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CHAPTER XX.

ACCESSION OF CHARLES X.-CONTINUATION OF THE VILLELE MINISTRYPREDOMINANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS PARTY-DIFFICULTIES OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS GENERAL ELECTION OF 1827-BARRICADES IN PARIS-RETIREMENT OF VILLELE-1824 TO 1828.

Immediately after the death of Louis XVIII., his successor, Charles X., left the palace of the Tuileries, and proceeded with all his family to St Cloud, a royal domain claimed for her own by the daughter of Louis XVI., in right of her mother, for whom the spendthrift Calonne had originally purchased it. The accession of the new monarch took place at a very favourable period for his peaceable assumption of the crown. The birth of an heir to the dynasty, and the successful issue of the Spanish expedition, had thrown around the sceptre of the Bourbons that halo of good fortune which is so liable to dazzle populations, and to which the mystical invocations of Napoleon had imparted a peculiarly tutelary character in France. The Royalists had obtained a complete ascendancy, and the authority of the government had never seemed more firmly established. Indeed, in despair of effecting any fresh revolution, and excluded by the last elections from the Chamber of Deputies, Lafayette, that inveterate plotter of civil broils, had betaken himself to the United States of America, there to receive the incense of exaggerated flattery, which was so grateful to his superlative vanity, and to gather also the more substantial reward of a pecuniary donation conferred upon him by the grateful and enthusiastic people he had assisted to win their independence.

Charles X. had already attained a venerable age when he ascended the throne of France: born on the 9th October 1757, he lacked only a few days of completing his sixty-seventh year. In person he was the reverse of his deceased brother, being tall, slim, and of graceful exterior, combined with great elegance and suavity of manner. In youth he had been remarkable for the number and variety of his amours; and even at a time when libertinism was universal, and when royal frailties were regarded with respectful indulgence, he had given cause of scandal by his flagrant inroads on the domestic peace of families. In the other excesses of appetite he had been more abstemious, and enjoyed the reward of continence in a robust health; but when advancing years had

slackened the fire of youth, he had wrapped his ardour in a religious mantle, and, as became a reformed libertine, sunk into a devotee. In capacity he was greatly inferior to Louis XVIII., but was not so liable to be swayed by the opinions of others: he was obstinate and confident, wedded to the prejudices he had imbibed from infancy, and impressed with a high sense of the sacredness of the authority he wielded. In other respects he was of an amiable disposition, much beloved by his friends and attendants, generous in his gifts, and truly princely in his habits and attributes.

As the new king had in reality directed the march of affairs during the previous two years, his accession was attended with no change in the government. In character it became still more intensely religious and reactive; and to keep his place, Villele was compelled to share the supreme influence with priests and Jesuits. Among the Royalists the cry was general that nothing had been done for religion, and they complained that the great mission of the Restoration was still unfulfilled: they demanded the re-establishment of the clergy in all their former privileges; that the custody of family registers should be replaced in their hands; that the rite of marriage should precede, if not displace, the civil bans; that the religious fraternities should be revived, and the laws of mortmain repealed in their favour. They were desirous also of reimposing the disqualifications to which dissenters from the Church were formerly exposed, holding, with the British government of the same period, that to deviate from the stereotyped letter of the State faith was sinful and rebellious; and they were, moreover, especially desirous of subjecting the entire education of the country to ecclesiastical direction. Mingled with this religious fervour was also the desire to see revived all that was feasible of the old monarchy, especially its decentralised administration and provincial Assemblies, by which they hoped both to annihilate the ascendancy of Paris, even to the taking from it the seat of the court and the legislature, and to rear in opposition to its turbulent population an organised system of independent municipal and local institutions. This design, although conceived in a party spirit, was in the main a beneficial one, since so long as the savage populace of Paris can upset and make governments at its pleasure, it is clear that France can scarcely hope to enjoy more than intermittent periods of repose and stability; but here, as in all other cases, long habit is an essential condition of success; and it is to be feared that the French, as a people, are incompetent to exercise the functions of local self-government. In the performance of quiet and unobtrusive duties they take no pleasure, nor is the spirit of association alive within them: accustomed, in all phases of their history, to be ruled by an administrative despotism, royal, democratic, or imperial, they are deficient in aptitude, incapable of con

joined action, and especially defective in that sound sense and continuity of purpose which so distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race, inured by the simple, but fertile institution of the jury, from the times of the English Heptarchy, in the exercise of the chief social functions, and which promises to secure it an ever-expanding preponderance on the continents and the archipelagos of the old and the new world.

In the composition of his court Charles X. gratified all the urgent cravings of the keenest Royalists. The royal household was formed upon the ancient model of Versailles, and not an officer was omitted who had ministered to the pride and pomp of the Grand Monarque. All the old titles and formalities were disinterred from the rubbish of the tomb, and the palace was filled with stately dignitaries, recommended by their lineage, or their austere and pious deportment, to whom were assigned the trivial and menial offices in which the retainers of courts place their highest ambition. In his own family the king gave an emphatic proof of his reverence for antique usages, by investing his son with the historical designation of DAUPHIN, which had been last held by the hapless Louis XVI. and his murdered son. At the same time he sought to give popularity to the commencement of his reign by abolishing the censorship on the periodical press, which had been instituted by Villele to revenge himself for the contumacy of the royal courts immediately after the preceding session of the Chambers. This timely and unexpected grace operated wonderfully in his favour: the Liberal newspapers in particular sounded his praises in notes of high rejoicing, contrasting his benignity with the spiteful malevolence of his minister; and when he made his public entry into Paris, the versatile multitude greeted him with stentorian acclamations, and showered on his kingly brow the benedictions they were so soon to change to

curses.

