THE great French Revolution, which first outwardly manifested itself in 1789, and which has since been gradually working out its final results, has suddenly assumed a new phase; once more the people have asserted their rights, and for the third time a Bourbon king seeks safety in flight from Paris. Since the first assembling of the tiers etat there have been eight governments. In 1789, that of the National or Constituent Assembly, which lasted three years, to October, 1791; the Legislative Assembly succeeded, and was prolonged five years, to October, 1795; the Council of the Ancients and of Four Hundred under the Directory three years, to the Consulate of the year 1799, which lasted five years, to May, 1804; the Empire sustained itself 11 years, to June, 1815; the restoration of Louis XVIII. 10 years, to 1824; Charles X. retained his seat six years, to July, 1830; and Louis Philippe struggled on 17 years, to February, 1848. These eight distinct governments have only been various features in the struggle for power, while the great mass of the French nation have been rapidly improving in the elements of self-government. The excesses committed at their first awakening, in 1789, from the lethargy of centuries of oppression, and which gave their enemies such advantage over them, were the wild but not unnatural outburst of an uninstructed populace that had suddenly been emancipated from a state of extreme degradation, and which had innumerable grievances to suppress and wrongs to avenge. Such a people, maddened by the paid emissaries of England, who concocted plots and spread alarm, in order to incite to those outrages, of which they did not fail to avail themselves and to denounce as the legitimate results of popular government, were the victims of the wily despots that surrounded them. The danger of a return to such a state of things scarcely now exists. The people of France have become wiser through long experience, and the gradually increasing wealth and importance of the lower classes have raised them nearer to a level with the bourgeoise, or middle classes, and, as it were, amalgamated the interests of these two classes, while the aristocracy has ceased to exist, and the influence of the court dwindled to the circle of its pecuniary dependants. At the outbreak of the revolution in 1789, the old feudal aristocracy and the hierarchy were in full possession of the land and of their privileges as landlords. These

privileges consisted in exemption from direct taxes; the dispensation of justice in manorial courts, with innumerable rights in respect to game, mills, &c. The rental of most of the estates consisted of services and feudal tenures, through the influence of which individual industry was nearly exterminated. The country inhabitants were in fact in a state of predial slavery, and while the nobility and clergy threw upon the people all the expense of court and government, they monopolised all situations of power and emolument. Without a patent of nobility no man could hold a civil or military office. Each noble was in his own circle a petty tyrant, and the peasantry were delivered over without appeal or protection from the government to his tender mercies. That these people should have cherished the most determined hatred of these petty tyrants, and that the long arrears should have been settled in one bloody burst of vengeance, is no matter of surprise.

Two events resulted from that revolution, productive of lasting, radical and progressive change in the government. The aristocracy was destroyed, and the land passing into the hands of the people without entail or law of primogeniture, became continually subdivided. Instead of being possessed by a few lords it is owned by independent occupiers. These two circumstances of necessity made France a republic. Napoleon alone seems correctly to have appreciated the real state of affairs when he declared,

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The destruction of the aristocracy had proved fatal to all subsequent efforts for establishing a constitutional monarchy in France. The revolution had attempted the solution of a problem as impossible as the direction of balloons. An aristocracy Is the true support of the throne-ite moderator, its lever, its fulcrum. The state without it is a vessel without a rudder, a balloon in the air.-(Las Cases.")

Napoleon himself sought, under the empire, to form a new aristocracy around him, by making dukes, princes, or counts of his soldiers. The thing was entirely artificial and would not work. Even under his military rule the progress of the people in intelligence and wealth, which is the element of their power, was so rapid as to threaten his dynasty. The people have since continued to make progress. The institutions of the United States, which, in 1789, were scarcely formed, have for 60 years continued to afford them a favorable example of popular government, while there has been no aristocratic body to support the crown in making oppressive and partial laws; for what the crown could not do by itself by force or fraud, it was compelled to depend upon a corrupt plebeian Chamber of Deputies. It had no large and influential class to co-operate with it in its schemes of oppression. In this system, which the English government understands prodigiously well, the power of making the laws belongs exclusively to the members of the aristocracy; public situations, which are the road to honors and to fortune, fall to the share of nobody but those who are vested with the power of making the laws, their children, or relations; and the people, which does the work, is the property in fee of those who have the management of public affairs. The English aristocracy displays great intelligence in the way in which it accomplishes its ends with the working classes. It leaves them all the means for the production of wealth; and every one of the individuals under its influence may choose the business by which he thinks he can get the most. All attempts on the security of individual property, which would only cause capital to disappear and hinder production, are completely put down. The people that work are neither hampered nor disturbed in their labors, but are as free in their industry and their commerce as bees in a hive.

