to disturb the Governments of surrounding states. Europe had not disturbed France, but France had disturbed Europe. Europe had no guarantees to offer to France, but she required them from her. Europe was disposed to listen to proposals-not to make them. Casimir Perier felt this. He therefore proclaimed the necessity for declaring that France, in making her Revolution, had no intention to violate existing arrangements, or to break existing treaties. How dangerous, however, was such a declaration to the throne of Louis Philippe! for her Barricades had hardly been removed― the populace was still in arms, and "Vive la Pologne !" was the cry from the Manche to the Pyrenees.

The real revolutionary party in France desired sincerely and truly a European war. This they did not conceal. They only wished for a pretext for the re-enactment of 1793. But there was another party scarcely less dangerous, though somewhat less wicked. It was a party which, in order to defend the Revolution of 1830 from foreign attack, maintained that it was indispensable "to carry the war into the enemy's country." This party required that Mina and Valdez should be encouraged to get up a civil war in the Basque Provinces, in order to divert the attention of Spain from France. That the cause of the Poles should be defended, in order to occupy the attention of Russia and Prussia. And that the Italians should be aided in their attempts to free themselves from the Austrian Government, and that the Governments of the Duke of Modena, the Duchess of Parma, and of the Papal States, should be overthrown. This was called by Lamarque, Constant, Lafayette, Lafitte, aud the whole of the revolutionary party, "The system of self-defence;" and Casimir Perier was invited to adopt it. But the invitation was not listened to, and Casimir Perier replied, "La paix est possible, et le moyen de la maintenir est que la France soit calme et son gouvernement regulier, si la guerre doit susciter l'anarchie, á plus forte raison l'anarchie enfanterait la guerre. Que la France reprime les soupçons, les ressentimens; les alarmes d'un patriotisme ombrageux; la paix depend de sa sagesse, et la politique qui la pacifie au-dedans, est aussi la seule qui la garantisse au dehors. Defensive et conservative, tees doivent être les

caractères de la Revolution en France, comme en Europe."

This policy was the only one which was suitable to the Monarchy of the 7th August. The very first day it was the secret policy of the Duke of Orleans. But what obstacles were there not to vanquish! What prejudices to overcome, or even to gratify! And still more, what illusions to dissipate! Those who made the Revolution of 1830 were perpetually exclaiming, "The Revolution of 1830 will make the circuit of the world!" and the frontiers of France were already, in imagination, transported to the Rhine and the Alps-to Savoy and the Rhenish Provinces! The crown of Belgium was to be placed on the head of the Duke de Nemours, and the throne of Greece to be offered to the Duke d'Aumerle, the Prince de Joinville, or even to the baby boy, the Duke de Montpensier. The treaties of 1814 were to be torn to pieces as waste paper-a new division of Europe was to be made by France-and we heard every morning, from the National, the Tribune, and even from the Courier Français "les rois s'en vont." A policy so directly opposed as was that of Louis Philippe and Casimir Perier to these views and these wishes could not then be put into practice without a counter-revolution, and could not be proclaimed without the most imminent danger. Many repelled such a policy without understanding it, and many more desired its success, without daring to hope for it. Though it was the only reasonable and the only truly French policy, yet it was not the moment to proclaim it. Doubtless, the inmost thoughts of all reasonable men were in its favour, but at any rate, it did not appear on the surface of public opinion. The smoke of the Barricades still covered the country, and the rumours and noise of a passing opinion appeared to the ignorant to be as the echo of the cannon of the Hotel de Ville.

This line of policy, adopted in the first Council of Ministers of the new King,however prevailed. It inspired wise measures and excellent speeches, but in the state of uncertainty in which it was placed, it was often obliged to make concessions, as it frequently had to submit to sad disappointments. The exigencies of foreign powers became necessarily greater in proportion as the revolutionary party appeared to

gain ground, and the Ministry of the 7th of August, 1830, was overthrown! Whilst member of that Cabinet, M. Perier made known, on various and important occasions, his firm and unchanging convictions; but he preserved a great degree of reserve on ordinary matters-satisfied in his own mind, that the time had not come when it would be either prudent or practicable to proclaim, insist on, and enforce a Conservative policy. His retreat from office exalted the apprehensions of Europe and the alarms of wise and moderate men. He was surrounded, consulted, looked up to-his wisdom insured him respect-his popularity with the middling classes caused him to be consulted. "Il n'est pas temps; c'est trop tôt; sachez attendre "-he repeated day after day to those who urged him to come forward, and to make a stand against the hurly-burly, confusion, agitation, and next to anarchy which prevailed. The Ministry of the 2d November, 1830, with M. Lafitte at its head, was formed, and M. Casimir Perier became once more the President of the Chamber of Deputies. Soon after the Revolution, he had ceded those functions to M. Lafitte. He now returned to them--and the Chamber was as much in need of his resolution as was the Cabinet itself.

