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port, and that France will preserve the high rank that is due to her in Europe."

The violence of these discussions led on one occasion to an exertion of power on the part of the ultra royalists, which showed no small confidence in their own strength. In the debate on the 26th of February, M. Manuel, deputy for La Vendée alluded to the conduct of Ferdinand 7th in terms of strong reprobation, and applied to his sway the epithet "atrocious:" the ultra members instantly exclaimed, that it was insupportable to hear the government of a Bourbon called atrocious! After considerable tumult, M. Manuel proceeded; "Foreign war would, instead of suppressing the excesses of civil war, only aggravate them. If they wished to save the life of Ferdinand, he implored them not to renew the circumstances which had hurried to the scaffold those whose fate inspired them with regret so intense." Cries of " You are justifying regicide!" assailed the speaker from the ministerial benches, "What caused the fate of the Stuarts?" added Manuel, "It was the protection of France, which placed them in opposition to public opinion, and prevented their looking to the English nation for support. Must I say, that the moment, in which the dangers of the royal Family of France had become the most serious, was after France, revolutionary France, felt that it was necessary to defend herself with new strength, and by an energy wholly new."-Scarcely

The following were the offensive words spoken:-" Ai-je besoin de dire qu'au moment où les dangers de la Famille Royale en France sont devenus les plus graves, c'est lorsque la France,

had this sentence been uttered, when a general burst of indignation from the ministerial party was manifested: the members of the right simultaneously arose, and demanded that M. Manuel should be called to order. A violent tumult then ensued; and the president, after ringing his bell, and trying every method to restore order, or to procure attention, at last dismissed the members to their separate bureaux. They assembled again in about an hour. In the bureaux, a proposition was adopted, that a commission should be named to consider the conduct of the obnoxious member. Many members thought that a vote for his imme diate expulsion should be passed: but this course was rejected on the score of irregularity. On Thursday, M. la Bourdonnaye brought for ward a proposition for Manuel's exclusion: a commission was appointed to examine it; and on Saturday the 1st of March, that commission reported, that "they unanimously recommended to the Chamber the expulsion of M. Manuel, on account of the speech which he delivered on the 26th of February, whereby he compromised the honour of his character of Deputy, and the dignity of the Chamber." On Monday the 3rd of March, this report was taken into consideration.

M. Hyde de Neuvill then spoke in favour of a more lenient course, and moved that M. Manuel, instead of being excluded absolutely and generally, should be expelled only for the session, leaving the ensuing to resume proceedings or not,

la France revolutionnaire, a senti qu'elle avoit besoin de se defendre par des forces nouvelles et par une energie toute nouvelle ?"

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agreeably to the sense of what might remain or become the majority of the chamber, by the changes which the elections might produce. This proposition was carried by a great majority.*

Mr. Manuel was born at Barcelonnette, in the department of the HautesAlpes, and was the son of a Notary, who sent him to Rouergue to be educated by an uncle. The uncle, who was an ecclesiastic, soon observed or fancied, that his nephew, along with boldness of character, displayed, even in infancy, considerable natural talents. He sent him to Nismes to improve his education, whence he returned home from his studies at the early age of 15. He was about to embark in the trade, which the inhabitants of the Alps carry on with Piedmont, when the Revolution broke out, and induced him to alter his plans. In 1792, though then scarcely 17, he entered into the army, and served in the first campaigns in Italy and Germany. He soon rose to the rank of captain of cavalry; but, about the time of the signing of the treaty of Campo Formio, when he had served six years, he retired from the army in consequence of ill health. At that epoch, French advocates were not required to undergo preparatory examinations: they were called "official defenders." M. Manuel performed the part of official defender for several of his friends. On these occasions his talent for pleading became known, and, determining to devote himself to the bar, he repaired to Aix, which, under the new government, was the seat of a court of appeal. There he applied himself to study, and was soon capable of appearing with distinction in his new profession. In 1815 he took an active part against the fanatics and aristocracy of Aix. After the return of Buonaparte, the business of the courts being in a great measure suspended, M. Manuel visited Paris: and he had not been long there, when he learned that two electoral arondissements of the Hautes Alpes had returned him a deputy. He wished to decline this honour, but being urged by his friends to accept it, he took his seat, and very soon became a leading man in the chamber. On the formation of a committee to draw up the plan of a constitution, in the name of the provisional VOL. LXV.

Notwithstanding this vote, M. Manuel, on the following day, entered the chamber, supported by many of his friends, and took his seat as usual. The president ins formed him of the vote of Monday, and advised him to withdraw he refused, and declared he would yield only to force. The sitting was then suspended for an hour and in the meantime the principal door-keeper entered and read to him the order he had received for his exclusion.

