tween any of the new ministers; and they were for the most part, if not unknown, at least strangers to each other. Conditions were mutually imposed both by the retiring and by the acceding ministers. Villele stipulated for himself and his colleagues that they should be protected by all the weight of ministerial power from an impeachment; and Martignac insisted that, in order to prevent them from becoming opposition leaders in the Chamber of Deputies, Villele, Peyronnet, and Corbiere should all accept peerages. Villele was extremely loth to be extinguished in the House of Peers; but the condition being made imperative, he with a bad grace was obliged to yield. As usual with regard to retiring ministers, all three of them were created secretaries of state and privy-councillors, to which honorary designation a salary of 20,000 francs was attached.

Thus was the Martignac administration launched into existence on the 4th of January 1828, a perfect enigma to the public, and evidently designed by Villele to fill the temporary void until circumstances were favourable for his own resumption of office.

CHAPTER XXI.

FORMATION OF THE MARTIGNAC MINISTRY-AFFAIRS OF GREECE AND TURKEY-RUSSIAN INVASION-DISMISSAL OF MARTIGNAC, AND FORMATION OF THE POLIGNAC MINISTRY-EXPEDITION TO ALGIERS-ORDINANCES OF JULY-REVOLUTION OF 1830-1828 TO 1830.

The first meeting of the new cabinet took place on the evening of the 4th of January. Except with Martignac, the king was not acquainted with any of the new ministers. He accosted all of them, however, very graciously, and addressed to each some winning expressions. But he rather surprised them when he spoke to them collectively. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'it is proper I make it known to you that I part from M. de Villele with regret ; opinion has been wrong with regard to him: his system was mine.' This declaration completely confounded them, and not one of them uttered a word, for they had an idea that if they had superseded Villele for any purpose at all, it was precisely to change his violent, rotten, and implacable system. The words of the king at the same time show how truly blind and infatuated a man he was-how totally incapable of appreciating the march of events. But it was necessary for Martignac to be ready with some programme for the opening of the Chambers, fixed to take place on the 5th of February, although the complexion of the new Chamber of Deputies was so doubtful, that it could not be predicated with any certainty what precise policy might be best adapted to knit together a compact majority. Accordingly the speech from the throne was vague and general in its language, and contained little more definite than the usual eulogy on the Charter-which, from frequent repetitions, was becoming somewhat stale and threadbare.

After the wretched experiment of Villele, and its equally wretched failure, it is undoubted that nothing but a government, strong in influence and character, could have saved the monarchy of the Restoration from destruction, or the monarch himself from the effects of his own egregious caducity; and such a government that selfish and unprincipled minister had taken especial care to ignore. The one that he had set up was, on the contrary, the weakest that could be imagined, having no real support either in the Chambers or in the confidence of the king. It was in the dilemma of having to fashion its principles and its policy accord

ing to the shifting exigencies of expediency. The country having decided so emphatically against Villele, it was natural that the new ministry should seek to dissociate itself from his system; but what other was it to adopt?-ultra-Royalism or Liberalism? for such were the two shades most strongly defined in the Chamber. It sought to trim between the two, inclining, from the force of circumstances, to the Liberal side, but ever dependent on the leaders of different fractions for support to its measures. The left and the extreme-left as yet acted in concert, not forming an absolute majority of the Chamber; and if the minister could combine with them a portion of the centre-right, constituting the moderate Royalists, he might contrive to carry on the government. Such was the course he adopted, for the Liberals were at the moment inclined to favour an approximation of this nature, since they knew all the difficulties surrounding the ministry from the secret hostility of the court. Consequently, by such a combination Royer-Collard, who had been returned by no less than seven electoral colleges, was elected president of the Chamber, such a nomination marking expressively the prevailing tone of its constitution. But if the ministry reposed on no large and distinctive basis, neither was it regarded with animosity, nor did it excite that virulence of opposition which had been displayed towards Villele. It passed through the ordeal of the session in comparative quietude, the only measures that were passed of any importance being a law for the prevention of frauds in the preparation of the electoral lists, and for their annual revision and publication; and another for the regulation of the press, which was the most liberal that had been yet adopted, as it abolished the censorship altogether, as well as the right of suspension by the courts of justice, and permitted the establishment of new journals without a previous license, upon the deposit of caution-money, and the registration of responsible editors. This law broke in upon the monopoly which had been hitherto possessed by the existing journals, and which rendered them such a very valuable property; investing them, moreover, with the importance of actual powers in the State. A considerable part of the session was consumed in investigations into the conduct of the prefects during the late elections, which resulted in a complete exposure of their oppressive and fraudulent practices. The dismissal of these guilty functionaries was urgently demanded by the Liberal party, but as strenuously resisted by the king, who was encouraged in his opposition by all the arts of court intrigue. Martignac was obliged to compromise the point: a great many prefects were displaced, but in some instances they were merely removed to other departments, and the remainder were provided with equivalent appointments, greatly to the indignation of incensed and ardent reformers.

