tion, while the superior of the brethren had admitted, that they could not, for ten years to come, furnish any beyond those at present engaged for. M. Cuvier observed also, that the brethren's schools were much more expensive, costing 50l. at the first establishment, and 751. annually. After three days of debate, the allowance was carried by only a very small majority. On the subject of the army, many complaints were made of its inefficient state. General Foy, in particular, reproached the minister with demanding 175 millions for a service which could not bring 80,000 effective men into the field. He insisted, that the disregard of the rules laid down for promotion, and other instances of ill treatment, had caused deep dissatisfac tion in the troops; that you would seek there in vain for that attachment to the standard, and that enthusiasm for France and for their king, which, in a French army, are the most sacred bonds of discipline. "Desertion to foreign service, which had disappeared from our armies since the Revolution, had recommenced more actively than before. There are no more materials to make non-commissioned officers, since the old soldiers will not engage anew. The officers, dissatisfied with the present, uncertain of the future, fatigued with being organized and disorganized without ceasing, see in their employment only an insufficient and precarious means of existence. In reply to this attack, the minister stated, that the army numbered 150,000 effective men; that it was so organized, that it could, in a very short time, be raised to 250,000. He denied altogether either the desertion or the dissatisfaction which was said to exist in it."Go, ask of these regiments," said he, "and you will find the most profound indignation at the manner in which you dare to interpret their sentiments. While the opposi tion members feared not to attack so openly the intentions of the king's go vernment, were they not afraid that some one might misinterpret their discourse, and suspect them of wishing to corrupt the fidelity of the troops?" In the mode of raising the supplies, the most important particular was a proposal for a reduction of 21,000,000 francs on the land-tax, which, in France, forms the most important branch of revenue. This remission was to be employed in reducing the preposterous inequality, which, from old causes, had crept into the distribution of this impost. This had risen to such a height, that the tax, in some instances, was a seventeenth, in others a sixth, of the net income. Little objection was made in a financial view; though some mentioned other taxes, the remission of which appeared to them more urgently called for. Discussion, however, was excited by the political effect of the change. The qualification of electors had been fixed according to the amount of direct taxes paid; conse quently, many persons still enjoying the same income, would, by a reduction of these taxes, be divested of their pri vilege. This measure, indeed, laid open the precarious basis on which the whole French representative system rested; for, if, in consequence of finan cial prosperity, all direct taxes could be taken off, or if they were even commuted for taxes on commodities, there would cease to be an individual in the kingdom entitled to vote for a deputy. The left side declared it impossible to agree to the reduction without an amendment, by which the qualification might be proportionally reduced, and the number of electors preserved undiminished. It was urged, in reply, that the present was a very trifling, and merely an equalizing arrangement, and was equally beneficial to the electoral system, which at present shared the inequalities of the fiscal system; that since the last arrangement, the number of electors had increased from above 80,000, to 104,000, and, consequently, was greater now than had been contemplated at the first establishment; finally, that the amendment proposed, being entirely political, ought, according to the charter, to form a separate law from the present, which was strict ly financial. The motion was finally disposed of by the order of the day. The entire law of finance was carried in the Deputies by 258 to 43, and in the Peers by 99 to 2. The last important question which occupied the attention of the Chambers, was the proposal made by ministers for continuing the censorship on the journals. The committee, how ever, reported unfavourably on the project, complaining, that, though ministry boasted of the moderation with which this power had been exercised, it had refused to lay before them the suppressed articles, that they might judge for themselves. Admitting the evil arising from the abuses of the press, it was conceived, that strict penal laws, after publication, were better fitted to repress them, than a previous censorship. The debate, as well as the report, went against the project. The ultraroyalists and the liberaux, by a combination which soon proved fatal to ministers, united their efforts. The latter employed the usual arguments in favour of free discussion; while the royalists exclaimed, that the censorship had been employed to promote mere ministerial interests, in opposition to monarchical principles, to the true welfare of the throne, of religion, and of the country. It had studiously stifled the expression of sound doctrines, founded upon sentiments of fidelity and honour, to favour subversive and rebellious principles. Ministers, however, succeeded in carrying the law, but clogged with a severe amend VOL. XIV. PART I. ment, which limited its operation to the end of the third month after the meeting of the following session. The session was closed on the 31st July, by a royal message. The present era was marked by an event, which caused a deep sensation in France, and made a material change in its political attitude. Its once terrible ruler, whose iron rod had been stretched so widely over the nations, was announced to have terminated his mortal destiny. An event which brought into one view a lot chequered by such mighty vicissitudes, so wondrous a rise, and so unprecedented a fall, could not but awaken reflection in the most thoughtless. Death seemed to have gained a higher triumph than usual, when he extinguished a soul which, by its single energy, filled a world, and swayed the destinies of a race. There was something peculiarly wild and strange in this closing scene of his destiny, on a solitary rock, bosomed in the waste of the Atlantic, and so widely removed from that world, to all the movements of which he had been accustomed to give the main impulse. Napoleon, in the first periods of his fall, displayed an equanimity almost heroic. He was then, as it were, a spectacle to mankind; the eye of the world was fixed on him; perhaps even some pleasure might be felt in the first relief from the anxious cares of empire. But, when all these new feelings were over, and when year after year of dreary and monotonous existence rolled on, his restlessly active mind began to prey upon