Volume 2

France in 1829-30 / By Lady Morgan.

  • Sydney, Lady Morgan
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: France in 1829-30 / By Lady Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    593/606 page 583
    Bourbon; and energies as decided as those of the people themselves were required in the ministers of their will, and the guides of their counsels. With a people so mercurial, and institutions so popular, faction must become dangerous, if not opposed with firm- ness; and firmness will inevitably be mistaken for despo- tism, if the march of the government is not openand candid. In proportion as the monarchy fulfils its promise, will be the toleration afforded for its acts of necessary severity. Hitherto the government has leant heavily on the protection of the national guard, and has done little or nothing to inspire re- spect for itself. But the national guard is a power which at any moment may escape from its hands. An armed popu- lation, the best support of a government that merits popu- larity, will turn short against a regime that has lost the con- fidence of the public. The commercial distresses, which have thrown numbers out of employment, have also created a standing force, ever ready to co-operate in the pursuit of change: numberless déseuvrés (men without the certainty of finding bread for their families from day to day, bank- rupts, dismissed functionaries, &c. &c.,) discontented with an order of things by which they have suffered so severely, swell the ranks of republicanism, from egoism or from despair ; and they look forward to a democratical government as offering the only harvest in which they can by any chance participate. The destinies of the new monarchy, then, cannot be con- sidered otherwise than most uncertain, so long as the present transitory state of things continues, and the throne remains
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