o no party, and indeed
to no nation.]

The court, the courtiers, and the ministry appeared as the central
phalanx of the _pure royalists_. As their auxiliaries, they had the
old nobility,--the priesthood,--a certain number of apostates who had
skulked away from the imperial government,--and lastly, all those who
had been disqualified by their incapacity and disloyalty from
obtaining employment under Napoleon. It was the undisguised wish of
this party to wash out every stain of the revolution, and to effect a
full and unqualified restoration of the _ancien regime_ in all its
parts, and to all intents and purposes.

On the other side were arrayed the party designated as that of the
Bonapartists, led on by our most honourable and most virtuous
citizens, and numbering within its ranks the great body of the people;
this party strove to withstand the impending resuscitation of the
privileges and abuses of the old government, and which was to be
effected only by the total subversion of our existing institutions.

The pure royalists endeavoured to annihilate the charter, which their
opponents defended, and thus a strange contradiction took place. The
royal charter had the royalists for its enemies, whilst its defenders
were only found amongst those who were stigmatized as the adherents of
Bonaparte.

Abortive attempts were made by the pure royalists to palliate the
treachery of the government. They tried to persuade the people that
the tranquillity and welfare of the nation depended but on the
re-establishment of an absolute monarch, of a feudal aristocracy, and
of all the trumpery of superstition. Such was the tendency of the
publications which issued from the ministerial press, owing their
birth to writers who had either sold themselves to the government, or
who had denationalized themselves by their political intolerance. But
it must not be supposed that liberty could remain in need of
advocates.

Each of the earliest stages of the growth of the young government of
royalty had been marked by obscure yet decisive symptoms of bad faith,
not the less mischievous because they were restricted to signs, and
symbols, and phrases. Instead of the constitution voted by the senate,
and which the king had engaged to accept and ratify, he graciously
granted and conceded a charter, by which he gave a new form to the
government; and which, according to its tenor, emanated from the
sovereign in the full and free ex