measures, in the execution of which their hearty and energetic co-operation was required, like the rest of the public, from the announcement in the official journal. Instead of making sure of the persons of those likely to take a leading part in a popular movement, if it had but been by means of an efficient surveillance; instead of making provision for the employment and support of the masses of workmen whom it was in the power of the rich manufacturers to discharge, and thereby to throw in a state of idleness and discontent into the general ferment, it was thought sufficient to have the playbills altered, so as to exclude performances likely to lead to political allusions and applications, and to keep the gates of the Palais Royal closed. The military, instead of being brought to act decisively in a body, were thrown in among the people in small detachments, and had time and opportunity afforded them for fraternizing with the insurgent population, while, at the same time, they were left exposed in the most cruel manner to hunger and thirst, by a total neglect in the victualling department. The subordinate agents, too, were ill chosen and ill directed. The measures of coercion against the journals were tardily and feebly enforced; so much so, that the fate of the kingdom hung for several hours upon the refusal of a journeyman locksmith to execute the orders of the police. The chief of the police of Paris, Prefect Mangin, after writing a few insignificant reports to the minister, made out a passport for himself under a false name, and decamped for Brussels early on the 29th; and Marshal Marmont, to whom the military command was entrusted, negotiated with those against whom it was his duty to have fought. The whole action of the executive was paralyzed at the very moment when it ought to have displayed all its powers with promptitude, energy, and firmness. From this reproach nothing that M. de Polignac alleges in his book can clear him; he planned a counter-revolution, but he had neither the sagacity nor the courage to carry it out; and all that he achieved, therefore, was to provoke to the uttermost the resentments of the liberal party and the populace.

But while historical truth requires this to be stated, it is not to be forgotten that M. de Polignac was forced into the position in which he found himself, by the infatuated old king, towards whom his loyalty knew no bounds; and that while he appears to have intended a speedy return to a regular system of government, looking upon the dictatorship assumed by the ordinances as upon quite a transient measure, he meant all along to confine himself within the strictest limits of legality. On this point he makes a triumphant defence, clearly proving, out of the mouths and by the acts of the opposite party, that the 14th article of the

Charter, upon which the ordinances were founded, justified them in a legal point of view. We select, from the passages given by M. de Polignac, two which are remarkable, as coming from two of the ministers of the new dynasty. On the 29th of December, 1830, it appears that M. Guizot, in a speech addressed to the Chamber of Deputies, expressed himself on this point as follows:

"When the Charter appeared in 1814, what did the power do? It took care to set down in the preamble the word octroyé, "granted," and in the text, the 14th Article, which conferred the right of making ordinances for the safety of the State; that is to say, the power attributed to itself a right anterior to the Charter and independent of it; in other words, a sovereign, constituent, and absolute power."-Polignac, Etudes Historiques, p. 338, note.

Still more decided, as to the legality of the ordinances, and the essentially illegal character of the constitutional changes effected by the July revolution, is the language of the Duke de Broglie, in the Chamber of Deputies, on the 5th of January, 1833:

"Thus, in spite of the Charter and the laws, we expelled, in 1830, an irresponsible sovereign; and afterwards we banished for ever the members of his family and all their descendants, without having any legal grievance to allege against them; thus we impeached the ministers of Charles X. without authority, and, in the absence of any law, we made one expressly to meet their case, and gave it a retrospective effect." Ibid, p. 339, note.

The most conclusive, however, of all the proofs of the legality of the ordinances, is the fact, that in the revision of the Charter, previous to the accession of Louis-Philippe, the 14th article was actually expunged, on the ground of its leaving in the hands of the crown a power dangerous to the public liberties. M. de Polignac is, therefore, perfectly justified in asserting that it was not a violation of the Charter which cost Charles X. his crown, and endangered the heads of his ministers; they did what it was "lawful" for them to do; but assuredly they also did that which was not "expedient." Whether by other hands and other methods the crisis could have been avoided, is altogether a different question; nay, it seems doubtful whether, even if the royal cause had triumphed during the memorable days of July, it would have been possible to have carried on the government of a country in which principles so essentially hostile to the church and the monarchy had taken such deep root, and risen to such a fearful height of political influence, even in the higher, and

especially in the wealthier classes of society. M. de Polignac himself seems to think, that the most complete success in putting down the riots which ended in revolution, would have left the country in an embarrassing and problematic position; and the whole of his argument goes to show, that sooner or later a conflict between the principle of divine right in Church and State, and the principle of religious neutrality and popular sovereignty, in other words, of infidelity and anarchy, must inevitably have ensued. The origin of this principle he traces back to Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the other leaders of the Reformation, whose advocacy of the right of private judgment was, in his opinion, the first fatal blow inflicted upon the recognition of divine authority either in religion or in politics. He sums up in a kind of pedigree the connexion in which he places the Reformation of the sixteenth century with the revolutionary and atheistical excesses of the eighteenth, inserting between the two, as the intermediate link, the scepticism and indifferentism of the seventeenth century. Of the character of the philosophical school which rose about the middle of the last century, M. de Polignac draws a powerful and, unhappily, not an exaggerated picture :

