by the army, acting after the example of the Roman legions; but, although cries of "Vive l'Empereur" were mingled with those of "Vive Napoléon," they were not sufficiently numerous nor enthusi astic to justify the belief that any such design was contemplated.

The delivery of the standards was followed by a religious ceremony, when the Archbishop of Paris pronounced a solemn benediction over them, and in the course of his address and prayer said:

"O Prince! whom the will of a great people has placed at the head of its destinies, we can understand what these heroic signs must say to your heart.

"We rely on your wisdom; it will protect you from the dazzling effects of glory. France thirsts for tranquillity and order. Fatigued with disorder, she wishes to repose under the shelter of a strong and tutelary Government. Continue to lead her in the pacific path on which she has entered; and may she be able to develop all the elements of strength and of prosperity concealed within her fruitful bosom.

"The moral interests of a country are superior to her material ones. They are the soul and the heart of a great people, without which they must decline and fall. Be you always their defender. The religion which you love asks neither privileges nor favour from you; it only asks of you to always preserve to it what the Emperor your uncle restored to it in the palmy days of his glory-liberty to live and to do good. You will gain by it the gratitude of the people, the only glory, perhaps, that a great mind can now be ambitious of.

"Prince, look less at the past than at the future. Peace may be spoken of when possessed of such valiant armies. Your eagles will have a vast field of flight from the heights of the Atlas to those of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Providence destines you for a great and holy work. Remember that, in order to build the Temple, God preferred Solomon to David. Continue to rebuild in peace that society which has been so deeply shaken, building it up with one hand, while the other holds the glorious sword of France."

It would occupy a considerable space to detail the various fêtes of which the Champ de Mars has been the theatre and the witness

each marking an epoch of change in the Constitution and Government of France. But it was impossible for any spectator, who looked upon the martial display, and beheld the scene which foreshadowed the approaching Empire, not to remember that on the same spot, four short years before, had been celebrated the inauguration of the Republic, which was thus described in the Moniteur of the following day:

"If unforeseen and fortuitous circumstances (the events of the 15th of May) have several times forced the Government to postpone the Feast of Concord, the public has lost nothing by waiting. That solemnity was celebrated yesterday (the 22nd of May), with a splendour increased by the magnificent weather. Beneath a beautiful sky, and in the midst of happy faces, which expressed the most expansive joy, how could any feeling exist except that of love, of reconciliation, and of concord? But what struck us particularly was the attitude, at once full of enthusiasm

and of confidence, of the immense population that thronged to the Champ de Mars; shouts, a thousand times repeated, of Vive la République! Vive la République Democratique! Vive l'Assemblée Nationale!' burst forth at each moment with a marvellous and astounding unanimity, as if to proclaim the respect of the people for the institutions they have given to themselves, and their invincible repugnance for retrograde or reactionary ideas."

Amongst those who were elected members of the Legislative Corps, were the two distinguished Generals, Changarnier and Lamoricière, both in exile in Belgiumand when the Minister of War wrote to them requiring that they should take the oath of fidelity to the President, they replied by answers which are worth recording. General Changarnier wrote as follows:

:

sired the advent of the Republic, but that it did not appear to me to affect the duty which I owed to my country. The Provisional Government did not break my sword, and on the 16th of April it did not regret to find it at its disposal.

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Shortly after that day I was appointed Governor-General of Algeria; in a little time I resigned that high post, where my will could meet with no obstacle, in order to respond to the confidence of the electors of Paris, who had called me to the Constituent Assembly. General Cavaignac, entrusted, after the events of June, 1848, in which I had no share, with the executive power, appointed me, on the 30th of June, Commander-in-Chief of the National Guards of the Seine.

