controlled power of the monarchs, who, with the support of the people, threw off the yoke. In the series of their kings, those who have been distinguished, depended upon the people, and frequently addressed them. Some of the addresses of Gustavus Vasa to the peasantry are remarkably interesting, from their simplicity, knowledge of the habits and way of living of those to whom they are addressed, and unconscious display of character. Charles IX., Gustavus Adolphus, even Charles XII., frequently addressed the soldiery and peasantry, and placed their reliance upon them. When the latter monarch threatened to send one of his jack-boots to preside in the senate of nobility, he was not addressing an idle insult to the nobles, so much as a popular expression of his reliance upon the people, and not upon them. When Gustavus III., in our times, wrested the power from the senate, he addressed the people; and again, when he engaged in his wars with Russia; and on these occasions his harangues were conceived in the spirit of his great predecessors. These personal communications between the king and the people have continued to a later age in Sweden than in other countries, from the sovereigns, in their contests with the senate or corps of nobility, having been frequently thrown upon the support of the people. To make that support permanent, by giving the people a greater share in the legislative system, was a step to which their policy had not advanced. In the necessary dependence of the monarch upon the nobles around the throne in the present reign, it is impossible

there should be that personal knowledge of, communication with, and reliance upon, the people of Sweden, that would tend to liberal institutions, in which the aristocracy, the nation, and the king would have equal interests. The nobles and privileged classes have all in their own way - they alone being the organs of communication with the king. It is the misfortune of the new dynasty to be in this false position with regard to the nation at large but it is their fault to have remained in that position, without effort to raise up national interests with which they would be amalgamated, and made independent of the support of any one class or faction. Their predecessors left ample room for the new dynasty to fix its roots in liberal institutions for the legislation of the country, and for its social well-being. How many of these has the new dynasty planted in Sweden, and interwoven with its own destiny? None. All the old abuses in the social arrangements of the country, however unsuitable to the present state of the world, remain, and are pertinaciously adhered to. It has connected itself with no national interests or feelings. It trusts to the court, not to the people, for its stability, and to that uncertain, evanescent personal popularity which may attach an army to its chief, but is not the tie that can connect a nation with its dynasty. Effective loyalty in the present age is not a personal attachment, like that of the soldier to his commander, but a common interest in beneficial arrangements, which a change would disturb, and therefore binding the people to that dynasty, be

it new or old, which secures them in the enjoyment of these arrangements. The prestige of the French revolution is evaporated. Those who were heroes for a time, and were the first of men in the estimation of the world, have been reduced to their proper level of moral or intellectual greatness to mediocrity, by the appearance on the scene of much greater men, who have acted in affairs of far greater magnitude, and of more influence on the present state of mankind, than the almost forgotten battles of Ulm or Austerlitz. It was, therefore, a dangerous policy to rest the stability of a new dynasty upon mere personal merits or claims. It is not to see one man on horseback as a king, instead of another, that a nation changes its dynasty; but to secure some important amendment in its civil institutions. This amendment has not been obtained; and the disappointment causes a re-action. The present dynasty is decidedly unpopular with the nation. It has the support of the numerous and influential classes who live by public function or by corporate privileges; but the voice of the people is not in its favour. The subserviency, real or supposed, to Russia, the spirit of the government opposed to the most necessary reforms, and the enmity of an enlightened and influential periodical press, shake to the very foundation the popularity founded on the personal glory of the monarch, upon which the dynasty so injudiciously rests its hopes of stability. The daily press, in fact, now sneers in the most provoking way, on every occasion, at their hero-king, as they in derision call His Majesty; compare his achievements

with those of Swedish kings and commanders of former times; and undervalue what is really good, if not very great, in his character, by contrasting it with the moral and intellectual grandeur of the first Vasa and of Gustavus Adolphus.

The acquisition of the Norwegian crown, is also adverse to the interests of the new Swedish dynasty. On the 18th of January, 1814, the king of Denmark formally, by proclamation, released his Norwegian subjects from their allegiance, in consequence of the treaty of Kiel with the allied powers for the cession of the kingdom of Norway to Sweden. As neither Sweden nor the allied powers were in possession of their country, the Norwegian nation, upon their sovereign's renunciation, declared themselves independent, and proceeded to elect his brother, Prince Christian Frederic, king. On the 10th of April, representatives chosen by the nation met at Eidsvold, framed a constitution - the same now enjoyed by Norway and proclaimed, on the 17th of May, the constitution, and the new constitutional king. Both contracting parties signed the act of the constitution; Christian Frederic took the oaths as king; the constituent assembly was dissolved, and he remained, de jure, and de facto, king of Norway. He held the crown from May to October, but wanted energy to defend it. On the 10th of October he resigned his sovereignty again into the hands of the nation, having assembled a storthing for the purpose. This storthing negotiated with the Crown Prince of Sweden, Bernadotte, then advancing with a Swedish army; and

upon the same condition-the maintenance of their constitution of the 17th of May - transferred the sovereignty resigned into their hands by Christian Frederic, to the Swedish king, Charles XIII., upon the 4th of November; and upon the 10th, the Crown Prince took the oath to the constitution for himself and the king. By the death of Charles XIII., in February, 1818, the Crown Prince succeeded, and took the oaths to the constitution, and was crowned in Norway in September. The dynasty of Bernadotte is thus as legitimately entitled to the constitutional crown of Norway, as ever that of Vasa was to the Swedish, and precisely in the same way-by a mutual compact with the nation, and an election as its royal dynasty. The family of Bernadotte could desire in common sense no better title; but from the unfortunate spirit in which it has set out on its regal career, a different title is assumed a sort of divine right derived from the treaty of Kiel- and is propounded in several of the royal speeches to the Norwegian storthing, in a sort of obscure-sublime, similar to the bombast of Buonaparte's decrees and addresses to his troops-together with the assumption, that the king out of his goodness bestowed the present constitution on the Norwegian nation on the 4th of November, 1814. This may suit the intelligence of the court-circles of Stockholm; but it is neither historically true, politically wise, nor, in the advanced state of the public mind in these times, altogether beyond the reach of the most dangerous weapon to which a new dynasty can be exposed