the majority, the King, and the Ministry, by a popular demonstration. A law, passed in 1834, advocated by M. Thiers himself, had rendered direct political assemblages illegal, and recourse was had to the subterfuge of dinner meetings, or patriotic banquets, at which, in addition to the natural forces of the united Oppositions, they hoped to aggregate all the classes whom the extended suffrages would reach; and at these banquets insulting toasts and seditious speeches, to be afterwards scattered abroad like firebrands by the press, might, or we should rather say, must, have a most dangerous effect with such an inflammable people. There was an ordonnance of the Republic, Brumaire, An VIII., which expressly gave authority to the Government to prohibit such banquets; but the Government, reluctant to interfere with any expression of public opinion, when it did not imminently endanger the public peace, did not, as long as they were limited to tavern dinners, assert its power of prohibition. But at last, bold with impunity, and probably intending to act more directly on the patience of the Ministry and the fears of the Chamber, a monster banquet was announced to take place in Paris, at which a great out-of-door demonstration of force and numbers was to be made. The wise Montesquieu says, Celui qui assemble le peuple, l'émeut,' and there had been but too many instances of the justice of the observation. The first cause of the deplorable troubles of Lyons, in 1834, was a monster banquet intended for M. Garnier-Pagès; and the equally frightful insurrection of June, 1832, in Paris, arose from the funeral procession of General Lamarque. The combined procession and banquet now proposed had every possible circumstance of illegality and danger. It was no longer a tavern dinner-it was a hostile array of the most excitable population in the world; and even if the masses had been animated with the most pacific and good-humoured spirit (and the contrary was notorious), could not have been permitted without the most culpable and contemptible pusillanimity on the part of the Government. It was therefore forbidden, just as the Commissioners of Police prohibited the other day Mr. Cochrane's meeting in Whitehall. A great deal was said, and is still, though faintly, repeated, against the inconsistency of the French Government in allowing fifty banquets in different parts of France, and stopping the last. This is the old complaint against all patience and forbearance ;-those who would not permit the authorities to interfere at all, censure them for not having interfered sooner. We answer this dishonest pretence as we did in the case of the Clontarf meeting in Ireland, which was prohibited after those at Tara and Mullaghmast (though abundantly formidable) had been permitted: cases must be measured by their circumstances:—a breach of the law-occa

sional-limited-not in itself immediately alarming-may be overlooked-may be, even on repetition, tolerated, as a less evil than the risk of violence or even of clamour from suppressing it; but when such tolerance is mistaken for timidity-when the single temporary offence is multiplied and prolonged to a systematic and permanent defiance of the law, and transferred from a small locality in which the public force could safely deal with it, to the streets of the metropolis, where the slightest accident might produce the most fatal results; it is no inconsistency in those who overlooked what might be an indiscretion, to endeavour to repress what had grown into a crime. Is there any man of common sense in the world who, as a magistrate or minister, would not— in anything like the same circumstances-have done as the French Government did,--both in the original acquiescence and the subsequent resistance?

Now comes a most curious and important episode in this great epic. These banquets had been originally the device of the parliamentary Opposition-at the head of which M. Odillon Barrot has the overwhelming responsibility of having placed himself-with, we believe, no other object than to embarrass the Ministry. They had all along insisted that such meetings were legal, and that the Ministers were not justified in suppressing them; but when the affair came to a crisis-when the day— Sunday, the 20th of February-approached, for which M. Odillon Barrot and his committee had announced the banquet and pledged themselves to march at the head of the procession, they began to falter. They knew (for some of them were eminent lawyers) that the law was against them-they quailed before the determination of the Government, and they felt behind them, with still greater alarm, the pressure of the Republican and Communist parties urging them to a desperate game of which these more decided revolutionists would reap all the advantage. The parliamentary leaders now took a step which, if the motive had been purer, would have been very laudable-they opened a communication with the Government-professed their wish for order -stated of course that they believed the meeting to be legal-but that, as the Government thought otherwise, they would give up the procession and only hold the banquet pro forma, for which the Government would commence a prosecution to carry the question to a legal tribunal, with whose decision all parties might honourably abide. To this proposition the Government at once assented, and the banquet, which had been originally announced for Sunday the 20th, was by this new arrangement postponed to Tuesday the 22nd. This was a prudent step, and no inconsiderable concession; for it removed the additional danger that the idleness and excite

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ment of a Parisian Sunday, which generally extends into Monday, would have created. It seems, however, that the managing committee, in which the democratic party had now the ascendency, were dissatisfied with this compromise; for they issued, late on the Sunday evening, a notice-said to have been penned by Marrast, editor of the National-for a procession on the Tuesday, which revived the whole original character of the banquet, with the alarming addition of inviting the Students and the National Guard, unarmed indeed, but in uniform, to take an active part in the demonstration. This new and still more formidable array the Government determined to resist; they published an absolute prohibition of the procession-not of the banquet-and forbade the National Guard to appear in uniform, except by order of their own officers. This prohibition was issued on the morning of Monday the 21st. About 3 P.M. on that day, M. Odillon Barrot, who was now placed in an awkward dilemma between his arrangements with the Ministers and the new notice of his committee, thought to get out of the difficulty by proceeding to the Chamber at the head of all the Opposition members, and there calling on the Ministers to account for having forbidden the meeting: the Minister of the Interior, M. Duchâtel, answered that, if the banquet was to be held merely as a banquet, he would have been content to try the matter by law, as had been arranged; but the last proclamation of the committee announcing a procession, and summoning, on their private authority, the National Guard, as well as the students of the public schools, to join in it, was such an invasion and defiance of the public authority as could not be tolerated.

