nation, till the Abbé Sabatier, more in search of a joke than of his country's ruin, cried out, "Vous demandez, Messieurs, les états de recette et de depense, et ce sont les états-generaux qu'il vous faut." It was a clap of thunder to the parliament, and they sent the punster to prison; but from that day the people never ceased to ery for the Etats-generaux. The king was obliged to promise them, and having promised, he certainly could not avoid the calling of them, whatever the Aristocrats may say to the contrary in reprobation of Necker. The fault was not in permitting them to meet, but in permitting them, when met, to assume the menacing attitude they did.

The great mistake of Necker was, that he thought the government and the public-purse synonymous terms. Fully versed in the theory of the pocket, he looked on the world as on a large counting-house: he had no ideas beyond honesty, credit, regularity, -individual ambition, party-spirit, popular commotion, never once entered among his conceptions. He was honest, but unfortunately thought that honesty was all-sufficient, and he flattered himself with being able to govern a mighty kingdom during the momentous crisis which was evidently approaching, by the pusillanimous principle of laissez faire. Doubts are entertained, whether Necker should have endeavoured to influence the elections or not; if he had understood the English constitution as much as he admired it, he certainly would have done all in his power to have secured a majority in favour of moderate and constitutional measures. But not only did he keep aloof from meddling with the elections, but even afterwards, when the royal prerogative was menaced with absolute destruction, he refused to save the monarch and the state by bribing Mirabeau-which was then considered and afterwards proved to be feasible. Whether honesty is a match for dishonesty, is a problem in some affairs; but in what are called revolutionary tactics, the former has been proved beyond controversy totally unable to support itself by the rigid principles of defence.

The great object of previous debate was, whether the tiers état should be represented by a deputation equal in number to that of the nobles and the

clergy? If this was decided in the affirmative, it of course followed, that all classes were to sit and vote togegether, for otherwise of what advantage was the increased number? The minister, Brienne, had allowed the free publication of all opinions on the subject; and Necker; whose god was popularity, and who saw not the consequence of doubling the tiers, sought to gratify the people's wish, yet would he not take the responsibility on himself-he asked the opinion of the Parliament, they declined interfering; he appealed to the Assembly of Notables, they all, except the bureau, presided by the present King of France, expressed a contrary wish. But Necker, like the most arbitrary minister, did not seek to be advised, but to be seconded, and concluded, contrary to the opinion of the Notables, by advising the King to grant the double representation of the commons. Having yielded so much to the popular feeling, then was the time, when the public gratitude was yet warm, to have arranged the mode of voting, and to have established an Upper and a Lower Chamber. Necker was certainly attached to the English constitution; he wished for the two Chambers, but was afraid to ordain them; he knew that he would lose his popularity by the act, and for this cursed love of popularity he sacrificed the nation's peace laissez faire was still his rule for acting. And with the most criminal negligence, which in any other man: we would be inclined to call conni vance, the Assembly was permitted to meet, the respective rights of its component classes being yet unsettled. This was nothing more than to give to the majority the power of arrangement, which would of course make that majority invincible, nor could it have been at all doubtful which side would preponderate. The deputies of the tiers were equal in number, by royal permission, to the clergy and nobles, and from the latter class a large secession to the popular party might be considered inevitable; besides that the nobles of Bretagne had refused to send deputies to what they deemed too democratic an assembly, by which five-and-twenty votes were lost to the cause of the nobility.

The day of meeting at length arrived; the privileged orders assembled by themselves, and the tiers, for whom

Pallotted, capable of nited bodies, affected

Hed at the absence of the They voted themselves the National Assembly; and their hall having been closed for a few hours, that a platform might be erected for the royal sitting, they seized upon the pretext to assemble in an adjoining ballcourt, where the members took the famed oath to meet in any quarter of the kingdom, however distant, should they then be dissolved. This was at once annihilating the royal prerogative-and in a mode far more audacious than that of the Long Parliament whoobtained the King's assent to their bill of indissolubility; yet Necker took no notice of this act, this serment du jéu de paume, as it is called, but proceeded to arrange the royal sitting, as if nothing had had happened. The States-general were opened the 5th of May, and it was not till the 23d of June that Mr Necker was prepared with his plan of arrangement for the sitting and voting of the respective orders. Madame de Staël states, that the declaration was to have been made immediately after the opening of the States, but her father himself, in his Memoirs, has left proofs, that the plan itself was not at that time digested. The proposition of Necker was, that the classes should vote in common on matters of finance, but separately on matters respecting the constitution and mutual privileges. But even this did not please the Queen and her party; of itself, at this late period, it would most likely have failed, but the meddling of the Queen and the aristocrats gave Necker an opportunity of withdrawing his responsibility, and saving his precious popularity for a few months longer. The 23d of June, the day on which the King made the declaration, founded on the proposition of Necker, but modified by the Queen and her friends, set at once the popular party in direct opposition to the court. The declaration was accompanied with threats-just threats, it is true, but impolitic, that "if they failed him, he would effect by himself the good of his people." The outcry was directed against the whole tenor of the declaration, but it was by no means so enraged, nor in common sense could it be so, against that part of the plan drawn up by Necker, as against the modifications and added threats.