On the 14th of December in the same year, General Cavaiguac having requested my presence at his residence in the Rue de Varennes, told me, in the presence of all the Ministers, that the police believed that a Bonapartist movement was in preparation to take advantage of the celebration of the anniversary of the transference of the Emperor's remains to the 'Invalides,' to stir up the enthusiasm of the populace, and to conduct Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to the Tuileries and proclaim him Emperor. General Cavaignac ended by asking my advice as to what measures should be taken. I gave it him, and concluded my observations vations by saying, My dear General, I gave my hand to Louis Napoleon to make him a President, and not an Emperor. In a few days he will be President of the Republic, but you may depend upon it that to-morrow he will not enter the Tuileries, where you have established my head-quarters.' These words briefly but correctly

expressed my fixed determination to continue that which I have been during my whole life, a firm supporter of order and of law.

"Louis Napoleon Bonaparte has frequently attempted to make me swerve from the straight line which I had traced for myself, and to induce me to lend myself to his ambitious designs: he has many times -very many times, offered and caused to be offered to me, not only the rank of Marshal, which I should have filled in the eyes of France without being thought to degrade it, but another military dignity which has never been revived since the fall of the Empire. He proposed to endow it with enormous pecuniary advantages, but which, thanks to the simplicity of my mode of life, I arrogate to myself no merit in having refused. Perceiving at last that personal interest had no influence over my conduct, he attempted to act upon me by representing himself as resolved to prepare the way for the triumph of the cause of monarchy, to which he believed me attached by predilection.

"Every species of seductive artifice proved unavailing. I have never ceased, both as Commander of the Army of Paris, and in the Assembly, as I asserted at a sitting of the Commission de Permanence,' after the review at Satory, to be prepared to defend with energy the legal powers of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and to oppose the illegal prolongation of those powers.

"It would be superfluous in addressing you to recall the means by which the establishment of those powers was brought about, and what acts of iniquity and violence accompanied their inauguration.

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Persecution has not cooled the

ardour of my patriotism. The exile which I suffer in seclusion, and in the observation of a silence which you now force me to break, has not altered in my eyes the duties which I owe to France. Should an enemy attack her I should solicit with ardour the honour of combating in her defence. The only French journal which meets my eyes here has just informed me of the decrce which prescribes the form of oath to be taken by all in the service of the army. A paragraph, evidently drawn up with reference to the generals under proscription, allows them an interval of four months. I require no such extended period for deliberation on a point of duty and honour.

"The oath required by the perjurer who failed in his attempts to corrupt me I refuse.

"CHANGARNIER."

General Lamoricière's answer was more brief, but equally decisive. It was dated

"Brussels, May 14. "General,-Torn from my home, thrown into prison, proscribed in contempt of the laws, I did not believe you would have gone so far as to ask me for an oath of fidelity to the man whose power, usurped by violence, is only maintained by force.

"But a document emanating from your department contains a paragraph which evidently applies to the generals who have been banished, and imposes on them the obligation of the oath. Two months are allowed to those who reside in Belgium, to reply to this

used, I reject it-delay I do not require the oath I refuse.

I know the consequences of my resolution: 29 years passed in the army, 36 campaigns resulting from 18 years' war in Algeria (from May, 1830, to January, 1848), some services rendered to France abroad, and during the fatal days of June, 1848, services which, perhaps, are not yet forgotten-all this will be reduced to nothing; I shall be struck out from the lists of the army. Once more it will be proved that rank is at the mercy of arbitrary power. That rank was made the patrimony of the officer by the laws of the 19th of May, 1834; he could not lose it but by the sentence of a court-martial. That law is trampled under foot by a Government which respects neither person nor property.

"Thus the sword which I had devoted to the service of France is about to be torn from my hands. What could I do with it under such a Government? But if (which God forbid!) our frontiers should be threatened, I would hasten to resume it, and to fight for national independence; for history sufficiently tells me that, in presence of extreme dangers brought about by ambition, despotism does not require an oath from brave men who march in the defence of the country.

"General DE LAMORICIÈRE."

