tive courts, and which he was authorized to communicate to their ministers for foreign affairs. To France, whose note, by the process above traced, had been considerably softened down from the Verona pitch, the reply was not much more than haughty. The constitution of 1812, was represented as produced by the united will of Spain; its overthrow was represented as the work of perfidious counsellors; its restoration as effected, not by military insurrection, but by the general will of the nation. The offer of his most Christian Majesty to contribute to the tranquillity of Spain, was duly appreciated; but the means employed were felt as producing an effect directly opposite. The aids desired from the French government were purely negative; to withdraw its army of observation, and to cease to afford an asylum to the factious enemies of Spain. It was added, "To say that France desires the welfare of Spain, and its tranquillity, while she holds continually lighted up these firebrands of discord, which feed the dis. orders that afflict her, is to fall into an abyss of contradiction." With the notes of the other powers no measures were kept. They were characterized, in the very preamble, as "a tissue of falsehoods and calumnies;" and the notes went on to repel their interference in a still more peremptory and indignant tone.

Had the Spanish ministers been guided by the counsels of wisdom, they would have anxiously sought to withdraw these documents and proceedings from the eyes of the Cortes and of the public. Acting upon such inflammable bodies, they could not fail to call forth words and deeds tending to widen the breach, and to inflame still farther the hostile spirit of the allied powers. The ministers followed a contrary course, and determined to

reap the applauses which such replies were sure to obtain from a popular assembly. On the 9th, therefore, they laid before the Cortes the notes of the allied ministers, and their own answers. The Cortes manifested a lofty and generous indignation, the expression of which could not in them be blamed, though its effects might be lamented. Galiano and Arguelles were the chief speakers; and the latter, though ranked usually among the most moderate liberals, outdid now the others in declamation against the principles and language of the European potentates, and in expressing a determination to resist to the utmost their attempt to dictate an internal constitution to Spain. A committee was appointed to draw up an address in reply; and the assembly closed amid loud cries echoed from the gallery, of Live the Constitution! Live the National Independence!

On the 11th, the committee laid before the Cortes their project of an address. It was agreed to unanimously, amid speeches breathing a similar spirit with those formerly uttered. One amendment only was moved, in reference to the expression, "his people," applied to the Spaniards in reference to the king; and which, at the motion of Munarriz, was expunged as too servile. That the address might wear a still more popular character, it was delivered to Riego, who, being placed in the president's carriage, was drawn to the palace by the people amid loud acclamations. The address itself was conceived in such terms as might be expected from the circumstances of its production. The Cortes declared "their surprise and indignation at the strange calumnies, the manifest falsehoods, the calumnious imputations, contained in these documents, particularly in the three last, as vicious in their substance, as contrary in their

we should be ourselves exposed to the dangers arising from similar calamities in a neighbouring people.

"I have attempted everything to secure the safety of my people, and to preserve Spain herself from the extreme of misfortune. The blindness with which the representations made at Madrid have been repelled, leaves little hope of preserving peace.

"I have ordered the recall of my minister; a hundred thousand Frenchmen, commanded by a prince of my family, by him whom my heart takes pleasure in calling my son, are ready to march, invoking the God of St Louis, to preserve a throne of Spain to a descendant of Henry IV., to save this fine kingdom from ruin, and to reconcile it to Europe.

"Let Ferdinand VII. be free to give to his people the institutions which they can hold only from him, and which, in securing their repose, may dissipate the just inquietudes of France; from that moment hostilities will cease; I come, in your presence, gentlemen, under this solemn engagement."

Such was the basis on which Louis, who had once displayed somewhat of a moderate and liberal character, had been so wrought upon by the bigots who surrounded him, as to found this iniquitous war. The Spaniards were to have no institutions, except what they held from the free gift of their monarch. In Mr Canning's language, to which nothing can be added, "The free institutions of the Spanish people could only be legitimately held from the spontaneous gift of the sovereign, first restored to his absolute power, and then divesting himself of such portion of that power as he might think proper to part

with."

We have already brought under review this famous gloss of the Holy Alliance. It has appeared, that in

every possible instance, with the exception, perhaps, of one in a hundred, the issue must be not a mere absolute monarchy, in the European sense of the word, but simple, unmixed, oriental despotism. Under the circumstances of the present case, every doubt as to this issue vanished. Ferdinand had been fully tried. He had reigned for six years uncontrolled, either from without or within. He had been seen to subvert all the institutions of his country, without introducing a single institution in their place. He had driven into the depth of exile and of dungeons, those who had been his chief champions in calamity, because they had attempted to assign some limits to his power. The present undertaking, therefore, was manifestly destined to trample upon every right of humanity to establish a despotism, second only to the Turkish in its bloody and bigotted character; a government alike fatal to the industry, the intelligence, and the happiness of its people.

Painful, however, as this declaration was, it did not form the worst feature in the transaction. France prepared for Europe a more humbling spectacle. That such language and such principles should emanate from a monarch, was less to be wondered at, than deplored. But that a constitutional body, boasting itself the representative of one of the most enlightened nations in the world, a nation which had done and suffered so much for liberty; that they should utter a redoubled echo of maxims framed in a conclave of despots; that they should disown the principles on which they themselves existed; should cheer on Louis in a war destined to subvert the very foundations of national independence; and should lay prostrate at his feet all the resources and well-being of the nation, to be employed in so unhallowed a contest ;-this is a scene

which seems to lower the scale of human nature itself.

