further trouble about the affairs of state. Bonaparte can and will manage them at his own pleasure." Sièyes retired into the senate, with a salary of 25,000 francs, and the estate of Crôsne, in the park of Versailles; whereupon some wag observed

"Bonaparte to Sièyes has given du Crôsne;

But Sièyes to Bonaparte has given a throne."

Ducos also retired into the senate. The Abbé Sièyes was great at constitutionmongering, and, in his scheme, the first consul was to have very little to do. Bonaparte was not the sort of man to stand that to be a sham-to have the appearance, but not the reality of power-to fatten like a pig, as he himself said of Abbé Sièyes' scheme-to fatten like a pig upon so many millions a year. The French revolution had made, and left, men terribly in earnest. We shall now hear of it no more. The Bourbons had gone, and a greater and more splendid power than that of theirs was to be built up. And thus the revolution passed away-a warning and an example to all coming time, and a blessing to all lands, in spite of its panics, bloodshed, and evil deeds. Our young poets welcomed it, such as Burns and Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge. What a light, glory, and fulness of promise it shed all over Europe for awhile! The darkness of feudalism, ignorance, and superstition had gone, and the light had come. How fair were Godwin's dreams of political justice! In his reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey, Cottle writes-"It may be proper to state that all three of my young friends, in that day of excitement, felt a detestation of the French war then raging, and a hearty sympathy with the efforts made in France to obtain political amelioration. Almost every young and unprejudiced mind participated in this feeling; and Muir, and Palmer, and Morgarot were regarded as martyrs in the holy cause of liberty." Wordsworth, who was in Paris at the birth of the revolution, returned, as his latest biographer, Mr. Palgrave, tells us, with a strong sympathy for what France had arrived at in 1790; and a great dissatisfaction with the policy towards her pursued by England in 1792. In the letters of Earl Dudley to the Bishop of Llandaff, we have the testimony of an aristocrat, and a friend of Pitt, in favour of the benefits, visible even to himself, of the French revolution. We taught the French the art of revolution. Our English history was their model; but the original is pale and colourless, when compared with the copy. The difference is of race, rather than circumstantial.

Under the Stuarts we were fast sinking beneath the sway of priest and king; enslaved body and soul. As France was in a still more deplorable state, so, in like manner, she had a terrible baptism of blood to undergo. A silent, reserved, phlegmatic Prince of Orange would not have saved her as he saved us. As it is, in spite of her revolution, and notwithstanding the wrongs it redressed, and the rights it obtained for the masses, the boon of constitutional liberty is still denied to France. To such an extent, therefore, the French revolution was a failure. It is also charged with bloodshed and crime. Well, we must remember, as the late Mr. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, observed-"Crimes, no doubt, there were sanguinary and enormous crimes-perpetrated during the course of the French revolution; but, be it remembered, these acts were done in self-defence. The revolution itself was completed peacefully; and no proof whatever is capable of being adduced, that a peaceably-accomplished event it would have remained had it been let alone. But the fact is, there was a ceaseless struggle for a counterrevolution-a struggle carried on continually within, and stimulated without. The revolution was never secure for a day: there were always persons in different ranks of society plotting: foreign gold was circulating there to bribe domestic treason: and all Europe in arms was thundering on the frontiers. Is it wonderful that crimes were committed in self-defence in the circumstances in which they were placed? Blockade a man in his own house-bribe his servants-put gunpowder

under his bed-set fire to his dwelling, already surrounded by banditti—and then you must not be surprised if his conduct be rather extravagant, and he becomes somewhat violent. Let there be no exaggeration here. In describing this event, we speak as though the streets of Paris had for years and years flowed with blood. Much there was, indeed, shed of real noble blood; many fell under the guillotine, who deserved statues raised to their honour, and a niche in history-many who, if they had lived in this country, at no great distance of time, would have had their chance of being hanged under the reign of terror of William Pitt: for, if the French literary, philosophic, and patriotic men suffered, we must not forget that our honest Hardy, and not only men of the shoemaking class, but that our Holcrofts, and Thelwalls, and Horne Tookes-our men of philosophy, literature, art, and genius-were also perilled; and it was by no virtue of the then ruling power that we did not commit some crimes as foul as any of those that stained the progress of the French revolution."

