1 Ann. Hist. viii. 35; Doc. Hist., Cap. ix. 37, 38; Lac. iv. 157, 158. Four laws, alike characteristic of the princi 16. 1 Lac. iv. 159, 18. Argument of the measure. the Allies, and the preservation of peace now | ment in a financial point of view, but the viofor a period of ten years, had so restored the lent resistance of the holders of stock scarce finances of France that not only was the sinking practicable in a political. M. de Martignac fund maintained inviolate, and the public debt was the principal author of this great measure; undergoing a sensible diminution, but the agree- and as it interested so many feelings, revived able feature of an excess of income above expen- so many reminiscences, and excited diture had been exhibited in the public ac- so much jealousy, it gave rise to the 160; Lam. viii. counts. The Five per Cents had risen to one hun- most violent debates both in and 33, 35; Cap. dred and two in the beginning of out of the legislature.1 ix. 41, 44. 1825, and the price of grain fallen to On the part of the government it was urged fifteen francs the hectolitre-rates by M. de Martignac: "The families still more indicative of the gen- of the emigrants-dispossessed dureral prosperity which prevailed.*ing an absence which all now ac- M. de Martig knowledge to have been legitimate, nac in favor of ples on which the government of despoiled on their return of all hope Restoration of Charles X. was to be conducted, of restitution by the sale of their estates-have the estates of were brought forward in the Cham-claims on the benevolence of the King and the the Orleans ber on January 3. The first was justice of the nation which can not be overfamily. the law on the civil list, or settle- looked. Their fields, their houses, the inheritment of the revenue of the crown, which was ance of their families, have been confiscated and fixed at 25,000,000 francs (£1,000,000) for the sold for the benefit of the nation. To every King during his life, besides 7,000,000 francs generous mind that constitutes a claim, the jus(£280,000) for the service of his family, and tice of which can not be disputed. But as the 6,000,000 (£240,000) for the obsequies of the contracts and sales which have taken place late king, and the coronation of his successor. during the progress of the Revolution must be This law was chiefly remarkable from the noble maintained inviolate-and their sacredness congrant which it contained of the whole territo-stitutes the corner-stone of the Restoration-the rial possessions of the Orleans family to the only means that remains of making good the present possessors of its honors. These immense indemnity is by pecuniary payments to the estates had been annexed to the state in 1791; sufferers in proportion to the amount which and Louis XVIII. had only accorded a tempo- they have lost. All hearts have felt the force rary usufruct of its rents and profits to the fam- of this appeal; it was first made by a noble ily. But Charles, in a truly regal spirit, now peer (Marshal Macdonald), one of the ornaments proposed to sanction the restitution by law, so of the Empire, in the first months which sucas to put it beyond the reach of ceeded the Restoration; and France will never Jan. 14, 1825. himself or his successors, on the con- forget the generous sentiments to which he then dition only that, in the event of the failure of gave utterance. The misfortunes of 1815, the the male line of the family, the estates should heavy pecuniary difficulties to which they gave revert to the crown. This magnanimous gift to rise, the necessity of providing succor in his a rival and long hostile family passed the Dep- misfortunes to the King of Spain, have rendered uties by an immense majority, and the Peers it necessary to postpone from time to time the almost unanimously. It is melancholy to reflect great work of reparation, but it has never been 2 Ann. Hist. on the return which the Orleans fam-lost sight of; and the measure now proposed is viii. 7, 15; ily made to Charles for this graceful Cap. ix. 40. concession.2 17. Law of indem nity to the suf ferers by the Revolution. The next measure proposed, and by far the most important of Charles's reign, was that for the creation of a stock to provide an indemnity to the sufferers by the Revolution. This was proposed to be effected by the creation of a stock to the extent of a milliard of francs (£40,000,000) in the Three per Cents, the whole money paid for which was to be devoted to the families which had lost their possessions during that convulsion. The elevated state of the public funds at once insured above £100 for each £3 a year inscribed, and secured the gift to the emigrants at the cost only of three per cent, to the nation. The annual charge would be about 30,000,000 francs (£1,200,000) a year; and to reconcile the people to the imposition of such a burden, M. de Villèle consented to abandon his favorite project of reducing the interest of the national debt, which the high state of the public funds rendered easy of accomplish Francs. £ in substance the same as that which had been matured in the cabinet of the late king, before the army of the Duke d'Angoulême crossed the Pyrenees. 