Such, however, was the tone assumed by the Chamber of Deputies, in its address to the King. "Destined," said they, "by Providence, to close up the abyss of revolutions, your Majesty, in your paternal solicitude, has attempted everything to secure your people, and to save Spain herself from the fatal consequences of the rebellion of a few perjured soldiers. A blind obstinacy has repelled the counsels of the head of the august family of the Bourbons.

"Sire, we are Frenchmen! No sacrifices will appear costly to your people, to defend the dignity of your crown, the honour and the safety of France. To your Majesty it belongs to deliberate; it is our part to concur with all our efforts in the generous enterprize of stifling anarchy to conquer only peace; of restoring liberty to a king of your blood; of securing the repose of Spain, to confirm that of France, of delivering from the yoke of oppression a magnanimous people, who aided in breaking our chains, and which can receive institutions conformable to its wishes and its manners, only from its legitimate sovereign."

The Chamber of Peers, though a body recently created by the King, presented an address, nearly similar indeed in substance, but not couched in terms of such deep servility. A clause, besides, in favour of peace, was negatived by only 90 to 53; whereas the address, in the Deputies, was carried by 202 to 93.

The constitution of France, by a very despotic clause, not only vests in the sovereign the sole power of declaring war, but obliges the chambers to suppose that he has done right, and withholds from them all power of discussing the question. This law, however, is sufficiently counteracted by that which vests in them alone the

right of voting those extraordinary supplies, without which the war cannot be carried on; in deliberating on which, it is easy for them to bring under review every question connected with the propriety and necessity of the war. Before hostilities could be commenced, an extra vote of credit was necessary. Martignac, the minister of finance, proposed a credit of a hundred millions of francs, with which he hoped, erroneously as it afterwards proved, to cover the extraordinary expenditure of the Spanish campaign. It was estimated, though not yet fully ascertained, that there was a surplus in the receipts over the expenditure of 1822, amounting to thirty-three millions of francs. To make up the balance of the hundred millions, it was proposed to grant an amount of four millions of francs, to be inscribed in the great book of the public debt. In deliberating on this credit, the opposition could not be prevented from bringing under review the whole question of peace and war. Upon this ground, therefore, the grand debate ensued, and was carried on for several days, amid various forms of tumult, interruption, and interpolation, to which the House of Commons, though not very rigidly observant of the laws of decorum, is happily a stranger.

Royer Collard opened the debate against the government. This, he observed, was a war by which France interposed in the affairs of a neighbouring state, and of which the avowed end was to dictate laws to that state; for it was dictating to a people laws, and the most tyrannical of laws, to impose upon it absolute power as its legislator.

The orator then alluded to the peculiar state of France as a restored monarchy, returned from a long exile. It was the ancient monarchy, and yet it was a monarchy separated from the ancient, by events which were like ages. The King had appeared as the

restorer, the arbiter, the universal legislator. Rejecting of the revolution only its errors and crimes, he acknowledged all the rights of Frenchmenhe admitted the legitimate vows of the nation-imposed not a single sacrifice on the new interests of France, and was wounded by none of her agreeable recollections. He adopted the glory acquired in a war almost as long as the Revolution; he made it the ornament of his throne. This war was purely national; it was inspired by a deep and general sentiment, the horror of foreign dominion. It was not for the Directory or the Committee of Public Safety, that France had conquered; in the cause of her independence, and in no other, had she triumphed over all Europe. "But if the war which we are to make against the independence of the Spanish nation be just, that which the foreigner made against us thirty years ago was just also; he had a right to ravage our fields, and to overrun our provinces, and we had not a right to defend ourselves; we did wrong to beat the Austrians. Do not be as tonished that the war in Spain is so deeply unpopular; it is not only the sacrifices which it exacts, that sadden this generous nation; it could well support them; it would meet them gladly in a cause which was its own; but it feels instinctively that the war is made against itself, and that at every victory it will lose the battles which it gains." After professing, finally, his strong attachment to the legitimate monarchy, he added, "Of all the duties which I could fulfil towards it, none appeared to me more sacred, more pressing, than this. Can I be si lent, when blind counsels hurry it on to its ruin? As it has been the thought, the wish, the hope, I might almost say, the action, of all my life, it is now the first of my interests."

General Foy espoused the same side with his accustomed ardour. He pro

tested against the aspersions thrown upon those who embraced his view of the question. In the British Parliament, the greatest geniuses had always opposed war. Lord Chatham, whose administration threw so great a lustre on the empire, declared in full Parliament, that he rejoiced at the resistance of the Americans. How could it be wondered, that the nation should dread an event which would close its ports-its work-shops-its manufactories-would make its industry perish

its commerce disappear-its wealth pass into other hands? Was this a time to meet new loans and new taxes, when it was already overwhelmed with so enormous a weight? How cruel to recall those old soldiers, who had paid their debt to their country, and had just touched their paternal hearths. The orator insisted that government itself did not wish for war; if it had done so, would it have withdrawn the portfolio of Montmorency, the Duke of Verona! (Violent conflict of applauses and hisses from opposite sides

Mechin-" The word is happyit will adhere.") Even now govern. ment only half wished for war. M. de Villele was of the same opinion with himself and his honourable friends; but he had a portfolio to keep or to lose. An occult power ruled, pressed upon ministers. This power had dictated to them, during six months, a

crooked policy; an attitude conciliatory on one side, hostile on the other; "it is this occult power, which, during these last days, has inspired a deceitful declaration. It matters little to me, if this power has mendicated, as is said, from the foreign sovereigns met at Verona, permission to attack, beginning with Spain, the constitutional governments, the fruits of the progress of human reason; or rather, if it is not foreigners that press us-that wish us to be for them what the army of the Faith is to be for us-with this