that authority should assign to each one his sphere (which would call to mind the castes in India, for want of his Parias,); that it should keep all the citizens divided, to prevent a powerful resistance, (which shows that the intention of the party, of which this journal is the interpreter, is to destroy by force the resistance of opinion); when he adds that that unique remedy must be adopted because the remedy which most displeases the invalid may be the only one that will save him (which proves that this remedy would be applied by a state-measure, for certainly neither the invalid (that is France) nor her representatives, would be consulted, to make her take a remedy which is hateful to her); when, we say, that all these things, printed by authority, are read, can we be surprised at the alarm of all men who are friends of liberty, or even of order and justice?

These alarms are ill founded, that is my conviction; but it is not those who are tormented by them, who are to be reproached with having conceived them. The fault, or rather the crime of it, belongs to men who rend the air with their ferocious cries; to those indefatigable informers, to those calumniators of their country and countrymen, to those dealers in tyranny, who congratulate themselves at the disquietude of power, in the hope that, it will become as barbarous as themselves; "to those men, who never saw any thing suspicious that they did not pronounce culpable, accused without demanding the life, nor condemned without applauding the punishment, and without stifling with the howlings of their rage the sighs of misfortune.'

1 " Tears perhaps already fall for the victims that are confined in secret. Let us bless the age of light, in which we are also permitted to be afflicted publicly for innocent conspirators." Journals of the 7th September, 1820. Certainly if those in custody are culpable they merit all the severity of the law; but until they are convicted shall we be forbidden to interest ourselves in their sufferings? There is, in the irritation against pity, a ferocity for which there is no excuse. This regret, that we are publicly allowed to feel for persons perhaps innocently accused, is so ferocious and ignoble a sentiment, that we must go back to the executioners of 1793, to find its equal. Before the 5th of September, indeed, we were not permitted to feel. A woman was taken up at Lyons for having had the audacity to be sorry for a man condemned by the Prevotal court (Journals of the 20th March, 1816.) For the rest they do nothing less in 1820, than persist in their characters of 1815. When, after our reverses five years ago, foreigners killed the countrymen who took up arms for the defence of the territory, they printed these words: When the country-people are met in arms, the order of the merit of banditti is put about their necks, and they are hanged up to the first tree they come to. When the protestants were massacred at Nîmes, they began their mutilated account of these events in the following terms: For some days past, the Buonapartists (those who had just been murdered as Buonapartists,) affected a malicious joy. VOL. XVIII. NO. XXXV.

Pam.

H

Here a, comparison presents itself, and I feel no inclination to withhold it.

Since anarchy has ceased to exist, since the iron yoke which succeeded to anarchy has been broken, since we thought we could perceive the dawn of a free constitution, that bond of the human species exists only in one party.

If a proof of it is required I will give it.

In 1818 also, the noise of a conspiracy having been discovered was spread over France, but the accused were in custody.-Nothing was known, about the conspiracy but the accused were in custody. Their object was, it was said, to overthrow the Charter, to destroy our new institutions, to massacre their principal defenders, and to replace the nation of slaves, under the empire of an unlimited power. They were falsely accused; this I admit without difficulty, but their innocence was not proved, and they languished in dungeons.

What did those who are called Liberals then do? They demanded the most scrupulous justice for these accused; they protested against secret torture-against the iniquity of prolonged detentions. They forgot political divisions, to invoke the natural laws and socialI guarantees. They were not seen to excommunicate the persons detained, to outstep the rigor of the tribunals, to require the violation of forms, to demand, like dogs thirsty for blood, that no scruple might be made about a few suspected persons, that all those might be attainted without examination, and without proof, whom hatred pointed out as chiefs or accomplices, or only as having favored the conspiracy by their secret wishes."

See the sundry numbers of the Minerva, at the time of the conspiracy in June, 1818.

2 I shall propose a question here to all my readers, which I invite them to solve. In one of those addresses to which I allude, and which I persist, in thinking suppositious, are the following words: "What! A sect for ever impious and regicide would haughtily dictate principles subversive of all society! Its preachers, its chiefs, should be known; all Europe should point them out, and however they may dare to hope that some obscure instrument would alone be struck with the sword which God has put into the hands of your Majesty, for the safety of your immense family. No, Sire; this will never be.” The Censorship allowed these phrases to be inserted in all their Journals. Now I ask if, after the discovery of the pretended conspiracy in the month of June, 1818, thé Liberals had addressed the King in these terms: A sect, connected with foreign powers, inimical to all the principles which Your Majesty has professed since 1788, eager to strip the nation of all the rights which Your Majesty has granted, would haughtily dictate maxims subversive of all constitutional liberty, and destructive of the Charter-Your Majesty's finest work--its supporters, its chiefs, should be known; all Europe should point them out, and however they may dare to hope that only some obscure instruments would be struck by the sword which God has put into your Majesty's

What they did not do then, what every one of them would have blushed at as a crime, their adversaries do in our day. Let France compare and judge.

I return to my subject.

The cause of the agitation of which the Ministry likes to complain is altogether in the conduct of that Ministry. If they had respected the principles of the Charter, the extravagant solicitations of a faction without power would only have excited contempt. Had they allowed the truth to be known, alarming reports would not have occupied, in credulous minds, the place refused to truth, If they had not possessed themselves of the Censorship, a free discussion would have restored tranquillity, by showing the absurdity of the sophisms and the weakness of the really factious. If at length, having invested themselves with the Censorship, they had so profited by the first error as to draw from it at least a reasonable course; if in imposing silence on some, they had not tolerated or favored license in others, their despotism might have been blamed, but a last hope would have been placed in their impartiality.)

They have taken an opposite course, a course entirely against their real interest. If France is unquiet and agitated they alone are the cause.

