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justly incur the forfeiture of his own crown? It would be "6 premature," in the judgment of some, to give an opinion on this subject till after the thing has happened, and then it would be neither loyal nor patriotic to condemn the conduct of our own cabinet; but we hope at least that the next time the English government undertake to force a king upon the French people, they will send them a baboon instead of a Bourbon, as the less insult of the two!-To return to the question of personal politics. Our last king but one was a good domestic character; but this had little or nothing to do with the wisdom or folly of his public measures. He might be faithful to his conjugal vows, but might put a construction on some clause in his Coronationoath fatal to the peace and happiness of a large part of his subjects. He might be an exceedingly well-meaning, moral man, but might have notions instilled into him in early youth respecting the prerogatives of the crown and the relation between the sovereign and the people, that might not quit him to his latest breath, and might embroil his subjects and the world in disastrous wars and controversies during his whole reign. His son succeeded him without the same reputation for domestic virtue, but adopted all the measures of his father's mini

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sters. If the private character and the public conduct were to be submitted to the same test, this could not have happened. But the late king was cried up for his elegant accomplishments, and as the fine gentleman of his family; and this, with equally sound logic, atoned for the absence of less shewy qualities, and stamped his public proceedings with the character of a wise and liberal policy. We are already assured of a fortunate and peaceful reign, because the present king looks pleased and good-humoured on his accession to the crown; though the smallest cloud in the political horizon may scatter the ruddy smiles and overcast the whole prospect. Mr Coleridge..complains, somewhere, of poli-. ticians who pretend to guide the state, and yet have ruined their own affairs. Would the author of the Ancient Mariner apply the same rule to other things, and affirm that no one could be a poet or a philosopher who had not made his fortune? One would suppose, that all the people of sense and worth were confessedly on one side of the question in the great disputes in religion or politics that have agitated and torn the world in pieces, and all the knaves and fools on the other. This is hardly tenable ground. Charles IX., of happy memory, was we believe a goodtempered man and a most religious prince: this

did not hinder him from authorising the massacre of St Bartholomew and shooting at the Huguenots out of the palace-windows with his own hands. This was the prejudice of his time: we have still certain prejudices to contend with in ours, which have nothing to do with the looks, temper, or private character of those who hold them. We wonder at the cruelties and atrocities of religious fanatics in former times, and would not have them repeated: were none of these persecutors honest, conscientious men? Take any twelve inquisitors: six of them shall be angels and the other six scoundrels, yet they will all agree in one unanimous verdict, condemning you or me to the flames, for not believing in the infallibility of the Pope. This is the thing to be avoided by all means; and not to lose our time in idle discussions about the amiableness of the characters of these pious exterminators, nor in admiring the fineness of their countenances, nor the picturesque effect of the scenery and costume. Charles X., the gay and gallant Count d'Artois, wears a hair-shirt, is fond of partridge-shooting, and wanted to put a yoke on the necks of his subjects. The last is that on which issue was joined. Let him go where he chooses, with a handsome pension; but let him not be sent back again (as he was

once before) at the expense of millions of lives!*

* Even then I should not despair. The Revolution of the Three Days was like a resurrection from the dead, and showed plainly that liberty too has a spirit of life in it; and that the hatred of oppression is "the unquenchable flame, the worm that dies not."

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