By another act of favour and concession, due to himself personally, Charles conciliated the good opinion of the Liberal party at his accession. The memory of the last Duke of Orleans, the unfortunate Egalité, was naturally held in abhorrence by the Royalists, and the feeling in some degree extended to his son, who had held a command in the Republican armies during the early campaigns of the Revolution. Afterwards he had become an exile, and been exposed to the rudest buffets of poverty and proscription, for it was his peculiar misfortune to be an object of hatred and jealousy both to the Jacobins in France and to the emigrants out of it. The Directory especially pursued him with its fears; and holding in captivity his two brothers, the Duke de Montpensier and the Count de Beaujolais, made it a condition of their liberation that he should leave Europe and proceed to America. Returning to Europe after some years, he married, in 1809, a princess of

Naples, and took up his abode at the court of his father-in-law in the island of Sicily. The Restoration restored him to his rights as a French prince, next in succession to the throne after the extinction of the reigning family, whose only hope of perpetuating itself rested on the Duke de Berry. From his antecedents, and from his reputation for talents and discretion, he was naturally a favourite with the Revolutionary party, and he was urged on the Allies in 1815 as an acceptable compromise between Napoleon and Louis XVIII.; the one repudiated by France, the other obnoxious as imposed by foreigners. Alexander had even entertained the proposition with some favour, but the rapid advance of Louis XVIII. to Paris, in the wake of Wellington and Blucher, settled the question before any negotiations were matured. Still, Louis remembered this competition; and although the Duke of Orleans disavowed his concurrence in it, he observed towards him a very repulsive mien, insomuch that the duke thought it expedient to return to England, where he remained until 1818. Louis retained his animosity towards him till the last, and refused all applications to invest him with the title of Royal Highness,' which he claimed as a prince of the blood. He was obliged to content himself with the inferior appellation of 'Serene Highness;' but Charles X., with a greater magnanimity, overlooked the jealousy which the position of the duke suggested, and conferred not only on him, but on all his sons, the much-coveted designation. He likewise agreed to secure by a law the indefeasible possession of his immense appanage to the duke, which rested at the time simply on a royal ordinance revocable at pleasure; and to insure its adoption by the Royalist majority, it was arranged that the provision should be inserted in the law for settling the civil list of the king himself. Thus the most friendly relations were established between the two elder branches of the royal family; and the Duchess de Berry, in particular, who was herself a princess of Naples, and niece of the Duchess d'Orleans, cultivated an intimacy with her young cousins of the rival stock.

Among the many hints that had been borrowed from the British constitution, the one relative to the dissolution of the parliament on a demise of the crown had not been adopted by France; and the new king had too little reason to be dissatisfied with the existing Chamber of Deputies voluntarily to seek another. The whole body of the Royalists was much more attached to him personally than to Louis XVIII., although the ultra portion of them still continued opposed under Labourdonnaye to the minister Villele. In his speech on the assembling of the legislature, Charles deplored of course the grievous loss he and France had sustained in the death of Louis XVIII.; but he was consoled by the reflection, that the paternal desire of his deceased brother, to close the last wounds of the Revolution,' might now

be safely carried into effect; and he announced that he intended at the foot of the altar to swear fidelity to the laws of the State and the institutions granted (octroyé) by his brother. He thus alluded to two measures extremely grateful to the majority of his hearers-namely, an indemnity to the emigrants, and a celebration of the old ceremony of the coronation. He was hailed with vociferous applause, and an address in conformity with the speech was voted with unanimity and enthusiasm.

The indemnity to the emigrants was fixed at 1,000,000,000 francs, to be distributed according to the rents of properties as ascertained in 1790, at the rate of eighteen times the income. The money was to be raised by the creation of 30,000,000 of 3 per cent. rentes issued by instalments. M. Martignac developed the scheme amid prolonged cheering in the Chamber of Deputies. It was opposed by the left and by the extreme-right: by the first, because it inflicted an injustice on the bulk of the community for the benefit of a particular class, a class which had ignominiously deserted their country, and afterwards been guilty of the most heinous of crimes that of bearing arms against the land of their birth; by the second, because it was incomplete and without principle, since no reparation could be sufficient or intelligible which fell short of an absolute retrocession of the confiscated estates. But the majority of both Chambers, having a direct pecuniary interest in the question, found these counter-reasons both invalid, and the measure was passed with a hearty good-will into a law of the State.*

This indemnity to the dispossessed emigrants, although doubtful on the ground of expediency, was sufficiently defensible in justice not to excite any very violent clamour; and as it was to be paid by the convenient process of issuing annuities, the pressure of the burthen was not immediately felt on the resources of the country. Besides, Villele accompanied it by another measure for the conversion of the 5 per cents., which, being more equitably framed, he was allowed to carry, and by which he effected a yearly saving of 6,000,000 francs. But it was necessary for him, above all, to satisfy the religious party-the' Congregation,' which was daily swelling in numbers and pretensions, and now overflowed in the court, the legislature, the university, and even the army. Never was the merely religious element in such unlimited ascendancy perhaps in any country, not even in Rome itself; and though it was far from taking the gloomy character of the fanaticism of the English and Scotch in the seventeenth century, it was eminently

* The Chamber of Deputies which voted this law of indemnity was thus composed-Of the 430 members forming it, 260 were public functionaries, all more or less dependent on the government; 320 were privileged possessors of the old régime; 184 enjoyed titles of nobility. No less than 242 were emigrants, or the sons or near relatives of emigrants. The measure was carried by a majority of 259 to 124 in a house of 383.

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