In another direction the French revolution was a sad stumbling-block. As regards England, it put political progress back half a generation. By our revolution in 1688, we had obtained the independence of the judges; the liberation of the press from the control of a censorship; and, in the third place, the great principle of religious liberty was proclaimed. Under the settlement thus effected, the nation enjoyed an amount of prosperity and repose which made it the envy of surrounding nations. But evils had grown up. Our Hanoverian kings were mere foreign doges, dependent upon the Whig party, and disliked by their natural allies, the Tories. The country was in the hands of the great revolutionary parties, and the power of the monarch was nothing; and thus abuses had crept into the heart of the body politic, and a cry for reform was raised. A character of selfishness, severity, and narrowness had stamped much of our legislation, especially as regards the poorer classes; and Sir Robert Walpole had lowered the tone of public men, till it became more like that of pedlars than statesmen. Pitt began life as a reformer. The Duke of Richmond, and the proudest noblemen in the land, were in favour of reform. The nation was on the side of reform. Burke, and Fox, and Pitt were all ready to carry a measure of reform. What was it altered this state of things? What was it drove the nation into the hands of the Tories? What made Pitt abandon the principles and pledges of his youth? The answer is

the French revolution.

If a

By king and queen, by lords and ladies, by statesmen and officers, by rich merchants and country squires, by millionaires and beggars, by dignitaries in the church, and by pensioners on the state, reform came to be hated with a hatred of which we, in these latter and calmer times, can form no idea. This reaction lasted till the peace-lasted all the time Lord Palmerston was preparing to buckle on the armour, and take his stand as an athlete in the political arena. "The French revolution," wrote Lord John Russell, in his History of the Constitution, "is ascribed to everything, and everything to the French revolution. book is written containing new opinions on subjects of philosophy and literature, we are told to avoid them, for to Voltaire and Rousseau is to be attributed the French revolution. If an ignorant cobbler harangues a ragged mob in Smithfield, we are told that the state is in danger, for the fury of a mob was the beginning of the French revolution. If there is discontent in the manufacturing towns, we are told that the discontent of the manufacturing towns in France was the cause of the French revolution. Nay, even if it is proposed to allow a proprietor of land to shoot partridges and hares on his own ground, we are told that this would be to admit the doctrine of natural rights-the source of all the evils of the French revolution. The voice of reason is not listened to; the whole precedent is taken in the gross as a receipt in full for every bad law, for every ancient abuse for maintaining error and applauding incapacity. It is as if, when a patient were worn out with bad fare, and exhausted with debility, a physician should administer copious bleedings because his next-door neighbour was dying with pleurisy." This

was written many many, years after the French revolution: yet such was the mischievous effect, even then.

CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST CONSUL AND WILLIAM PITT.

THE age makes the man. This is true of Bonaparte; and is equally true of his steadfast enemy, William Pitt. But "men make the age," is an axiom equally true; and equally true is it of Bonaparte and Pitt. Bonapartism is still a power-still forms and fashions a great nation. The Pittites have passed away, because they were fighting for a dead and rotten past. Pitt's name, however, was something more than a tradition in English statesmanship, up to the time of the struggle for reform. Let us look at these giants. We begin with the Corsican, who—

"Left a name at which the world grew pale,

To point a moral or adorn a tale."

In 1332, John Bonaparte was chief magistrate of Florence. In 1404, a descendant and namesake of the above was plenipotentiary from Florence at the Court of Gabriel Visconti, Duke of Milan; and he married a niece of Pope Nicholas VII. His son was ambassador from that pontiff to several foreign Courts. Gabriel Bonaparte established himself at Ajaccio, in Corsica, in 1567; and for several generations his descendants were successively head of the elders of that city. By intermarriages, the Bonapartes, on their emigration into Corsica, had become connected with some of the noblest in Italy.

