We must now resume the thread of the internal history of France, which excited this year only a secondary interest, when compared to her foreign policy; and after the great length to which the latter has extended, will not demand so many of our pages. The moment, however, at which the narrative paused, was that of a critical and interesting proceeding.

Manuel, in exposing the dangers which France incurred by engaging in a war for the suppression of Spanish liberty, particularly urged the hazards to which it might expose the person of the king himself. In enforcing this view of the subject, he used the following expressions: "Need I say that the moment when the dangers of the royal family in France became the most serious, was when France, revolutionary France, felt that she had need to defend herself by new strength, and by an energy wholly new?"

This sentence, the obnoxious tendency of which appears somewhat mysterious, caused the whole right side to burst forth into one blaze of tumult. They rose at once, and with shouts demanded that the orator should

be called to order. The president then said, "It is impossible not to remark to the orator, that the manner in which he now expresses himself is wholly out of order. In speaking of an event which must so long cause the tears of France to flow, and will be the object for her of eternal regret, he has treated the assassination of her martyr-king, as a measure inspired by a new energy." (Loud applauses on the right

from the left," M. Manuel did not say so.")" The duties which the regulations of this house impose, do not permit me say that M. Manuel did not say so; I shall repeat his phrase. The orator said, if such misfortunes have happened, it is that France had need to recur to a new energy,' and some moments before he had spoken of a crime for ever to be deplored." Voices to the right: "The intention is too evident. Order! order!" Other voices: "Expulsion! expulsion! we must expel this wretch." The whole right again rose with a sudden and spontaneous movement, and a hundred voices, heard far beyond the precincts of the assembly house, exclaimed, "Down with the apologist of regi

cide! he cannot remain among us." Above the tumult was heard the voice of Hyde de Neuville, who rushed to the tribune, and was crying out, "I ask to avenge France! I ask to avenge the army!" The president now stated, "that the orator against whom the complaint was made sought to justify himself." Hyde de Neuville, "There is no justification possible." The president urged, "that by the regulations of the Chamber, the orator was absolutely entitled to a hearing, and that it was not possible to refuse it." Forty or fifty voices cried out, "We will never hear him more, let him cease to stain the tribune." The tumult now rose higher than ever. The president directed all his efforts to bring some sort of order out of this chaos. After having in vain for some time rung his bell, he had at length recourse to the extreme measure provided by the constitution, of putting on his hat. This potent step, by its novelty, produced a silence of a few minutes, after which the uproar recommenced. The president, however, declared the sitting suspended for an hour. The tumultuary noise then gradually fell; but the opposite parties continued discoursing among themselves in a state of violent agitation. The members on the right formed plans for the expulsion of Manuel, and even arranged a committee among themselves, to prepare a proposition to that effect. The members on the left were at the same time engaged in deep consultation, the result of which was, that Manuel should commit his defence to writing, for the purpose of being presented in that form to the president. When the hour had elapsed, the assembly was again constituted, and there appeared a gleam of tranquillity; but as soon as Manuel appeared, advancing towards the president with his paper, the whole right side rose with redoubled cries, calling out, "No, no to the door! to the

door! we must expel this votary of sedition, this apologist of regicide. The president, however, proclaimed that the regulations absolutely gave to Manuel the right of being heard. Forbin des Isarts," I speak for a case which is above regulation. The cham ber never could, in my opinion, binda itself so far by any regulation, as to be condemned to undergo the punishment of hearing an orator preach here maxims and doctrines which invite and which justify regicide. I propose, in consequence, as a duty of the Chamber, if it wishes to respect itself, and to meet the confidence which all France reposes in it, that it should expel from its bosom the orator who has held such infamous language." These words were accompanied by loud bravoes and cheers from the right, by which, when Manuel attempted to speak, he was immediately cried down. The president, however, maintained the dignity of his office, and informed them that no proposition could be made to the chamber, till it had passed through the offcial forms, which it could not do till next day. They endeavoured to hold out the committee formed among themselves as sufficient, and when this was rejected by the president, the whole right raised an united cry of " Vote! Vote!" With this they drowned the attempts made by the president to read the paper of Manuel, as well as to procure a hearing for Chauvelin, who wished to plead his cause. The president finally declared, that he knew his duty too well to sanction so irregular a proceeding, and since he could not re-establish order, dissolved the sitting. The right side then cried out, "This is what we wanted for to-day; to-morrow we will do the rest. Vive le Roi! Vivent les Bourbons!" Thus closed those royal proceedings, which certainly were much more stamped with the wildest licence of revolutionary times, than any of that foreign po

pular assembly, which, to maintain the cause of "order," they were so anxious to subvert.

