glories of the Royal Prerogative, asserting, among other strange things, that the king in such a monarchy is more absolute • than any monarch of France has been before him, more 'master at Paris, than Louis XIV. at Versailles.'

He holds in his hand the manners, the laws, the ministry, the police, the army, and the power of peace and war!

'He drops his extended hand-the whole machine stops; 'He raises it-all is again in motion.'

This is a rather bold flight for an Occidental courtier, but it will suit the meridian of Paris well enough. M. de Chateaubriand could not hope to please without a little extravagance. Again:

• He is accountable only to God and his conscience. He is the head" or visible prelate" of the Gallican Church. He is the father of all private families, the example of their duties, and the fountain of their

education and morals.'

Happy, happy France, if this be the character of her monarch! M. de Chateaubriand might well address the son of such a Constitutional King, were he blessed with one, in the language of our Laureate :

Look to thy sire, and in his steady way
Learn thou to tread.'

It

But if M. de Chateaubriand means that the kingly office includes the moral characteristics with which he invests the image of royalty, he is chargeable with great absurdity. There is no people, perhaps, by whom the private virtues of a monarch are so affectionately and reverently appreciated, as by the English. Their loyalty to one who should exhibit, in any exemplary degree, the Christian character, would be almost unbounded. would be of a nature far superior to the blind homage paid to grandeur and power; it would partake of filial veneration; it would lead them to overlook or to forget a hundred political errors. And if the honours of age were superadded to the claims of character and the titles of royalty, and still more if the person of the aged monarch was rendered sacred by sufferings, the feelings with which he would be regarded, would be something more than loyalty, or at least such loyalty as the object of a Frenchman's idolatry never awakened in the bosoms of his most devoted parasites. But although the private character of the monarch is in a moral respect of so vast importance, it is in a political respect not subject to the public cognisance, and it has therefore no influence on the loyalty of the nation. In this sense, the Prince is accountable only to God and his conscienee; an immunity, if immunity it may be termed,

which is not however the exclusive prerogative of royalty. It applies to his ministers also, considered in their private capaeity, to nearly the same extent. So far from announcing a privilege, the words of M. de Chateaubriand simply convey a momentous and fearful truth-While the minister is accountable to the people, the monarch is accountable to God.

From the consideration of the Royal Prerogative, M. de Chateaubriand proceeds to suggest the necessity of conferring higher privileges, honours, and fortune, on the CHAMBER OF PEERS. He deprecates the rendering of all the peerages hereditary; but insists on the expediency of re-establishing the right of entailing property in the order of primogeniture, and of increasing the natural force and importance of the aristocracy, which he considers as the barrier and safeguard of the throne, and as a necessary balance to the democratic importance of the Chamber of Deputies. On the subject of hereditary peerage, it may be interesting to our readers to have the sentiments of the Bishop of Blois, which of course are dictated by a rather opposite view of the question :

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Personal merit constitutes the only true nobility: every one, to borrow the expression of a French poet, is the son of his own actions. In spite of the murmurings of a ticklish vanity, those prejudices which relate to an hereditary nobility 'will perhaps one day be swept away, as so many others have been, and will no longer exist but in the history of human aberrations. The merit which is derived from parchments, has, no less than that which lies in the colour of the skin, < undergone long since its trial at the tribunal of religion and of philosophy, and these by anticipation appreciate the establishment, in the nineteenth century, of an hereditary nobility, an hereditary peerage.

Would the constitutional equilibrium be deranged, if the • nomination of senators was not vested exclusively in the king, and if it required the concurrence of the three authorities which compose the legislative power? In the latter case, the individual elected would be the man of the nation, (l'homme de la nation); but now, a senator will henceforth be only l'homme du monarque, and instead of being the representative of the people, he will represent, to use the expression of a learned English writer, only himself and his family. Hereditary succession, moreover, closes one door on superior merit, while it opens it to an individual invested with a title which neither confers nor even implies any merit ; to a youth who may be either a wise man or a blockhead, an honest man or a scoundrel, till the secret be discovered of ren<dering talents and virtue likewise hereditary.'-De la Constitution Française, de l'An, 1814. page 13.

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With regard to the Chamber of Deputies, M. de Chateaubriand complains that it is deficient in the precise knowledge of its own powers, inasmuch as the responsibility of ministers is still indefinite. He justly remarks, that if the ministers are considered as accountable to the King only, they may ruin the country at their ease, and the Chamber, become their slaves, will fall into disgrace. They should be masters of the Chambers in fact, by being identified with the majority, but their servants in form. But the question is, Will a representative Government be suited to the feelings of France, and be supported by public opinion? M. de Chateaubriand's reply is, "We have the Charter: let us give it at least a fair trial.'

The Freedom of the Press is his next topic, and on this he acquits himself with manly explicitness, and displays very correct views of the true interests of Government.

< Without the Liberty of the Press there can be no representative Government.

A representative Government is founded on and enlightened by public opinion; the Chambers cannot be aware of that opinion if the opinion has no organ.

In a representative Government there are two tribunals-the Chambers, where the interests of the people are debated; the public, in which the conduct of the Chambers is discussed.

In the differences which may arise between the Ministers and the Chambers, how is the public to know the truth if the journals are under the restraint of the Ministers themselves, an interested party in the dispute? How shall the Ministers and the Chambers ascertain the public opinion, if the Press, the tongue of the people, be not free?' p. 39.