Carlo Bonaparte studied law at Pisa; and when he returned to Corsica, became advocate in the Royal Court of Assize. He married Letitia Ramolino, at Ajaccio, in 1767. Both were born in that town; and the lady, who was of Neapolitan extraction, is said to have been well descended, remarkable for beauty, strong-minded and accomplished. Carlo had gone into the army, and served under Paoli in his defence of the island in 1768 and 1769, after the Genoese had sold their claim to France. The submission of the Corsicans to the French took place in 1769, in June. On August 15th, Napoleon was born. By birth, therefore, he was a subject of the Bourbons. His mother was seized with the pains of labour while attending mass at the solemnisation of some holiday. She speedily gained her home; and upon reaching her chamber, was delivered of a male child upon an old piece of tapestry, upon which was embroidered the heroes of Homer, and figures of the fabled warriors of antiquity. The child thus born was to outrival, in his career, "the Macedonian madman and the Swede." The month after his birth, Count Marbœuf, the French commissioner at Corsica, convoked the states of the island, comprised of the three orders-clergy, nobles, and commons. The Bonapartes were convoked with the nobility.

Bonaparte, the fighting over, returned to his profession as an advocate, and, soon after, he went to Paris at the head of a deputation of his order, to obtain an audience of Louis XVI., relative to differences which had arisen between the French commissioner, Count Marbœuf, and Count de Narbonne Peter, who had commanded in Corsica. His defence of Count Marbœuf led to a friendship between them. The count was grateful, and, in 1777, obtained for the young Napoleon admission to the military school of Brienne as a king's pensioner. At that time he had an Italian caste of features of a remarkably dark hue, bright piercing eyes, and a large head, quite disproportioned to his body. As a child he was studious; and he applied himself with great earnestness to the study of the

French language, history, and mathematics, in all of which, especially the latter, he made a great proficiency. In his leisure hours he cultivated a little plot of garden; as did all the other boys at Brienne.

At an early age his genius was remarkable. He was the second son of Carlo, Joseph being the oldest; but his uncle, Lucien, who was Archdeacon of Ajaccio, when on his death-bed, designated him, in the presence of his brothers, the chief of the family.

In 1784, in consequence of his proficiency in mathematics, he was selected for the military school in Paris, although he had not attained the age at which scholars are usually admitted to that establishment. The next year he passed his examination successfully, and obtained his first commission in the artillery regiment of La Fère, then forming part of the garrison at Grenoble: he was soon after promoted to the rank of first lieutenant. At Valence, where he was then stationed, he experienced his first attachment: he visited at the house of Madame Columbier, who had a beautiful daughter. They fell in love; but the prudent mother would not hear of marriage. They parted; and when they again met, the lady had become the wife of a private gentleman, and her first love was Emperor of France. Napoleon gave employment to the husband, and made the wife lady of honour to one of his sisters. At Valence Bonaparte also made the acquaintance of M. de Montlevet, who, years after, became his Minister of the Interior: and in that town Napoleon studied other than military questions. The Abbé Raynal proposed a question for discussion-"What are the principles and institutions by which mankind can obtain the greatest amount of happiness?" Napoleon's paper on the subject gained the prize offered by the Academy of France.

While at Valence the French revolution broke out, and Napoleon took the popular side. In Paris he witnessed the attack on the Tuileries, in 1792. On that occasion, he exclaimed-" How could they allow those despicable wretches to enter the palace? Why, a few discharges of grapeshot amongst them would make them all take to their heels: they would be running yet at this moment." Nor did he despise the unfortunate Louis. At a later period, when Sièyes, in conversation, spoke of Louis XVI. as a tyrant, he replied "He was no tyrant, or I should have been a subaltern officer of artillery; and you, Monsieur l'Abbaye, would be saying

After witnessing the scene of the 10th of August, Napoleon returned with his family to Corsica. Paoli, who had been appointed to the chief command of the island, gave him the captainship of a battalion of guards. When Paoli called upon his countrymen to place themselves under British rule, Napoleon joined the French. The English were for a time successful; and, in 1793, he left the island, taking his mother and sisters with him-his father being dead.

to

To a certain extent we have indicated his career. He had won his way the first rank three months before he completed his thirtieth year. Aiming at universal empire, he was thwarted by William Pitt.

