1830.] Europe, and the Horse-Guards' Cabinet. 21 



Horse Guards, the European nations follow their own career, without 

 caring whether we exist. The Russian war has sunk our name as pro- 

 tectors of the weak ; and, unless the exigencies of some foreign cabinet 

 require a loan, England is as remote from their thoughts as the most 

 mushroom republic of Columbia. But the storm will come. It is ga- 

 thering in every quarter of the horizon. What is the condition of that 

 monarchy in whose fate England must be always most vitally interested ? 

 France is now running the race that England ran in the days of Charles I. 

 The struggle is no longer between parties in the state, between ministers 

 and their political opponents, but between monarchy and the people. 

 The popular leaders have already set their public existence upon the die, 

 have openly resisted the king in parliament, and have been openly 

 branded with the king's displeasure. The legislature has been dissolved 

 a virtual declaration that it was either incapable of its functions, or 

 determined to exercise them contrary to the government that it was 

 either imbecile or hostile. 



The representatives have accordingly been scattered through France. 

 More dexterity would have kept them together in the capital ; would 

 have exhausted them by perpetual discussions upon trivial subjects; would 

 have entangled them in the ministerial meshes until they grew weary of 

 debate, and the people grew weary of the debaters, until one half turned 

 courtiers, and the other half, in the eagerness to escape from the heat, the 

 expense, and the ennui of Paris, had given way to any measures of the 

 minister But the fates of France have ordained it otherwise. In the 

 moment when their irritation was at the highest pitch, when the popular 

 effervescence was rising to its height, and when the king was most ob- 

 noxious to national opinion, the deputies have been scattered through 

 every corner of France, like the fragments of an exploded shell, to spread 

 popular animosity. 



The fullest success of the Algerine expedition will not extinguish this 

 universal discontent. Its failure may precipitate the collision ; and the 

 ministry must be sacrificed to save the throne. But the public feeling is 

 too deep, too fierce, and too sternly supplied by the materials of national 

 tumult, to be reached by the trivial influence of foreign temporary triumphs 

 or failures. The spirit of France is not republican ; for every man of 

 common competence in France who pronounces the name of the Revolu- 

 tion pronounces it with fear. The days of Robespierre are still a chro- 

 nicle of blood to the French mind. But the spirit of France is a spirit of 

 change. The evil glitter of the empire still dazzles the national eye. 

 The terrors and shames that Napoleon brought upon his people are for- 

 gotten in the sight of the trophies that have been suffered to remain 

 among them. Even the column in the Place de Vendome, with its 

 haughty inscription of the conquest of Austria in a three months' war, 

 inflames the original rashness of the most war-loving people in existence. 

 The names of the Parisian streets are stimulants to war; Napoleon's 

 fame is living in a thousand public recollections ; and the last tremen- 

 dous blow that crushed him and his empire has less broken down the 

 strength of France, than stimulated and fevered its singular native 

 energies for once again ascending to the summit of European fame. 



But war will not be the first experiment of France. She feels herself 

 too keenly watched by the great continental powers. She has received a 

 lesson of her true strength too recently, to dare the desperate waste, the 

 continued misery, and the certain ruin of an attack on the continent. A 