The Royalists retired to mature their plans, for the irrevocably decided expulsion of the obnoxious member. Manuel, meantime, gave to the public his letter, which he had in vain offered to the perusal of the chamber. His sole object, he declared, had been to prove, by the example of France, the danger to which the royal person might be exposed by the intervention of a foreign armed force. After the obnoxious words, he had been prepared to add: "Then revolutionary France, feeling the necessity of defending herself with a new force and energy, set all her masses in motion, excited all popular passions, and thus led to ter. rible excesses, and a deplorable catastrophe, in the midst of a generous resistance."

The ruling party were fully pre-determined to set at defiance all apology or explanation. On the following day, after some deliberations on matters of form, De la Bourdonnaye, who ranked at the head of the ultra-royalists, came forward in due form to demand the expulsion of Manuel. He represented that individual as having already, by continual relapses, exhausted all the milder forms of chastisement, which the indulgent generosity of the regulations made by the chamber entrusted to its president. He had now become the object of general indignation, not for a word, not even for a phrase involuntarily escaped amid an extempore harangue, but for an entire discourse," of which," said he, "the whole and the parts, alike criminal, not only revived the pernicious doctrines which made such ravages among us, but go even to justify the most terrible of the crimes to which they gave birth. If the regulations of the chamber are insufficient, it was because the chamber never could foresee that

a deputy, whose first obligation is to be loyal and faithful, should proclaim in this house the apology of regicide." (Girardin, "There is no apology of regicide; you would have been convinced if you would have heard the sentence to the end.") La Bourdonnaye continued to urge, "that the chamber not being amenable to any other jurisdiction, and possessing the liberty of votes and opinions, must possess a power of punishing crimes committed in the exercise of this liberty." (Dupont and Lameth called out that this was the language of the convention.) The orator insisted, that this right was essential to the chamber, and that they could not delegate it without renouncing their existence. At the same time, the strongest punishment they could inflict was exclusion from their body. The assembly could delegate to their president only the right of punishing infractions of order and decorum, of preserving the police of the assembly, but not the high jurisdiction of punishing crimes committed within itself, and in the exercise of legislative functions. This jurisdiction the chamber was now called to exercise. He would not recall the expressions, which it would be impossible to repeat, without losing the moderation which became so solemn a proceeding. He appealed to the feeling which they had experienced, to the recollection which remained engraven in their hearts, as the best and surest witnesses.

In closing his speech, the orator addressed the assembly in an impassioned strain: "Defenders," said he," of the powers of society, you will not suffer that an attack on the first, the most august of all powers, should remain unpunished. Defenders of public li berties, you will not suffer the abuse to such a pitch of the first of all liberties, that which is the protector of all others, the national tribune, in order

to render the representative government odious and impossible. Convinced of the fatal effects of too long indulgence, you will strip off the mantle of inviolability from him, who, having received it only for the defence of society, turned against itself the security which it granted. He must cease to be the representative of this country, for ever celebrated under the name of the classic land of fidelity, who feared not to make in your presence the apology of regicide, of that crime, which rousing in an instant La Vendee, produced suddenly an army of heroes. Let him cease to be deputy; let him enjoy for the last time the inviolability which that title secures to him."

La Bourdonnaye was answered by Etienne, who declared "that Manuel, with all his party, were united in their horror of regicide. They all regard ed the crime of the 21st of January as a subversion of every divine and human law. It was the work of an anarchical and sanguinary faction; yet the Convention itself would not have been guilty of it, if some of its members had not voted under the influence of terror and death. These declarations were not necessary for France, to which he and his friends were known; but they were necessary to refute, in the eyes of foreign nations, those odious calumnies, which treated the defenders of liberty and of the chamber, as the supporters of anarchy and regicide; to shew to kings and to nations, that they professed the principles upon which reposed the stability of empires, and the happiness of nations."

