the ocean. Against this usurpation, the unhappy Louis could only offer an empty protest. On the marriage of the Emperor with the Archduchess of Austria, a sort of reconciliation between the brothers took place, and Louis was permitted to return to Holland: but he was enjoined to take his Queen with him. The joy which their return diffused was of short duration: they lived separately; and the mortifications which the latter experienced, as a prisoner in her own palace, drove her at last to seek repose in flight, leaving the Prince-Royal behind.

Although it was in conformity with the terms of a treaty, that the Duc de Reggio occupied the Hague and Leyden with French troops, in the month of April, 1810, it was impos sible not to see that these troops came rather to take posses sion of the country than to hold it as allies. Others were sent to the department of Frise; and the head-quarters of the French army were fixed at Utrecht, where Marshal Oudinot had the command of ten thousand Hollanders, and fixed his own residence at the Hôtel du Pape, where King Louis had himself resided. Little things sometimes produce great events. The French ambassador at the court of Amsterdam had a Dutch coachman, who one day, in full livery, quarrelled with one of the citizens near the royal palace; and this streetbrawl was the spark which caused explosion to the gun-powder. It was represented as a premeditated insult to the ambassador of France, to the imperial livery!; and his Excellency, who by others was supposed to have given his coachman instructions to pick a quarrel, required immediate reparation for the insult. Be this as it may, Napoleon, if he did not seek the opportunity of bringing matters to a crisis, took it. The fact doubtless was that, finding his brother Louis of too inflexible a disposition, he had resolved, at all events, to attach Holland to the French empire: he therefore pretended to be highly indig nant at this outrage, and recalled his ambassador, M. de la Rochefoucault. The French influence now daily gained ground at Amsterdam, and Reggio went so far as to demand military occupation of the capital. Louis would have defended it to the last extremity:-but he must have inundated the land, and this was too terrible an alternative. After a consultation with his ministers, he resolved on that measure which he thought was the least injurious to his adopted country, and determined to give up a throne which he could not support in dignity and independence. The act of abdication, dated from the royal pavilion, Haarlem, July 1. 1810, was in favor of his eldest son; and the regency was given to the Queen, supported by a council of regency, till he should come of age.

10

After

After the preparation of this act, of a proclamation to the people of Holland, and of a message to the legislative body, in which he explained in a very feeling, and honorable, and touching manner, the motives which urged him to take this final step, Louis privately quitted Haarlem in the middle of the night; and his departure was not known or suspected till the publication of these documents announced it on the fol lowing day, when an expression of regret was universal and sincere. He proceeded with General Travers, captain of the Guards, and Admiral Bloys van Treslong, his aide-de-camp, in a voiture, to Toeplitz, in Austria; travelling under the title of Compte de Saint-Leu. His son, Louis Second, was pro claimed king the next day : but his reign was truly ephemeral, for the Emperor Napoleon, by a decree dated 10th July, annexed Holland to France: -the army and navy were incor. porated with that of the empire; and the public debt was reduced one-third!

Some official documents are given in an appendix to this lively volume, with biographical notices of the principal per sonages who figured in the court of Holland.

ART. V. De la Contre-Révolution en France, &c.; i. e. On the Counter-Revolution in France, or the Restoration of the old Nobility and former social Authorities in New France. By M. GANILH. 8vo. pp. 238. Paris. 1823, Imported by Treuttel and Co. Price 7s.

WE

E rejoice to see our old friend M. GANILH present himself on the stage as a politician, since as an economist he is well known and highly respected; and we are not willing to believe that the voice of one, who has shewn himself so well acquainted with the sources of national prosperity and wealth, will pass unheeded when he raises it in order to point out the true source of national dignity and grandeur, Occasionally we have observed his name in divisions of the Chamber of Deputies: but he has generally contented himself with a silent vote against the incroachments on that charter, which recognized the rights and liberties of the people of France. The return of a body of rapacious and revengeful emigrants, designated by the appellation of UltraRoyalists, has been the signal for counter-revolution; they avow themselves implacable enemies to the freedom of mankind all over the world; they have trampled under foot the very charter on which was inscribed the freedom of their own country; and they domineer in the counsels of the monarch, in the Chambers, and in every department of administration. • I should

I should flinch from my duty, I should betray my oaths,' says the author, if I did not, in this hour of peril, undertake to defend those principles of the Revolution which I embraced in the days of my earliest youth, and which I never abandoned, even at the foot of the scaffold."✶

