every body; there shall nobody be hurt, only the cause of the people must go forward. If the king wants a yacht, or Her Majesty's Grace would like a few acres of real lace,—a contented people is as well able to pay for them, as a sulky and discontented one. But we must have no Stuarts, here or any where. Not a sixpence nor a fathom of rope, to help to declare our own king a usurper, or to set up a Pretender any where in opposition to the people's choice. Our own king, for these hundred and forty years, has been legitimate by virtue of his illegitimacy; and three hundred thousand bayonets could be brought, if need were, to prove this to be good law. If any body is disposed to protest against the inference, will they have the kindness to state with clearness, why a nation with the force in its own hands should not be competent to put down a tyrant, as well as to put down a thief? But, says the tyrant, I am put down by an appeal to force. And so is the thief; the community would be in a sad estate, if it might not resort to force, till the thief could be persuaded to sign the warrant. But, again, I make the law. Who told you so? You may make it the day before you are beaten, but certainly not the day after. Finally then, I ought to make the law. . But Quere, why? You think you ought; but what if other people think differently. You may have got the true truth; but what if fifty others have got their true truth also, and that a different one. Is there any thing that you can do in such a case, but wait till the others are converted? And here the case must rest. Is there any body that does not see, that the thing called legitimacy is a paltry argument in a circle,-fit only for the fool, who tried to climb into the buttery on his own back?-We are legitimate, because we make the law; and why are you to make the law? because we are legitimate. 1 There would indeed be another way of putting the argument for legitimacy, which at first sight might seem to contain more of reason; but then its friends will not put the question so, because they know how much the result would finally be against them. And that way would be, to state that such great and undeniable uses have been found in an absolutely unchangeable order of succession, as to swallow up all other reasons, and bind all living creatures to the support of the unvarying rule. But here the misfortune is, that facts and history are against them. No man is disposed to deny, that in countries where there is an absence of the organization for transferring the highest executive power after certain limited periods (which is what makes a principal feature in the form of government known by the title of republican), there is great and decided use in a fixed rule;-. that is, in a rule so far fixed, as to be undeniably sufficient for regulating the succession under the ordinary circumstances of a number of individuals who would be all equally happy to take it if they could. But the fact established by history is, that whenever the conduct of this highest executive is so bad, as to force the community to encounter all the suffer ing attendant on a forced ejection, it is right that the ejection should take place, and that it should extend beyond the actual holder, to all whose claim is but a prolongation of his own. If the holder is barred of succession by the act of the community, all who claim succession through him are barred also; if any body thinks the contrary, let him try the effect of barring the operation of a common fine, by claiming for the heir at law. The heir is heir to his father's property if he keeps it; but not if the community has taken it away for punishment. A rule which should say that the succession might be barred for crime, but that it could only be to turn it over to the heir, would be nugatory and fit. for idiots; no people have ever been so contracted in their cranial developements, as to think of submitting to it. The English notoriously set their mark upon the folly of it; and the French have not been behind to follow their example. It may not have been entered in a particular book, or engrossed in a certain hand on the skins of a particular kind of beasts; but it has been written down good national law, in characters more legible than ink and more durable than parchment, for at least these hundred and forty years, to go back no further,→→→ that a sovereign who is weak enough and wicked enough to oblige a people to take the trouble of ejecting him by force, has broken the line of succession for himself and all that claim to hold of him. The necessity of the ejecting power, is simple matter of history. Thirty millions in France are at this moment holding up their hands and declaring to its truth; and though an ultra-royalist may abnegate their right to have any thing to say upon the matter, he cannot abnegate the historical fact that they hold up their hands and say so. That it is politic that the succession should be preserved in all but the extreme case,→ will never prove that it must be preserved in the extreme case too. It is very meet and right, that a man should walk the streets without being knocked down; but he must be knocked down, if he proceeds to cut his neighbours throats. The argument is not transferable from the general rule to the exception;: and for this plain cause, that the reason which makes the rule, makes the exception too. Men in general must walk the streets. in quietness, because it is necessary for the public good it should be so; but a man who tries to cut his neighbours throats, must be brought to the ground like a mad dog, for the self-samé reason, that it is necessary for the public good it should be so. And it makes very little difference whether a man proceeds to cut his neighbours throats simpliciter, or whether he says to them, You must bottle up your words, your thoughts; you must think as I think, and do as I do; or else here is a line of well-fed able-bodied gentlemen, who shall cut your throats for you in the newest method practised in the army.' There will be a difference in the mode of acting in the two cases; a mad dog may be brought to the ground with a butcher's cleaver, or any other of the weapons of suburban war, and the other requires barricades and a more tedious process; but the principle is the same. It is the simple right of self-defence, which men will neither be fooled out of nor frightened out of, that acts in the two cases alike. If it should be said that men have a mania, a pruritus, for ejecting sovereigns, it might be asserted with as much show of truth, that they have a mania for having a leg cut off in St. Bartholomew's Hospital. The process of ejection, in one case as in the other, is a troublesome process, an awful process, which men never undertake nor dream of undertaking, but under the heavy pressure of keen necessity. The fallacy that says the contrary, is one that only