1830.] 'The French Revolution of July, 1830. 251 



Europe, or the people overturn the royal power, and France is a repub- 

 lic, at the head of a continent of republics !" 



This would, to demonstration, have been the working of a civil war 

 sustained with any equality of vigour on both sides ; but the people of 

 Paris settled the grand question at a blow, found the conquest too easy to 

 excite them into serious rage, and saw the Bourbon pageant too easily 

 stripped of its plumage, to feel much alarm at once again making the 

 experiment of a king. 



But this was a chance which lay totally beyond conjecture. The 

 course of nature was for a long struggle, or the sudden extinction of 

 right by force; and this a British cabinet, that deserved the name, would 

 have foreseen and would have provided for. 



We are no friends to petulant interference with Foreign Courts, but 

 when the follies of that court obviously threaten to draw down ruin on 

 every other, such follies become crimes against Europe, and it is the 

 simplest assertion of the right of self-defence to interfere. If our neigh- 

 bour piles a magazine of gunpowder in his house, and walks about, 

 playing with a firebrand, we have the clearest right in the world to warn 

 the fool that he endangers us as well as himself, and take the firebrand 

 out of his hand. If the English Ministry, knowing that this fantastic old 

 king was preparing a measure which must shake Europe to its centre, 

 and which at this hour affrights every continental king with the fear of over- 

 throw, and stimulates every continental people to the frenzy of insurrec- 

 tion, yet took no step, nothing remedial, nothing in the way of serious 

 remonstrance for they must not escape under cover of surmises and 

 recommendations then we shall know what to think of the cabinet ! 

 A single decided notification of the alarm of England at the measure, 

 would have startled the French government into a sense of its hazard. 

 There would have been no necessity for going to war on the subject ; not 

 a single sloop, nor a single corporal's guard the more, need have been 

 added to our establishment. The few words, " the British Ambassador 

 will be withdrawn !" would have strangled the design in its birth, would 

 have saved the hideous convulsions of Paris, and would have rescued 

 Europe and England from the innumerable hazards which spring, full 

 armed, out of the declared triumph of the multitude. 



True; if the English Cabinet knew nothing on the subject, we must of 

 course exonerate them from the crime of looking with composure on the 

 most guilty attempt of despotism within European history, and the pre- 

 parations for a convulsion of which no man can now predict the limits, 

 or circumscribe the evil. 



But, if they were ignorant on the point, it is plain that they do not 

 read the newspapers. In a letter from Paris, in the John Butt, dated so 

 far back as the 20th of January, we find this paragraph : 



" The Ministry, like the circle of the compass, is true to the crown, 

 the charter, and the people. Clamour does not affect, nor opposition inti- 

 midate them. They owe a duty to France, and they will fulfil it. Those 

 who represent them as enemies to the charter, neither know their princi- 

 ples nor desires. Those who represent them as enemies to the freedom of 

 the Press, are violent and intemperate demagogues. The party opposed 

 to them threaten an insolent address to the king, requiring their dis- 

 missal and the refusal of the budget in case their wishes should not be 

 respected. As to the address if it be insolent, the king will dissolve the 

 chambers ; and as to the refusal of the budget, if that step should be 



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