1831.] The State of Europe. 589 



France is what she was in the last days of Louis the Fifteenth ; gay, 

 poor and restless ; dancing at fetes clu Roi, and dreaming at once of 

 universal monarchy, and of universal revolution ; of realizing the vision 

 of matchless power which the wizard Napoleon summoned from the 

 grave of the Republic, and of enjoying the full feast of democracy, 

 without its drunkenness, riot and blood. 



The popularity of Louis-Philippe, and the new moderation of his 

 ministry, have hitherto kept down this passion for change, but the cha- 

 racter of a people is not within the hands of kings or ministers. France 

 loves the prizes of war, and disregards their terrible purchase. A few 

 years of peace will cover over the ruins left by the Revolution, and 

 then will revive the old national desire of aggrandizement. With the 

 finest soil, the most numerous population, and the most fortunate and 

 central position in Europe, France will covet some barren fragment of 

 Germany, some desert rock in the Mediterranean, or some nest of pesti- 

 lence in the West Indies ; and for this glory she will waste more trea- 

 sure than would have covered her territory with canals, and more lives 

 than would have turned every barren league from the Rhine to the 

 Pyrenees into a garden. 



The partizans of the exiled government occasionally murmur. A few 

 old priests in the provinces, cankered with prejudice, or embittered by 

 finding that sectarian violence and kingly persecution are no longer the 

 law of France, exhibit a ridiculous opposition to the government, and 

 vaunt the virtues of the Bourbons. But the day of the Bourbon dynasty 

 is over. They exhibited none of the qualities essential to government. 

 They might have been suffered in the dark ages, when the monk was 

 the monarch, and the monarch the monk ; when the people were beasts 

 of burthen, and the man who wore the diadem was occasionally the 

 demon, and occasionally the god. But the race was burned out. The 

 mild virtues of Louis the Sixteenth were caricatured by the sensual 

 impotence of his successor, as the haughty tyranny of Louis the Four- 

 teenth was burlesqued by the shallow and capricious violence of Charles 

 the Tenth. But their history has closed. The famous " ordonnances" 

 were an insult which no nation could endure, and hope to be accounted 

 among the brave, the rational, or the free. The audacity of the three- 

 fold declaration, that the liberty of the press was abolished, that the 

 parliament was at an end, and that the rights and privileges of the 

 electors were to be revised by the will of the minister, was even less an 

 injury than a challenge less a violation of the charter than a summons 

 to every man in France to pvotest against arbitrary power, and by his 

 resistance vindicate the general character of human nature. The claim 

 of the Bourbons is buried in a grave from which there is no resur- 

 rection. 



We come now to a topic of the highest interest to ourselves, and by 

 implication, to the world the state of England. The great party which 

 had so long controlled the councils of England is utterly overthrown. 

 For the first time during a hundred years, Whiggism is completely trium- 

 phant, and Toryism is utterly defeated. The offices of government have 

 been stormed, and all public power is in the hands of Whiggism. But 

 it' has achieved the more formidable victory over the nation all po- 

 pular power is in its hands, and for the first time since the Hanover 

 succession, the leader of the mob and the leader of the ministry are 

 the same. The deliberations of the Crown and Anchor are now but the 



