dicity. It was, indeed, in his opinionand it was a wise one-the most important subject to which a government could direct its attention, and no honor could accrue to an administration equal to that of affording relief without increase of taxation. In this country, although the poorrate is one of the most burdensome taxes, it is one of the questions which least of all occupies parliamentary attention, and that for the simple reason that private interests are involved. Should a member for the Tower Hamlets or Finsbury, for example, advocate equalization of the poor-rate in the interest of his electors, the whole host of county and borough members would as strenuously oppose it in their own interest and that of those whom they represent. This is one of those questions in which the parliamentary system fails, and justice cannot be obtained where interest prevails. Louis XVI.'s notions upon the subject were very concise: no mendicity on any account, work for the able-bodied, hospitals for the infirm, and prisons for those who resist. The system has no more worked in France than vast mansions for ablebodied and infirm alike, and an almost indiscriminate out-door relief, with education (in many cases without instruction) for the young, have answered in this country. There are many honest persons in England who pay taxes to the poor and are yet more in want of assistance than many a dishonest recipient of relief. It is grievous to find the king always speaking of England as "the natural enemy and rival of the Bourbons," whether in France or in Spain. England, as a constitutional country, has undoubtedly been always opposed to whatever was absolutist or despotic in the government of the Bourbons, and as a commercial nation, before the doctrines of free trade, so one-sided as yet in practice, were broached, and it had become an accepted maxim in political economy that the wealth of one nation did not detract from but contributed to that of another, it was the rival of other nations, especially on the sea; but even then more in enterprise and industry than in that irritable or sullen jealousy which is the least reputable form of rivalry, and which led France to commit the grievous error of combating for the Americans. The younger branches of the Bourbons, being constitutionally inclined, understand at the present time full well that there is no natural enmity to the Bourbons. If the British government failed Louis XVI. in his extremity, it was because he would not concede parliamentary privileges in time to save his throne and his life. That, with all Louis XVI.'s paternal and praiseworthy attention to the most minute particulars in which the well-being of his subjects was concerned—as poor-laws, foundlings, burials, pawnbroking, feudal servitude, and other social evils-the political condition of the kingdom was not all that could be desired, either within or without, is sufficiently attested by a passage in one of M. de Mercy's letters to the Emperor Joseph, and that written on the auspicious event of the birth of Marie Antoinette's first child. "Whatever may be the circumstances," writes the ambassador, "if it were possible not to precip itate matters, I think there might still be means, at a decisive moment, to induce this court to pursue a less miserable line of conduct, were it only in matters of language! The feudal rights of "mainmorte," or servitude, were not only still in existence when Louis XVI. began his rule, but the "preparatory question," or inquisition by torture, although nearly fallen into desuetude, was still legal. The king, discussing a proposition of his ministers to do away altogether with so barbarous a practice, premises "that he does not consider it prudent to abolish, without grave motives, laws that have been rendered respectable by their antiquity and long practice." (As if any amount of antiquity could render the practice of torture respectable?) "I feel, on the contrary, how much it concerns my wisdom not to open the door to a new right in all matters whereby principles might be sapped in their basis, the dignity of my justice might be contravened, and the respect of the people shaken in what is, by exciting a taste for what is not.” Such are always the principles of those who dread innovation, and if they obtained universally, the eloquence of a Brougham and a Wilde might as well be spent in open air as at a Social Science meeting. Louis XVI.'s heart was better than his head. The former recoiled be fore torture, however venerable and respectable, but he compromised for giving way to his feelings by a curious mental subterfuge: "Such proceedings have always been repugnant to me, and I have always asked myself, from my earliest youth, if, in the application of torture, it was not mostly strength of nerve that decided upon crime or innocence, and if it was not treating one who was only accused as a convicted criminal." Not only France and Spain repudiated constitutional England at this epochjust as the powers are agreed to repudiate all constitutional states in the present day-but upon the occasion of the death of Maria Theresa, the Emperor Joseph seized the opportunity to develop his political system to Louis XVI. "All that I ask," writes the Austrian emperor, "is, that you look carefully into the facts, and judge me by them. I am quite certain that you will never find them in contradiction with my words, notwithstanding all the absurdities that my dear | neighbor Frederick may invent and give circulation to, either as my pretended partiality for England, or my projects