The love of liberty with life is given,

And life itself the inferior gift of heaven.-Dryden.

1. RARELY has the accession of a new sovereign afforded such general satisfaction, as was manifested by all classes, when the duke of Clarence ascended the throne with the title of William IV. Unlike his predecessors, his habits were economical and his manners familiar; he exhibited himself to his people, conversed with them, and shared in their tastes and amusements; within a few weeks he attained an unprecedented degree of popularity, and was reverenced by his subjects as a father, and loved by them as a friend. 2. No change was made in the ministry; but as his majesty was connected by marriage with some of the leading whigs, it was generally believed that the policy which rigidly excluded that party from office during the two preceding reigns, would not be maintained in full force. The hopes of a coalition between the Wellington administration and the whigs were, however, soon dispelled; the opposition to the ministry, which had been almost nominal during the preceding sessions, was more than usually violent in the debate on the address; and though the formal business of both houses was hurried through with all possible despatch, the whigs were pledged to a virtual declaration of war against the cabinet before the prorogation of parliament.

3. The parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July, but before it could be again convened, a revolution in a neigh

bouring country produced important effects on the public mind, and in some degree convulsed all Europe. Charles X., in defiance of the wishes and feelings of the great majority of the French people, was eager to restore the royal and socerdotal power to the eminence which both possessed before the revolution. He found in prince Polignac, a minister able and willing to second his projects, and he placed him at the head of the cabinet. Polignac thought that, by gratifying the national vanity of the French, and indulging their passion for military glory, he might be able to divert their attention from domestic exploits: previously to dissolving the chamber of deputies, he therefore proclaimed war against the dey of Algiers, who had committed several outrages on the subjects of France. But the expectations of the prince were miserably disappointed. His cabinet was assailed with a ferocity and violence to which the annals of constitutional warfare furnish no parallel; and as the actions of its members afforded no opportunity for crimination, their opponents made amends by attacking their presumed designs and intentions. When the chamber of deputies met, an address, hostile to the ministry, was carried by a large majority. 4. The king instantly prorogued the chambers; and when the reduc tion of Algiers had, as he fondly hoped, gratified the nation, and restored his popularity, he once more hazarded the perilous experiment of a dissolution. The new chamber of deputies was still more hostile than the preceding. Polignac and his colleagues saw that they could not hope to retain their power by constitutional means, and in an evil hour they prepared three ordinances by which the French charter was virtually annihilated. The first dissolved the chambers before they assembled, the second disfranchised the great body of electors; and the third imposed a rigid censorship on the press.

5. When these ordinances first appeared on Monday, the 28th of July, they excited astonishment rather than indignation; a number of persons, however, connected with the journals of Paris, assembled, and issued a manifesto, in which they declared their resolution to resist, by all the means in their power, the enforcement of the ordinance imposing restrictions on the press. Several of the daily journals were not published on the following morning, and the printers and compositors, engaged in their preparation, being left without employment, formed a body of active rioters. They were joined by the workmen from several manufac

tories, the proprietors of which had agreed to suspend their business during the crisis, thus throwing into the streets an insurrectionary force, whose ferocity was more formidable than military discipline. Some disturbances took place at the offices of two journals, the proprietors of which persisted in publishing appeals to the populace, but they seemed to be of so little importance, that Charles went to enjoy his favourite amusement of hunting, and his ministers, with similar infatuation, neglected to strengthen the garrison of Paris. 6. In the evening of Tuesday, the appearance of the military to reinforce the police, became the signal for the commencement of a contest. Several lives were lost, but the soldiers succeeded in dispersing the riotous mobs; and when they returned to their barracks, Marshal Marmont, the military commander of Paris, wrote a letter to the king, congratulating him on the restoration of tranquillity; and the ministers prepared their last ordinance, declaring the capital to be in a state of siege.

7. But the apparent triumph of the royalists was delusive; scarcely were the troops withdrawn when all the lamps in Paris were broken, and the citizens, protected by darkness, made energetic preparations for the struggle of the ensuing day; barricades were erected, arms were procured from the shops, the theatres, and the police-stations, and the arsenal and powder magazine were seized by the populace. When the morning of Wednesday dawned, Marmont beheld with. alarm the tri-coloured flag, the banner of insurrection, waiving from the towers of the cathedral, and the preparations made on all sides for an obstinate struggle. He instantly wrote to the king, recommending conciliatory measures, but receiving no answer, he prepared to act on his previous instructions. Dividing his troops into four columns, he directed them to move in different directions, and make circuits through the principal streets occupied by the insurgents. A series of sanguinary conflicts took place, in all of which the royalists were worsted; the troops of the line manifested the greatest reluctance to fire upon their countrymen; some of them disobeyed orders, and others went over to the insurgents. When evening closed, the soldiers had been beaten at every point, and they returned to their barracks wearied and disappointed. No provision was made for their refreshment after the toils of the day, while all the houses in Paris were freely opened to the insurgents, and the citizens vied

with each other in supplying them with every thing that they needed.

