aristocracy had headed the resistance against the encroachments of the Crown, in France' the Crown had been weakly ready for innovation, the aristocracy null, and the chief characteristic of the whole democratical. We stopped not to consider how very superior in some respects was the restoration of the Bourbons to the restoration of the Stuarts, inasmuch as it was the strongest possible assertion of nationality under the very hand of invasion; neither did we take into account that, whilst in these islands the hatred of James' Catholic tendencies sprang from the superabundant strength of an opposite religious feeling, in France the dislike of the bigotry of Charles X. had for its origin the absence of all religious feeling whatever. We considered nothing of all this; we never compared the weight of our popular protestation, supported by a wealthy, active, order-loving nobility, with the socalled popular movement of France, exposed to every downwardtending influence, thoroughly antagonistic to the entire mass of the higher classes (who, it must be said, had most culpably abdicated their political responsibilities), and teeming with the germs of disorder and confusion. We made to ourselves an image of the July Revolution, set it up, and obstinately regarded it as the right one; and now, after it has been dashed to atoms, we begin to pick up the broken fragments, and to acknowledge that the image had been fashioned by our own fancy, and in no way resembled what it was meant to represent.

In this work of enabling us to appreciate the force and the weakness of the July Revolution-its achievements and its failures-its causes and its aims- -which is absolutely necessary to make us understand the French nation, as the last sixty years have modified it, many contemporary French writers have largely helped, by their publications of the last ten years; but we know of no one who has done so much as M. Guizot in the volume now before us—the second volume of what he entitles, "Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de mon temps."

They are well named. They do serve to make clear "the history of his time;" and some admissions are contained in them, and some facts registered, which, if published by any one whose authority was less than that of their author, would be received with more than suspicion. For instance, take the ensuing phrase: "What we had promised ourselves from the Revolution of July, what France expected of that event, was constitutional government, a real government, in short, capable of conciliating Order with Liberty, and of protecting both. This government failed us altogether.'

We allude here simply to the first Revolution (that of 1789-93).

2 P. 176. M. Guizot speaks of the first year or two after the Revolution of July.

Any one who had taken the trouble to look into matters as they really stood, would have reached this conclusion at once, and been able quickly enough to foresee what-unless things altered considerably-must be threatening the future. But no one in this country ever cared to undertake the work of examination. We assumed that a "Constitutional Government" had been established in France in July 1830; all our subsequent arguments rested upon this assumption; and, that being once well settled, all our criticisms were a pure matter of detail. We now and then thought Louis Philippe wrong upon this point or that; we opined he was not so "liberal" as he might be; we wished he would modify just some one part of the governing machine, or we took sides with M. Molé, or M. Thiers, or Marshal Soult; but we never went beyond, and nothing disturbed the serenity of our conviction that constitutional government existed in France. M. Guizot most truly says: "Every fact attested the absence of constitutional institutions; neither freedom nor order were guaranteed as they ought to be. Why? Because the essentials of constitutional government were not there, neither were they properly understood. There was no union in the cabinet, or between the cabinet and its agents; no good understanding between the ministry and the majority, and nothing to be relied upon in the executive (point d'efficacité dans le Pouvoir). The latter did not attempt to rule, because it allowed itself to be overruled; and sought for the favour of the populace, not for the means of exercising a genuine legal authority." Whatever may have been M. Guizot's own errors at a later period, he evidently said at the outset what were the dangers that would daily threaten the Government more and more, and that ultimately occasioned its fall. Here were his own words in 1831: "If the present system be adhered to, and if the power of governing be demanded from mere popularity, no government will be obtained, and the means of governing will not improve; they will lessen, on the contrary, every day. Order will lose its strength, freedom its chances of development, individuals their good name, and we shall none of us be the gainers in the end. I do not believe it is possible to continue in such a position."

And yet in this very position did France continue till its impracticability was made more manifest by the catastrophe that destroyed all. It is this which makes M. Guizot's words strike us now as exceedingly remarkable. What he objects to in 1831 as the "present system," was adhered to throughout, in so far as one of the two expedients was for ever resorted to, either of compromising the "strength of order," or of imperilling the "chances of future development of freedom." Individuals did, in turn, each and all forfeit their "good name;" and who gained by all

MM. Theirs, Molé, and Guizot.

5

this in the end, it is, alas! too easy now to demonstrate; but of a certainty it was not the cause of Constitutionalism.

The system, we have said, continued; its two separate tendencies, only, being applied, according as this or that set of men came into the cabinet. With M. Molé and M. Guizot, M. de Broglie or M. Duchâtel, the policy of resistance was uppermost; and then what we should regard as the freedom of the subject, or as those political liberties and rights to which every Christian community is in our age entitled, were, no doubt, kept in check with a sharp and tight, but not firm hand. When, on the other side, it was M. Thiers, and those of his party, who occupied the high places of the state, disorder, so inimical to liberty, was tolerated till repression became inevitable, and the popularity that had been weakly courted, was angrily refused. And between these opposite factions stood the King.

But here, while quoting M. Guizot's most important testimony, we will ask his permission to go much further than he goes, and remount to some of the causes of the universal mistakes committed by all parties, and by all their leaders.