19. Continued. army of "The moment has now arrived when it is practicable, nay easy, to carry these just intentions into effect-to give vent to these generous sentiments. The final discharge of all the arrears due to the occupation, the prosperous state of our finances, the constantly increasing strength of our credit, the good intelligence which prevails between the King and the other European powers, have at length enabled us to set in good earnest about sounding that wound which the Revolution has opened, which the Restoration has not yet closed; and which, though it seems to affect only a part, in reality reaches the whole body politic. The time has at length arrived when we can say to those who have been spoiled of their inheritance, and who have borne their misfortunes with a noble resignation, 'The state has deprived you of your possessions; it has in times of trouble and of disorder transmitted them to others; the state, restored to peace and * The Expenditure of 1824 was 986,073,842 or 39.440,000 to the sway of legitimacy, makes you the only The Income.... Excess of Income. 994,971,960 or 39,800,000 8,898,118 or 360,000 -Annuaire Historique, App. 31, Partie 1., 1825. reparation in its power; receive it, and with the gift may all trace of these confiscations and heartburnings disappear forever.' Continued. "We are asked, why should the losses sustained by the emigrants be the only 20. ones to which the measure of reparation applies are there no other wounds which require to be stanched-no other scars which are not healed, which need not the healing salve? The holders of public stock, for example, who sustained a loss to the extent of two-thirds by the act of 1797, why are they excluded from the reparation? Your sense of justice, gentlemen, has suggested the answer. Without doubt the Revolution has produced evils without end; injustices without number have been the fruits of its errors and fury, and it is in vain to think of repairing them all. But because every one can not be relieved, is no one to be succored? because the work of justice can not be rendered complete, is it never to be attempted? The case of the emigrants is trying and peculiar; they have been the victims of injustice without example, a ruin without parallel. The state creditors, victims of a culpable faithlessness, have lost, indeed, two-thirds of their stock, but they have preserved the remainder, and the great rise in the value of stock has restored to them much of what they had lost. But what have the emigrants regained of their inheritance? If, among the numerous evils which the Revolution has produced, there is one which justice signalizes as the most odious, and reason as the most fatal, one of which the origin is a crime against the most sacred rights, and the effects a cause of the most endless divisions, are we to be told that the impossibility of applying an entire remedy to such enormous evils is a reason for not attempting such as is in our power? 21. "The injustice which the emigrants have undergone, the evils they have suffered, Continued. is beyond what any other class have. The laws of the Maximum, of the Assignats, have destroyed a large part of the wealth of the capitalists, but they have not diminished their immovable possessions. Those who have seen their fields laid waste by the armies of the enemy, have also beheld the sun of succeeding years restore their harvests, and the labor of subsequent time efface the traces of devastation. But the laws against the emigrants have wrested from them their all, their credit, their claims, their movables, their lands, their houses. They have stript them of every thing, down to the very roof which had sheltered their forefathers from the storm.* It is for these evils that reparation is demanded. The evils they have undergone take them out of the M. de Martignac gave the following details as to the extent to which the confiscation of land estates had been carried during the Revolution, and compensation was now sought: common case: the injustice they have experienced is peculiar, unprecedented. The confiscation to which they were subjected was the worthy accompaniment of the proscriptions; it could be compared only to the violent acts of Sylla and Marius. It is for France to give an illustrious example of the sense of justice which repairs as much as possible such terrible deeds of injustice, and to show that, if it can follow other nations in the path of in- An. Hist. iquity, it can precede them in that of viii. 85, 86. repentance and reparation.' 22. Concluded. "Let us not be told that the emigrants have leagued with the stranger against their country, and are no more worthy to be ranked among its citizens. When they fled to the frontier, the king indeed was upon the throne, but he was powerless, he was in chains; his most faithful servants had been persecuted or destroyed. What became of the assemblies which succeeded? They mutu ally destroyed each other. What then remained for the emigrants to defend? Their country? At the very moment when they left it, their real enemies were tearing out its entrails. Our country is in our religion, and its altars were overturned; it is on the steps of the throne, and its ruins even were scattered: our country is in the king, around the king, and he had disappeared in the tempest. Our country is in its institutions, its