'A constitutional Monarchy the powers of the monarch and of the Legislature must be consistent and balanced. But if you throw the Press into the scale of the Ministers, and permit them to employ it exclusively in their own favour, they will soon turn the public opinion against the Chambers: the balance is destroyed, and the constitution in danger.' p. 40.

The following remarks deserve particular attention.

‹ « The freedom of the press will harass and distract the Administration: every body will write, every body will advise; and between praise, and projects, and libels, there will be no means of carrying

on the Government."

All this is mighty plausible: but Ministers sincerely constitutional can never wish us to risk the state, in order to spare their feelings-such men will not sacrifice the dignity of their stations and their nature, to the smarts or itchings of a miserable vanity-they will not disgrace a free Monarchy with the punctilious jealousies and paltry despotism of an aristocracy. “In Aristocracies," says Montesquieu," the magistrates are little princes, not high enough to “ look down upon libels; a shaft aimed at a monarch on the elevation

of his throne, falls short of him, but a poor little aristocratic "lord it pierces through and through."

'I beg Ministers to recollect that they are not little aristocratic lords; they are the constitutional servants of a constitutional King. An able Minister does not disregard, but he does not fear, the freedom of the press-it attacks him, but he survives.

To be sure, Ministers will have some journals against themwell: others will be for them-they will be attacked, they will be defended, like their brethren in London.

Is the British Ministry disturbed by the jokes of the opposition, or the abuse of the Morning Chronicle? What has not been said, what not written, against Mr. Pitt? was his power diminished by it, and is his glory eclipsed?

One thing I must concede: the Liberty of the Press would render it necessary that Ministers should be men of talents and character, that they should be able to get the majority of the Chambers and the public on their side. Good writers will not then be wanting in their interests: and the journals, well written and widely circulated, will give them an honest support. They will be ten times as strong as they now are, for they will gather the public sentiment about them. When they no longer oppose themselves to the current of opinion, and stand up like exceptions to the feeling of the country, they may smile at the petty reproaches which journalists may cast them.

upon

"I also beg to observe that Governments are not constituted for the exclusive use or profit of Ministers-There are others also, who have some little interest in them. If our Ministers dislike the annoyance which the freedom of the press may produce, they should go live elsewhere; a free government can never please them, for without the Liberty of the Press there can be no constitutional freedom.

A final and not unimportant consideration for Ministers is, that the Liberty of the Press relieves them from an irksome responsibility to foreign powers. They would be no longer pestered with those diplomatic notes which the negligence of a censor, or the ignorance of editors, now bring down upon them; and being no longer obliged to give way to such representations, they will no longer be obliged to degrade the dignity of their sovereign and the nation.' pp. 48-50.

It is a remarkable fact, that the French Press, though under the immediate control of the Minister, has long teemed with the most inflammatory tirades againt the usurpation and ambition of Great Britain. The same police that seized two editions of M. de Chateaubriand's present work, connives at the effusions of atrabilious jealousy against this country.

M. de Chateaubriand has some very sensible remarks on the Ministry, as subsisting under a representative monarchy, which, he conceives, must and ought to be changed till the fit men are found-till the Chambers and the public shall have 'forced men of talents into eminence and power.' What would our government-men say to assertions so bold as this, if

they had come from an English Constitutionalist? What wouldour most Christian politicians say to such doctrine as he afterwards maintains that under a constitutional monarchy, public opinion is the legitimate source and principle of an Administration-principium et fons; and that consequently, 'Ministers should spring as it were, out of the majority of the Chamber of Deputies, which is the organ of the popular feeling? Possibly these are the sentiments for the assertion of which the name of De Chateaubriand is erased from the list of Privy Counsellors; and we question whether he would not have run a similar hazard, had he been a Right Honourable member of a different Privy Council.

'As there are men,' our Author proceeds to remark,' who cannot be Ministers under a legitimate Monarchy, so there are ministers who ought not to exist under a Constitutional Government. Need I designate the Minister of General Police.'

Of this frighful and enormous system of internal despotism, this imperium in imperio, the Author speaks with just indignation, and shews that it is not only unconstitutional, but at once useless and dangerous.

The general Police is in fact a political Police, a party engine,— its chief tendency is to stifle the public opinion, if it cannot disguise it-to stab, in short, the constitution to the heart. Unknown under the old regime-incompatible with the new-it is a monster born of anarchy and despotism, and bred in the filth of the revolution.'

• What is a good Police? A good Police is that which bribes the servant to accuse his master; which seduces the son to betray his father; which lays snares for friendship, and man-traps for innocence.

A good Minister of Police will persecute if he cannot corrupt fidelity, lest it should reveal the turpitude of the offers which it has resisted. To reward crime, to entrap innocence-this is the whole secret of the Police!

The master of this formidable engine is the more terrible, because his power mixes itself with all the other departments: in fact, he is the prime, if not the sole, Minister. Nay, He may be said to be King, who commands the whole gendarmerie of France, and annually levies, without check or account to the people, seven or eight millions (from 350,000 to 400,0001. sterling).

Thus whatever escapes the snares of the Police may be bought by its gold, and secured by its pensions. If it should meditate treason; but if its preparations be as yet incomplete; if it fear a premature discovery;-to dissipate suspicion, to give an earnest of its frightful fidelity-it invents a conspiracy, and sacrifices, to its credit and its treason, some wretches, under whose feet it has itself dug the pit-fall.' p. 76.

From the discussion of these elementary principles of the Government, our Author proceeds to examine the false systems upon which, as he conceives, the three administrations succes