It is the inevitable fate of all ministries which exist by sufferance, that they must make concessions to conciliate adversaries; but in so doing, they expose themselves to accusations which always operate injuriously against them. On all sides the Royalists took the alarm, and exclaimed against the concessions of M. de Martignac, which they pronounced to be pregnant with ruin to the monarchy, and leading assuredly to revolution. It was more particularly with regard to ecclesiastical affairs and to the Jesuits that the measures of the ministry exasperated them. The department of public instruction was separated from that of religion, the university was purified from priestly inquisition, and the Jesuit seminaries were dissolved, as the public voice so loudly demanded, and by which those emissaries of Rome were obliged to remove their establishments beyond the Pyrenees or over the frontiers of Switzerland. It was not without much difficulty that the king was brought to sanction these measures, and he did so undoubtedly with the secret intention of undoing them as early as possible. In fact, the moment he found that the tendency of his new cabinet was decidedly liberal, he began to plot against it, although he did so with great address and dissimulation. In the interior of the palace all was hostile to it, and an action incessantly in movement for its overthrow, which fortified the mind of the king in his repugnance. Yet to Martignac personally he was always gracious, and apparently confiding, evincing almost attachment to him during a tour he made in the autumn of 1828 through Alsace and the provinces on the Rhine. The minister was the more easily led into a false assurance by the idea he entertained of his own powers of ingratiation, which were very remarkable certainly, but to which men are too often prone to ascribe an undue importance. Charles X. could easily resist seductions of that nature when not enhanced by sympathetic principles; whilst, on the other hand, with all his abhorrence of vulgarity, he tolerated around him for so many years such men as Villele and Corbiere, whose manners were the very reverse of delicate, refined, or dignified.

The first blow aimed at the Martignac ministry was an attempt to force on it Prince Jules de Polignac as minister of foreign affairs. This personage, who was so soon to attain a fatal celebrity, had been for some time ambassador at London, and had long enjoyed the intimate friendship of Charles X. La Ferronays was anxious to leave the cabinet, with which he was not altogether in harmony, and opportunely fell ill, whereby it became necessary to provide him a successor. Several names were mentioned to the king, and among others that of Chateaubriand; but he found reasons for rejecting them all, and at length Portalis was charged with the office ad interim. Him Charles commanded to summon the prince to Paris; and without consulting his col

leagues, Portalis obeyed. The sudden arrival of Polignac caused the greatest surprise and excitement, as it was known that the king had long desired to have him in the administration; and Villele, who was jealous of his influence, had with difficulty struggled to counteract this inclination. However, the cabinet was not thus to be taken by storm, and the whole of the ministers tendered their resignations rather than accept Polignac as a colleague. Matters were not yet sufficiently ripe to dispense with them; and the king, disconcerted and mortified, felt constrained to send Polignac back to London, whither he returned with a very downcast countenance, since he had most imprudently boasted before his departure of his instant appointment to the ministry of foreign affairs.

The desire of the king to discard his present counsellors was raised in intensity by the change that had recently taken place in the English government. Canning, after a short premiership, had died in August 1827, and been succeeded by a feeble administration under Lord Goderich, which gave place in January 1828 to one of a stronger texture under the Duke of Wellington. This was a return of the pure Tories to power, materially modulated no doubt, but still regarded as personifying a retrogression towards the school of Castlereagh and Sidmouth. The example seemed one precisely fitted for the present condition of things in France, as the Goderich ministry might be compared with the Martignac, and the advent of Wellington gave promise of that firm resistance to popular demands in which the court of the Tuileries thought the essence of government lay. In reality there was scarcely any analogy between the cases of the two countries, for the spirit of their respective institutions was so fundamentally opposite, that no relation could exist in their domestic political occurrences. Notwithstanding his long residence in the country, Charles X. had a very confused notion of the British Constitution, sharing the profound ignorance of England common with Frenchmen; and fully believing that Wellington would establish a virtual approach to despotism in the British islands, he deemed it the more incumbent on him to make haste and essay a like experiment.

In the execution of his scheme the old king displayed a dexterity and duplicity which were scarcely natural to him. Serious embarrassments might be entailed by an abrupt dismissal of the ministry, and the very object of the measure be defeated by its prematureness. It was expedient that Martignac and his colleagues should be instrumental to their own extinction, in order to derive from that consummation all the advantages anticipated. They fell very easily into the snare extended for them. The great project of the session of 1829 was intended to be a bill for municipal reform, divided into two measures-one rela