The truth then came out that the expedient, by which this dark and awful thundercloud, which had, for some days past, overshadowed the metropolis, was to be dispersed by the easy and simple paratonnère of a suit at law, was by no means to the taste of the Republicans and Communists—that is, in fact, of the journalists of the National and the Réforme-who had been summoned to the fray: it promised, indeed, to relieve MM. Thiers, Odillon Barrot, and Co. from the terrible responsibility of leading the van of the banquet mob, but was received with great indignation by their allies in the rear. The latter saw that this affair had grown into a favourable opportunity for a demonstration on their part: the popular object of the banquet-its announcement -its postponement-the warnings of the Government-the persistence of the Opposition-the doubts as the time approached whether it was or was not to be attempted—the gravity which the question had assumed, and all the passions, hopes, and fears that it had excited-they saw that all these circumstances had created

an

an agitation in the public mind, of which they might take instant advantage-they (in consequence of the movement of the Dynastic Opposition) themselves were on foot and ready-of a large portion of the National Guard they were sure-of the apathy of the majority of the rest almost equally so. This opportunity for a trial of popular strength would not be a mere accidental collision like the insurrection of June 1832, nor an absurd and unmeaning riot like that of May 1839, in which they had stood alone-it was a solemn union of all the Oppositions under, as they alleged, the banner of the law-not with such leaders as the Jeannes and Rossignols of the former, or the Barbès and Blanquis of the latter-men never before heard of till they appeared in these extemporised revolts. They had now in the first line such names as Thiers and Odillon Barrot and a crowd of deputies, whose limited views and measures they might safely adopt as preliminary steps to the accomplishment of their own-they resolved therefore to avail themselves of this, as they thought, favourable opportunity, and to change the Reform movement into a Republican one. This still more alarmed those who had begun the agitation; and on Monday night M. Odillon Barrot* and his party issued a notice abandoning the banquet altogether; but, by way of a sedative sop to the Cerberus he had roused, he pledged himself to the impeachment of the Ministers.

On Tuesday the 22nd, the Government, though still uncertain as to the precise movements that any or all the various parties concerned in the agitation might make, saw clearly that it was their own duty to be prepared to maintain the public peace; and accordingly, in addition to the less ostentatious disposition of the troops and the police (Municipal Guard) which had been silently made, they ordered the usual rappel or summons of the National Guard to be beaten at an early hour in the Quartier St. Honoré, the intended scene of the procession. We have already described the apathy of the majority of the National Guard and its causes, but the agitators had recourse, on this occasion, to a manœuvre that was likely to increase their disinclination to come forward:-The drummers were preceded and followed by some hundreds of young men in blouses, armed with long sticks, shouting Vive la Réforme! and chorusing all the revolutionary songs.' The result was that few of the National Guards answered the call but those who were disposed to favour the rioters-the rest did not appear, or appeared with evi

*When we say M. Odillon Barrot, we do not mean that his signature was attached, but that the notices were substantially issued and authorised by him and his parliamentary friends,

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dent marks of dissatisfaction. This had a most serious effect on the whole aspect of affairs: it excited the hopes and emboldened the measures of the disaffected; but its worst influence was on the King himself. He had built, as it were, his throne and all his hopes on the National Guard-the doubt of their adherence, or rather the certainty of the disaffection of the most active and the neutrality of the most respectable amongst them, seems to have had a very strong effect on the minds of him and his family, and in fact to have shaken his natural firmness. Still, however, he seems to have clung to the mistaken hope that the disaffection was to the Ministry, and not to the Crown.

During the forenoon of Tuesday the streets were still tranquil the excitement which gradually showed itself was by no means either spontaneous or general: ordinary people followed their ordinary occupations, though there was some concourse of curious spectators about the Madeleine, the Rue Royale, Place de la Concorde, and Champs Elysées, the announced scene of the promised exhibition; but towards the middle of the day (no doubt as the Republican and Communist leaders were bringing forward their forces) a considerable agitation began to fill the chief thoroughfares-large bodies of men-with a row of unarmed National Guards in front, on whom they knew that the troops could not fire-came down the Boulevard and made hostile demonstrations against the official residence of M. Guizot, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des Capucines-a similar demonstration was made against the Chamber of Deputies, but easily and temperately repelled by the police, subsequently supported by the troops, who, under a series of insulting, and at last violent aggressions, showed admirable forbearance. But it soon became evident that a great ferment was growing up in the manufacturing districts of the town; and in the course of the day M. Odillon Barrot, no doubt with a view of calming the public mind, proceeded to the Chamber to present his promised impeachment of the Ministers. To that document (and it is well to record the names as marking the confederacy) we find the signatures of-Dupont (de l'Eure), Garnier-Pages, Courtais, Thiard, Crémieux, Marie, Carnot, and others, who were subsequently prominent parties to the proclamation of the Republic-another indication that Reform had become only a stalking-horse to Revolution.

As the day-Tuesday the 22nd—advanced, the Republican and Communist forces accumulated-the whole city swarmed with insurgent mobs-some bakers' and gunsmiths' shops were plundered, and barricades were commenced in several of the streets, amidst cries of A bas Guizot! Vive la Réforme! and

the