8. The struggle was renewed with great fury on the morning of the third day; Marmont and the ministers, now convinced of their danger, proposed a suspension of arms; but before anything decisive could be effected, two regiments of the line unfixed their bayonets, and went over to the insurgents in a body. The populace reinforced by these, rushed through the gap thus opened, carried the Louvre by storm, and opened from this position a terrible fire on the column of the royal army. Under this new attack the soldiers reeled; their assailants saw them waver, and charging with resistless impetuosity, drove them to a precipitate reMarmont and his staff escaped with great difficulty, his scattered detachments were taken or cut to pieces; before three o'clock Paris was tranquil, and the victory of the people complete.

treat.

9. The members of the chamber of deputies, whó happened to be in Paris, met at the house of M. Lafitte, and organized a provisional government; and on the following Friday they proclaimed the duke of Orleans lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the 3d of August the chambers met, pursuant to the original writs of convocation, and the national representatives raised the duke of Orleans to the throne, under the title of Louis Philippe I., king of the French. Charles X. was dismissed to exile with contemptuous humanity; but the efforts of the new government to protect the obnoxious ministers almost produced a new civil war. of these unfortunate men, arrested by individual zeal, were brought to trial; an infuriated mob clamoured for their blood, but their judges had the firmness to sentence them to perpetual imprisonment; and soon after their removal to their destined place of confinement, public tranquillity was restored.

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10. The revolution of Paris was closely followed by that of Brussels. The union of Belgium with Holland by the treaty of Vienna was an arrangement which contained no elements of stability, for the Belgians and the Dutch were aliens to each other in language, religion, and blood. The arbitrary measures of the king of Holland's prime minister provoked a formidable riot in Brussels, on the night of the 25th of August, which the indecision, cowardice, and stupidity of the Dutch authorities, fostered into a revolutionary war. The prince of Orange made some efforts to mediate between the contending parties, but he only exposed himself

to the suspicions of both; and, after a brief struggle, Belgium was severed from the dominions of the house of Nassau.

11. Several insurrectionary movements took place in Germany; the duke of Brunswick was deposed, and replaced by his brother; the king of Saxony was forced to resign in favour of his nephew, and the elector of Hesse was compelled to grant a constitutional charter to his subjects. Poland next became the theatre of war; its Russian governor, the archduke Constantine, was expelled, and the independence of the country proclaimed; but after a long and sanguinary struggle, the gallant Poles were forced to yield to the gigantic power of Russia.

12. In England, the rural districts, especially Kent and the northern counties, exhibited alarming signs of popular discontent; but the agitation in Ireland was of a still more dangerous character, and seemed to threaten the dismemberment of the empire. Great anxiety was felt for the opening of parliament, and the developement of the line of policy which the ministers would adopt at such a crisis. It was with surprise that the people learned from the premier, on the very first night of the session, that not only he was unprepared to bring forward any measure of reform, but that he would strenuously oppose any change in parliamentary representation. 13. The unpopularity which the duke of Wellington seemed almost to have courted by this declaration, was studiously aggravated by the arts of his opponents; and when the king had accepted the invitation of the Lord Mayor to dine with the citizens on the 9th of November, a letter was sent to the duke of Wellington by a city magistrate, warning him that he would be insulted, perhaps injured, by the mob, if he did not come protected by a military escort. The ministers in alarm resolved to put a stop to the entire proceedings, and on the 8th of November, to the great astonishment of the public, it was announced, not only that the king's visit would be postponed, but that there would be neither the usual civic procession in honour of the new Lord Mayor, nor the dinner in the Guild-hall, for which great preparations had been made, in consequence, as was alleged, of some seditious conspiracy. The first effect of the announcement was a general panic; the funds fell four per cent. in one day, and the whole country was filled with anxiety and alarm. But when it was discovered that no serious grounds existed for the apprehensions which had