STATE PAPERS. 
power and their means, they will 
endeavour to force the King and 
the nation to accept those laws 
which they make. 
I do not doubt that the emigrants 
have often represented this plan as 
the thing in the world most pacific 
and easy to be executed; but I 
cannot persuade myself that it has 
been so easily adopted. I cannot 
believe, above all, that the Empe- 
ror, guided as he is by views of 
wisdom and justice, can have im- 
bibed such ideas. Vain would be 
the attempt to change by force of 
arms our new constitution: it has 
become toa great majority of the 
nation a species of religion, which 
they have embraced with enthusi- 
asm, and which they will defend 
with that energy which belongs to 
the most exalted sentiments. 
Those who would draw the fo- 
reign powers into violent measures, 
Tepeat incessantly that France is 
full of malcontents, who wait only 
for the opportunity of declaring 
themselves. There are many who 
suffer and who complain ;_ but [| 
firmly believe, and my belief is 
commensurate with the belief of 
those who know the actual dispo- 
sition of the public mind, that the 
first moment in which the constitu- 
tion shall be attacked, there would 
' be but one party, one sentiment, 
one interest ; and the greatest part 
of the malcontents, attaching them- 
selves to the common cause, would 
become its warmest defenders. 
At the same time that they speak 
of malcontents, they exaggerate the 
want of discipline in our armies, 
the disorder of our finances, and our 
intestine commotions; in a word, 
they represent us ina state of abso- 
Jute imbecility. J do not dissem- 
ble, that our embarrassments are 
287 
great; but were they still greater, 
they would much deceive themselves 
if they thought they could insult 
France with impunity, or if they 
despised her power. 
You have often informed me, Sir, 
that the people were extremely asto- 
nished at Vienna, ‘* at the appa 
rent disorder of our government, at 
the want of subordination in the 
different powers, and at the little 
respect with which the King was 
treated.” It ought to be con- 
sidered, that we are but just com- 
ing out of one of the greatest revo~ 
lutions that ever happened; that 
this evolution, in its essential cha- 
racteristic, being at first wrought 
with an extreme rapidity, has beery 
prolonged by divisions arising’ in 
the different parts, and by the op- 
position established between differ- 
ent passions and interests. It was 
impossible that such opposition and 
such effects, such innovations and’ 
such disasters, should fail of produe- 
ing long agitations ; and it may rea= 
sonably be expected that the re- 
establishment of order ean only be 
produced by time. 
Besides, what is the cause of this 
intestine fermentation, at which the 
court of Vienna seems so much of- 
fended? It is the steps which the 
emigrants have taken, their prepa- 
rations, their projects, their me- 
naces, and the support, more or less 
considerable, which they have re- 
ceived in most of the courts of 
Europe. 
There was, without doubt, an 
epoch in which their cause, appa- 
rently connected with that of the 
King, might have excited the in- 
terest of sovereigns, and more par- 
ticularly of the Emperor. But when 
once the King, by the acceptance of 
the constitution, had put himself at 
the 