of aggrandizement, by the destruction of the Germanic system, and by the union of all the episcopacies of Germany under bishops and coadjutors belonging to my own family." This was written eightyfour years ago, and it might have been penned yesterday, so little has the position of parties under new representatives changed with regard to one another. There is the same jealousy between Austria and Prussia in regard to Germanic supremacy, the same readiness on the part of either to throw Great Britain overboard to cultivate the amity of France, and the same system of playing the Romanism of Southern Europe against the Protestantism of the North. But a truce to political rivalries. Marie Antoinette, delighted at the birth of a dauphin, and in happy ignorance of the fate destined for her innocent babe, commemorates the event by sending to Madame de Lamballe some couplets, which she justly designates as "poissardes," but which the king himself had repeated to her: "Ne craignez pas, cher papa, D'voir augmenter vot' famille, Le bon Dieu-z-y pourvoiera; Fait's-en tant qu' Versailles en fourmille: Y eût-il cent Bourbons cheux nous, Y a du pain, du laurier pour tous." We had intended, in epitomizing the Hunolstein Correspondence, to have remarked upon Marie Antoinette's eloquent defence and yet sensible remarks on Freemasonry, now the object of imperial persecution, but space prevented us. M. de Conches returns to the subject, refers to the Hunolstein collection, and adds that these lodges have preserved, in some parts of Europe, in opinion, and often in fact, the dangerous character of secret societies. Marie Antoinette's pleas are scarcely admissible, for the Princess of Lamballe was grand mistress of the Scotch lodge, and a considerable number of the ladies of the court were Freemasons; but, after all, as the queen justly observed, "cannot one do good without attaching so much mystery to it?" One of those wise dispensations of Providence-or of publishers-which have baffled abler heads than Louis XVI.'s, attracted his attention. On the occasion of remitting a small sum of money to a descendant of Racine's, he says: "I have always regretted that the works of these fine geniuses, which become the honor and the patrimony of the nation, leave their descendants without means, whilst so many others are enriched by them. What I did five years ago to protect the rights of authors, is, unfortunately, far from obviating all inconve niences of this nature." Whilst the court was at Fontainebleau, Maria Christina wrote to inquire about the carp. Marie Antoinette replied amusingly enough: "I really cannot tell you all that they say concerning the carp in the ponds here. They tell so many marvellous stories that I don't believe in any one of them. And yet they are repeated just as if they were gospel, but no carp has yet written its history, and we shall not know the truth until some learned fish shall have put us in his confidence. I sent food this morning in your name to all these centenaries, but not one spoke." A gratuity of two hundred and forty francs pension was granted at this epoch to one Gammin, a locksmith-the same man who afterwards denounced to the Convention the iron box in the Tuileries, at which he had worked with the king, and who pretended that he had been poi soned by the queen in the presence of the king! of America which involved France in war with England, cost her her navy, M. de Conches' collection contains and laid the seeds of revolution in France: nothing new, as far as personal corre- "Where you are you can, at least, enspondence is concerned, in what regards joy the comfort of not hearing talk of the affair of the necklace, "first stroke affairs. Although in the country of high of the revolutionary bell," as he justly and low Chambers, of oppositions and terms it, a sad and wretched trial, the motions, you can close your ears, and let real bearing of which can no longer be people talk. But here it is a noise to misapprehended in the present day, in stun you, do what you will. The words which the queen's name was unjustly and opposition and motions are established scandalously compromised, in which the just as in the English parliament, but folly of love, enhanced by the folly of with this difference, that when one passes ambition, betrayed into the most incred- over in London to the party of opposiible credulity a great officer of the crown tion, one breaks openly with the monar and a prince of the church; in which a lost chy, whilst here many oppose themselves woman, perishing with hunger, in open to the wise and benevolent views of the hostility with society that rejected her, most virtuous of masters, and keep their sought for the enjoyments of luxury appointments. It is, perhaps, more skil through intrigue; in which forgers lent ful, but it is less noble. The time of their art to imitate the queen's signature, illusions is gone by, and we are going and in which a disreputable personage through the ordeal of cruel experiences; contributed her venal beauty to aid in we pay dearly at the present moment for blinding M. de Rohan, and completing our enthusiasm and infatuation in the the swindle by personating the queen. American war. The voices of honest Well might Marie Antoinette exclaim, in people are stifled by numbers and by her grief, when a parliament, corrupted cabal. Questions at the basis of subjects by libels, and which in great part had are abandoned for the sake of words, or their origin in a most mistaken court lev- of multiplying quarrels among individuity, acquitted