The Lafitte Ministry was feebleness personified. It wished, or professed it wished, for the Monarchy and for peace, but it knew not how to enforce the conditions of peace or of the Monarchy. How could it! For M. Lafitte, the revolutionist banker and conspirator, to have proclaimed himself a Conservative would have been too preposterous; so he took to tricking, but it did not succeed. When does it? All the wisdom and prudence of Louis Philippe and of the Duke de Broglie were necessary to avoid a rupture with Europe-for every day some new occasion was offered for an open war. France was ignorant of her peril. She imagined that because she did not really desire war, therefore that the Propagandism of her parties, and the conspiracies of her revolutionary leaders, were but of little importance. She forgot that example is dangerous, more dangerous than precept; and she did not perceive that public opinion was all at sea-that the state vessel was without a pilotthat there was mutiny on board-and that the Chambers did not dare to say

to the Revolution, Hitherto thou hast proceeded, but thou shalt proceed no further. Still, some discussions of an important character had brought the two opposine systems before the country, and yet the Ministry hesitated what course to take. Casimir Perier presided over those debates with an inflexible severity. His face was pale and sad. He saw the cloud in the horizon. He knew that the storm would be terrible-but he resolved, when the proper moment came, that he would face it.

The evil increased. He witnessed its progress, yet he still decided that, though it was time to expose, the moment had not arrived to combat it. During four long months he watched, night and day, the progress of the evil, and his mind was perpetually occupied with the question. He saw that France had still her illusions-that still they were too near the noise of the Revolution to hear the small still voice of peace and of order-and in the long conversations he had with a small number of friends, he always led the discussion to this question, and spoke with the anxious tone of a man who deliberated on the salvation of his country, and on the glory of her name. To those who pressed him to act-to make a stand, and not to suffer the Revolutionary party to proceed further, he always replied, "Ilest trop t t, le temps n'est pas venu." Often did he refuse to his political friends at the Chamber of Deputies, when president, the permission to speak on insignificant subjects, lest through such debates, the great and decisive question should be prematurely, and therefore, injuriously discussed at the public tribunal. Emeute after emeute took place, but the Lafitte Ministry had disposed of the fate of the ex-Ministers of Charles X., and this terrible affair was heard and decided. At length the moment approached when it became indispensable to know whether France was to be governed by Paris mobs in the streets, composed of anarchists, thieves, and "proletaires," or whether there was to be a regular throne, regular laws, a regular government, a regular army, and the institutions at last promised by the Revolution and Charta of 1830. The subject could admit of no longer delay, and the emeute of the the 13th of February, 1831, decided the question.

The Emeute of 13th February, 1831,

was of a nature to open even a most friendly eye to the weakness of the Lafitte Administration. Some deputies resolved to speak out to the Chamber, and to excite it from its apparent and false security. M. Guizot attacked the Ministry from the Tribune, and the Ministry replied by announcing an early dissolution of the Cabinet. The fall of the Lafitte Administration was one of the greatest blessings ever conferred on France or on Europe. Whilst it boasted of its pacific and moderate intentions, it encouraged the hopes, and raised the expectations of the ultra-Liberal party. Whilst it affected independence and a great love of national honour, it was, like the Melbourne Administration, the slave of a faction, and the ally of revolutionists. Whilst it gave daily and solemn promises to the ambassadors of foreign powers that it desired to cultivate the best possible understanding with the Governments they represented, it at the same time encouraged secretly the hopes of the Poles without meaning to help them; told the French party in Belgium that it was convinced that the union of that province with France was the only means of putting for ever at rest the agitations of the Low Countries; supplied means to the Spanish Liberals to carry on their political intrigues and their border insurrections; kept the Italian refugees in a state of suspense, sometimes encouraging, and at other times discouraging them; and, in one word, preached peace, but encouraged war-preached order, and yet was the author of anarchy.

