emergencies and the provisions of the Charter, the sole obstacle to its beneficial operation: it was, in four particulars, unhappily defective. First, it contained nothing to prevent arbitrary imprisonment, or to determine the period, during which a person under arrest might be detained without trial. Secondly, no attempt was made to limit the oppression of the police-a set of civil functionaries, who impose such excessive and needless restraints on human action, that their official existence may safely be deemed incompatible with true freedom. Thirdly, the Cham ber of Peers, instead of being composed of great proprietors, hereditary in their functions, respectable from their fortunes, or illustrious from their descent, was, for the most part, made up of salaried officials, who enjoyed their seats for life. Fourthly, no provision was made for the establishment of the Church, or for public instruction on an adequate basis; but the teachers in both departments were left to languish, in the obscurity and indigence bequeathed to them by the perfidy and rapacity of the Revolution.

But great as were the embarrassments attendant on the forming of the Constitution, a still more difficult task was to provide for the destitute multitudes, which the Revolution had left in France; to reconcile their conflicting interests, and calm their furious passions. Restoration is always a work of peril and uncertainty: Henry IV. perished under it; James II. fled from its dangers; and it is no wonder that the feeble dy. nasty of the Bourbons was unequal to its achievement. The public joy at their return to France, was equally general and sincere; for it had its rise in a sense of relief from impending and insupportable evils. But when those evils passed away; when the allied armies no longer burdened the country; when the conscription ceased to tear families asunder, and France was left alone with her monarch, her losses and her humiliation, the bitterness of the change bowed the nation to the earth. Entire classes, and those too the most powerful and important, were a prey to secret alarm or sullen discontent. The holders of the national domains, several millions in number, endured the greatest anxiety: the government had indeed guarantied the possession of their estates, but the government had not been a participant of the iniquity by which their property was acquired. They felt the same uneasiness at the restoration of the legitimate authority, that the holders of stolen property feel at the approach of the officers of justice. The regicides, and those who were implicated in the actual crimes of the Revolution, experienced still greater apprehension: the unqualified amnesty of the Charter could not remove their disquietude: conscience told them that they deserved punishment; and the fact of the Restoration was a daily act of impeachment against them. The army, too, was in despair: defeated in the field; driven back into France; humiliated in the sight of Europe; the soldiers had now the additional mortification, of being disbanded and condemned to inactivity. The wandering life of camps, the excitement of battle, the joys of the bivouac, the terrors of the breach, the contributions from provinces, the plunder of cities, were theirs no longer; and they found themselves scattered over the territories of France, without employment or the means of support.

The penury of the government was another serious evil of this embarrassing period. The Tuileries were besieged from morning till night by clamorous crowds, composed of men divided from each other in principle

as widely as the poles are asunder, but uniting in one loud and importunate cry for employment or relief from the king: one half were Royalists demanding compensation for the losses they had sustained during the Revolution, or a reward for the fidelity with which they had adhered to the cause of the exiled monarch and aided his return; the other, dignitaries and officials of the Imperial régime, who had been deprived of all by the overthrow of Napoleon and the contraction of the dominions of the Empire. The necessities of the troops were still more urgent. Eight months' pay was due to them, and ten months' to the commissaries and civil administrators. To meet these demands, Louis XVIII. had an exhausted treasury, a diminished territory, and a bankrupt people. The taxes and requisitions of the last two years of Napoleon's reign, had been so enormous, that the provinces which bore the brunt of war were unable to endure any imposts whatever; indeed, such was the general impoverishment of the country, the total arrears for the same period amounted to no less than thirteen hundred millions of francs; and while, by the most rigid economy, the government could not reduce its annual expenditures below eight hundred and thirty millions of francs, the income did not exceed five hundred and twenty millions; and even this sum was obtained with the greatest difficulty, and by adding one-third to the direct taxes. The genius of Sully and the firmness of Pitt united, could scarcely have made head with such means against such difficulties; and it may well be imagined that Louis and his ministers were unequal to the task. Striving to please both parties, they gained the confidence of neither. They had not power or vigor enough to take a decided stand, and yet possessed sufficient confidence in their legitimate title to hazard a perilous one. Their system was to retain in their employment all the Imperial functionaries, civil and military, and indeed to make no change in the nation but by the substitution of a king for an Emperor, and the introduction of a few leading royalists into the cabinet. They hoped thus to secure the power of the Revolution, by injuring none of its interests: but they forgot that mankind are governed by desires, passions, and prejudices, as well as by selfish considerations; and that Napoleon had so long succeeded in governing the Empire, only because while, in deeds, he sedulously attended to the interests of the Revolution, he carefully, in words and forms, flattered its principles. The capital error of the Bourbons lay in this: that while they wholly depended on the physical forces of the Revolution, they made no attempt to disguise their aversion to its .enets; and that, without endeavoring to establish any adequate counter. poise to its power, they irrevocably alienated its supporters.