M. de Rohan: "The ver- als. The seditious would rather drag the diet which has been given is a frightful state to ruin than give up their intrigues." insult. I am bathed in tears of grief and In a further letter to the same amiable despair. One can rely on nothing since duchess, Marie Antoinette speaks in still perversity has taken upon itself the task stronger language of the baseness of the of hurting my feelings by every means in opposition in acting disloyally yet holdits power. What ingratitude! But I ing by their appointments, and she enushall triumph over the wicked by doing merates, among others, La Fayette, De threefold the good that I have always Broglie, De Mirepoix, De Brienne, and tried to do. It will be easier for them others, including D'Estaing, who was to afilict me than induce me to take ven- guillotined under Robespierre, after havgeance on them." The Hunolstein Cor-ing basely borne witness against the respondence is much fuller on this mel- queen. ancholy topic. Marie Antoinette even transmitted to her sister the ballads that were sung in the streets in connection with it. In the Hunolstein Correspondence we have also a letter from Marie Antoinette, dated March 24, 1787, to her brother the Emperor Joseph, in which she remarks upon the proceedings of the Assembly and the gathering of notables, as indicative of forthcoming troubles. In the De Conches' collection we have a still more curions letter, addressed to the Duchess of Polignac, at that time at Bath for her health, and which is especially remarkable as denouncing that chivalrous defence On the 16th of June, 1789, we find the king denouncing the expression of "privileged classes" by the third order of the States-General in regard to the other two orders, the clergy and the nobility. "Such expressions," he said, "were only calculated to uphold a spirit of division, which is utterly opposed to the progress of the welfare of the state." 17th of June, the States-General declared themselves through Sièyes, supported by Mirabeau, the "National Assembly," and on the 27th the three orders were fused into one! On the 19th of August, 1788, we find Marie Antoinette acting in favor of Necker, yet dreading his pre On the sumption. "IIe requires a curb," she de Mercy, Marie Antoinette's chief corsays, writing to M. de Mercy. "The respondent and almost sole reliance, was personage above me (the king) is not as much misled in regard to the real progequal to such, and I-let what may be ress of events as others. On the 16th said or take place--I am never more than August, 1789, he wrote to the queen : second, and, notwithstanding the confi-"I foresaw how displeasing the morning dence of the first, he often makes me feel it." By the 11th of July, 1789, Necker had promised, according to Marie Antoinette, to take his departure in secret and without noise. Froin this epoch, indeed, we have little more than presumption on the one side and concessions on the other, with occasional stand points or bursts of opposition, which only served to aggravate the evil. The very night of the fall of Necker the French Guard united with the people, and fired on the royal German regiment. On the 17th of July the king held a meeting at the Hôtel de Ville, leaving to the nation the liberty of naming the ministry! Well might the Russian minister write to his chancellor "It was an event that entirely changed the position of affairs and of the monarchy." "A revolution that would be scarcely credible if it had not happened before the eyes of the living!" Great concessions once made, little ones follow almost insensibly. Marie Antoinette writes to M. de Mercy, saying she had approved of the "gardes du corps" being kept out of the capital if their presence was obnoxious to the people, but they must not be permitted to undergo any change, or be incorporated with other troops! Concessions did not come from royalty alone, but from the nobility and the clergy. Madanie Elizabeth wrote on the 5th of August, 1789: "The night of Tuesday and Wednesday the Assembly sat till two in the morning. The nobility, with an enthusiasm worthy of the French heart, renounced all feudal rights and the right of game. Even fish will, I believe, be included. The clergy renounced tithes at the same time, as well as the holding of more than one bénéfice.' This act has been sent to the provinces. It is to be hoped it will put an end to the burning of chateaux. Seventy have already been consumed. It was who should make the most sacrifices: everybody was magnetized." This was the epoch when Louis XVI. was proclaimed "Restorer of French Liberty." The Austrian ambassador, M. of Thursday would be to the queen. They wished to consecrate the very height of delirium by a religious ceremony, and this mockery of piety will not escape the surprise and contempt of Europe. But it is as well that events should march in this direction: they will pave the way all the more surely for a return." When, by a movement which has been attributed by some to the Duke of Orleans, the royal family were forcibly removed from Versailles to Paris (October 6, 1789), poor M. de Mercy made frantic efforts to obtain access to the queen's person. He describes himself as endeavoring to penetrate even into the ante-chambers, but they were encumbered with insurgents, and he was told by the queen's best friends that his presence there as Austrian ambassador might only serve to compromise Marie Antoinette. The latter was, as usual, courageously resigned to the progress of events. "If we could forget where we are, and how