shows itself in company, for want of looking for the cloven foot. -- The English people are on the side of the French Revolution, because they have the legitimacy of their own sovereign to defend, and because they have no intention of seeing any body remove the sentries from the Horse Guards, and send for the king of Sardinia. Those who are of this opinion say Aye; those who are of the contrary opinion say No, and let us see how many they are. If an attempt should be made to decry the analogy between the Revolutions, it will only end in showing that the French was the better of the two. There was the very awkward circumstance about the English one, that it was undeniably brought about in part, by the help of certain regiments of Dutch Guards. If the French people had called in the Swiss instead of the king, their revolution would have been where ours was; and the Swiss regiments added to the Dutch, give the difference by which the French revolution was better than the English. It appears to be decided that there is to be no direct attempt on the part of the arbitrary sovereigns, to put down the con tagion of English principles; for English they may be called, by right of seniority, though there is no denying that their resuscitation in France has been attended with a splendour vastly surpassing any thing that took place in England. The English revolution was, as somebody has rightly observed, useful, but not glorious. It was a tame affair, as far as related to external effect; but it had one great good quality, it was permanent. It may perhaps be at some time gone beyond, and so may a mile-stone; but like a mile-stone, it will not retrograde, but remain a mark by which future generations will calculaté their progress. The further directions in which every person must feel anxious to attempt some calculation of the results, are in its effects on France, and on the rest of the continent of Europe. Is the revolution ended in France? Clearly not. It is where a mani is, when he gets up in the morning and has his day's work before him. But there is a right way of doing this day's work, and a wrong; and it is a great blessing to be in the way of starting fair for a beginning. France has thrown off the foreign conquest; for herself and England too. Men on the two sides of the Channel stand up free; and the Cossack spear can no longer be held out in terrorem, at Manchester, or at Paris But Frenchmen have got one more great advantage; they have the arms in their own hands, and the world may rest persuaded, that they will not be induced to give them up. They will not be led away by the English journalists who prove, that the only way to be safe, is to subscribe for gunpowder for blowing out our own brains, with item for the keep of a man to light the same. They have got the power, and they will keep it; there is no doubt therefore that in the end, they will have every thing their own way. The only question is, whether they will go quietly about the operation, or not quietly. And here it by no means follows, that because men have arms in their hands, they must attempt to perform every thing by force of arms. Englishmen have weapons of no mean power, attached by nature to their brachial extremities; and yet they forego the temptation of legislating through the medium of pugilistic combats, because they know there are other ways equally effectual, and which save a large amount of bloody noses in the process. What holds good of these weapons, would hold of more dangerous ones; in fact the premium would only be the greater, on paying deferential awe to the inventions of voting and election. There is therefore no inherent reason, why a nation with arms in its hands, should not agree to settle its affairs by the innoxious processes of ballot and petition; the contrary assertion is only the old Tory jingle, about an armed nation being governed like an army.' What is to be desired, at least on this side the water, is, that if the French community is not content, petitions may be seen pouring into the seat of government, of which one end shall be within the barriers, and the other at Lyons or Bordeaux. If these pro * 本 duce no effect, it might be time to think of further operations; but till then, the subject seems to be premature. It is very well known that an English ministry cannot stand against shot of this kind; and it is hard to conceive, that in the existing state of things, a French one should have any armour that can turn it. No ministries are good for any thing, intrinsically; there never was a good one, nor ever will be. They all do precisely what they cannot help; and provided there is but the impulsive force to drive, one is very little better than another. It would be sad waste of time, if the French people were to wait till they got a good ministry. These are among the things and there are some which are better understood in England. Nobody here, waits for a good ministry; the worst will do our business, if we can only make it. The French people will be to blame if they burn as much gunpowder as would scare a rookery, in the course of obtaining every thing which they can agree among themselves to wish for. There is no doubt that the process must go a long way. Other nations, and Englishmen in particular, look to them for a practical declaration, that all the acts of a government established by foreign force are non avenus and of no avail, except so far as the legitimate government shall see a fitness, in confirming the existing state of things. There must not be a man of the ancient army, who does not find himself, to the extent of what human talent can devise, in the self-same rank and place that he would have occupied at this day, if he had never been ousted by the appointees of the foreigner. There must be nobody led to battle by men who carry the colours of the enemy in their pockets, and wait only for an opportunity of sacrificing their followers. There must be a huge extension of the right of suffrage, and a withdrawing of all pretended apprehensions that the represented shall chuse a man too young or too old to guard their interests. All priests who will not sing the salvum fac to any substantive the community may chuse to add to it, must be sent to teach French at English boarding-schools. That all these things and many more must be done in the end, no man will be found to doubt; but there is no occasion to mar the whole by hurry, The recognitions are at this moment hardly clear of the shell; and there is scarcely any of the changes that are to be, that would not have served the enemies of France and England for a splendid plea to hang a refusal of recognition on, if it had come a week too soon. It is clear enough, that the intense feelings of a nation cannot be hushed into repose before the cold demonstrations of policy; but still, when it is proved that great advantage has arisen already from |