Were all the men who administered-we purposely do not say governed-France, from 1830 to 1848, either dishonest or incapable, that they should all have failed in the governing work as they did? No! and, more than that, we will affirm they were, one and all, most capable and most honest. Yet, for their utter failure in the task of governing France, History is there to answer, and will not be gainsaid. M. Thiers was national to excess, and by more than one gratuitous imprudence showed how far he was capable of mere popularity-hunting, and how boldly he was ready to invoke the memories of bygone glories;1 yet, in the hour of extreme need, the country did not rely on M. Thiers more than upon those who were his direct opponents. M. Molé was, perhaps, nearer to what we should regard as an efficient minister than were most of his colleagues; he was very like what a member of the British House of Peers may be a gentleman of high birth, but with none of that nobiliary nonsense about him which now-a-days prevents almost any French nobleman from learning even the alphabet of politics,-a real, true gentleman, in short, and not a "fine gentleman." M. Molé was liberal, and utterly free from the two defects which have gone so far to bring about, with other French ministers, that "loss of good name alluded to by M. Guizot: First, he was not an orator; consequently his eloquence never tempted him to right or to left, and whenever he spoke, it was because he had something to say; and, secondly, he was extremely rich, and the long habit of

It must not be forgotten that M. Thiers originated the notion of bringing back Napoleon's remains from St Helena!

wealth was a sure pledge that speculation would receive no encouragement at his hands. Yet M. Molé could help to raise no constitutional government in France. The Duc de Broglie and Marshal Soult were both men of high standing in every sense, of great experience, and of unquestioned moderation; yet neither could succeed in establishing any genuine constitutional institutions, the force whereof should be permanent, because derived from their very principle and essence.

On the other hand, if eloquence could have contributed to the triumph of such a government as France thought she had secured to herself, M. Guizot might alone have endowed her with it, for parliamentary eloquence never was carried higher, and never was more ready or unfailing; added to which, M. Guizot had what is termed in France the "habit of business" (la pratique des affaires) to no inconsiderable degree. If he was not a statesman (which few men of our time have been), he, at all events, possessed a certain degree of what we will call statecraft, for want of a better word. Yet all his acquirements availed absolutely nothing.

What, then, was wanting? Where lay the obstacle that prevented those, even, from attaining their ends who had earliest and clearest discerned what ends ought to be attained, and who had started with few or no illusions upon the victory gained by the July Revolution? A large proportion of clever, reflecting politicians in France, of men whose opinions we are not prepared to disdain, have, we are well aware, found the explanation in the fact, that the King alone rendered every attempt at constitutional government abortive. Now, there is just enough truth in this assertion to prevent us from discarding it altogether, whilst, at the same time, there is room sufficient for at least partial refutation, to make us unwilling to adopt it. The King was intelligent, though less so than his friends affirmed; he was not liberal, though he was more so than his enemies believed. He was not so constitutional a monarch as Louis XVIII. had shown himself to be,-who, from strong good sense, and not from taste, was the only constitutional monarch France ever had,-but had he been ever so minded, Louis Philippe could not have been the constitutional king Louis XVIII. was, for he was deprived of the materials wherewith constitutional government can be founded. France was alternately given over to the prejudices and passions of two rival classes, each of which regarded the King as a foe when he declined to be a tool. In the face of the so-called Progressists, whose inevitable extreme was destruction, stood the men blindly wedded to resistance; but in the whole state was no moderator, no body wedded by self-interest to the degree of conservatism that with us, for instance, even ultra

Louis Philippe as a Ruler.

7

Radicals would own to. To be distracted between two parties, who had since the first Revolution mutually hated, mutually feared, and mutually distrusted and calumniated each other, was the fate of France; and on a level with these two parties, and midway between them, stood the Citizen-King, who, by the very force of circumstances, could never show himself either wholly a king or wholly a citizen. It was with Louis Philippe's honesty as with his capacity: he was far more honest and wellintentioned than he has been given credit for, but he was all along in a more false position than any one chose to admit; and it was with him, as with many a public character, he was not a little confused by all he had lived through. Great and varied experience stood with him in the way of action. The head of the Orleans branch never was the constitutional king, we repeat, that was Louis XVIII.; neither were his ministers equal to the Duc de Richelieu, or M. Decazes, or several others of remarkable, though often antagonistic merit, under the Restoration. But the fault was none of theirs; the fault lay both deeper and higher at once; and we think those are unjust who blame Louis Philippe entirely for the failure of constitutional government in France. There is no proof that, had Louis Philippe ever been in the same position as Louis XVIII., he would not have acted as he did; but he never was one hour in that position. No one knows this better than M. Guizot, though there are many things he cannot openly say even now-the prejudices of Frenchmen being as strong as ever, albeit their passions are subdued. We do not believe there is in existence a more impartial or more faithful portrait than the following of the prince whom events brought to rule over the French nation in the year 1830:

"In the beginning of his reign, and under the influence of the terrible memories of his youth, one of the tendencies of the King was to believe the power of the Revolution superior to what it really was, and to suppose himself, for any contest with it, possessed of less strength than he really had. Besides this, in all sudden emergencies he received impressions so lively, that they impelled to immediate decisions that were far beyond the necessities of the case. Upon one occasion, I could not refrain from saying to him, The King ought never to trust to his first impression, whether in hope or in alarm; for his first impression is almost always an exaggerated one: in order to see things exactly as they stand, and to give them only the precise importance that is due to them, the King requires to look at and consider them twice over.' I believe that in the beginning of his reign' he

1 This passage applies particularly to the request made by M. Laffitte, after the sack of the Archbishopric, that the King would alter the armorial bearings of France, and sacrifice the fleurs de lys, which were his arms as well as those of all the House of Bourbon.