a year (10,000 francs). This measure, no doubt, secured to the ministers a majority in the upper chamber, but secured it by means which were an insult to public opinion. It was a prostitution and degradation of the dignity of the peerage; it was a declaration that the great institutions of the state were to be regarded only as means for securing the power of a party; it was a fresh and open acknowledgment, like the establish ment of the censorship, that the reign of that party, and the regular constitutional working of these institutions, were incompatible with each other.

From the moment that the ordinance dissolving the chambers was promulgated, the censorship was suspended; and the gathered exasperation of the press now flamed forth on every side, to annihilate the ministerial candidates at the elections. Ministers had foreseen this; and to guard against its effects, they had had recourse to all the little arts of management which the election law of France renders it easy to practise, and to which no party seems to reckon it dishonourable to have recourse. Protected by the censorship, the government had for some time been making its own arrangements in silence, and entered on the contest fully prepared; while it left so short an interval for the elections as, it flattered itself, would not allow time for maturing any plans of regular opposition. The ordinance appeared on the 6th of November; the electoral colleges of the arrondissements were summoned for the 17th, and those of the departments for the 24th of the same month. Thus only twelve days were allow ed for the decree to travel to all corners of France, and for the op

position to examine the lists of voters, and carry through their canvass. The ministry had already taken its measures; the prefects, the mayors, and the clergy, had been all at work; they had ascertained, and, as they imagined, with perfect accuracy, the relative strength of parties in every electoral college. The jury-lists, which had been made up under the law of the present session, furnished them with the means of doing so; and it is impossible to conceive that they would needlessly have encountered a general election, if they had not thought that the state of these lists justified confident anticipations of decided majorities.

But these anticipations were woefully disappointed. The management that had been used, the influence that had been purchased, joined to the usual appliances of power, would have been sufficient to defeat either the liberal, or the royalist, portion of the opposition. But these two parties, between whom there were not many senti. ments or opinions in common, coalesced, and, by their union, overwhelmed the government. Whenever the liberals found themselves likely to be in a minority, they united unhesitatingly with the royalists to defeat the ministerial candidates; and, in the same spirit, whenever the royalists found that they had no hope of success singly, they united with the liberals. If any doubt occurred whether a royalist-opposition candidate, or a liberal-opposition candidate, ought to retire, a scrutiny took place, and he who was found to have the smaller number of promised votes, gave way, that his friends might lend their support to the other candidate. There was,

as an elector expressed it, "an unanimity of malediction against the ministry," altogether unexampled. From the coalition of such opposite opinions, there resulted a list of candidates the most whimsical and party-coloured imaginable; a mixture of royalists, emigrants, republicans, and Buonapartists, all equally certain of success. In Paris, out of the eight colleges of arrondissement into which the electors of the capital are divided, not one maintained the provisional bureau, in other words, the president, inspectors, and secretary, nominated by the government. At the election, not a single ministerial candidate obtained a seat. The eight opposition candidates, Dupont, Lafitte, Cassimir-Perrier, Benjamin Constant, Schonen, Ternaux, Royer-Collard, and Baron Louis, were returned by 6,690 votes against 1114. In the provinces, the same spirit and coalition were at work with the same effect. Even many of the ministerial candidates secured their election only by throwing off their old patrons, and professing a sincere desire to return to the government of the charter. The last hope of the ministers lay in the departmental elections. The electors of the departmental colleges were persons of more respectable rank; the élite of the district colleges; more accessible, it was hoped, to government influence, and less apt to be led away by popular feeling, than the more mixed electors of the arrondissement. But this stay, too, failed them. The department of the Seine, which includes Paris, returned four opposition candidates. Its example was very generally followed in the provinces. On the close of the elections, the ministers VOL. LXIX.

found that they would be left in a decided minority in the Chamber, and that this contest, which they had prematurely provoked, had sealed their fate. M. de Villèle had thus effected his ruin by those very compliances with the policy of the ultra and Jesuitical party, by which he had purchased their influence to support his power. He had given way to their extravagance, till he drove into the ranks of his enemies that large body of royalists who would not consent to see a free constitution and an enlightened people laid at the mercy of priests and arbitrary power. Some of his most unpopular measures, indeed, had been at bottom deserving of praise. His laws for the conversion of the rentes, and the introduction of a modified right of primogeniture, covered him with odium; and yet the opposition to them was founded mainly in selfish interests, and unreasoning prejudice. The incessant attacks which he made, or allowed to be made, against the press, and the willingness with which he gave way to the inroads of the congregation, whose supremacy was to be civil as well as religious, were, perhaps, less the result of his own wishes, than compliances extorted from him by an influence which stood behind the throne. But the very fact that such compliances could be extorted from him, disqualified him from being an useful depositary of power. The great defect of his character as a minister, was love of place. He seemed not to have any system of his own, to the maintenance of which he would sacrifice power; on the contrary, to secure his continuance in power, he sometimes resisted his own better convictions, and bowed to the

[Q]

royal mandate, or to an extravagant party which spoke in the royal mandate. There is no defect in the character of the minister of a free country which is so difficult to be pardoned, none so destructive of his political dignity and weight.