Casimir Perier neither excited nor restrained those who took the lead in their subversion of a Government of clubs, emeutes, and mob dominion. He felt that the time was at hand, but he thought the moment had scarcely arrived; he resolved not to undertake the task of governing without having at least reasonable chances of success. He did not desire office for the sake of its glitter or show; he had more ambition than that. Naturally an enemy of disorder-profoundly attached to all ideas of authority-of subordination of respect inaccessible to speculative illusions-full of contempt and irony for the politics of romancers and poets-he saw with some severity and some disgust the agitations of modern society, and above all, that feverish, unhealthy, irritable state de

veloped by the Revolution of 1830. He felt, then, neither joy nor happiness when he saw the day arrive for him to seize the reins of Government; but casting on his country a firm but a sad look of distrust and sorrow, he accepted the mission with the sentiment of a man who has a great duty to perform-with the distrust of a mind chagrined, but with the courage of a great and noble heart.

His celebrated Ministry of March 13, 1831, was no hasty combination. Before forming it, he was resolved to know the real state of the police, the finance, and the diplomacy of the country.He saw and conferred with the former Council; he deliberated a long time before he declared his resolution; he really and truly hesitated more than once, and he did not consent to be chief of the Cabinet till he had sounded well all the questions, resolved, at least in principle, all the difficulties and examined profoundly all the repugnances, as well as all the objections. He wished that, from the moment the Ministry should be named, it should begin to act. Unity-an entire, and well-based, and well-considered unity was that which he regarded as indispensable. The difficulty was great to bring all together to one way of thinking and to one system of action, but yet he succeeded; and when he saw the Ministry ready to be formed and to act, he received from the hand of Louis Phillippe the commission to unite the proposed members into a Cabinet. He was one of those who would not consent to accept the confidence of a prince without being assured that he possessed the means of rendering himself worthy. The situation of France when Casimir Perier accepted office and formed his Ministry was most deplorable. She had no ally but England; she had no public opinion; her finances were in a most melancholy situation; her public credit was gone; her trade and commerce were in a state of ruin; her manufactories were closed; her nobility were emigrating, or selling their properties and funds, and converting all into ready money; her metropolis was daily exposed to the agitation of street emeutes and insurrections in the public places; her political and revolutionary clubs were increasing every week, and were demanding new concessions every day; her press insulted the throne, the

altar, and the privileged classespreached anarchy and levelling in broad day; and whilst the ambassadors of foreign powers were insulted in their hotels, the clergy were thrown into the Seine, or hunted down like wild beasts when they appeared in public. The working classes necessarily suffered much from this sad state of depression, misery, and anarchy. The Progagandist party urged them to pillage and the modern Robespierrian demagogues counselled the sans culottes to proceed to the Faubourg St. Germain and rob the hotels of the absent nobility-or hang those they might find at the next lamp-posts. There was no cry heard but for a general war, and those who discouraged that notion were stigmatised as traitors and scoundrels. We remember to have witnessed in Paris the emeute of 13th February, 1831, and to have asked some of the leaders the objects they had in view; but they could give no other account of their principles and wishes than "il faut la guerre. "War! War!" was their only crybut it was war to the cottage as well as to the throne-war to the altar as well as to the home-and war to all who possessed, on the part of those who did not.

The policy of the Cabinet of the 13th of March was the natural policy of the monarchy of 1830-but it was never recognised nor proclaimed till Casimir Perier undertook to do so. Oh, how loud was that howl which proceeded from all parts, when Casimir Perier proclaimed that the policy of his Administration would be "peace, liberty, and public order!" His true merit was, not that of having discovered the system, for from the moment Louis Phillippe was named King he declared he would adopt no other; but Casimir Perier was the first Minister who proclaimed that those were his intentions-he was the first who said, “mine shall be a system of resistance"-not a negative policy, but a policy of action; he was the first who gave that tone of authority which is so necessary to a Government, and which commands confidence. He was the first who rallied round the Government not only the interests, but the convictions and devotedness of the middling classes, and assured, to the cold and chilling system of repression and counter-revolution, the support of the convictions, and even of the