Notwithstanding the care taken to fill the Legislative Corps with devoted adherents of Louis Napoleon, the semblance of an opposition showed itself in the discussion of some of the measures brought before that body, as, for instance, with respect to the projet de loi giving the Government power to expel summarily, and without any

formal sentence, from Paris or Lyons all persons who possessed no visible means of subsistence. And during a debate on the Budget, M. de Montalembert expressed himself openly and boldly in condemnation of the decrees which confiscated the property of the house of Orleans. He said:

"Gentlemen,—I wish to make a brief remark, and I promise beforehand not to demand the authority to print what I am about to say. But I think it necessary to have noted in the minutes of the Assembly a fact which I have already alluded to without any contradiction, in the minutes of the Commission of the Budget, and which appears in the report of M. Gouin. The question is as to the proceeds of the property of the former civil list, sold in execution of the law, and comprised in the chapter of domains. M. Gouin expresses himself thus :-' In order to meet a feeling manifested by the commission, the commissioners have added that this valuation of 7,500,000 francs had been made on property sufficient for its total realization, independently of the property of the house of Orleans, indicated in the decree of the 22nd January. With that declaration before us, as well as the written documents which have been furnished us by the Administration, we are justified in stating, that the question raised by the decree of the 22nd of January is not presented under any form, direct or indirect, in the Budget of 1853, and that the vote of that Budget does not compromise any participation in that measure of an anterior date to that of the meeting of the Legislative Corps.' It was then shown, gentlemen, in a manner undisputed and undisputable, that

the Budget of receipts that you are about to vote contains no revenue, no proceeds resulting from the execution of the decrees of the 22nd of January, which have despoiled the house of Orleans of the property it possessed for ages. I feel some astonishment, but I am the more rejoiced at it. I dare not conclude from it, as the best friends of the Government would so much wish to do, that it is not as yet irrevocably determined to execute in their totality these fatal decrees. But in any case, it has not been judged proper to demand from us for them a sanction directly or indirectly. It is well that France should know the factthat it should know that none of its deputies has been called upon to consecrate by his vote any of the consequences of a measure which it has been unanimous in disapproving, and which it has disapproved as much for the sake of him who is the author of those decrees as of those who have been the victims of them. We shall have, without doubt, to discuss that measure some day; the law of the finances will bring us to it; we shall discuss it in full liberty. Until then, it is necessary it should be known that we are neither associated in the act nor engaged by it. As to me, I avail myself of this occasion to raise in the triple interest of property seriously affected, of justice disregarded, and of august misfortunes, my solemn objection against a fault which has been committed without excuse, without a pretext, without a provocation of any kind, and which it is attempted to render more irreparable each day."

These symptoms of opposition were by no means palatable to the President, and the session of the

Legislative Corps was closed at the end of June with the following message, read in the Assembly by M. Billault ::

"Elysée National,

June 28, 1852.

"Gentlemen,-At the moment of the close of the session of 1852, I have to return you my thanks for the loyal co-operation and support you have given to our new institutions. You have known how to resist what is the most dangerous amongst assembled men-the being carried away by esprit de corps; and, all susceptibility laid aside, you have occupied yourselves with the great interests of the country, feeling that the epoch of impassioned and sterile discourses has passed away, and that of business had arrived.

"The application of a new sys tem always encounters difficulties; you have had your share of them. If occupation has seemed to be wanting at your earlier meetings, you have understood that the desire of abridging the term of my dictatorship, and my anxiety to call you around me, had been the cause of it, in depriving my Government of the time necessary for the preparation of the laws which were to be submitted to you. The natural consequence of that exceptional state of things was the accumulation of business at the close of the session. Nevertheless the first trial of a Constitution, completely of French origin, must have convinced you that we possessed the conditions of a strong and free Government. The Government is no longer that passive butt against which the various Oppositions directed their shafts with impunity. It can resist their attacks, and henceforth follow a system without having