BOOK XII. in peace-they had long suffered and severely from the anti-commercial spirit and plans of Bonaparte: CHAP. IV. peace, therefore, but especially a peace with England, was particularly necessary and desirable to them. On these two classes, therefore, the agricultural and commercial classes, the hope of the security and permanence of Louis's government must mainly depend.

1814

There is only one other class in France whom it will be necessary to consider with respect to their influence on Louis's government; and that is the clergy. Bonaparte, from whatever motive, certainly curtailed their power; and even endeavoured to separate, as much as he possibly could, the church from the state, by reducing the emoluments of the clergy, and not permitting them to assume a rank at all proportionate to that influence which they retain in most other governments. This circumstance, united to the strong and general passion for military rank and glory, and the indifference to religion, created or augmented by the revolution, must have operated in diminishing the influence of the priesthood over the people of France; and yet it may be doubted whether in the country they did not retain much more of it than might have been expected. Louis, from his natural disposition and habits, must have been strongly urged to replace the clergy as nearly as possible in the same scale of rank and wealth which they held before the revolution; he must also have seen, that if he could accomplish this, he would secure in his favor a most powerful body. They were no doubt disposed to assist and support him; but as they naturally expected that his restoration would lead to theirs, and that theirs would be complete, there was some danger, that their zeal in his behalf would cool, if he adopted half measures with regard to them. And yet he And yet he

was so placed, that he could not go so far as they wished and expected, nor probably so far as he was disposed to do. Great part of the property of the church was sold: this could not be restored; nor could any steps be taken towards a restoration, without creating great alarm in the breasts of all those who had purchased confiscated property. The revenues of the clergy before the revolution were also in part derived from tithes: to endeavour or seem to wish to re-impose these would undoubtedly be dangerous, as the landed property had been bought under the idea that no tithes were to be paid ;-besides, there could be no doubt, that the improvement in French agriculture had arisen in some degree from the abolition of tithes. It seemed, therefore, impossible to reinstate the clergy in their possessions. But Louis plainly shewed, by his behaviour to them, and in all things connected with religion, that he wished France to return to her former faith in every point. This conduct of the sovereign, especially his ordering mass to be said for Louis XVI., and his endeavours to enforce the strict observance of the sabbath in Paris, has been censured as highly imprudent. Undoubtedly, he ought to have buried in oblivion every thing regarding Louis XVI. and the revolution, and in this light his ordering mass for that monarch was imprudent: but his attention to the ceremonies of the Catholic religion, in other respects may be vindicated as politic, even if it were not with him a matter of conscience.

Such were the principal circumstances which were favorable, or the reverse, to the support and permanence of the government of Louis XVIII. on his first restoration, so far as they depended on his own personal character, and on the disposition of the different classes of his subjects.

1

WHEN the intelligence arrived in England of the entrance of the allies into Paris, and the abdication of Bonaparte, the joy that was diffused throughout the country was unbounded. In the metropolis it was celebrated by a splendid and general illumination for three successive nights, in which the public joy was testified by every de

vice that the taste and invention of the exhibitors could supply.

The national gratitude was bestowed upon Lord Wellington, and some of his most distinguished associates in arms, on the conclusion of the war. On the 10th of May, a message from the prince-regent was communicated to the house