Buta party, the Ministers continue, are meditating the overthrow of the dynasty. I do not give an opinion upon this fact. I could deny it; a few men, preoccupied with regret or personal affections, do not form a party; however I will allow my adversaries to flatter themselves though my politeness. I shall not cavil with them about their words, but I shall say, the party you mention, separate from those who appear to join it from other motives, is it the majority of the nation? Certainly not. Those whom you call Liberals, do they partake of their desires and enter into their views? They have a

hands for the safety of your immense family.-No, Sire; this will never be. If the Liberals, I say, had taken the liberty of thus imposing laws of blood, and proscription on the throne, would not a cry of horror resound from one end of France to the other, and would the Censorship of 1818 have tolerated the insertion of these sanguinary declamations? the position, however, was exactly the same. Men were accused of having endeavored to attack the Charter, others were suspected of favoring these attempts, as in these times some men are accused of having conspired, and others suspected of being in the bottom of their hearts favorable to conspiracy. But the Censorship would have objected, and with reason, that the accused who were not convicted, the suspected who were not accused,'ought not to be the butt of insinuations as illegal as they were ungenerous.-Between 1818 and 1820, there is the difference of a constitutional regime and a regime which a Minister has himself characterised as arbitrary]; and between the Censorship of these two epochs their is the interval which separates from instruments devoted to a faction, functionaries charged with a difficult task, which they executed to the best of their ability.

hundred times declared to you the contrary, and their interest is a guarantee for their good faith. These Liberals ask for very simple things;-that every innocent person may sleep in peace; that every citizen may give his opinion, without being liable to answer for it; that the most precious of man's possessions, his belief, may not be threatened with a return of intolerance, more or less artfully disguised; that no one may have cause to fear arbitrary principles in the government agents, partiality in any judges, who are not his natural ones; vexations, inequalities, insolence of office, in the career in which every one ought to be permitted to unfold his powers, and reap the benefit of them. These demands are just, they are easy to be granted; being granted they would disperse all the symptoms which alarm you Have we obtained them under our anterior government? No Why then do we expect to see those governments reappear which have not given us what we desired? Were we more fortunate whilst the storms of the revolution raged around us? No. Why then do we meditate a revolution whose explosion would be terrible, and whose end unknown? Taking all things into consideration, are not governments better than revolutions, and for that reason, still remembering that we take every thing into our view, is not an ancient government better than modern one? for it spares the cost of revolutions, costs which a nation pays but with regret, and of which they lament the cause.

But if the demands which I have mentioned were refused, the pretended party, which you dread, would not then be the cause of the danger. This danger would be your work, and the triumph of this party, if it took place, would be only the effect of it-If you create yourself a host of enemies, however diverse and dissimilar may be the private sentiments of these enemies, they will be united in appearance, and will think themselves united in reality, for this simple reason, that a general discontent will remove them from your banners. Then probably the most violent will become chiefs, in spite of the rest. If what you say is true, the former have a fixed object, a positive interest. They will, in consequence, be stronger than those who have only opinions and principles. This will be an evil, a very great evil, but the fault will be yours alone, although the inconvenience may fall on all France. Conspiracies are plotting, you still say. I have no information on the reality of those you pretend to have discovered. If it is necessary to announce my opinion, I shall say, that I am induced to believe that no party conspires in France, in the strict sense of the Conspiracies are difficult, when secrecy is impossible. They murmur, they threaten, they create insurrection. But almost always every thing is public, unforeseen, and instantaneous. Nothing is long in preparation.-Conspiracies of every complex

word.

ion, with which we have for so many years been fatigued, have only, I believe, been the consequence of this miserable system of see-saw, which tended to strengthen one party to oppose the other, and which required in the sequel some accusation against the party which was thought to have been too much strengthened, which might weaken it. Besides, I recollect that the accused of the black pin were presented to us as conspirators, and it was dicovered that there had been instigating agents and no conspiracy in this process of the black pin. 1 I also remember that a great conspiracy was announced at Lyons, in 1817; that it was more than announced, that the tears of families are not yet dried up, and six months after the then Ministers, amongst whom was one of our present Ministers, caused to be printed by functionaries whom they did not disown, that the real conspiracy consisted in having imagined one. I shall wait then to see what you will say of the present conspiracy a year hence.

I

But if there are conspiracies, do you know from whence they come? The cause of them is that your perpetual accusations give to France, in spite of herself, a doleful feeling of instability. You denounce hidden, powerful, dangerous, factions; but if there is a faction, you encourage it by persuading it that it has allies. The writers which your Censorship approves solicit State-measures. Opinion translates their high flown phrases, and knows very well what they mean; bold strokes, state-measures are illegal resources. When power has recourse to them, it is because the regular resources fail. It is then but one force, another force may break it; thus every thing appears uncertain, shaken, and precarious. You like malevolence, you unite timidity with it. Will you then never feel the immense advantage which a courageous perseverance in the respect for legal order would give you? You would throw upon your enemies the odium of the violation of tutelary forms. By imitating them you lose your distinguishing character and your happy pre-eminence. When the factious attack you, their arms are equal to yours, their protestations are identic, they and you equally speak of the general interest, the public good, the

'Almost all the conspiracies with which we are entertained, I am bold to say may be explained by these few words, which I borrow from a pamphlet that I have cited above.—“It would be absurd to think that it would be possible to organise a conspiracy, to induce it where no ingredients for it exist; but the events which appear extraordinary may be thus explained. Advantage is taken of the hostile disposition of some minds, of sume imprudent words, to stir up a discontented part of the population by the means of secret devoted agents; and thus men only discontent or inconsiderate are transformed into conspirators. (M. Choppin d'Arnouville's Pamphlet, on the Elections of the Isere, page 8.)