M. Manuel remained firm, and the door-keeper called in a piquet of the national guards: but the serjeant and his men, on being addressed by the members of the left side, declined executing the orders they had received, to remove the refractory member by force. This produced shouts of bravo! from M. Manuel's friends, as well in the galleries as on the floor of the chamber. The gendarmerie were then called in, who laid hold of him and hurried him out of the chambers, followed by all the members on the left side. After his exclusion, the agitation was such, that the president was oblig ed to adjourn the sitting. On Wednesday morning MM. Foy, Laffitte, and other members of the opposition delivered a protest against the proceedings adopted toward M. Manuel; but the majority, on the principle that it was not competent to deputies to enter any protest, refused to hear it read.

government, he was chosen one of the members. After the dissolution of that assembly, M. Manuel returned to pri vate life. He applied to be admitted to the bar in Paris, but his application was rejected by the Procureur-General Bellart. He was several times put in nomination to represent Paris, but ministerial influence carried the elections against him by small majorities. He was at length chosen for La Vendee. [M]

All the members, except two, of the left side (that is about 170) with drew in a body, and the remainder voted the supplies for war. On Thursday, no deputies on the left side were present. The chamber met on Saturday, but no business of importance was transacted. The ministers were present, with only eight members of the left centre, and seven of the extreme left. The protest of the 60 members of the Chamber of Deputies against the exclusion of M. Manuel contained the following passage:"We are convinced that this first step is but the prelude to the system which conducts France to an unjust war abroad, in order to consummatethe counter-revolution at home, and to invite the foreign occupation of our territory."

This protest, which was not allowed to appear on the records of the chamber, was expressed in these words.

"We, the undersigned Members of the Chamber of Deputies of the depart ments, declare, with profound grief and indignation, that we feel it to be our duty to proclaim before all France, the illegal act, which in hostility to the charter, the royal prerogative, and all the principles of representative government, has attacked the integrity of the national representation, and violated, in the person of a Deputy, the guarantees assured to all-the rights of every elector and every French citizen.

"We declare, in the face of our country, that, by this act, the Chamber has overstepped its legal pale and the limits of its authority.

"We declare, that the doctrine professed by the committee which proposed the exclusion of one of our colleagues, and on which that measure is founded, is subversive of all social order and of all justice; that the monstrous confusion of the functions of legislator, accuser, reporter, juryman, and judge, is an outrage unexampled except in that trial, the remembrance of which has served as a pretext for annulling the powers of M. Manuel.

"That the principles set forth in the

During the remainder of the session, the members of the extreme left abstained from again appearing in their places or taking any share in the proceedings of the chambers.

These discussions in the legislature were accompanied with great agitation in the public mind, which in some cases led to breaches of the peace. On Thursday, the 6th of March, crowds of people, amounting to between five and six hundred in number, assembled on the Boulevards San Martin, and du Temple. They were mostly of the working classes, though some few among them were of a better condition. The gendarmes arrested 29 of them.-Next day a crowd assembled at Port St. Den

report of the committee, as to the unlimited and retroactive authority of the Chamber, are no other than the anarchical principles which led to the most odious of crimes: That the protecting forms with which the law shields the most obscure person under accusation, and even the appel nominal, which on an important occasion can alone guarantee the independence of votes, have been rejected with a frantic and turbulent obstinacy.

"Considering the resolution adopted yesterday, the 3rd of March, 1823, against our colleague, as the first move ment of a faction desirous of placing itself violently above all forms, and breaking through all the checks imposed on it by our fundamental compact;

"Convinced that this first step is but the prelude to the system which conducts France to an unjust war abroad, in order to consummate the counterrevolution at home, and to invite the foreign occupation of our territory ;

"Unwilling to become accomplices of the misfortunes which this faction cannot fail to draw on our country, we protest against all the illegal and unconstitutional measures lately taken for the exclusion of M. Manuel, Deputy of La Vendee, and against the violence with which he has been torn from the bosom of the Chamber of Deputies,"

nis; calling out "Vive Manuel: Vive la Charte!" Mort à la Bourdonnaye." The gendarmerie dispersed the assemblage in a few moments; but the rioters in their flight assailed a party of Swiss soldiers, and wounded some of them, dealing on their way blows on all sides, with bludgeons, knives, and stilettoes. Nine individuals were arrested and conveyed to the guard-house, and from thence to the Prefecture. Among them were a civilian, a physician, and a merchant; the rest belonged to the Several of them meaner classes. were subsequently brought to trial, and convicted of the riot.