enthusiasm of all thinking and energetic men. It was at a moment of peril like that we have described, that Casimir Perier, renouncing the ease of a brilliant position, and of an untouched popularity, delivered himself up, without illusions, sacrificing all his ease and all his popu larity at once, to the perfidy and menaces of all the factions then SO powerful and sanguinary-ready to defend his cause against the authors of the Revolution-not under-rating any obstacle or peril-but rather regarding the horizon as more charged and more black than even was the case. He was indeed superior, but not insensible to calumny and injus tice. He knew and felt that to govern France then, was to renounce all repose, all security, all ease; and yet, though his health was most frail, and his constitution most feeble, he entered the arena-ay, and by no means certain of victory. He regarded the Revolution of 1830 as a most dangerous experiment. He knew that that experiment must fail if any other policy were adopted than that which he proposed, but he was by no means certain that even that policy would succeed. He was also no theorist. He had not therefore, the consolation derived by some men from a belief in abstract principles. He had no great confidence in political friends, and none in political partisans. He endeavoured to imagine that he should be deserted by all, and even conducted as a victim to some revolutionary orgies, to be offered up as a sacrifice to their mad and brutal passions; and all this he realised in his own mind; and yet, with all these motives for renouncing, instead of accepting the terrific duties of Prime Minister at that moment, he accepted the combat, feeling, that he was the only man who at that moment could stand in the breach. Nor must it be forgotten that at the palace and the court, Casimir Perier had some personal enemies. He was proud, haughty, domineering; had strong passions and strong dislikes; and was resolved to be a real bona fide President of the Council, presiding himself over all the meetings of the Cabinet, and not allowing Louis Philippe to continue his favourite system of presiding himself. He was willing to undertake all his responsibility of an undivided presidentship, but he was

resolved that it should be undivided.

When Casimir Perier took office, the approaching dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies, rendered essential by the fact of the Revolution of 1830, was likewise unfavourable to the development of his system. Who could predict what a new Chamber might say, think, and decide? The press -the clubs the schools-the young and ardent portion of the army and National Guards, were all opposed to the system of "peace, liberty, and public order." Their cry was still for war. The whole of the west of France was in a state of agitation. The question of Belgium was so wholly undecided, that the question of peace or war was still in suspense. Poland still fought valiantly with broken swords. Nearly all the press excited daily the warlike dispositions of the lower orders-and by degrees all France had become inoculated with the mania for war. It became necessary then to give confidence to Europe, without abandoning the new French dynasty; to satisfy France, without allowing her passions to be gratified; and to bring one party to resign itself to the Revolution of 1830, as understood by the conservateurs-and to bring the other to be contented with the simple change of dynasty, and with the revision of a few of the articles of the Charta of 1814. Yet Casimir Perier had to fulfil the promises made by the Charta of 1830; and deeply did he regret one of those promises, viz. the destruction of the Hereditary Peerage. He had also at once to show to Europe that he did not fear war whilst he offered peace; and that the sword was at his side whilst the olive-branch was in his hand. And in the midst of all these difficulties he was surrounded everywhere by distrust for no mind was confiding-everywhere by uncertainty; for no one was satisfied. He had but one idea, one reply, to oppose to all this-and that was

"Je veux la paix, et je ne veux que la

Charte ;"

In other words, he insisted that the monarchy of 1830 should be, and should also be considered, as a definitive and regular Government. "Wisdom and pride," said Casimir Perier, "should be inscribed on the banner of our national Revolution."

But that which he said, it was ne

In

cessary also for him to prove. politics a system is not every thing.— The system sbould be reasonable and wise; but it is the execution of that system which assures to it success, which constitutes its glory. What did M. Perier bring along with him in support of the system which he proclaimed? One only thing-but it was a great one-the security offered to France by his own character. M. Perier said at the Tribune, "Pour garder la paix au dehors, comme pour la conserver au dedans, il ne faut peut-être qu'une chose-c'est que la France soit gouvernée."

Under the preceding Administrations France had often asked, "Where is the Government?" And echo answered, "Where?" But with Casimir Perier the question could be put no longer. France soon knew, and soon felt, that she was governed indeed.

On one occasion an old friend of himself and of his family, attached to the cause of Bonaparte, and believing that the Government of Napoleon II. was practicable, attacked, in no very measured terms, the President of the Council, in his private dressingroom, to which he was always admitted at an early hour in the morning. "M. Perier," said the Bonapartist, "your system cannot standall France is opposed to you-you are only supported by the bankers and capitalists of the Bourse-your system is selfish, pecuniary, disgraceful to France and anti-national; France requires the old fractions of the empire-the des truction of the treaties of Vienna-the emancipation of the people of Europe, who are her natural allies-and not the kings of this continent, who can never sympathise with the Revolution of 1830. Your system cannot last."

To all this he replied, "" The France you know is the France of the kennels, of the gutters, of the dregs of society, of the mob, of the clubs, of the schools; beardless boys, indolent vagabonds, and dissatisfied speculators. The France which supports my system is opulent France, industrious France, honest and laborious France-wellprincipled France, which loves order as well as liberty, and peace better than conquest. We shall see which France will prevail. If yours shall succeed, do not imagine you will stop at even the terrorism of 1793-you