to France. Our readers will be at no loss to make the proper application of them.

"As to the faction exercising power in France, to suppose that monarchy can be supported by principled regicides, religion by professed atheists, order by clubs of jacobins, is to be sanguine in a degree of which I am incapable." "A royal democracy would infallibly be again set up in France to run exactly the same round, if | the predominant power should so far be forced to submit, as to receive the name of a king, leaving it to those who had subverted royalty and destroyed property, to modify the one and distribute the other as spoil

"I believe we shall be in a great error, if we act upon an idea that there exists in that country any organized body of men who might be willing to treat on equitable terms, for the restoration of their monarchy, but who are nice in balancing those terms, and who would accept such as to them appeared reasonable, but who would quietly submit to the predominant power, if they were not gratified in the fashion of some constitution which suited their fancies. I take the state of France to be totally different.*"

The character of the civil functionaries alone was of fatal portent to the throne of Louis XVIII. They could be restrained from conspiring singly against it, only so long as they were actuated by the dread of vengeance from abroad. This apprehension could not influence the army or its lead

*The whole of this admirable dis'sertation of Mr. Burke should be attentively read in connection with the present subject.

throw, and the exile of their chief, no favours of the Bourbons could cure; who contemned the unwarlike temper and exterior of their new sovereign; who were impatient under inactivity, and panted for war as the means of reinstating themselves in their supremacy over France and her neighbours. The considerable part of them whom the government had been forced to disband, were doubly fierce in their resentment and discontent. The genius of the French armies implies, that they could not be open to any considerations of remote consequences, either to themselves, or their country, and must have been ready, at the first signal, to declare in favour of any leader from whom they could expect employment and largesses.

Abundant evidence can be adducduced of systematic machinations among the military from the outset. Commissioners were stationed with every regiment to prepare for an explosion. The seduction was nearly universal before the debarkation of Bonaparte, especially among the troops stationed on the route from Grenoble to Paris. The imperial eagles had never been discarded, but were hidden, (and in this the officers set the example) to be re-produced when the crisis should arrive. The military addresses, proclamations, and orders of the day, which crowd the newspapers of the month of April, 1815, boast of unremitting devotion to the emperor, of steady detestation of the Bourbons, and of indefatigable zeal to keep alive these sentiments in all the camps and barracks. In default of Bonaparte, some other bold spirit would have been borne to Paris, and installed in the Thuileries, by a multitude of desperate officers and

soldiers of fortune, whose pleasures and hopes lay in the activity and empire of the sword. "So much the worse," said general Lecourbe, speaking of Bonaparte after his landing at Cannes, "if he should be killed; there are five or six who want to be emperors. We resemble the Roman empire in its decline." Uno avulso, non deficit alter.

We may safely infer, a priori, that many of the great civil functionaries plotted in collusion with the military. The offspring (the parvenus) of the revolution, the heroes of the Convention, however metamorphosed externally by titles. -the family connexions of Bonaparte, the creatures of his nunificence, who filled Paris, could never be reconciled to the svay of the Bourbons. Their sympathies must always have been with their benefactor, with the Man of the Revolution, whom they had, personally indeed, known as a tyrant, but who had placed them above the miseries resulting to the mass of the nation from his government. They could only feel secure in their overgrown fortunes and dignities with him, or a rule composed of men of the same origin. It was not in their complexion to sit down quietly, and fall, as it were, into the shade, after the career of turbulence and satrapism which they had run; to be content with seeing France contracted to her natural dimensions, and within her natural sphere of action, after having so long given laws to the Continent, and counted forty millions of helots.

their old position, and restore France to her darling supremacy. This could only be done at the moment, by means of the army, and best, as to the chances of success, with Bonaparte, whose adversity might render him more pliable to their ulterior purposes, whether of a more reserved and circumspect scheme of domination abroad, or of the conversion of the domestic government into a jacobinical and military oligarchy.

His position in the island of Elba furnished facilities of intelligence with him, too tempting to be neglected. At the same time, the excusable errors of the Bourbons, and the indiscretions of the more ardent loyalists, affording pretexts for treachery, the captious spirit and jealous alarms of a considerable part of the French population, the opportunities which their official stations afforded of provoking discontent and suspicion; the confidence inspired, and the advantage afforded by the unbounded lenity of the monarch, and the incredible supineness of his ministers; the uncharitable and unfriendly distrust expressed abroad of the proceedings of the royal administration; the hopes of an easy forgiveness and acquiescence on the part of the Allies, particularly of Austria and Russia, derived from their fraternization at Paris, and a certain compromising and hesitating tone towards the Bourbons-all these were powerful stimulants to immediate action. If the disgust of the French politicians at the sup

* "No correspondence," says H. M. Williams, "had been for a long time more active than that of Paris and

posed decline of their country from her pre-eminence among the European nations, their thirst for her exterior aggrandizement, and the aspiration of the enterprizing talents, and tiers etat, after the honours and emoluments of the state, were sufficient to produce the ruin of the monarchy in 1790, we will not wonder at the revolution of 1815, when we reflect that, in this latter period, to still fiercer desires and passions of the same kind, there was added such a new host of assailants as the army of Bonaparte, than which there never existed in any of the despotic empires, antient or modern, a similar body, likely, from long habit of preponderance, conquest, and pillage, to be more incapable of repose and civil subordination.