In this Mr Lacretelle carries his hostility to the memory of Necker too far; with both cloquence and indignation misplaced, apostrophizes the minister, accuses him of selfishness and want of candour in this affair.

"Le peuple le reconduit jusqu' à son hôtel, et ces cris se prolongent sous ses fenêtres et jusques dans la nuit. Quoiqu'un tel bruit dût bercer agréablement un homme trop porté à croire le peuple infaillible, dès qu'il l'applaudissait, je crois pourtant qu'ami de la vertu, il dut se faire dans le nuit de sevères reproches. Ce prétendu code de tyrannie qui avait excité l'indignation de l'assembleé nationale et du peuple, n'était-il pas un propre ouvrage?" &c.

This philippic borders indeed on the ridiculous; for allowing what M. Lacretelle asserts, that the nation and the Assembly were equally enraged with Necker's original proposition as with the modification of it-an assertion manifestly absurd-even allowing this, how could Necker serve the King by sacrificing his popularity at this moment? He did sacrifice his popularity subsequently, both in the cause of his his sovereign and of humanity-he may have been weak, misled, arrogant, censurable in a thousand points, but a more disinterested minister, it must be allowed, never entered the councils of a monarch. Mr Lacretelle was a Bonapartist under Napoleon; he may have excuses for supporting such a party under a despotic government, but in the constitutional reign of Louis the XVIII. there is no accounting for his ultraism, but in the principle of reaction. "Live, and let live," is a worthy adage. Necker was a republican perhaps, at least a constitutionalist, but the blundering and ignorant aristocracy of France have more of the Revolution to answer for than he-they who refused to form an Upper Chamber through mere motives of negative spite-they who, in the Assembly, joined the bitterest republicans in preference to the constitutionalists-they who voted for every extravagant measure, and carried it in the pernicious hopes of bringing forth good by the excess of ill-they who pusillanimously emigrated, instead of rallying round the throne of their sovereign, and whom the unfortunate Louis in his testament upbraids as the chief, though blind promoters of his

downfall-these, as they were the more interested in the welfare of their country, are certainly the most culpable. Those who vacillate between our two great parties, may perhaps merit the appellation of trimmers, but in France, where the leading men are yet at issue about the fundamental principles of society, it must be granted to the impartial to choose between, and, equally avoiding liberal and ultra, to enlist under the banners of Constitutional Royalism.

It is on these grounds that we have almost an equal dislike to the new as to the old principles of Mr Lacretelle. In this country we would unite at once with the highest upholders of government and religion, but we have no love for the dogmas of the ultra school, preached forth at the Societé des bonnes Lettres; nor can we keep in with Mr Lacretelle and his brother professors of that society, Mr Raoul-Rochette, &c., that the Reformation has been the cause of all the crimes of the Revolution; and that the only means of regenerating society are to be found in the convents, the Jesuits, and the sixty-six thousand priests, who at present inundate France.

To return from our digression: the effect of the King's declaration on the Assembly was such as might be supposed. They remained for some time in discontented silence, interrupted only by some epigrammatic ejaculations, till they were roused by the voice of Mirabeau. This orator had studied deeply the history of our first revolution; he entered the constituent assembly fully versed in the arcana of revolutionary tactics-no leader ever perceived more instantaneously the exact degree of boldness requisite; and though ready to venture the farthest point if necessary, he still preserved the assembly in its early days (if we except the sermen du jeu de paume*) from the open violence which would have furnished a pretext for destroying it. He had learned from the resolutions of the long parliament about suspicion and malignants, the strength of a vague and ambiguous vote, which roused the populace, while it exposed to the court no expression which could be construed into downright violence

or disrespect. Unfortunately, the least menace or murmur of opposition was sufficient to shake the feeble resolu tion of the king-he commanded the nobles and clergy to sit and vote with the tiers. One immediately asks, what bold vote of the Assembly produced this change of measures in the King? this-they simply declared at the suggestion of Mirabeau, that the persons of the deputies were inviolable. No one thought of violating them-the vote had nothing to do with the object of concern, but it hinted to the people that their persons were in danger.