In the beginning of December, M. Villèle resigned his office. His example was followed by Damas, Peyronnet, Corbieres, and Clermont Tonnerre. They still remained members of the privy council; and Villèle, Peyronnet, and Corbieres, were raised to the dignity of the peerage, which, but a few weeks before, they had so shamefully degraded. They were succeeded by M. Roy, as Minister of Finance, and President of the Council; Count Portalis as Minister of Justice; La Ferronnays, as Minister for Foreign Affairs; Martignac, as Minister of the Interior; and De Caux, as Minister at War. Chabrol retained his place as Minister of Marine and of the Colonies, and Frayssinous continued at the head of Ecclesiastical affairs; but from the department of the latter was now separated the superintendence of public instruction, which had subjected all the concerns of education to the control of the church.

The foreign relations of France were not perplexed by the agitation which reigned in her internal affairs. A dispute in which she found herself involved with the Dey of Algiers, was not very actively prosecuted, and excited no notice beyond her own Southern harbours. Some Barbary Corsairs had searched and pillaged vessels sailing under the French flag. The French consul having remonstrated with the Dey against these infractions of treaty, his highness

wrought himself into such a passion, and forgot his princely dignity so far, as to crown the menaces and insults which he heaped upon the consul with a blow. The consul found means to convey intelligence of this to France, without the knowledge of the Dey; and a squadron was despatched to Algiers to demand satisfaction. It was preceded by a schooner, on board of which the consul contrived to make his escape, before the appearance of the fleet should expose him to the vengeance of the barbarian. On the arrival of the squadron, the admiral sent to the Dey to demand satisfaction for the insult offered to his nation, in the person of their consul; and required that one of the Dey's ministers should instantly repair on board his ship, and, in the name of his master, and in the presence of the French consul, as well as in the presence of the other European consuls, who were to be invited for that purpose, should there make an ample apology for the blow which had been inflicted upon the French king's representative. This the Dey indignantly refused, and declared that the impertinence of the message more than equalled the insult complained of. Dey, however, invited the admiral to his palace, to discuss the points in dispute, at the same time declaring, that, if they were not satisfactorily arranged within eight and forty hours, the Regency would be prepared to act accordingly. This invitation the admiral very naturally declined; and the French government announced that it was in a state of war with the Regency of Algiers. No attack, however, was hazarded upon the town, the batteries, or the shipping; there was no rivalry of lord Exmouth's

The

splendid exploit: the French squadron contented itself with blockading the harbour. The Algerine vessels of war shut up in port came out, and attacked the blockading fleet; but, after an action of two hours, the engagement ceased as if by mutual consent, and without either party having suffered any material loss. The Algerine ships returned into harbour, apparently in as good order, and with as much regularity, as when they left it, not pursued or molested by the French squadron, which forthwith resumed the blockade.

A commercial agreement, of a novel form, was entered into with Mexico. It was concluded with the consular agent of that republic at Havre, and, though intended to serve all the purposes of a treaty, it bore the singular name of a "declaration;" an unworthy evasion to which France had recourse, to avoid the appearance of formally recognizing the South American States. By this declaration it was provided, that the inhabitants of the two nations might proceed with their shipping and cargoes, to every port, river, and place, where strangers were admitted, and there remain and occupy houses or warehouses to carry on their commerce; and, in

general, every merchant of each state was to enjoy, in the territory of the other, perfect liberty and security. The reciprocal right of entering the ports, rivers, and other places of the two countries, did not include the privilege of the coasting trade, which each country might subject to special regulations. The produce of each country, on being imported into the other, was not to be subject to higher duties than those imposed on the produce of the most favoured nation, with an exception in favour of Hayti, with regard to reductions in the tariff, which France might make in return for the privileges reserved by the ordinance of the 17th of April, 1825. Certificates of origin were required for all merchandise exported from either country. The shipping duties paid in the two countries by the ships of each, were placed on the footing of the most favoured nation, and the produce of either might be imported into the other, either in French or Mexican ships. The rights of Frenchmen in Mexico, and Mexicans in France, the establishment of consuls, with their privileges, in each country, were secured and provided for by various articles, on the principle of reciprocity.

THE

HE arrival of British troops at Lisbon in the end of December, 1826, and in the beginning of the following January, the expressed displeasure of France, and the military disasters of the Portuguese rebels, had at last compelled Spain reluctantly to abandon her armed machinations against the Portuguese regency. In the beginning of January manifesto appeared, in the shape of a despatch from the Minister at War to the Captains-general of the provinces, explaining the conduct which Spain had hitherto adopted, and that which she intended to pursue for the future. In this document the Spanish government averred, that it had not only acted with perfect good faith towards Portugal, but had done no more than self-preservation required. The establishment of the Portuguese constitution, they said, had been accompanied by the daily emigration of Portuguese troops, who entered Spain on so many different points of the frontier, that it was impossible to believe the

movement to have been the result of a Spanish plot. At the same time, the danger, with which the innovations in Portugal threatened the tranquillity of Spain, had been instantly manifested by the desertion of mal-content Spanish troops. In this state of "moral hostility" his Catholic majesty, though he had found it necessary to take what his manifesto called "precautions" for the security of his own dominions, had acted honestly towards his neighbours; and he now declared, that nothing was more important to the gratification of his love of peace, than that every collision or disturbance should be avoided which might give offence to Portugal or her armed ally. But in the same breath he pronounced an apologetic eulogy on "the ardour and exalted sentiments of the emigrated Portuguese soldiers, which equalled, if they did not surpass, those of their officers-undoubtedly an interesting situation, in which the fire of despair might have been kindled by the very means contrived to at