laws; and it had no other institutions but prisons, no other laws but scaffolds. The emigrants sought safety in exile, that they might breathe freely; they found death on our soil, which was no longer their country. Who can say, in these circumstances, that the emigrants committed a fault; that they did wrong in striving to liberate their country from the most execrable of tyrannies; that they committed a crime in refusing to return and place vi. 96. their necks under the guillotine?"2 2 An. Hist. 23. claims. The great difficulty which the Government had to encounter in the discussion of this question, was not the resist- Embarrassance it roused, but the concurring ment of the claims which it awakened. The Government justice of the appeal to the nation from other was generally admitted, but it was urged that other sufferers, during recent times, had equal or superior claims for indemnifica tion. The Chamber of Deputies was assailed by petitions of all sorts from all who had been impoverished, and many who had been enriched by the events which had occurred since the Revolution. The capitalists who had suffered from the confiscation of the public funds, the dealers who had been such losers by the law of the Maximum, the Vendeans whose fields had been ravaged during the terrible war of which their country had been the theatre; the marshals and officers who had been deprived of their provisions by the disasters of 1814 and 1815, which had reft from France the countries on which they had been secured-the sufferers under the foreign invasion of those years of mourning-all preferred the most urgent claims to indemnification. General Foy expressed the general feeling of the Liberal party 3 Séance du on the subject, when he used in the Jan. 26, heat of debate the expressions which 1825; Montbecame famous.3 "At the moment teur, Jan. 28, 1825. of the splendid feast which you are als. 27. "We are told it is desired to remove the feeling which exists against the new proprietors, but never was property Continued. which can found on a juster title. If the possession of lands which have once been confiscated is illegitimate, what title is free from that defect? Where is the estate in France which has not been confiscated since the sentence pronounced against Robert of Artois or the Constable de Bourbon to our days? What answer could be made to a new proprietor who, presenting himself before the Chamber of Peers with a list of historic confiscations in his hand, should ask restitution of them all? What be came of the estates of Coligny, Teligney, and the thousands of Frenchmen who perished on the execrable day of St. Bartholomew whose hands are the estates of those who fled from the persecution of Louis XIV. on account of their religion? All in the possession of courtfavorites, many of them of the most unworthy description. The principle on which the law is rested, therefore, is one which goes to shake property of every description. See into what an abyss the Government is about to lead us. It awakens a process which has slumbered since the days of Gracchus, a process which revives the furies of Sylla and Marius, and you are the judges appointed to decide it! In about to serve up to the emigrants, let a few | every thing, and the other sufferers by the Revcrumbs at least fall to the old and mutilated olution only a part. With the exception of a soldiers who have carried to the furthest cor- few provincial proprietors, who would receive ners of the earth the glory of the French name." but a very trifling part of the indemnity-with It was strenuously contended in opposition the exception of those who have suffered only to the project of Government-"The in their movable estate, and whom the proposed 24. situation of the country, externally law, based on the principles of justice, excludes Argument against the and internally, is the least favorable with the exception of a few cadets of famiproject by that can be imagined for so vast an lies, who have nothing but their swords, they the Liber- addition to the public burdens. At are all or nearly all electors, nearly all belong the first Restoration, in the year 1814, to the elevated class of the grand colleges, all the budget for the ensuing year was fixed at or nearly all are eligible as representatives of 618,000,000 francs, comprising in that sum the people. 70,000,000 francs for the liquidation of arrears; now our expenditure amounts to 1,000,000,000 francs, and it is proposed to augment it by 30,000,000 francs a year! We want peace with all the world; our armies occupy the strong places of a neighboring power; but our debt has multiplied fivefold, and general misery attests the suffering state of our people. Will even the large indemnity now proposed satisfy the claimants? Never: it will only open the door to fresh demands, and, like the sums given in former days to buy off the hostility of the Normans, it will immediately give rise to new clouds of depredators, who will ravage and lay waste our country. "Every one knows that the emigration which proved most fatal to France-that 25. which armed Europe against herContinued. commenced in 1791. When it began, France was at peace with all the world; the greatest possible tranquillity reigned in the interior. The decree of