"Inter arma, leges silent" and, as laws are silent amid the din of war, so is the voice of reason unheard in the conflict of interests and passions. It is impossible not to observe that, in the eager deliberations which frequently take place in the British parliament, no member is ever convinced, at the time, by the arguments of his opponent, however powerful; each party exercising his perverse ingenuity in warding them off, breaking their force, and giving the utmost impulse to his own. There is a false point of honor in not yielding at the moment: but conviction does certainly follow these conflicts of argument; the force of the blow is felt after the heat of the battle; and it is very common to see one side acting on principles against which its members had pertinaciously reasoned only a short time before. This consideration inspires us with hope that, however unwilling a part of the auditory may be whom M. GANILH addresses, to listen to his portentous warnings, even that part, on cool reflection, will be sensible of the force of his arguments, and be ruled by his principles. We wish also to believe that the bulk of his auditory, that is, the people of France, are not unwilling listeners: for it is impossible, surely, to replunge a civilized country into the vassalage from which it has once emancipated itself by its own bravery. There is a re-action in France at the present moment, undoubtedly: but no physical power can paralyze the moral faculties of a whole population, or make men unknow their knowlege and unthink their thoughts. What, then, is physical power among men ?-it has no existence but in moral feeling. Ignorance alone degrades man into a machine with which conquerors may play; and the despots of the North, who are now supposed to be bringing down their barbarian hordes to pour them on the southern countries of Europe, will assuredly rue the day which saw them depart from the Boristhenes and the Weser. Are there no discoveries, however,' exclaims M. GANILH, to be made in this age of illumination, in the science of oppression, and in the art of subjugating mankind? I acknowlege that the genius of despotism is fertile in resources, but safely may we rely on the

*After a detention of nine months, under the "reign of tertor," M. GANILH was condemned to deportation; and every body knows what deportation was during that period.

obstacles

obstacles which it has to conquer.' We trust that we may : and it is this consideration which alone supports us in looking forwards to the struggle now begun on the Peninsula. We are cheered, too, in finding the same confidence expressed by such an observer of mankind as the author whose work is before us, who has had the courage to write it under the eye of the government of France, and who addresses it to the French people.

Within little more than the lapse of an age,' he continues, a general revolution has taken place in the intellectual, economical, and moral state of society, which has entirely changed the seat of power. Commerce, industry, and agriculture have made prodigious advances: since the seventeenth century, their products have increased ten-fold. Within the same period the population engaged in these labors has doubled in England, and augmented with more or less rapidity in all the commercial states of Europe. Riches have increased to a still greater extent, and, no longer confined as they were formerly, now circulate through all ranks and gradations of people; communicating to them a new degree of ease and comfort, a sense of their rights, and a consciousness of their power to make those rights respected. The education of the people has every where followed this extension of comfort and of wealth; and instruction has multiplied the number of men conversant in all the various branches of knowlege and of useful industry. A fifth part of the population, in most of the states of Europe, is qualified to appreciate the direction and conduct of public affairs, to exert an enlightened control over the agents of government, and to form a sound opinion as to the true interests of their country. If we may judge of the moral condition of a people by their religious character, it may possibly be contended that society is in a state of retrogression: but what conclusion is to be drawn from this? That it is more subservient to power? On the contrary, it presents a grasping point the less, and is less easily bent down to the yoke of arbitrary domination.'

**

The indulgence of abstract speculations, however, is not the object of the present work. What will be the fate of the French Revolution? Will it triumph over its enemies, or fall under their efforts to destroy it? These are the truly interesting questions before us. It is towards the existing course of policy that all the hopes, fears, and thoughts of the people of France are directed. Bonaparte united in his favor the suffrages of all when he was fighting for the independence of

* In a discourse pronounced by M. Cuvier, in the Chamber of Deputies, in the year 1822, he stated that, in France, twelve hundred thousand persons received primary instruction, and about forty thousand were instructed in the higher departments of

science.

APP. REV. VOL. C.

K k

his

his country, as a basis on which to found the public liberty: but opinion abandoned him when he proposed himself as the object and end of the Revolution. This was plainly seen at the restoration of Louis: the Charter obliterated in a moment every vestige of fourteen years of glory, enthusiasm, and intoxication: it eclipsed the 'hero,' the great man,' the man of destiny;' it bereaved him even of that pity which great reverses inspire, although they have been merited; and, from that moment, he became a mere historical personage. The events of the 20th of March do not invalidate this assertion. If France opposed no resistance to the return of Imperial despotism when Bonaparte escaped from Elba, and if she appeared unaffected with the loss of the Charter, it was because the King's government had already been so conducted as to excite doubts respecting the stability of that Charter, the fidelity of its execution, and the real intentions of the royal authority. Confidence disappeared with the pledge which created it. The people would have done any thing for the faithful legislator of that document, but they did nothing for a monarch imposed on France as an absolute master. When Napoleon returned, it was in vain that he offered conditions to the people of France still more restrictive of his power than the Charter abridged that of Louis: he seduced none but feeble, credulous, and devoted adherents, and those whom the infraction of that instrument had disaffected from the Bourbon government: in the days of his prosperity, he had trampled on the liberties of his country; and, in the day of adversity, that country abandoned him to his fate.

It was in this state of public feeling that the French saw their King again mount his throne: a new concession of the Charter revived all those sentiments which the first had excited; and a frank- or fraudulent confession of the faults of the government, under the first restoration, imparted credit to the sincerity of the second, banished all apprehensions, and restored a devotedness to the constitution. Under the specious pretext of preventing any new attempts of the Bonapartists, the Ultra-Royalists now beset the throne, and arrogated the merit of exclusive loyalty to the Bourbons. The Chamber of Deputies, however, by the introduction of several new laws favorable to the liberty of the subject, (such as the laws relating to the elections, to recruiting, and to the freedom of the press, by which libellous offences were to be tried by a jury,) gave such an apparent guarantee for the inviolability of the Charter as at once to infuriate the Ultras, and to secure the attachment of the great part of the nation. In the course of a very short time, alas! by the monstrous alliance