conduct and maxims which he recommended relative to the interests of France. It has been truly said, that, after the first errors and ebullitions of republican zeal, if he were measured by this standard, he must be judged favourably. The councils which he gave to Napoleon were all calculated, it was said, for the good of the nation, and so were the measures which he recommended to the King. Much of this is really true; yet, when we think of the political consistency of the Prince of Beneventum, we cannot help recollecting the personal virtue of a female follower of the camp, which consisted in strict fidelity to the grenadier company.
Dupont was promoted to the situation of minister at war, owing, perhaps, to the persecution he had undergone from Buonaparte, in consequence of his surrender at Baylen to the Spaniards. Soult was afterwards called to this important office; how recommended, it would be vain to inquire. When Napoleon heard of his appointment from the English resident, he observed that it would be a wise and good one, if no patriotic party should show itself in France; but, if such should arise, he intimated plainly that there would be no room for the Bourbons to rest faith upon Soult's adherence to their cause; and so it proved.
To add still farther to the inconveniences of this state of administration, Louis XVIII. had a favourite, although he had no prime minister. Count Blacas d'Aulps, minister of the household, an ancient and confidential attendant on the royal person during his exile, was understood to be the channel through which the King's wishes were communicated to the other ministers; and his protection was supposed to afford the surest access to the favours of the crown.
Without doing his master the service of a premier, or holding either the power or the responsibility of that high situation, De Blacas had the full share of odium usually attached to it. The royalists, who pressed on him for grants which were in the departments of other ministers, resented his declining to interfere in their favour, as if, having satisfied his own ambition, he had become indifferent to the interest of those with whom he had been a joint sufferer during the emigration. The opposite party, on the other hand, represented Count Blacas as an absolute minister, an emigrant himself, and the patron of emigrants; a royalist of the highest class, and an enemy, of course, to all the constitutional stipulations in favour of liberty. Thus far it is certain, that the unpopularity of M. de Blacas, with all ranks and parties in the state, had the worst possible influence on the King's affairs; and as his credit was ascribed to a blind as well as an obstinate attachment on the part of Louis, the monarch was of course involved in the unpopularity of the minister of the household.
The terms of the peace, as we have already hinted, had been studiously calculated to recommend it to the feelings of the French people. France was, indeed, stripped of that extended sway which rendered her dangerous to the independence of other European nations, and reduced, generally speaking, to the boundaries which she occupied on the 1st of January 1792. Still the bargain was not harshly driven. Several small additions were left with her on the side of Germany and the Netherlands, and on that of Savoy she had the considerable towns of Chamberri, Annecy, Avignon, with the Venaisson and Mont Belliard, included in her territories.73 But these concessions availed little; and looking upon what they had lost, many of the French people, after the recollections had subsided of their escape from a dreadful war, were naturally, however unreasonably, disposed to murmur against the reduction of their territories, and to insist that Belgium, at least, should have remained with them. This opinion was encouraged and pressed by the Buonapartists, who considered the cession of that country with the more evil eye, because it was understood to have been a point urged by England.
Yet if England played a proud, it was also a generous part. She had nothing to stipulate, nothing of which to demand restitution, for she had sustained no territorial loss during the whole period of hostilities. The war, which had nearly ruined most other nations, had put Britain in possession of all the colonies of France, and left the latter country neither a ship nor a port in the East or West Indies; and, to sum the whole, it was not in the power of united Europe to take from England by force any one of the conquests which she had thus made. The question therefore, only was, what Britain was voluntarily to cede to an enemy who could give her no equivalent, excepting the pledge to adopt better principles, and to act no longer as the disturber of Europe. The cessions were such in number and amount, as to show that England was far above the mean and selfish purpose of seeking a colonial monopoly, or desiring to destroy the possibility of commercial rivalry. All was restored to France, excepting only Tobago and the Mauritius.
These sacrifices, made in the spirit of peace and moderation, were not made in vain. They secured to Britain the gratitude and respect of other states, and, giving to her councils that character of justice and impartiality which constitutes the best national strength, they placed her in a situation of more influence and eminence in the civilized world than the uncontrolled possession of all the cotton-fields and sugar-islands of the east and west could ever have raised her to. Still, with respect to France in particular, the peace was not recommended by the eminence to which it had raised England. The rivalry, so long termed national, and which had been so carefully fostered by every state paper or political statement which Buonaparte had permitted to be published, rankled even in generous and honourable minds; and so prejudiced are the views of passion, that by mistaking each other's national feelings, there were many Frenchmen induced to believe that the superiority attained by Great Britain was to a certain degree an insult and degradation to France.
Every thing, indeed, which ought to have soothed and gratified the French people, was at last, by irritated feelings and artful misrepresentation, converted into a subject of complaint and grievance.
The government of Napoleon had been as completely despotic as it could be rendered in a civilized country like France, where public opinion forbade its being carried to barbaric extreme. On the contrary, in the charter, France was endowed with most of the elementary principles of a free and liberal constitution. The King had adopted, in all points of a general and national tendency, the principles proposed in the rejected constitutional act of the Senate.
The Chamber of Peers and Chamber of Deputies were the titles applied to the aristocratical and popular branches of the constitution, instead of the Senate and Legislative body. Their public duties were divided something like those of the Houses of Peers and Commons in England. The independence of the judicial order was recognised, and the military were confirmed in their rank and revenues. The Chamber of Peers was to be nominated by the King, with power to his Majesty to create its members for life, or hereditary, at his pleasure. The income of the suppressed Senate was resumed, and vested in the crown, excepting confiscated property, which was restored to the lawful owners. The Catholic religion was declared to be that of the State, but all other Christian sects were to be protected. The King's authority was recognised as head of the army, and the power of making peace and war was vested in him exclusively. The liberty of the press was established, but under certain restraints. The conscription was abolished – the responsibility of ministers recognised; and it may be said, in general, that a constitution was traced out, good so far as it went, and susceptible of receiving the farther improvements which time and experience might recommend. The charter74 was presented to the Legislative Body by the King in person, [June 4,] with a speech, which announced, that the principles which it recognised were such as had been adopted in the will of his unfortunate brother, Louis XVI.75
Yet, though this charter contained a free surrender of great part of the royal rights which the old race of Bourbons had enjoyed, as well as of all the arbitrary power which Napoleon had usurped, we have seen that it was unacceptable to an active and influential party in the state, who disdained to accept security for property and freedom under the ancient forms of a feudal charter, and contended that it ought to have emanated directly from the will of the Sovereign People. We have no hesitation in saying, that this was as reasonable as the conduct of a spoiled child, who refuses what is given to him, because he is not suffered to take it; or the wisdom of an hungry man, who should quarrel with his dinner, because he does not admire the shape of the dish in which it is served up.
This
See Treaty of Paris, Art. III. Parl. Debates, vol. xxviii., p. 178.
See Annual Register, vol. lvi., p. 420.
See