August 1, 1791, enjoined the emigrants to return. Soon a constitution, framed according to the suggestions of the King, and sanctioned by the laws, offered the French the hope of a durable liberty. What did the emigrants do? Did they return, according to the royal invitation, according to the injunctions of the government, according to their duty to their country? They did just the "If any thing could add to the insanity of reverse. They followed no other route but that such a proceeding, it would be the to Coblentz; they placed their honor in foreign selection of the tribunal which is to Continued. lands. Forgetting alike to whom they had decide so perilous a question. It is sworn fidelity, and whom they were bound to a fundamental principle of jurisprudence, redefend alike from duty and interest, and whose cognized in all countries and in all ages, that life, had they done so, they would probably no man is to be permitted to decide in his own have saved, they leagued with the stranger, cause. But when I look around me in the they armed themselves alike against their king Chamber, I see nothing but parties interested and country, and, without regarding the dan--not one impartial judge. Not one but has a gers which threatened their parents, their wives, their children, they called Europe to share in the spoil of the land which had given them birth, and which was yet charged with the maintenance of all who were dear to them. The manifestoes of Berlin, of the Duke of Brunswick, had appeared; the war had commenced when the confiscation was pronounced. It was not a measure of severity upon countrymen, but of retaliation upon those who had become enemies. 28. share, some a very large one, of the proffered indemnity to expect. In vain will you give the name of law to your decision in such a cause; it never can bear that character. It is essential to a law that it should be general, apply indiscriminately to all the citizens, whether it pronounces on their interests or determines on their duties. The present project can never approach to that august character, for it is the decision of a question in dispute, a litigated point be tween a part of the people and the whole, and "We are told the emigrants have lost every the judgment is to be pronounced by the very thing; the capitalists, the fundhold-parties most deeply interested in the issue. Continued. ers, the merchants, have lost only a Whatever conclusion you arrive at, therefore, part. Say rather-and you may do can never be a law; it can only be a decision so with sincerity-the others have lost much, of a litigated point by one of the litigants. And they have lost all, but they have remained faith- are we, the guardians of the laws, the protectful to their country. Hence the disregard they ors of right, the final judges in the last court have experienced-'inde mali labes.' It is a of appeal, to set out with a proceeding so unmere illusion to say the emigrants have lost just that it would at once be set aside by a 26. Continued. superior judicatory, if attempted by the hum- | ritorial, but the moneyed class-not with the blest in the land? country, but the town. The importance of this change was not at first perceived, and least of all by the recipients of the indemnity, who were overjoyed at such an unlooked-for addition to their means of existence; but the consequences became very apparent in the end, and will be traced in the sequel of this work. The addition of so large a sum also to the movable capital of the nation produced a very great movement, gave a vast impulse to speculation, and augmented the moneyed interest so much as to throw the elections for the most part into their hands, and contributed in no small degree to the blind security on the part of 1 Cap. ix Government which led to the fall 77, 78, Lac. of the monarchy.1 iv. 168, 169. What did the emigrants go to the stranger to ask! War-war against France, 29. under chiefs and armies whose ambition after victory they would have been powerless to restrain. What is this but treason of the very worst description-treason against the land of your birth? All nations have an instinct which is superior to all other instincts the instinct of self-preservation; a feeling paramount to all other feelings-the feeling of patriotism. All nations have regarded the citizen who herds with the stranger against his native land as its worst enemy. If such sentiments did not exist, if they were not implanted in our breasts by the hand of nature, it would be necessary to invent them; and the nation which should depart from these conservative principles, essential to the life and duration of societies, would be no longer a nation; it would have abdicated its independence, accepted ignominy, and voluntarily committed the most odious of suicides. 