The prospect of approaching war excited also much alarm in the manufacturing and commercial districts of France.

On the 16th of February Lyons was the scene of a disturbance, occasioned by the opposition offered by the authorities and the military to the progress of a procession of masks, which, under the privilege of the Carnival, purported to represent the Funeral of Trade. The next day, in the afternoon, an individual utterred aloud several times on the Place Bellecour, the ominous cry of Vive l'Empereur. Attempts were made by the gendarmes and officers to arrest him, but he was suddenly surrounded by a number of persons, who struck them and rescued him. A strong military force having at last assembled, order was restored, and the offending individual arrested.

Addresses likewise were presented to the chambers, signed by multitudes of persons engaged in different branches of commercial and manufacturing industry, who deprecated war with Spain as fatal to the internal prosperity of

France. Among these classes the
belief prevailed, that war with
Spain would, sooner or later, lead.
to war with England; when their
commercial marine would be in-
stantly swept away in hopeless de-
struction.

Even though Great
Britain should remain neutral,
great injury would be sustained
from the depredations of Spanish
privateers: and that their fears
were not groundless, was already
attested by the height to which
the premiums of insurance had
suddenly risen, and the increase
which had taken place in the prices
of the principal articles of colonial
produce.

Rumours, too, prevailed, that Russian armies were assembling in order to support those of Louis, and to be ready to crush any attempts which the disaffected in France might be encouragedtomake, The supposed probability of encampments of these semi-barbarons hordes on the banks of the Moselle, the Seine, or the Loire-visitors scarcely less unwelcome as friends than as foes-was the subject of not very pleasing anticipations.

Amid these fears and doubts, Villèle and his associates continued their preparations for war. The supplies were voted by the chambers; and the hopes of the friends of peace (for up to the last moment their wishes led them to hope, contrary to every ground of reasonable calculation) were annihilated by a formal communication of the commencement of hostilities, made by the minister of war on the 10th of April to the Chamber of Deputies. "Gentlemen," said he, "all efforts to stop the course of the faction which governs the councils of Spain having proved fruitless, Monseigneur the Duke of Angoulême received or

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ders to pass the frontier, and, on the 7th of this month, passed the Bidassoa at the head of the army." The financial measures were then completed; and in the month of May the session of the chambers closed.

The details of the war in Spain belong to another chapter. It is enough to state here, that the French ministry experienced, in the execution of their project, none of the embarrassments which had been anticipated. France remained quiet internally; her soldiers showed no reluctance to the service in which they were engaged; Spain presented nothing but treason and cowardice: the invaders did not conquer, because they had no need to fight, but they marched in triumphal procession from the Bidassoa to Cadiz, and saw a powerful nation surrender its independence into their hands without even a struggle for its honour and happiness.

The impression, produced in France by these events, proved, how little the great body of the people of that country (whatever might be the case with respect to enlightened individuals) either understood or cared for the principles of rational freedom. They expressed no regret at the progress of their army in Spain; they seemed rather to take a pride in again strutting upon the stage of Europe in the guise of conquerors; they were told that they were dictating to a neighbour, and their vanity looked no farther. The duke of Angoulême was metamorphosed into a hero, and loaded with eulogies, which would have been extravagant, even if applied to Turenne or to Napoleon. Of course, the language of flattery cannot be mistaken for an expression of

the actual sentiments of men. But the French make high pretensions to taste; and even that secondary principle of human nature would cause some proportion to be kept between the state of public feeling and the ceremonies and addresses which professed to be the expounders of it.

The triumphal entry of the duke of Angoulême into Paris was attended with one circumstance not unworthy of being mentioned. A sentinel at the Tuilleries, conceiving that he was insulted on his post by one of the mob, discharged his musket, and killed the man on the spot. For this he was tried before a courtmartial; and, it being proved that abusive language had been addressed to him, he was acquitted. [See Chronicle, p. 162.] Such a mode of proceeding must be admitted to be very singular; nor could it be tolerated in a country, where sound notions of government existed. A soldier is charged with the murder of an unarmed person in civil life; and for this the murderer is tried by a court-martial!—that is, the subjects are to appeal from the fury of one soldier to the equity of many the refuge of the ag grieved from military violence is to be sought in military law!

The occupation of Spain by French troops, led to negotiations between the French ministers and the English cabinet on the subject of the Spanish provinces of South America. France would have been glad to have figured in the, to her new, character of a trans-atlantic conqueror: but be fore such a wish could be explicitly avowed, or any step towards it ventured upon, it was necessary to ascertain how far England would permit her to go. And here, for

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