for a republican government, or who should venture to ridicule the king, or allude to him at all, in discussing the acts of his government. Having thus procured a law by which to make the press amenable, and a tribunal to apply it, that engine of democracy was to a great extent controlled. But another power was now becoming formi dable political associations were growing up, both in the capital and in the provinces, and to suppress this organ of public opinion, was the next effort of the "citizen king." The control which Napoleon established over associations, by the articles of the penal code, and which articles were still in force, was wholly insufficient for Loud and incessant were the outcries of the journals against the king and his rule, and still more fiercely and perseveringly was this hostility resented. The censorship of the press had been abolished in 1830, and an act passed, enacting that all offences of the press should be referred to the ordinary courts of assize. Here the prosecutions were incessant. The Tribune alone, after fighting the battle for four years, was beaten down on its one hundred and twelfth prose-Louis Philippe. Napoleon's law prohibited all cution. The prisons of France were crowded with state prisoners. An idea may be formed of the extent and nature of this struggle from the following table, which was published by the Tribune in 1833, of the number of actions and condemnations, which had taken place from August, 1830, up to that time. We quote from the Annual Register for 1833: associations, unless they were first authorized by government, provided they were associations which consisted of more than twenty persons, and had stated periods of meeting. This law it was now becoming general to evade, by forming societies of a less number than twenty persons, but affiliated one with another. To guard against this evasion, Louis Philippe, in 1834, had a law passed, correcting this abuse, but at the same time extending the application of the law from societies with stated times of meeting, to which Napoleon had restricted it, to any single meeting whatsoever. As it was under this law that the Reform banquet was suppressed, which was the immediate cause of the recent revolution, we Thus expressly guarding that perfidy such as Ney's give the enactments as they appear in the stat hould not go unpunished. ute-book: |