THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 



Kfi!) ^rrifs. 



Vol. VIII.] OCTOBER, 1829. [No. 46. 



THE STATE OF THE EMPIRE: 

 POLICE, PRESS, POPERY, AND lOREIGN RELATION'S. 



It is scarcely two months since Prince Polignac was made Prime 

 IVIinister of France, and in that time he has contrived to make himself 

 the object of the most universal public reprobation of any man in power 

 since the days of Rol>espierre. The Duke of Wellington has been 

 Prime ]\Iinister of England two years, and with what results. He 

 has destroyed his own popularity in all ranks ; he has sunk his 

 character from that of a high-minded, straight-forward, and soldierly 

 man, to that of a meagre, irritable, and vindictive minister; he has 

 changed the whole national estimate even of his abilities, and has shewn 

 himself as incapable of governing the country as of controlling his own 

 temper ; incapable of meeting the exigencies of the first public crisis, 

 and equally incapable of listening with the calmness of a manly mind, 

 or answering with the intelligence of a wise one, to the charges that the 

 national distrust is gathering tliick round him from every quarter of the 

 political horizon. 



But the similitude of the English minister and his French counterpart 

 runs close through every branch of their administration. In the assault 

 upon the freedom of the press ; in the encouragement of a subtle and 

 treacherous priesthood ; in the arts to manage their respective legisla- 

 tures ; in the policy of surrounding themselves with cabinets of indivi- 

 duals either so insignificant as to leave the sole power in tlie minister's 

 hands, or so obnoxious to popular scorn as to cover his meanness by the 

 collected meanness of his creatures ; in the use of a police hateful to the 

 national feelings, and offensive to the national sense of liberty ; in 

 being equally violent at home, and feeble abroad ; in leaving their foreign 

 allies to chance, and exercising their whole vigour in coercing the public 

 feeling of alarm at home, — nothing can be more fatally complete than 

 the parallel of the Premierships of France and England. 



Which of those ministers has led the way is not worth the question. 

 The old habits of France have been in the prince's favour, and have 

 saved liini from much exertion of originality in his experiments on the 

 constitution. lie ha<l found a gendarmerie ready made ; the censorship 

 of the press, though it had fallen into abeyance, still existed ; and the 

 M.M. New Scrics.~Voh. VIII. No. ilj. 3 A 