"The majority of the noblesse," says Lacretelle, obeyed the orders of the king. A minority of the clergy followed their example. The national assembly received with increased pride their new conquests. The nobles and prelates maintained an irritated mien, and the mutual hatred became but the more bitter, when both parties saw each other face to face-the conquered no less proud than the conquerors. We may compare the nobility and clergy to those great rivers of the new world, which, after having traversed so immense a space, cast themselves murmuring into the ocean, where they are about to lose both name and existence, but where they yet preserve for a time the agitation and the colour of their waters."

One of the first and principal accusations of breach of faith made against the unfortunate Louis, is the secret order issued at this time for the approach of the troops to Paris. The measure was rendered manifestly necessary by the insurrectionary movements of the French guards quartered in Paris: breach of faith there was none-impolicy there was much. The monarch should have openly ordered the march of the troops, or have put himself at their head, instead of vacillating at Versailles between the aristocrats, the assembly, and the scrupulous Necker. This minister was, it seems, against the approach of the troops he was for employing his favourite maxim of laissez faire in the matter of insurrections even-notwithstanding our respect for him, it had been well for France, if this honest

to

banker had been left quiet in his counting-house at Geneva. On Mirabeau's address for the remanding of the troops, when that orator, for the first time, put forth all the powers of his eloquence, the queen and her party could no longer contain their indignation against the want of influence and apparent insignificance of Necker. He received an order from the king retire secretly, and he honourably obeyed the injunction by setting off at night and reaching the frontier, ere news could be had even of his departure. The news of his dismissal reached Paris July the 13th, and immediately the insurrection burst forth -the green cockade, Necker's livery, was worn, and his bust, with that of Orleans, was carried in processionthe troops in the Place Louis Quinze were insulted, and fired on by the French guards in insurrection-the royalist troops never returned the fire -'tisdifficult to conceive what brought them there. The next day the Bastille was destroyed, and the triumph of the popular party complete. Louis in person acquainted the assembly of his determination to remand the troops, entreating them at the same time to send a deputation of their members to calm the Parisians.

Our readers need not be alarmedwe do not intend troubling them here with a history of the Revolution, but we could not help recapitulating the leading features of its commencement, concerning the causes and errors of which there has been so much controversy. The controversy is necessarily confined to the period of the Assemblée Constituante; for after the disappearance of both royalist and constitutional party, any friendly sentiments towards one body or another, must be merely comparative. We may pity Condorcet, if we compare him with his Jacobin enemies-we may admire the boldness of Tallien, in the overthrow of Roberspierre; but considered as individual men, or single parties, they excite no feeling but abhorrence and disgust. France has of late, it must be confessed, heard strange doctrines from her tribune, but so violently indecorous as to alienate many of the liberal party from their friends. The very day on which a deputation was appointed by the Chamber to attend the ceremonial of the 21st of January-the anniversary of the death

of Louis the XVI. Mr Manuel pleaded the cause of the Convention:

"Ne cherchons pas," says he, “ à faire de cette discussion une arêne pour combattre le gouvernement existant alors, (the Convention), reconaissons que ce qu'il a fait, il a pu, il a du le faire." Happily for France, these sentiments are unechoed, and there is not in that country, perhaps, another man that would utter them-and aptly they seem to fall from the mouth of him who proclaimed Napoleon the II. That which was considered the great bulwark against revolutions-their novelty and want of precedent, was the very circumstance which, more than all others, facilitated their completion. The sanguine and confident, a character prevalent in France, remained satisfied that the tendency of things was towards rectitude and order-they considered but as a passing ebullition, what in reality was a rapidly-spreading sentiment, and esteemed it quite unnecessary to put in practice the defensive arms of unity and party discipline, which the promoters of anarchy had recourse to for offensive measures. The Revolution in England was considered as an exception in the natural course of human affairs, instead of being taken into account as an obvious phenomenon. The Constitutionalists and nobles united, could have at first overwhelmed the Republicans, even before such a hydra had arisen as Jacobinism. It was the want of discipline to the rules of party that destroyed the aristocrats, and consequently the moderate revolutionists; for, notwithstanding the declamations of the ignorant against party and party spirit, nothing great or good can be effected, nor anything destructive prevented without obedience to it. But the laws of popular assemblies have developed themselves-the world is aware of their inevitable tendency, and that no society could exist in the vicinity of such a volcano without establishing checks of one kind or another upon its indomitable spirit. England and France have had their revolutions and their contra-revolutions; and each, though at distant intervals, follows the same path of progression, leaving the popular tendency in active force, but assured of its being ever repressed within its legitimate bounds by one great safe-guard, viz. the dread that every wise citizen must entertain