"Nothing is more easy of proof than the conspiracy of the philosophism of the eighteenth century against the Catholic religion. Its end and its means have been disclosed to us by its disciples. Three of these may in some sort be considered as personifications of different parts of a system adopted by them all. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, by his insidious doubts, his false, vague, and contradictory reasonings, seems to have made it his business to demonstrate the incapacity of the human heart to believe in the truths of the Catholic religion; and, this incapacity being once acknowledged, faith became naturally extinct; a negative cannot form the basis of any religious belief. Voltaire, taking off the mask, attacks religion as a whole and in its details, he persecutes it with his scoffings, pursues it with his slanders, and in his satanic rage pours forth upon it, for want of argument, the gall of ridicule. Lastly, Diderot, more impetuous than the other two, sounding withal the note of victory before the end of the combat, sums up together the consequences of the philosophical system, of which he is the Séïde, and preaches materialism, which he represents as the sublimation of human reason; but he was several years in advance of the events of his age; his voice, more prophetic than those of his friends, was not at first listened to with the same favour. And how indeed was it possible that in an intelligent nation that wretched axiom, the sum of all the philosophical principles of the fiery encyclopædist, could find acceptance, that "between man and his dog dress makes the only difference??" Besides, Diderot was misWhen man degrades himself so far as to sink into materialism,

taken.

2 The Life of Seneca, by Diderot.

it is not the peaceful instinct of the animal, which is the symbol of fidelity, that guides him; the rage of the tiger devours his soul. Proofs of this assertion will not be wanting.

"If the hatred of this impious sect was in appearance directed. chiefly against the Catholic religion, the reason is, that it well knew that the downfall of that religion, had it been possible, must have drawn after it the overthrow of every other religion; but notwithstanding the feigned patronage which the philosophers condescended to bestow, on certain occasions, on the Protestant doctrines, they were not in fact less the enemies of Protestantism than of Catholicism. All authority, of whatever kind, every check imposed upon the passions of man was hateful to them; whether the authority were religious, moral, or political, their object was to annihilate it altogether. We have only to listen to their principal adepts; they will inform us of the sentiments and projects of their sect.

"These regenerators of society will teach us, in matters of religion, that the immortality of the soul is a mere barbarous and pernicious dogma, which leads to despair, and is incompatible with all legislation; that the soul is not a being distinct from the body;' that the God of the Jews and Christians is nothing more than a chimera and a phantom; that they are tired of being told that twelve men were sufficient to establish Christianity, and that they mean to prove that one is sufficient to destroy it; having further in their impiety designated the Saviour of the world by the term l'infâme, they will be found encouraging each other in crushing l'infáme, rejoicing together over the contempt into which, as they say, l'infâme has fallen with all respectable people throughout Europe, and congratulating themselves on the speedy advent of the time, when cobblers, servant-girls and the canaille will be the only people that will still believe in the religion of Christ.

"In point of morality they will teach us, that the ideas of justice and injustice, of virtue and vice, of glory and infamy, are purely arbitrary, and dependent on habit; that self-interest is the only and universal test of the merit of men's actions; that the law which condemns married persons to live together after they have ceased to love each other, is a barbarous and cruel law; that the command laid upon children to love their parents, is a matter of education rather than of nature; that remorse is nothing more than the anticipation of the physical pains to which crime exposes us, and that a man who is above the law, commits without repentance the dishonest action which is useful to him.

"Furthermore, with a view to overturn the order of society established in Europe, they will teach us, that the true monarchy is nothing more than a constitution invented for the purpose of corrupting the morals of the people and enslaving them; that if the authority of kings comes from God, it is in the same way as the diseases and plagues which afflict human kind; that kings are the chief hangmen of their subjects; that force and stupidity are the only origin of their thrones. One of them, apostrophising the kings, is heard to exclaim; You tigers, deified by

other tigers, do you really think that you shall attain unto immortality?' And lastly, another indulges himself with a public expression of the wish to see the last of kings strangled with the entrails of the last of priests.'"-Polignac, Etudes Historiques, pp. 46–49.

All this mass of blasphemy, immorality, and rebellion, M. de Polignac shows, in a note in the appendix, to be faithfully compiled from the original writings of the philosophers themselves; and very justly argues that the sanguinary and brutal scenes of the French revolution were nothing more than the practical exemplification of those horrible doctrines. But M. de Polignac loses sight of an important fact, which it is not likely that he would notice, but which must be kept in view, in order to form a correct estimate of the primary causes which led ultimately to results so deplorable. He attributes, as we have seen, the rise of this vile and infidel philosophy to the Reformation; and on this point we differ from him toto cœlo. We are not at all disposed to underrate the mischief which the principle of private judgment, asserted by some of the foreign reformers in all its crudity and arrogance, has caused in weakening men's faith in, and submission to, God's word and ordinance. We are aware that that principle, so asserted, leads of necessity to schism, and experience has abundantly proved, that schism, if it does not begin, invariably ends in heresy and unbelief. Yet even for this mischief we hold the Church of Rome to be responsible in the last instance, because it was she who by her corruptions, and her pertinacity in adhering to them, provoked the excesses into which the spirit of the Reformation, essentially a religious and a holy spirit, was betrayed. But in a far more direct manner do we hold the Church of Rome chargeable with the blasphemies and abominations which M. de Polignac has so forcibly condensed. It was not from Protestant communions, not from Protestant seats of learning, that the race of infidel philosophers sprang: they issued from the bosom of the Romish Church; the very chiefest among them was the disciple of the Jesuits, brought up in their learning and morality. And no wonder that the boundaries which divide right and wrong had no sanctity in his eyes. We have only to scan the moral theology of the Jesuits, and we shall find there, along with the infamous doctrine of probable opinions, the seed and the justification of all the enormities of which the philosophers of the eighteenth century were guilty in matters of religion, of morality, and of social order3. All the landmarks of the divine law, whether revealed or written

3 In proof of this the reader need only compare the specimens of the casuistic theology of the Jesuits, given in vol. v. of the English Review, pp. 72-81.