The orator then endeavoured to draw to the assembly a picture of their own conduct. " A fatal prejudice had given rise to a scene afflicting to all the friends of representative government. They had formed a final judgment upon a sentence which they

would not even hear to the end; they then refused, contrary to their own regulation, announced by the president, to hear M. Manuel's defence. They would not suffer the reading of his letter, which would have enlightened the blindest passion, and disarmed the most obstinate fury. Gentlemen, i laws are disregarded in the very sanc tuary of their discussion; if you break all the ties of discipline; if you are deaf even to the voice of him in whose hands you have entrusted your own powers, what fatal examples do you not give to all the administrative and judicial bodies. Not content with ha ving trampled under foot your inte rior regulations, you propose to vio late all the most sacred laws; to pu nish without hearing; to refuse to one of your colleagues the justice granted to the most obscure of malefactors; to strip the deputy of the security and the rights of the citizen. Gentlemen, beware! to act in this manner is not to judge; it is to proscribe. It is to resemble the assembly which inspires you with so much horror, and which, by mutilating itself, shewed sufficient. ly the lot which it reserved for France. It, too, condemned by acclamations; it punished upon a strained interpre tation of phrases. Gentlemen, can you

think without trembling, on the measure into which it is attempted to hurry you? There will be no longer a Chamber of Deputies, when it shall be shewn, that the violence of a majo rity can destroy the work of an elec toral college. It is to the violation of laws, that France owes the catastrophes under which she groans; it is thus that political institutions perish. In stri king one of your members, you strike yourselves; you are accusers and jud ges; you sacrifice at once the right of defence, the laws, justice, and berty."

After some observations on the same side, from Girardin and Tripier

Manuel rose in his own defence. The right side made a violent effort to drown him, and to close the discussion; but the president insisted upon his obtaining a hearing." He did not rise," he said, "with any hope or desire of conjuring away the storm which was about to burst on his head. The conduct of the party, from the beginning of the session, had shewn a formed determination to crush him; and having in vain endeavoured to do so in any more plausible and regular manner, they had resorted to the present course. then endeavoured to shew, that there had been nothing in his language disrespectful to the memory of Louis XVI., or at all tending to justify regicide. He had merely said, that this foreign invasion, destined to save the monarch, might, on the contrary, precipitate his ruin. He, the youngest of all the speakers, had been the most a stranger to the revolution, and had known it only in the armies. As a proof of the spirit of party which pursued him, his adversary, De la Bourdonnaye, had characterized the charter, the immortal work of Louis XVIII., as an odious guarantee." (Reply, that it was a charter to be imposed upon Spain.) M. Manuel concluded, "Gentlemen, you are the Sovereign arbiters of my lot. If this fatal proposition obtains success, I shall be the first victim. May I be the last! Oh! if capable of feeling a spirit of vengeance, I, the victim of your passions, would trust to those passions the care of its gratification." The proposition was now referred to a committee of the whole chamber. Several members of the left having taunted ministers for declining to vote, the minister of finance declared, "that they had shared the opinion of the right side, but they conceived their official character precluded them from coming forward in a matter connected with the interior regulations of the

chamber." As the chamber was going at once into the committee, M. Laine urged, " that it would be more decorous to postpone it till to-morrow, and to shew to the world that they were capable of acting with deliberation." The proposition was carried by a very small majority.

On the following day, a great number of orators stood inscribed to speak; but the subject was already decided. St Aulaire and Royer Collard opposed the measure, with the intervention of Duplessis Grenedan, who supported it. The Royalists, who wished only for the vote, then ceased to speak, and the debate was necessarily closed. The president however stated, that Manuel himself must be heard; but he declined availing himself of this permission. A question arose to what length the exclusion could extend; but it was admitted both by Hyde de Neuville and Bourdonnaye, that it could not reach beyond the present

session.

The closing of the discussion being now pronounced by a great majority, Manuel rose. Even though he had intended to defend himself, he had been anticipated by the zeal of his honourable friends. The absence of right, the usurpation, the arbitrary nature of the proceedings, the innocence of his intentions, had been by them perfectly established. He was now determined, that everything should be done that depended on him, to preserve the national representation from degrada. tion. "I declare then," said he, "that I acknowledge in no one the right of accusing or of judging me. I seek here judges, and I find only accusers. I do not expect an act of justice; it is an act of vengeance to which I resign myself. I profess respect for the authorities, but I respect much more the law which founded them; and I acknowledge their power no longer, when, in contempt of this law, they