we came here," she wrote the next day to M. de Mercy, "we ought to be satisfied with the attitude of the people. I hope, so long as bread is not wanting, that many things will come round again. I talk to the people, to the fish wives, as well as to the national guard; all give me their hands, and I give them mine." M. de Mercy encouraged her in these demonstrations. "That which my zeal leads me to consider to be of the utmost importance in the present crisis," he says in one of his letters, " is, that the national guard, its chief, and the people, should have reason to hold the queen in affection. A few acts of beneficence, which shall be seen to emanate directly from your Majesty, would produce an effect that might yet remedy everything." Poor queen! she was always making concessions; concessions to Louis XV., when as a child she came into the country and declared Madame du Barry to be “ charming;" concessions to the royal family and the court, in order to be French and not Austrian; concessions to the king, when her name and reputation were jeopardized by the infamous trick ery of the necklace affair; concessions on | tions of Paris and Versailles, and that the purchase of St. Cloud from the Or- the duke, in return, exhibited papers leans family, and where she received and compromising the ever calumniated treated with kindness people of all classes Marie Antoinette in a conspiracy, in con(an act of condescension denounced by junction with the other princes, to emithe brutal Mirabeau); and now she was grate to England. He did not, at the to go on making concessions to the mob same time, deny his own culpability! and armed insurgents, when not a concession had ever availed her, in the court or in the streets, save to sink her deeper and deeper in that enmity in which she was by some strange fatality ever held by the majority of the French nation. Capefigue himself, an ultra-legitimist, traces all Marie Antoinette's misfortunes and unpopularity to the manner in which she was treated by her own friends and relatives at court, and M. de Conches, in the preface to the present work, upholds precisely the same view of the case. The king and the queen were now quasi-prisoners in Paris, relying upon time, patience, and confidence in those around them, to bring about a change; but the Parisians would not have it so. The movement of the fanatics was kept up by an abominable license of the press, which never ceased to send forth libels which M. de Mercy justly denounced as dishonoring the nation in the face of Europe; and in the second place, by an equally vile and disgraceful system of exciting and keeping alive suspicions and troubles, with no other foundation than the corrupt motives of their inventors. We find M. de Mercy, for example, busy in officially correcting the false report of Marie Antoinette having dispatched "millions" to Austria; then we find Marie Antoinette writing to M. de Mercy about a gendarme in his service, who, it was reported, had boasted that another revolution that of the provinces - would soon set the royal family at liberty. To which M. de Mercy replies that he has no gendarme in his service. Next, M. de Mercy writes that the belief is current in Paris that the king has given up his usual habits of walking and shooting, only to make his captivity more glaring, and to excite the provinces against the capital! Marie Antoinette's courage and selfreliance, as we have seen by the Hunolstein Correspondence, and we now see corroborated here, never abandoned her. She had the good sense to see herself that M. de Mercy's presence in Paris only served to aggravate hostile feelings, after the events of Versailles, and she wrote to him not to come to Paris, adding also that she had still hopes, notwithstanding the wicked acts that were being committed, of being able to bring round the wiser and more honest portion of the bourgeoisie and the people! Madame Elizabeth also relates, in a letter written at the same epoch, that when the royal family reached the gates of Paris, M. Bailly was there to welcome them. The king replied that he should always see himself with pleasure and confidence in his good city of Paris. M. Bailly repeated the king's words to the people, but omitted the word "confidence." The queen call-member Croisard, the son of my sister's ed his attention to the fact, when he clev- woman of the wardrobe ?" she writes to erly remarked, "Messieurs, you are much Madame de Bombelles. Well, he is happier than if I had not made a mistake." now attached to my steps in quality of This in allusion to the queen's calling his captain. I say attached, for they do not attention to it, and the populace shouted, leave us any more than the shadow does "Vive le Roi! la Reine! et nous tous!" the body. Do not fancy that it annoys The last alone was sufficiently indicative me. As my walks are little varied, it is of the hollowness and hypocrisy of the all one to me. I walk, however, as first. much as I can; this morning I walked a whole hour." When complimented by her dear "Bombe," as she calls her, on her courage, she replied, "I assure you it is far less than people think. I think it requires very little to support that which one cannot prevent, and that is One of the most curious and important of all the letters which belong to this epoch is one written by the Russian minister. He declares that La Fayette exposed to the king the Duke of Orleans' guilty connivance in the revolu Madame Elizabeth was subjected to the same system of surveillance as the rest of the royal family. "Do you re |