William Pitt, orator and statesman, the second son of the great Lord Chatham, was born in 1759. His mother was a Grenville. From his father he inherited a lofty, liberal, magnanimous nature, and commanding oratorical talent. From his mother he derived a methodical accuracy-a power of arranging masses of details which had distinguished two generations of Grenvilles. The child was educated by his father, who trained him for the assembly in which, in time, he was to fill the highest and most arduous post. From earliest boyhood he attended the debates in parliament; and at Cambridge, under the tuition of Tomline, he seems to have acquired most of the learning which he ever had the leisure to master. He became an extraordinary mathematician, for his years. He was also a good classic scholar; and, what was equally advantageous to him, he became a diligent student of political economy, as then expounded by Adam Smith.

Pitt was driven from office by the unnatural alliance formed between Fox and Lord North. Though his chance of office appeared but remote, and he was

actually meditating a return to the bar, to which he had been called, his attitude of proud self-confidence was unchanged. He continued, in haughty and telling language, to inveigh against the apostasy of the coalition; and the applause of the House was echoed by the nation, as, in a felicitous quotation, he contrasted the spotless purity of his political conduct, his " self-resignation to honest poverty," with the triumph of his foes, obtained by tergiversation.

And he was right. Such conduct raised him high in the respect of the nation and the king, and he was soon recalled to office. On the defeat of Fox's India Bill, Pitt was ordered to form an administration, with himself as First Lord of the Treasury; and he accepted the responsibility in the face of a furious and baffled opposition.

The general election of 1784 placed Pitt at the head of affairs, with ampler powers than had been wielded by any minister since the days of Walpole. From 1784 to 1806, with the exception of the brief interval when Addington filled the office of Premier, the government of England devolved upon Pitt.

Pitt's fame, in his earlier years of premiership, was enhanced by several accidental circumstances. Against the expectation of all who had prophesied the decline of England upon the loss of her American colonies, the nation grew in wealth and prosperity. The majority which Pitt commanded in parliament removed from George III. the temptation of governing by illegitimate means; and the factious and unprincipled conduct of the opposition, enhanced, by contrast, his dignified conduct, and reflected much discredit on their leaders. When we bear in mind that the French treaty, and the resolutions of free trade with Ireland, were denounced by Burke, who had spent years in inculcating an analogous policy, and that Fox, the representative of the Whigs of 1688, in his opposition to the Regency Bill, proclaimed theories of divine right, it is evident reflecting men must have preferred the principles and policy of Pitt.

Pitt's weak point-now that the passions of the day have passed away, and we can judge after the event-was his foreign policy. Like Fox, he was blind to the real nature of the French revolution, and its probable consequences. Even after 1793, when France was overrunning Europe with a propaganda of Jacobin crusaders, Pitt persisted in maintaining that its disruption as a nation, and its fall as a great European power, would be the result of the revolution: and the "same want of accurate perception and of keen sagacity," writes a recent reviewer in he British Quarterly, "may be traced in Pitt's subsequent conduct of the contest. Undoubtedly there was a grandeur of conception in his plan of banding all Europe against France, and of crushing her through successive coalitions; nor do we dispute that considerable energy, and an immense amount of British money, were employed in seeking the attainment of those objects. Undoubtedly, in this course of policy, Pitt was following out, on a larger scale, the examples set him by King William and Chatham, who, at different periods, had combined leagues for the purpose of resisting French ambition, in which England took, as a military power, but a secondary part as compared with her allies. Nor can we deny that the obstacles to success in the path of Pitt were infinitely greater than those which beset his illustrious predecessor, inasmuch as, for instance, Moreau and Napoleon were different far from Richelieu and Soubise; and the stern republicans of the army of Italy were very unlike the unwillingly impressed peasants who bled at the bidding of Villars and Luxembourg. But admitting all this, it is now evident that Pitt committed a terrible mistake in opposing mere dynastic coalitions to the energy of the French republic; and, at least, when he had become aware of the hollow support which Prussia and Austria were giving to the cause of the alliance, he should have brought more prominently forward the force of England as a military nation. It is impossible to doubt, that had he possessed the creative genius of a real war minister, he would, even from the outset of a strife which had little resemblance with previous wars, have made England as formidable on land as would have befitted her rank as a European power; and that when a succession of humiliating