are assured that couriers arrived here yesterday from Austria."

Id. 8th May," It is certain that there is, at this moment, an exchange of couriers between the cabinet of the Thuileries and that of Vienna. The emperor has said to count Carnot, "I still hope that peace will not be interrupted."

Id. 9th May. "It is permitted us to hope, that the actual exchange of couriers between the cabinets of the Thuileries and that of Vienna, is not foreign to the consolidation of the peace between the two nations."

Id. 11th May. "It is generally believed that Austria has decided upon maintaining neutrality in case of war. There is a rumour generally current, that an envoy extraordinary arrived this morning from the emperor of Austria."

Id. 21st May. "To-day a courier from Austria arrived at 11 o'clock; in consequence, the great review announced for this day is postponed, and the council of state has assembled at the Thuileries, his majesty present."-23d." A regular correspondence is maintained between the emperor Napoleon and the empress, with the consent of Austria."

Could we suppose any limitation to the effrontery of the imperial ministers, it would have been impossible, from the outset, to maintain this ground by the side of the declaration of the congress of Vienna of the 13th March, which reached Paris as soon as Bonaparte himself, had the authenticity of this paper been admitted. There was, at first, no hesitation, however, in stoutly denying the reality of its existence. "A certain pretended declaration," says the Journal de l'Empire of the 23d March, "has been sent

which declaration was fabricated at Paris; the news of a later date from abroad make no mention of it." The scheme of dissimulation on this head was persisted in until the 14th April, when the minister of police published the paper, alleging it to be a fabrication of the ambassadors of Louis XVIII. at the Congress.

To provide an opportunity for a reply, this minister was charged with a formal exposition of the matter to the council of state, and speaks roundly as follows.

"It is demonstrated that this piece(the declaration of the 13th March) which could not have been signed by the ministers of Austria, of Russia, 'of England, and of Prussia, emanated from the Bourbon legation at Vienna, which legation has added to the crime of provoking assassination, that of forging the signatures of the members of the Congress. The proofs of this shall be sent to the council of state."

That the people might not be roused from the security in which he wished to lull them, with respect to the continuance of peace, Bonaparte refused to consider this declaration as one of hostilities. In reviewing the national guard on the 10th April, he stated to them, in a set speech, that, as yet, he knew of no enemies.

On the heels of the declaration of the 18th March, followed the treaty of Vienna of 25th of the same month, which binds the allies of 1814 in a solemn league for his dethronement, and stipu lates the contingents of men and money to be furnished by each for this purpose. The Swiss diet published their resolution to embark in the same enterprise, by an ener getic proclamation of the 24th of

fits will be guaranteed to our children by the august heir whom your majesty is now preparing to crown at the field of May." In the address from which these passages are taken, we are also told that the Bourbons had learned to forget nothing; and yet, it has the signatures of three regicides, two of whom had enjoyed the highest stations under Louis, and the third been suffered to rail at the Bourbons with impunity.

The members of the council of state begin by assuring his majesty of "their devotion, their gratitude, and their respect and love for his sacred person." Being particularly charged with the task of cajoling the people, and justifying his majesty's violation of his pact with the allied powers, they tell him, that all sovereignty is with the people; that the Bourbons had wished to govern and oppress the people by emigration; that the Bourbons were preparing the reestablishment of feudal rights and tithes; that the senate had no right to alter the constitution of the empire and pronounce his forfeiture; that his abdication not being sanctioned by the people, could not release him from his obligations to them; that even if he could have abdicated for himself, he could not sacrifice the rights of his son; that his abdication was only meant to prevent a civil war; that if the adhesions and oaths tendered to the Bourbons could ever have been binding on those from whom they came, they must have ceased to be so, as soon as the government which received them ceased to exist; that the emperor is to guarantee by new institutions, all free principles, and again-that he could not abdicate without the consent of the nation."

To all this and to similar dis

courses from the court of Cassation, the court of Accounts, &c. and the Institute, who remind him of the speedy arrival of his "spouse and son," he replies, generally, in the affirmative, and tells them,"that princes are but the first citizens of the state; that kings exist only for the people; that the imperial throne is specially distinguished by the circumstance of its being created by the nation; that his device was all for the nation and for France; that he renounced all ideas of the great empire, of which he had been only laying the foundation for fifteen years."-We might almost imagine that we had again the General Bonaparte of 96, and 97, declaring-that "the French republic had sworn hatred to tyrants, but fraternity with the people; that he would perish rather than allow an attempt against liberty and the (directorial) constitution; that his civil as well as his military career would always be conformable to republican principles." It is equally curious to retrace the First Consul in the contrite Emperor. We have but to go back to the tenth year of the republic, to find him talking of "the people the sovereign of all," "of the people from whom all power is derived," "of liberty and equality," of his oath to have a republic, founded on civil liberty and national representation, of his invariable determination to maintain both, and consult only the happiness of the nation, to shun wars of ambition, c.*

The reader, is referred for all this

and much more of the same purport to Goldsmith's valuable compilation of "the manifestos, proclamations, discourses, decrees, &c. extracted from the Moniteur, of Napoleon Bonaparte as General in Chief of the Republican

There is a striking analogy, too, between the addresses and circulars of the public authorities of the epoch of his consulate, as to the delineations of the man and his maxims of government, and those upon which we have been animadverting; only that the latter, with respect to the principles and style, approach nearer to the conventional and directorial eras. This is not, however, so much matter of surprise, since we have nearly the same list of names attached to the public documents at all these periods. The address of the imperial council of state has quite the air of a revolutionary catechism; the proclamations from Gulf St. Juan, the official narrative of the march thence to Paris, even the orders of the day for the military, make frequent appeals to revolutionary feelings and principles, and abound with revolutionary associations and reminiscences; topics so hateful and so industriously suppressed, before his visit to Elba. The hero had become again a worshipper and apostle of the rights of man.