The working classes, however, derive no more advantage in the end from this freedom in their operations, than the bees do from the honey they take

so much pains to make. The higher orders, through the medium of the taxes which they alone have the privilege of laying, soak up the greatest part of the produce, and divide it under different names among the members of their body. To describe the thing properly, the English Parliament performs the office of a pump; it sucks up the wealth produced by the working classes, and turns it over into the hands of the families of the aristocracy. But as it is a machine that has a head and can think, it leaves the working people as much as is necessary for them to go on working.

The English aristocracy allows a certain number of men from the ranks of the people to find their way into the two houses of Parliament; and it is for the interest of its supremacy that it should be so. If the body that makes the laws consisted entirely of the persons for whose advantage the industrious portion of the community is set to work, they might bring their power into peril by demanding of the people more than it was able to pay. The men from among the people who find their way into Parliament, take care to let them know when they are running into any danger. The opposition, in the machine of government, does the duty of the safety-valve in a steamengine. It does not stop the motion; but it preserves the machine, by letting off in smoke the power that otherwise might blow it up.

The exercise of aristocratical power being attached to the possession of great landed property, it is easy to see that younger brothers can have no share in the real estates which may be left by their relatives at their decease. The descendants of an aristocratic family would in fact all sink into the ranks of the common people, if they were to divide what is left by their relations in equal shares. The eldest son therefore keeps to himself all the landed property, to which is attached the exercise of aristocratical power; and then he makes use of this power to get money for his younger brothers, at the expense of the working classes. It is a mistake to imagine that in England all the property of a family in the higher orders goes exclusively to the eldest son. It is true, he takes the landed property, which is exclusively the family estate. But the younger brothers have for their shar rich livings in the church, sinecures or places of some kind which the public is obliged to pay for; and all these are considered as part of the family property as much as the other; for there never can be too much pains taken to impress the fact, that the higher orders consider themselves as having a property, not only in the landed estates which they possess by direct title, but in the working classes besides, on whom they lay taxes as they please, and share the proceeds among themselves.

The higher orders in Great Britain (who must not be confounded with the English people, a people who are at their mercy to take what toll they please,) will never allow the working classes in any country to be their own masters, as long as they can do anything to hinder it. They know very well that their own power over the working classes in the countries under their control will never be out of danger of being disputed, till the working classes in all other countries, too, are made the property of a family or of a

caste.

France was without a body whose own interests ran thus in unison with those of the crown, as well under the Restoration as under Charles X. and the government of July; she was but a democracy with an hereditary head, continually striving to return to absolute despotism. The Polignac Ministry, in 1829-30, made too great and determined strides, and the people were aroused. The king looked around for support and there was none to help him. His safety was in flight only, and the crown was bestowed on the Orleans dynasty, mainly through the agency of two elements of popular power, the great mass of the people themselves remaining inactive. These were the Press and the

National Guard. A free press and a bad government are utterly incompatible. The nature, object and essence of the press is, by free discussion, to elicit truth and ascertain and develope public opinion upon all subjects of public interest. Where the government seeks to conceal the truth and act in opposition as well to the opinions as to the interests of the people, it cannot tolerate freedom of the press. Since the revolution of 1789, no government had been bold enough to deprive the successive constitutions of the principle of the freedom of the press, and yet there is not one of those governments that, by virtue of laws regulating the press, has not deprived it of its freedom. Charles X. on succeeding to power courted popularity by abolishing, as the first act of his reign, the censorship of the press. The last act of his reign was its re-establishment. The press gathered strength when its trammels were relaxed, and it gave the signal, and became the main instrument, aided by the National Guard, in the overthrow of the old dynasty. The National Guard is an institution peculiar to France. The corps originated as early as the twelfth century, during the feudal oppression under Louis le Gros. The powerful barons robbed freely the towns and villages which the weak government could not protect. The burgesses, therefore, organised companies of hommes d'armes for their own protection. The king soon saw the efficiency of these corps as a means of reducing the rebellious vassals of the crown, and they continued for nearly 500 years, until suppressed by Louis XIV. In all that time they were true to the people. In 1789, when the king surrounded himself with foreign bayonets, the National Guard again sprang into existence. It is composed of all the male population between the ages of 20 and 60 years; the number enrolled is over 6,000,000, and the effective force nearly 4,000,000. All the governments were aware that if this force acted at all it must be for the people, of whom they formed the active part. They all strove indirectly to curb and destroy it, and all failed, until Charles X. committed political suicide in 1827, by dissolving it by royal ordinance. This he followed by restoring the censorship of the press, and immediately he was forced to see the policy of retiring to Edinburgh. In July, 1830, the National Guard re-appeared more formidable than ever, under the venerable La Fayette. In common with the people, they had been induced to regard favorably the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, who professed liberal principles, and had steadily opposed the policy of the restoration; they therefore supposed that France would prosper under such a chief, not being, as was supposed, ripe for a republic. They sent a deputation from their body to acknowledge him as king, and rallied round his throne generously and frankly; and the public press, which for the first three months of the new reign remained completely free, gave also a frank support to the new dynasty. The new king had not, however, become fairly seated on his rickety throne, before he began by insidious means to destroy the efficiency of the National Guard-to undermine the liberty of the press, as preliminary steps to curtailing the right of suffrage, and trampling upon the constitution he had just sworn to defend and support. The revolution of July, 1839, sought to re-establish the principles enunciated by the National Assembly of 1799. The object of the revolution, as stated by the venerable La Fayette himself, the bestower of the crown, were as follows:

