3<H The Stale of Hit- Empire : [Oct. 



had an old aversion to the sight of military force ; flourishing the sabre 

 over its counters and ink-horns, is not France, and is either too young 

 or too old to take delight in that ro)'al toy, a gendarmerie. 



Of course, we fully exculpate his Grace of Wellington from all 

 the sour " suspicions" that have somehow or other lately spoiled the 

 public taste for his panegyric. We take it for granted, that in estab- 

 lishing a police with a military commander, in turning the civil magis- 

 trates to the right about, and in withdrawing the guai-dianship of 

 the parishes from the lazy somnolency of the parishes themselves to the 

 sleepless vigilance of the minister, he had no thought of any consequence 

 further than the increased security of the pocket-handkerchiefs of his 

 Majesty's loyal and much filched people. 



As Prince Polignac has got the stai't of the duke in the gendarmerie, 

 he has also got the start in the libel system. In the late trials in Paris of 

 some caitiffs, who, after having exposed themselves long ago to be hanged 

 for their loyalty to the Bourbons, are now exposing themselves to be 

 pilloried for their doubts of a ministry of two months' standing ; the 

 crown lawyer laid down the maxim, that to ridicule the minister was to 

 ridicule the monarch and his family. The maxim was one of those il- 

 lustrious discoveries in libel legislation that force universal assent at the 

 instant. But " if the French invent," says the proverb, " the English 

 improve." We have seen, for years together, the most atrocious libels 

 of pen and pencil issued by the hundred against the king and every 

 branch of his family ; the grossest and most malignant caricatures of 

 bis JMajesty's person flourishing in the public ways ; yet the ministerial 

 thunderbolts slept by the foot of the ministerial chair. Who but re- 

 members the monstrous and loathsome slanders propagated day by day 

 against the king's brother, the Duke of Cumberland ? and who remem- 

 bers a single movement of a finger of authority against the slanderers ? 

 And those charges were not vague — there was no airy and floating sur- 

 mise of "grasping ambition," love of power, or passion for pelf; no sus- 

 picion of being suspected. Nothing in accusation could have taken a more 

 distinct form, nor a more repulsive, degrading and detestable one. Yet 

 the majesty of justice slept on its desk, ate its cabinet dinner, and took 

 its ride to Newmarket without the disturbance of a muscle. It reposed 

 in sublime faith on the divinity that doth hedge a king, and piously 

 shrank from interfering with the ways of a tutelar Providence. But let 

 a syllable be uttered against ministerial fallibility, its whole nervousness 

 is up in arms. The power that when ro3^alty was assaulted saw nothing 

 but pitiable impotence in the assailants, when a chance shaft glances on 

 itself, sees nothing but a traitorous and combined assault against king, 

 country, and constitution. Steady as a rock, when the blood royal were 

 exjwsed to the bitterest blast of infamy, the moment a breath of popu- 

 Lir dislike turns on itself, it melts into the wave, and frets and foams, 

 as if the w^hole wrath of the popular tempest were let loose against it. 

 A reposing giant where the honour of the crown alone is concerned, it 

 dwindles doAvn into a pigmy where its personal interests are at stake ; 

 hears the clang of its enemy in every cloud, and levels its lance against 

 tlie first crane. 



The Morning Journal has been threatened with prosecution for sup- 

 posing that the minister has had some designs beyond the mark of a sub- 

 ject. We think that the Morning Journal now deserves to be prosecuted, 

 but it is for the absurdity of supposing that the man capable of this silly 



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