itself, and the barriers of his rock-prison were felt pressing on him harder and harder. The violence also of his complaints was probably a manoeuvre, fair and natural enough, to obtain an opportunity of liberation. On the part of the British government, we conceive that it was altogether out of the question to afford any indulgence that was incompatible with the most strict guardianship. The case of one man could not be put in competition with the welfare of a hundred millions. Beyond this, it was magnanimous, and everyway right, that his comfort should be consulted. How far this was done by the ap pointment of Sir Hudson Lowe as his guardian, has been a subject of warm controversy; and we do not know if much has yet been got on either side, except the contradictory assertions of parties concerned. It was necessary to find a man trusty, vigilant, and determined; and it might be difficult, in so painful an office, to find these qualities in combination with the highest polish and sauvity of manners. We have formerly blamed the withholding the title of Emperor; and, if there was any wanton neglect or insult, we should certainly blame it. There does not appear any deliberate intention of such on the part of government; but, on the contrary, a considerable wish to promote the personal convenience of the illustrious prisoner. O'Meara, whom Buonaparte had entirely gained over, represented his complaints as arising from an affection of the liver, generated, or greatly aggravated, by a residence in warm climates. His friends, therefore, urge, that the prolongation of his residence at St Helena was nothing less than a sentence of death. Five respectable medical men, however, by whom the body was opened after death, declared, that the disease had arisen solely from an ulceration of the stomach, understood to be hereditary; and that the liver exhibited no injury, unless what arose from the local contact of that morbid organ. It was remarked, indeed, that this report was not signed by Antomarchi, Napoleon s private physician; but this was probably only in consequence of his not being in the British service, since no contradiction was ever obtained from him, although there were so many by whom it would have been eagerly received and circulated. A life of Buonaparte would be the history of Europe for the last twenty years; and it is scarcely here the place or time to form an estimate of his character. That party spirit, of which he was so long the main object, threw mankind into the most violent extremes. The period is past for considering him as a monster of crime, such as the world never before saw, and as only the abyss of Jacobinism could have thrown up. On the other hand, to represent him as a hero, with whose success the cause of liberty and the welfare of mankind were identified, and whose fall left the world in darkness, appears to us the most palpable extravagance and absurdity. If there is nothing to sink him morally below, there seems as little to raise him above, the common herd of conquerors and usurpers, with whom it is not usual that anything is sacred which stands between them and the object of their boundless ambition. To liberty, in every shape, and in every country, he was an avowed foe. The instances in which he has been charged with acts of peculiar atrocity, are not very numerous, and some of them, though not all, have been cleared up. But the main blemish is, that it is impossible to point out any course of conduct into which he entered with a view to the benefit of France, or of any other part of the world. His every care, every thought, every exertion, were devoted to his own aggrandizement, and that of his family. In private intercourse, although he was stormy, and, amid the cares of power, reserved and gloomy, yet there appears to have been a good deal of openness, amenity, and affection; and he succeeded in strongly attaching to himself those individuals by whom he was immediately surrounded. The death of Napoleon appeared to give a firmer seat to the French government, and to relieve it from that inquietude which was always kept up by the existence of a standard, round which a large part of the French nation would have been inclined to rally. The King acted with moderation and magnanimity towards the memory of a foe no longer dreaded. The marks of grief which involuntarily burst from some officers of the old army, then in his service, were not only indulged, but applauded by him. Bertrand, Montholon, and others, who had personally attached themselves to their fallen master, were, on returning to France, restored to their place in the army, and to all the emoluments attached to it. A different spirit broke out from some of the zealots in the Chambers; but it was overborne and kept down by the sense of a great majority. 212 CHAPTER IX. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. Agitated State of Spain.-Commotions at Madrid.-Meeting of the Cortes.Change of Ministry.-Disturbances in the Provinces.-Murder of Vinuesa. Violence of the Clubs.-Proceedings of the Cortes.-Disorder at Saragossa.Plague at Barcelona.-Refractory Spirit at Cadiz, Seville, and Corunna.— Reports and Debates on the subject.-Sanitary Cordon, and Insurrectionary Movements. THE present year opened, for Spain, in a general state of interior agitation. That superficial unanimity, which had been for some time exhibited, in regard to the new system, had now entirely disappeared; and two parties were very distinctly formed, one devoted to the cause of monarchy, and desiring the restoration of the ancient regime; the other disposed to push the nation still farther in the career of revolution. Each party, agitated by continual wrongs and alarms, worked itself up always to an higher pitch of exultation. The ejected monks everywhere called the peasantry to arms, in the name of the throne, and, above all, of the altar, which they represented as trampled under foot by the revolutionary system. The superstitious reverence in which the church is held, particularly by this class of Spaniards, joined to the habits of insurrection and irregular fighting, formed during the long course of the French Revolution, enabled them to collect, in various quarters, a number of bands, which were with difficulty reached and dispersed by the regular troops. The Spaniards had now a complete church militant, the royalist guerillas being usually headed by, and their ranks partly filled with, monks. The Curate Merino, in Biscay and Navarre, distinguished himself above all the others; but the Sierra Morena, Old Castille, and even the environs of the capital, contained a number of similar partizans. The great cities again, the focus of liberalism, were agitated by the clubs, who, enraged and alarmed at these movements, branded government as favouring them by its want of energy in their suppression, and denounced the highest persons in the state, and the royal house itself, as lending secret aid to the anti-revolutionary movements. Among these clubs, that of Malta held now the |