"The revolution of July, so noble, so pure, so generous, has traced for us all the course we have to follow for the happiness and glory of the country. To reject what the revolution has rejected, to maintain what it seeks to establish, and to perform what it demands, such should be our triple rule of conduct.

"To consolidate, by founding it on the broad basis of the general interests the popular throne, which the revolution is about to re-establish; to destroy monopoly

wherever and in what form soever it may appear, in trade, in public instruction, in public worship, or in the distribution of political power. To insure to every district a bona fide local representation; to the people, the means of subsistence and instruction; to all, the peaceful and legitimate enjoyment of their faculties and their rights. To unravel the chaos of our legislation; to simplify and combine, or expunge the innumerable provisions which have been confusedly handed down to us by the republic, the empire and the restoration.

"To extirpate, by great retrenchments, the hideous disease which the thirst of places and sinecures has engendered. To pursue, in the public expenditure, all reductions compatible with the good of the public service, and above all, with the safety and dignity of the nation; and to aim, in the mode of assessing and proportioning the taxes, at the utmost possible alleviation of the burdens of the working classes."

This was the exposition of the aim of the revolution, as made by the venerable Lafayette, at the head of 5,000,000 National Guards, who had called Louis Philippe to the throne. However ripe France might then have been for a government so liberal, with the exception of England, popular progress had not yet been sufficient in other countries to check the power of the absolute governments. The circumstances in which the new king was placed, go far in mitigation of his villainy, although they cannot redeem the folly of his subsequent conduct. But fifteen years had elapsed since the bayonets of coalesced Europe had forced upon France the elder branch of the Bourbons; but eight years had elapsed since the Congress of Laybach; and the soldiers whom France had sent at the behest of the Holy Alliance to put down a popular movement at Cadiz. had scarcely returned, when this popular movement of France changed its dynasty, and placed upon the throne one who derived his title from the people, in place of being the creature of the Holy Alliance. That respectable body did not look on with indifference. All the foreign ambassadors in Paris, including Lord Stuart, the representative of England, protested, in the name of their governments, against the usurpation, and threatened him with a new invasion of the country if he accepted the crown at that juncture. Nothing saved the new government but the attitude of the English people in favor of France and reform. The enthusiasm in favor of the revolution alone prevented the ministry from entering anew into that holy alliance from which they professed to have withdrawn in 1823 under Canning. Louis Philippe, himself, was in an awful "fix." He began by calling heaven and earth to witness that he had taken no part in the revolution; that his sole motive in taking the cursed crown was solely to reduce the people to obedience, and then return it to Charles X. This was publicly announced by the Duke Mortemart, who had been President of Council under Charles X., and was the first person summoned to the Palais Royale by Louis Philippe, on his arrival. The same determination was avowed in autograph letters to William IV., to the King of Prussia, and to the Emperors of Austria and Russia. He also pledged himself to England to abandon Algiers. Thus, at the beginning of his reign, this precious king was bound to the people to carry out reform on one hand, and to the Holy Alliance on the other to oppose reform. In 1836, he was relieved of his promise to Charles X., by the death of that prince in Edinburgh. The true policy of this new king was, by being honest, to carry out the reforms as the age advanced, and by so doing strengthen himself with the people, and to defy the coalition. The man was, however, but a flashy knave, without real talent. No country but England would receive his envoy, and he appointed the man Talleyrand, most detested by France, to represent her there. His first cabinet was formed under Cassimir Perrier, who was the last minister appointed by the late king. United with him was Guizot, known as a violent legitimist. These were pledges to the Holy Alliance, but gave great