30. which fell to The distribution of this magnificent gift of justice was made with the greatest 32. impartiality; the spirit of party Distribution of had no hand in it. The greatest the indemnity: enemies of the throne, those who large share in the end overturned it, received as the Duke of much in proportion as its stanch- Orleans and "It is the fundamental principle of a hered- est supporters. It was only to be other Liberals. itary monarchy that the throne ap-regretted that, owing to the magnitude of the Concluded. pertains to the nation; that it is con estates of some of the great families which had founded with it, identified with it; been sold, the proportion which their heirs rethat for its advantage, and that alone, it is oc- ceived was exorbitantly large, while that which capied by a single race-by that race and no fell to the lot of the provincial noblesse was oftother race, by that prince and no other prince. en, from the scantiness of their heritage, very Individual properties pass from hand to hand; inconsiderable. The Duke of Orleans received they are sold and parceled out: the nation de- no less than 14,000,000 francs (£560,000) for rives benefit from every sale and every division. that part of his estates which had been sold; the But in the midst of that universal movement Duke de Choiseul and the Duke de la Rochefouand turmoil, the throne alone remains in ma-cauld 1,000,000 francs each (£40,000); the famijestie stillness, motionless for the benefit of all. Should the day ever arrive when a whirlwind should separate the monarch from the monarchy, the whirlwind passes away, the monarch is restored to the monarchy. Those, then, calumniate the royal majesty who would separate the monarch from his entire subjects, who would 1 Ann. Hist. make him the auxiliary only of a vii. 93, 95, party, and who would place the King of France elsewhere than at Jan. 19, and the head of the affections, of the glories of the universal French people." 119, 120; Moniteur, Feb. 24, 1825. The law passed both Chambers by large majorities; that in the Deputies being 105-the 2 Ann. Hist. numbers being 259 to 154; in the Peers, 96-the numbers being 159 viii. 137, 154. 31. to 63.2 ly of Montmorency 12,000,000 francs (£480,000); 2 Lac iv. 169; Cap. ix. 74, 76. 33. The clergy, as mere life-renters, possessed only of a usufructuary interest in the possessions which formerly belonged to Law against the church, had no share in this in- sacrilege. demnity, and this naturally excited some disOne very singular result, which was little ex- satisfaction among a body which had suffered pected, ensued from this measure, and so much from the Revolution as the ecclesiBeneficial that was the altered relations of the dif- astical had done. It is a singular proof of the results of ferent classes of society to each other. strange and infatuated ideas which at this period this meas- The addition of so vast a capital as had got possession of the leaders of the French £40,000,000 sterling, equivalent to at church, and their supporters in the Ministry, least £60,000,000 in Great Britain, to a single that they thought they would compensate this class in society, the dispossessed proprietors, made want, and extinguish this discontent, not by an a prodigious difference in their weight in society, enlarged provision for the church, but by an but it did not restore their original position. It enhancement of the pains of sacrilege. A law rendered them fundholders, not landholders; it was introduced by the Government, which proallied them in interest, at least, not with the ter-posed to punish the profanation of the conse ure. The two last paragraphs in this argument are taken from the speech of General Foy on the question It is easy to discern in them the distinctive marks of a great orator. One of the greatest privileges and chief enjoy ments of a historical work of this description is that of translating or transcribing so many noble specimens of eloquence from the most gifted speakers of all nations. that of the sacred vases, not yet filled with the crated elements with the pains of parricide; consecrated elements, with death; theft in churches or sacred places with death, or forced labor for life; and of sacred objects in unconsecrated places, with lesser penalties, as impris 1 Ann. Hist. vili. 64, 65, 74; Lac. iv. 175, 180; Cap. viii. 79, 86. 34. onment for various periods. The excessive se- | extensive than that which had been thrown out verity of these enactments, more suited to the in the preceding year, and therefore less likely twelfth than the nineteenth century, excited, as to excite general alarm; but it was destined to might have been expected, the most violent op- the same object, and intended to prepare the position in both Chambers. Viscount Chateau- way for a more general measure. The Govern briand spoke and voted for the amendment ment proposed to the holders of five per cent. proposed by the Liberals; but such was the stock to convert them into four and a half per strength of the ultra-religious party in both, cent., with a guarantee against being paid off that the law, without any material alteration, before 1835. It was hoped that this advantage, passed the Commons by a majority of 115, and in the existing state of the money market, would 36 in the Peers. It is worthy of notice, that in induce the holders of stock to consent to the all these extreme measures the majority in the small reduction of their interest. The project, Commons was much greater than in the Peers; which was very complicated in its details, was so materially had the modification of the Elec- adopted by a large majority in both Chambers; toral Law, and the admission of an enlarged the numbers being, in the Deputies, 237 to 119; number