Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V. Walter Scott
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great occasions of the Restoration and Revolution; recognising, at either crisis, the right of blood to succeed to the crown, whether vacant by the murder of Charles I., or the abdication of James II. In principle, too, it may be observed, that in all modern European nations, the king is nominally the source both of law and justice; and that statutes are promulgated, and sentences executed in his name, without inferring that he has the despotic right either to make the one, or to alter the other. Although, therefore, the constitution of France emanated in the usual form of a royal charter, the King was no more empowered to recall or innovate its provisions, than King John to abrogate those of the English Magna Charta. Monsieur, the King's brother, had promised in his name, upon his solemn entrance to Paris, that Louis would recognise the basis of the constitution prepared by the Senate. This pledge was fully redeemed by the charter, and wise men would have been more anxious to secure the benefits which it bestowed, than scrupulously to cavil on the mode in which they had been conferred.
In fact, Louis had adopted not only the form most consonant to ancient usage, but that which he thought most likely to satisfy both the royalists and the revolutionary party. He ascended the throne as his natural right; and, having done so, he willingly granted to the people, in an irrevocable form, the substantial principles of a free constitution. But both parties were rather displeased at what they considered as lost, than gratified at what they gained by this arrangement. The royalists regarded the constitution, with its concessions, as a voluntary abandonment of the royal prerogative; while the revolutionary party exclaimed, that the receiving the charter from the King as an act of his will was in itself a badge of servitude; and that the same royal prerogative which had granted these privileges, might, if recognised, be supposed to reserve the power of diminishing or resuming them at pleasure. And thus it is, that folly, party-spirit, pride, and passion, can misrepresent the best measures, and so far poison the public mind, that the very granting the object of their desires shall be made the subject of new complaints.
The formation of the ministry gave rise to more serious grounds of apprehension and censure. The various offices of administration were, upon the restoration, left in possession of persons selected from those who had been named by the Provisional Government. All the members of the Provisional State Council were called to be royal ministers of the State. Many of these, though possessed of reputed talents, were men hackneyed in the changes of the Revolution; and were not, and could not be, intrusted with the King's confidence beyond the bounds of the province which each administered.
Talleyrand, minister for foreign affairs, whose talents and experience might have given him claim to the situation of prime minister, was unpopular from his political versatility; and it was judged, after a time, most expedient to send him to the Congress at Vienna, that his diplomatic skill might be employed in arranging the exterior relations of France with the other powers of Europe. Yet the absence of this consummate statesman was of great prejudice to the King's affairs. His having preserved life, distinction, and frequently power, during so many revolutionary changes, proved, according to the phrase of the old Earl of Pembroke, that "he was born of the willow, not of the oak." But it was the opinion of the wisest men in France, that it was not fair, considering the times in which he lived, to speak of his attachment to, or defection from, individuals; but to consider the general conduct and maxims which he recommended relative to the interests of France. It has been truly said, that, after the first errors and ebullitions of republican zeal, if he were measured by this standard, he must be judged favourably. The councils which he gave to Napoleon were all calculated, it was said, for the good of the nation, and so were the measures which he recommended to the King. Much of this is really true; yet, when we think of the political consistency of the Prince of Beneventum, we cannot help recollecting the personal virtue of a female follower of the camp, which consisted in strict fidelity to the grenadier company.
Dupont was promoted to the situation of minister at war, owing, perhaps, to the persecution he had undergone from Buonaparte, in consequence of his surrender at Baylen to the Spaniards. Soult was afterwards called to this important office; how recommended, it would be vain to inquire. When Napoleon heard of his appointment from the English resident, he observed that it would be a wise and good one, if no patriotic party should show itself in France; but, if such should arise, he intimated plainly that there would be no room for the Bourbons to rest faith upon Soult's adherence to their cause; and so it proved.
To add still farther to the inconveniences of this state of administration, Louis XVIII. had a favourite, although he had no prime minister. Count Blacas d'Aulps, minister of the household, an ancient and confidential attendant on the royal person during his exile, was understood to be the channel through which the King's wishes were communicated to the other ministers; and his protection was supposed to afford the surest access to the favours of the crown.
Without doing his master the service of a premier, or holding either the power or the responsibility of that high situation, De Blacas had the full share of odium usually attached to it. The royalists, who pressed on him for grants which were in the departments of other ministers, resented his declining to interfere in their favour, as if, having satisfied his own ambition, he had become indifferent to the interest of those with whom he had been a joint sufferer during the emigration. The opposite party, on the other hand, represented Count Blacas as an absolute minister, an emigrant himself, and the patron of emigrants; a royalist of the highest class, and an enemy, of course, to all the constitutional stipulations in favour of liberty. Thus far it is certain, that the unpopularity of M. de Blacas, with all ranks and parties in the state, had the worst possible influence on the King's affairs; and as his credit was ascribed to a blind as well as an obstinate attachment on the part of Louis, the monarch was of course involved in the unpopularity of the minister of the household.
The terms of the peace, as we have already hinted, had been studiously calculated to recommend it to the feelings of the French people. France was, indeed, stripped of that extended sway which rendered her dangerous to the independence of other European nations, and reduced, generally speaking, to the boundaries which she occupied on the 1st of January 1792. Still the bargain was not harshly driven. Several small additions were left with her on the side of Germany and the Netherlands, and on that of Savoy she had the considerable towns of Chamberri, Annecy, Avignon, with the Venaisson and Mont Belliard, included in her territories.73 But these concessions availed little; and looking upon what they had lost, many of the French people, after the recollections had subsided of their escape from a dreadful war, were naturally, however unreasonably, disposed to murmur against the reduction of their territories, and to insist that Belgium, at least, should have remained with them. This opinion was encouraged and pressed by the Buonapartists, who considered the cession of that country with the more evil eye, because it was understood to have been a point urged by England.
Yet if England played a proud, it was also a generous part. She had nothing to stipulate, nothing of which to demand restitution, for she had sustained no territorial loss during the whole period of hostilities. The war, which had nearly ruined most other nations, had put Britain in possession of all the colonies of France, and left the latter country neither a ship nor a port in the East or West Indies; and, to sum the whole, it was not in the power of united Europe to take from England by force any one of the conquests which she had thus made. The question therefore, only was, what Britain was voluntarily to cede to an enemy who could give her no equivalent, excepting the pledge to adopt better principles, and to act no longer as the disturber of Europe. The cessions were such in number and amount, as to show that England was far above the mean and selfish purpose of seeking a colonial monopoly, or desiring to destroy the possibility of commercial rivalry. All was restored to France, excepting only Tobago and the Mauritius.
These sacrifices, made in the spirit of peace and moderation, were not made in vain. They secured to Britain the gratitude and respect of other states, and, giving to her councils that character of justice and impartiality which constitutes the best national strength, they placed her in a situation of more influence and eminence in the civilized world than the uncontrolled possession of all the cotton-fields and sugar-islands of the east and west could ever have raised her to. Still, with respect to France in particular, the peace was not recommended by the eminence to which it had raised England. The rivalry, so long termed national, and which had been so carefully fostered
See Treaty of Paris, Art. III. Parl. Debates, vol. xxviii., p. 178.