The belief of a wide-spread conspiracy, of a traiterous concert with Bonaparte, does not rest merely upon general reasoning, and the vauntings of his friends after his reintegration. We have as direct evidence, the peculiar distribution and composition of the troops on his route, and the resignation of Soult, the minister of war, at the precise period when his station would have compelled him to act efficiently for the Bourbons. His immediate and hearty declaration in favour of the usurper, confirms the suspicions which these circumstances had raised. How much he had it in his power, as minister of war, to inflame the discontents of the army, may be seen at once; and the disclosures since made concerning his conduct in his department, would lead to the conclusion that he did so industriously. Early in the month of February, all furloughs were re

* See Burke's Regicide Peace.

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called by the department of war; the utmost industry was exerted to prevent and punish desertion; the regimerts were filled up from every source of supply, and directed to be in complete marching-order for the first week of March, under pretence of reviews and inspections, which, if they had been contemplated, would not have exacted or explained the extent and ton: of these measures. The politica assemblies at the house of Horensia, the ex-queen of Holland, of which the fact is now fully established, as well of her regular communication with Napoleon in the isand of Elba;-the correspondence of general Excelmans with Murat;-the march of general Lifebre-Desnouettes upon Paris, simultaneously with the approaci of Bonaparte to Lyons; the novements in particular of generls Erlon and Lallemand, and the conformity of the measures and ceclarations of most of the princ pal commanders throughout France, with those of their hero, from the moment of his re-appearance; the usurpation of the postoffice establishment by Lavallette; the violet carried by such numbers, and so boldly, as the watchsign and emblem of treason, in allusion to the revolution which was to happen at the opening of the spring; the numberless letters received by the French ministryparticularly during the months of February and January, announcing the projected debarkation; together with the cabals and correspondence of which it was the object; information, which was either treacherously, or most preposterously disregarded-these, and several other incidents, might be cited to support the assumption of extensive intelligence, and well-digested arrangements. The active intrigues,

now circumstantially known, which were carried on by Bonaparte, in regard to his return, with his relatives in Italy, and particularly with Murat, whose ill-fated moveinents of the month of March were accommodated to his designs, fortify the supposition of a similar understanding with the interior of France. Whatever may have been his share of audacity, it is not probable that he would have thrown himself upon any part of the French coast, had not his reception been well-arranged and secured.

But, if there remained a doubt on this head, it would be removed by what transpired on the trial of marshal Ney. The marshal himself is reported to have held the following language, by witnesses of the highest character, and unquestioned veracity, general de Bourmont, the marquis of Vaulchier, prefect of the department of the Jura, and baron Capel, prefect of Doubs. "The marshal said to me on the 16th March,” says the general, "but, comrade, were you not surprised to see, that the half of the command of your division was taken from you; to see that the troops were made to march by two battalions and three squadrons? Well! the same has been done throughout all France. All this was settled; it is three months that we are all agreed. If you had been at Paris, you would have known it as well as myself. All the troops are so disposed in their march as that they may arrive to escort the emperor. The king must have quitted Paris; if he does not quit it, he will be carried off."

The marshal told me," says the prefect," that all the troops were a long time before so distributed (by échellons) as to favour the march of Bonaparte; that the duke

de Berry was detained purposely at Paris, because it was feared that his presence might excite some enthusiasm among the troops." "The marshal declared to me," says baron Capel," and general de Bourmont informed me before of his having made the same declaration to him, that every thing had been some time previously arranged between him, some other marshals, and, I believe, the minister of war, that their first project was to change the dynasty; that they had, for a moment, thought of the duke of Orleans, but they learned that he would not lend himself to their project;* that, in the interval, madame Hortensia (the ex-queen of Holland) had laid a plan to bring back Bonaparte to France; that they were obliged, in spite of themselves, to accede to this arrangement." "I believe he added," continues baron Capel," that at the moment he was speaking the duke of Dalmatia (Soult) was taking his mea sures in Paris."-The depositions of general Lecourbe, and of another officer, ascribe similar assertions to Ney; and it is not to be imagined, that he would have made them at the particular period mentioned, had they not been wholly, or, in great part, true.

"I recollect," says Ney himself, "that Bonaparte in order to persuade me that the English protected him, caused it to be told me, that he had dined, eight days before he left the island of Elba, on board an English man of war; that Colonel Campbell who was English commissary in the island, had set out the day after the dinner,

* Fouche's letter to the duke of Wellington, furnishes confirmation of this project.