The motives of this singular transformation are sufficiently obvious, and will exhibit him in novel and curious situations. He foresaw that his armies might not be strong enough to bear him through the struggle, in which he was to be engaged with the Bourbons and the Allies. The last were, indeed, to be cajoled if possible; but this was a forlorn hope. Even the bulk of the French people, particularly the solid, middle classes, although they were to be indefatigably plied in every possible way, would yet

Armies, as First Consul, and as Emperor. London, 1812" The part of this work, which treats of his consulate, furnishes a curious rapprochement with our subject.

be hard to rouse to any earnest or persevering efforts in his support.

Where then was the sure auxiliary?-The genius of the Revolution, that is to say, the spirit of jacobinism, which he had not destroyed but only chained; which survived in many of its original agents whom he had estranged from him, but not irrevocably; which could always carry with it, in any country, the mere populace, and especially that of France of whom it had been so long the leader and idol,-which, although once let loose, would prove dangerous to himself, he might hope again to subdue by the same means, or finally propitiate by an equal share of power. The genius of the Revolution was invoked, and Bonaparte stood forth once more in the proper shape, the child and champion of jacobinism.

The members of the school clung to him almost instinctively. Their object had been alwaysdominion; and the name of emperor was to them the synonime of equality, or liberty, or of any of the catchwords which they had of old used to facilitate the attainment of that object. If Bonaparte were willing to indulge their favourite passion, for which they wanted but scope, he would answer as well as any other shrine. If they could but entangle him in their own snare, they might, if they found it convenient, dethrone him, and thus, while they indulged their proneness for revolutions, exercise a fair retaliation. Like Romulus, he might ascend to heaven, from the bosom of his faithful senate.

Carnot, the Coryphaeus of the sect, the ark, as it were, of the new covenant, the acting executor, with Fouché, of the Convention, himself warily provided this soothing

explanation of so suspicious a confederacy. "If the emperor were less sure of the force of his cha racter and the purity of his resolutions, he might consider himself as placed between two quicksands; the partizans of the dethroned dynasty, and those of the Republican system: but the first cannot regain what they could not keep; the last undeceived by a long experience, and bound by gratitude to the prince who has delivered them, have become his most zealous defenders; their candor, as well known as was their philanthropic enthusiasm, environs the throne occupied by the august founder of a new dynasty, who makes it his boast to have sprung from our popular ranks." (Report to the Chamber of Representatives.)

Their old habit into which they would naturally relapse, of preaching the abstract rights of man, and whining about feudality and aristocracy, serves to explain, in conjunction with the new policy of Bonaparte, the revolutionary tone of their circulars and addresses. The necessity, for their own purposes, of reconciling the world to him, prompted them, no less than the abjection of their natures, to the most unqualified panegyric of his character and intentions. Bonaparte had rendered himself as frightful to the best portion of the French people, as they had rendered their jacobinical liberty. They had found it adviseable to deck her out in the colours of a real goddess; so they deemed it expedient to invest him with the attributes of an Augustus or an Antoninus, that the public eye might bear to look towards him, without expecting an apparition like the Minotaur or the Chimera.

In attending to what has been here said, we may understand why

Count Carnot remained faithful to him, and defended him with extreme zeal, as he avows in his Memoir; and why, after having spoken of him opprobriously in his letter to the king, he, as his minister of the interior, takes the lead in the new apotheosis. There can be no "obedience to an established government" more complete; no surrender of conscience more absolute, than is implied in the extracts which we shall proceed to give from the circular of this Rehublican to the prefects, dated only the day after his nomination as minister of the interior. It is a suitable companion for his instructions to the same authorities concerning the Field of Mayfrom which we have quoted a passage above.

"The emperor has honoured me with the appointment of "minister of the interior, and I am "sure that my relations with you "will be agreeable to me, because

your zeal, your devotion, and "your efforts will be indefatigable "to meet worthily the confidence "of his majesty. The emperor, “surrounded by the army and the "people, has traversed his states "in the midst of the sweetest emo"tions; his march offered through❝out the image of a triumphal

pomp; and this pomp, formed "by enthusiasm alone, has not "cost a tear to one of his subjects, "whom he every where called his "children, who saw again in him "a father wholly occupied with "their happiness and the national "glory."

The official papers, printed in the Moniteur, have already made "known to you the magnanimous "intentions of our legitimate so"vereign. Lose not a moment in "disseminating them by every "means. Impress yourselves deep