1830.] The French Revolution of July , 1830. 253 



But the experiment would have been only half made, if it had been 

 confined to France and the lawyer. The Quarterly Review of May last 

 was honoured with an article on the subject, which has been subse- 

 quently said to have been forced upon the acknowledged editor. 

 The palpable object of this article was to try how far an improvement 

 " from the French" would be relished here. The writer observes, that 

 " France had not yet succeeded in forming a constitutional government 

 that the French were incapable of a constitutional government that 

 they had the great public misfortune of not being able to respect and 

 cherish ancient prejudices and customs, merely because they rvere venera- 

 ble I and that, in the struggle, it would be altogether the better that the 

 king should gain the day I" 



So much for the British feeling of this slave ! So much for eagerness 

 of money acting on the heart of a place-hunting menial ! But we have a 

 flourishing recapitulation still. 



" We therefore hope and trust," says this high-spirited writer, " that 

 the king and his present ministers may succeed, if such be their object, 

 in establishing a censorship on the press ; and likewise in acquiring so 

 decided a preponderance in the chamber of deputies, that its existence, 

 as an independent body, capable of bearding the monarchy, as it has 

 recently done, shall be no longer recognized. This, we own, will be a 

 virtual abolition of the charter, but the question is obviously reduced to 

 this shall the monarchy, which is suitable to the country, be over- 

 thrown ? or shall the charter, which, in every possible view, is unsuit- 

 able to it, be abrogated ?" 



So much for the opinion of a public journal two months ago. But, 

 of course, the government were innocent of all knowledge on the 

 subject. 



The whole of this matchless argument is, that the French, having no 

 conception of what is good for them, Charles the Tenth was to manage the 

 matters in his own style ; that the French, having let Charles the Tenth 

 ascend the throne in virtue of a charter, to which he swore ; they were to 

 look on with complacency while he broke his oath and abolished the 

 compact under which he was a monarch ; and, finally, that the liberty of 

 the press being one of the primary stipulations of that compact, and a 

 stipulation without which no liberty of any kind can be secure, it was 

 to be hoped and trusted that Charles the Tenth would succeed in destroy- 

 ing the liberty of the press. 



Now, what is all this advice, but to stimulate the breaking of faith, 

 the violation of the most solemn oaths, and the extinction of all hope of 

 rational freedom in France ? Yet, it is more, it is the suggestion of 

 bloody execution on the people of France ; for from the irritated feeling 

 which the people from one end of that immense and crowded country to 

 the other exhibited ever since the commencement of the Polignac admi- 

 nistration, no man with a grain of common sense could doubt that the 

 nation would resist ; and that if despotism was " to gain the day," it 

 must be on the field of battle, or on the scaffold. 



But what were the circumstances under which the French constitution 

 was formed ? In 1814, on the first entrance of the Allies into Paris, 

 proclamations of the Emperor Alexander, and of Prince Schwartzen- 

 burg, as commander-in-chief, were issued, March 31, calling on the 

 French to form a Provisional Government and a Constitution. The 