They abolished the national colors, the object of even superstitious veneration to the French soldiery, and replaced them with the white flag of the monarchy; they changed the numbers of the regiments, thus confusing or destroying the recollections connected with many fields of fame, and reducing those which had fought at Rivoli, or Austerlitz, to a level with a newly-raised corps. When the tri-color standards were ordered to be given up, the veterans of many regiments burned them and preserved their ashes: the officers generally secreted the eagles, and the men hid the tri-color cockades in their knapsacks. The designations of the superior officers were changed: generals of brigade were denominated marshals of the camp; and generals of division, lieutenant-generals. Catholic and Protestant soldiers were alike compelled to go to mass, to confess

and to communicate. The Imperial Guard, which in the first instance was intrusted with the service of the Tuileries, was soon removed, and its place was supplied by troops from Switzerland and La Vendée. Six companies of gardes-du-corps and several red companies of guards were organized-in short, the military splendor of Louis XV. was revived at court, and these new troops, in their yet unsullied uniforms, supplanted the veterans of France in the honorary service of attendance on the palace. The civil regulations of the new government, though not so important n themselves as those relating to the military administration, were not less material in their ultimate effects; for they exposed the court to attacks which in Parisian society are more fatal than any other-those of ridicule. An ordinance of the police prohibited labor on the Sabbath; and this regulation, though expressly enjoined by religion and loudly called for by the interests of the working-classes, became the object of unmeasured obloquy, because it circumscribed the pleasures or the gains of an unbelieving and selfish generation. The restoring of the forms and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic service in the chapel of the Tuileries not only excited the ridicule, but also awakened the fears of a revolutionary people, who regarded these rites as the remnants of an exploded superstition. Female animosity, too, added its bitter venom to the many other causes that influenced the general discontent: the ladies of the new noblesse were daily exposed to the cutting sarcasms of those of the ancient régime; and not one of the marshals' wives or the duchesses of the Empire was placed in the Royal household. The revival of the ancient Orders, especially that of St. Louis, gave rise to a rumor that the Legion of Honor was about to be superseded; and the excitement on this subject became so great, that the king found it necessary to issue a public denial of entertaining such a project. In fact, the civil government of the Restoration, while in all essential particulars favorable to the interests of the Revolution, had nevertheless in language, form and ceremony, introduced the most antiquated and offensive features of the monarchy: and the French had discernment enough to see that, in the intoxication of success, words and forms betrayed the secret thoughts, and that acts favorable to revolutionary principles were adopted only from state necessity.

The general exasperation rose at length to such a pitch, that the Imperialists on the one hand, and the disappointed adherents of the monarchy on the other, buried their mutual animosities and antipathies, in order to decry every measure of the government. The celebration of a solemn and touching funeral service to the memory of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the Princess Elizabeth, was denounced as the commencement of hostilities against the Revolutionists: the exhumation of the remains of several Vendéan and Chouan leaders, and their interment in consecrated ground, was considered a proof of deplorable superstition: the reduction in the numbers and emoluments of persons employed in the public departments-rendered unavoidable by the insolvency of the nation-was styled a wanton attack on the glory of the Empire: even the restitution to their rightful owners of the confiscated national domains, so far as they had not been disposed of, combined with a proposal to indemnify the surviving victims of the Revolution, and the disabled soldiers of the Empire, was pronounced by all the disaffected to be partial and oppressive.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

CONGRESS OF VIENNA. NAPOLEON'S FINAL STRUGGLE.

WHILE the French government was vainly striving to close the wounds, and mitigate the sufferings induced by the Revolution, negotiations for the adjustment of the affairs of Europe had commenced, and were yet in progress at Vienna.

It was originally intended, that the congress of Vienna should begin its deliberations on the 27th of July; but the visit of the allied sovereigns to England, and their subsequent return to their own capitals, caused a postponement until the 25th of September. Among the members of this assemblage were, the Emperor of Russia, the Kings of Prussia, Bavaria, Denmark and Wirtemberg, Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, Talleyrand, Metternich, and many other persons of distinction from the lesser European states. These personages maintained in appearance the most amicable and confidential relations; yet it was easy to perceive that their views were widely dissimilar, and that the removal of common danger, and the division of common spoil had produced their usual effect, dissension among the victors.