of rural representatives, altered the in the Peers, 134 to 92. Thus commenced the character of the popular part of the legislature. system of progressively reducing the interest of The professed object of the law was to check the public debt-a system, the expedience of the growth of irreligion and infidelity-a de- which, in a financial point of view, is beyond sign in the importance of which all must concur, all dispute, but which, in a social, is attended though the question as to whether with very important and often unlooked-for reit was likely to be favored or re-sults. When the public funds," said M. Bertin tarded by enactments of so extreme de Veaux, during the discussion of this question, and rigorous a description, is by no "shall yield only three per cent., land will yield means equally clear.1 only two per cent.; its value as stock will inAnother step, less important in itself, but equal- crease, its income diminish. Would you know ly significant, as indicating the rapid the result of such a state of things? It must Law regard tendency of ideas and legislation in be the entire disappearance of small properties. ing religious the party at present ruling the state To them it is, in truth, a law of expropriation. societies of toward Romish institutions, was the Under the long-continued action of such a syswomen. bill for legalizing female religious tem, the soil of France will come to be divided communities. The law of January 2, 1817, had among a few great millionaires and seigneurs, enacted, that every religious establishment re- who alone will be able to bear, from the imcognized by the law should be capable of hold- mensity of their possessions, the low rate of ing property under certain conditions; but this profit to be derived from any portion of land.”* privilege applied only to societies of men. The It may be subject of grave consideration whether present law extended the privilege to societies this effect is not already taking place in Great of women, on condition of their being established Britain, when it is recollected that, despite its for religious and charitable purposes, under cer- vast stores of accumulated wealth, drawn from tain prescribed regulations, and approved by the all parts of the world, there are only 1 Ann. Hist. bishop of the diocese. It was stated by the 236,000 persons possessed, from ev- Cap. viii. Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, in the debate ery source, of an income of £200 a viii.174,182; on the subject in the Chamber of Deputies, that year.1 140,000 sick persons among the poor were year- The coronation of the King took place, with ly attended by the pious care of the Sisters of extraordinary pomp, at Rheims on 36. Charity, 120,000 children in the humblest class- the 29th May. An accident which Coronation es received gratuitous education from their la- occurred to the King's carriage, and of the King bors, and 100,000 in the higher an education was nearly attended with fatal effects Rheims. suitable to their more elevated duties. May 29. Cer- to the royal person, on the journey tainly in these exemplary duties there was no- to the town a few days before, afforded, by the thing which was not the proper object of anxious solicitude which it awakened in all admiration; and so obvious were the advant- classes, a measure of the popularity of the sov ages of these charitable institutions, that, not-ereign. Nothing could exceed the grandeur 2 Ann Hist. Withstanding the jealousy of monastic advances, the bill passed the ChamCap. 9, 94, bers by a very large majority, that in the Deputies being 263 to 27.2 Although M. de Villèle had been defeated the question of a reduction upon Measure of M. of the interest of the national debt, he did not despair of ultimate success; and the extremely high state of the public funds, which had attained such an elevation that the Five per Cents were above a hundred, afforded the fairest prospect of success. The indemnity to the emigrants, as already noticed, was based on the establishment of a three per cent. stock; and as the prin- finances appeared from the result in August 5, when the ciple of such interest was once admitted, it seem-books, opened for the conversion of five per cents to four ed to afford a precedent for effecting a gradual reduction of interest to the same level. The plan now brought forward by M. de Villèle was less viii. 25, 43. 97. 35 de Villele for the reduction of the debt. 103. and magnificence of the preparations and the ceremony, in which all the minutiae of feudal etiquette were religiously preserved, but combined with the splendor of modern riches and the delicacy of modern taste. An important change, indicative of the spirit of the age, was introduced into the oath which the monarch took on the occasion. A long negotiation between the government and the heads of the church had been carried on before, which terminated in a considerable modification of the coronation oath, both as regards the duty of the King to his subjects, and the obligations The beneficial effect of M. de Villéle's motion on the and a half, were closed. The reduction of interest was of the land-tax-Ordonnance, 23d Sept., 1825; Annuaire 6,238,000 francs a year, which was applied to a reduction Historique, viii. 284. |