Had the soldiers not revolted in July, what would have been the consequence? The insurrection in Paris, crushed by a garrison of 12,000 men, would have speedily sunk. A new Chamber, convoked on the basis of the royal ordinance, would have thrown the Ministers into a minority in the Chamber of Deputies, and by them the obnoxious measure would have been repealed. If there is any truth in the growing influence of public opinion, so uniformly maintained by liberal writers, this must have been the result. No representatives chosen by any electors in France, could have withstood the odium which supporting the measures of the court would have produced. Thus liberty would have been secured without exciting the tempest which threatens its total overthrow. Public credit, private confidence, general prosperity, would have been maintained; the peace of the world preserved; the habits conducive to a state of national freedom engendered.

What have been the consequences of the boasted treachery of the troops of the line in July? The excitation of revolutionary hopes; the rousing of democratic ambition; a ferment in society; the abandonment of useful industry; the government of the mob; the arming of France; the suspension of pacific enterprise.

A civil war in France would have been far more serviceable to the cause of real liberty, than the sudden destruction of the government by the revolt of the army. In many periods of history, freedom has emerged from the collision of different classes in society-in none from military insubordination.

If Charles I. had possessed a regular army, and it had betrayed its trust on the first breaking out of the great Rebellion, would the result have been as favourable to the cause of liberty, as the long contest which ensued? Nothing can be clearer than that it would not. No greater consequences would have followed such a revolt, than any of the insurrections of the barons against the princes of York and Lancaster. A revolution so easily achieved, would as easily have been abandoned: liberty would never have been gained, because the trials had not been endured by which it is to be won. The only security for its continuance is to be found in the energy and courage of the citizens it is not

by witnessing the destruction of government by a mutinous soldiery, that these habits are to be acquired.

Soldiers, therefore, who adhere to their honour and their oaths, are in reality the best friends to the cause of freedom. They prevent the struggle for its maintenance from being converted into a mortal combat, in which the victory of either party must prove fatal to the very object for which they are contending. They prevent the love of independence from being transformed into the spirit of insubordination, and the efforts of freedom blasted by the violence of popular, or the irresistible weight of military ambition. They turn the spirit of liberty into a pacific channel; and, averting it from that direction where it falls under the rule of violence, retain it in that where wisdom and foresight duly regulate its movements.

The institution of a National Guard, of which so much is now said, is not less the subject of delusion, than the boasted treachery of regular soldiers.

Citizen soldiers are most valuable additions to the force of a regular army; and when actuated by a common and patriotic feeling, they are capable of rendering most effective service to the State. The landwehr of Prussia, and the volunteers of Russia, sufficiently demonstrated this truth during the campaigns of 1812 and 1813. They are a valuable force also for preserving domestic tranquillity up to a certain point, when little real peril is to be encountered, and a display of moral opinion is of more weight than the exertion of military prowess. But they are a force that cannot be relied on during the shades of opinion which take place in a revolution, and still less in the perilous strife which follows the actual collision of one class of the State with another. This has been completely demonstrated during both the French Revolutions.

The National Guard of Paris was first embodied on the 20th July 1789, a week after the capture of the Bastile. During the first fervour of the revolutionary ardour, and before the strife of faction had brought the opposite parties into actual contest, they frequently rendered effective service to the cause of order. On more than one occasion, headed by Lafayette, they dispersed seditious assemblages; and once, in June 1792, were brought to fire upon the Jacobins

in the Champ de Mars. But whenever matters approached a crisis; when the want and suffering consequent on a revolution had brought forward angry bodies of workmen from the Fauxbourgs; when the question was not one of turning out to parade, but of fighting an exasperated multitude, they uniformly failed.

The citizen soldiers, headed by Lafayette, were under arms in great force on the 5th October 1789, when a furious rabble marched to Versailles, broke into and plundered the palace, attempted to murder the Queen, and brought the Royal Family in captivity to Paris, preceded by the heads of their faithful Body-Guards. They refused for five hours to listen to the entreaties of their commander to march to protect the palace of the King against that atrocious insult; and when they did go, were too irresolute to prevent the violence which followed.

They stood by on 20th June 1792, when a vociferous rabble broke into the hall of the Assembly, threatening the obnoxious deputies with instant death; when that rabble rushed into the Palace of the Tuileries, presented their pikes to the breast of Louis, placed the Cap of Liberty on his head, and brought the Royal Family and the monarchy into imminent danger.