The first difficulty arose from a dispute as to the right of precedence among the several states represented; but this was readily settled by a happy expedient of Alexander, who recommended an alphabetical ar. rangement, in conformity to which the members should subscribe their names. A more serious difficulty next occurred; a question, namely, which of the states should in their own right, as principals, take part in the deliberations. The representatives of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Great Britain, wished to dispose of the territories wrested from Napoleon and his allies, before entering into conferences with France and Spain. Talleyrand and the Spanish plenipotentiary resisted this desire, and strove to show that the treaty of Chaumont had, in effect, ceased with the accomplishment of its objects; and that France, at least, should be admitted to a full participation in the proceedings. Lord Castlereagh and Metternich, who early perceived the necessity of a counterpoise to the preponderating influence of Russia, supported Talleyrand's request; and it was eventually agreed, that all questions before the congress should be submitted to a committee of ministers from the four allied powers just mentioned, together with those from France, Spain, Portugal and Sweden: the Cardinal Gonzalvi, from the court of Rome, was afterward added to the number.

Under this arrangement, severai important measures were concluded by unanimous approval. Belgium and Holland were joined together, under the title of the Netherlands; Sweden and Norway were also united; Hanover, with a considerable accession of territory taken from Westphalia, was restored to the King of England; Lombardy was again placed under the rule of Austria; and Savoy, under that of Piedmont. But the affairs of Poland, Saxony, and Genoa, led to serious dissensions. Alexander insisted, that the Grand-duchy of Warsaw should be ceded to Russia, as an indemnity for her losses and sacrifices during the war; and Prussia, being as well from gratitude as position under the influence of

her powerful neighbor, seconded the views of the Czar; and proposed, on condition of obtaining Saxony and an indemnity on the Rhine for herself, to cede the southern provinces of Poland to Russia. France, Austria and England, however, opposed these sweeping annexations of territory to the northern powers. Independent of the obvious peril to the other European states which would be incurred, by adding the greater part of Poland to Russia, and extending Prussia to the Elbe and the Rhine, Lord Castlereagh bjected to these proposals, as contrary to the great principles of justice on which the war against Napoleon had been maintained. Metternich and Talleyrand adopted the same views; and here Alexander lost patience. He anticipated opposition from England and Austria, but he was unprepared for such a line of policy on the part of France. He openly charged Louis XVIII. with ingratitude, and manifested his displeasure to Talleyrand without reserve: he also entered into communication with Eugene Beauharnois, espoused the cause of Murat against France as touching the crown of Naples, and spoke of the unfitness of the elder branch of the House of Bourbon for the throne; and averred, that a revolution might yet put the sceptre into the hands of the House of Orleans.

But these divisions were not long confined to mere expressions of illhumor; acts of great moment followed angry words, and all parties prepared for war. Alexander sent orders to halt his armies in Poland on their return to Russia; Hardenberg declared that Prussia would not relinquish Saxony, and the cabinet of Berlin at once put their troops on a war footing; while the Grand-Duke Constantine, at that time in command of Alexander's forces, prepared the soldiers by proclamations on the one hand, and strict discipline on the other, to take the field and renew the contest without loss of time. Nor were the other powers idle: they, too, hastened their preparations for resuming hostilities; and while a congress assembled for the pacification of the world was professedly deliberating on the means of accomplishing that object, the various sovereigns therein represented, were maintaining a million of men in arms for the purpose of mutual destruction.

The differences were at length brought to a crisis, by the conclusion of a secret treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, between Austria, France, and England, on the 3rd of February, 1815. By this compact it was stipulated, that the contracting parties should act disinterestedly and in concert to carry into effect the treaty of Paris: that each, to support the others and the common cause, should maintain in the field a hundred and fifty thousand men. The Kings of Hanover, Bavaria, and Piedmont, were invited to join the coalition, which they immediately did; so that, in effect, the forces of Western and Southern Europe were arrayed against Russia and Prussia. The parties to this treaty took great pains to keep its existence secret; nevertheless, it soon transpired to a certain extent, and had an immediate effect in modifying the views of the refractory powers. Metternich now took a bolder tone, and his intervention was decisive. Russia agreed to relinquish several districts of Poland, and Prussia avowed her determination to be satisfied with a portion of Saxony on the right bank of the Elbe.

The adjustment of this difficulty enabled the congress to dispatch in detail, matters of secondary consequence. The Germanic States were united in one confederacy, bound to afford mutual support in case of external attack, and to be directed by a Diet, in which Austria and Prussia