They assembled at the sound of the générale, when the Fauxbourgs rose in revolt on the 10th August; and their dense battalions, plentifully supported by cavalry and artillery, accumulated in great force round the Tuileries. But division, irresolution, and timidity paralysed their ranks. First the Gendarmerie deserted to the assailants; then the cannoneers unloaded their guns; several battalions next joined the insurgents, and the few that remained faithful were so completely paralysed by the general defection of their comrades, that they were unable to render any effective support to the Swiss Guard. From amidst a forest of citizen bayonets, the monarch was dragged a captive to the Temple, and the government of France yielded up to a sanguinary rabble. Seven thousand National Guards, on that day, yielded up their sovereign to a despicable rabble,—as many hundred faithful regular soldiers would have established his throne, and prevented the Reign of Terror.

When Lafayette, indignant at the atrocities of the Jacobins, repaired to Paris from the army, and appointed a rendezvous at his house, in the evening of June 27, 1792, to the National Guard, of which he had so lately been the popular commander, in order to march against the Jacobin Club, only thirty men obeyed the summons. The immense majority evinced a fatal apathy, and surrendered up their country, without a struggle, to the empire of the Jacobins.

When Louis, Marie Antoinette, and the Princess Elizabeth were successively led out to the scaffold; when the brave and virtuous Madame Roland became the victim of the freedom she had worshipped; when Vergniaud and the illustrious leaders of the Gironde were brought to the block; when Danton and Camille Desmoulins were destroyed by the mob whom they had excited, the National Guard lined the streets, and attended the cars to the guillotine.

When the executions rose to 150 daily; when the shopkeepers closed their windows, to avoid witnessing the dismal spectacles of the long procession which was approaching the scaffold; when a ditch was dug to convey the blood of the victims to the Seine; when France groaned under tyranny, unequalled since the beginning of the world, 40,000 National Guards, with arms in their hands, looked on in silent observation of the mournful spectacle.

When indignant nature revolted at the cruelty; when, by a generous union, the members of all sides in the Assembly united, the power of the tyrants was shaken; when Robespierre was declared hors la loi, and the générale was beat to summon the citizen soldiers to make a last effort in behalf not only of their country, but of their own existence, only 2500 obeyed the summons! Thirty-seven thousand five hundred declined to come forward in a contest for their lives, their families, and everything that was dear to them. With this contemptible force was Robespierre besieged in the Hotel de Ville; and but for the fortunate and unforeseen defection of the cannoneers of the Fauxbourgs in the Place de Grêve, the tyrants would have been successful, the Assembly destroyed, and the reign of the guillotine perpetuated on the earth.

When the reaction in favour of the victors, on the 9th Thermidor had roused the Parisian population against the

sanguinary rule of the Convention; when, encouraged by the contemptible force at the disposal of government, 40,000 of the National Guard assaulted 4000 regular soldiers, in position at the Tuileries, on 31st October 1795, Napoleon showed what reliance could be placed on the citizen soldiers. With a few discharges of artillery, he checked the advance of the leading battalions, spread terror through their dense columns; and a revolt, which was expected to overthrow the tyranny of the delegates of the people, terminated by the establishment of military despotism.

When Augereau, on 4th September 1797, at the command of the Directory, seized sixty of the popular leaders of the legislature; when the law of the sword began, and all the liberties of the Revolution were about to be sacrificed at the altar of military violence, the National Guard declined to move, and saw their fellow-citizens, the warmest supporters of their liberties, carried into captivity and exile, without attempting a movement in their behalf.

When Napoleon overthrew the government in 1800; when, like another Cromwell, he seized the fruits of another Revolution; when he marched his grenadiers into the Council of Five Hundred, and made the stern rule of the sword succeed to the visions of enthusiastic freedom, the National Guard remained quiet spectators of the destruction of their country's liberties, and testified the same submission to the reign of military which they had done to that of democratic violence.

The National Guard was re-organised in August 1830, and their conduct since that time has been the subject of unmeasured eulogium from all the liberal Journals of Europe. The throne was established by their bayonets; the Citizen King has thrown himself upon their support; they were established in great force in every quarter of Paris, and the public tranquillity intrusted to their hands. History has a right to inquire what they have done to justify the high praises of their supporters, and how far the cause of order and rational liberty has gained by their exertions.

They had the history of the former Revolution clearly before their eyes; they knew well, by dear-bought experience, that when popular violence is once roused, it overthrows all the bulwarks both of order and freedom; they