d have seen the latter's
execution with satisfaction, because they desired peace, and he had
fallen into the habit of breaking it. The enthusiasm that was created in
France by the arrival in that country of the remains of Napoleon I.,
not three months after the coming Napoleon III. had been sent to the
fortress of Ham, showed how difficult a matter it would have been to
proceed capitally against the Prince. Louis Philippe has been praised
for sparing him; but the praise is undeserved. Certainly, the King of
the French was not a cruel man, and it was with sincere regret that he
signed the death-warrants of men who had sought his own life, and who
had murdered his friends; but it would have been no act of cruelty, had
he sent his rival to the guillotine. When a man makes a throw for a
crown, he accepts what is staked, against it,--a coffin. Nothing is
better established than this, that, when a sovereign is assailed, the
intention of the assailant being his overthrow, that sovereign has a
perfect right to put his rival to death, if he succeed in obtaining
possession of his person. The most confirmed believer in Richard III.'s
demoniac character would not think of adding the execution of Richmond
to his crimes, had Plantagenet, and not Tudor, triumphed on Bosworth
Field. James II. has never been blamed for causing Monmouth to be put to
death, but for having complied with his nephew's request for a personal
interview, at which he refused to grant his further request for a
mitigation of punishment. Murat's death was an unnecessary act, but
Ferdinand of Naples has never been censured for it. Had Louis Philippe
followed these examples, and those of a hundred similar cases, he could
not have been charged with undue severity in the exercise of his power
for the conservation of his own rights, and the maintenance of the
tranquillity, not of France alone, but of Europe, and of the world,
which the triumph of a Bonaparte might have perilled. He spared the
future Emperor's life, not from any considerations of a chivalric
character, but because he durst not take it. He feared that the blood
of the offender would more than atone for his offence, and he would
not throw into the political caldron so rich a material, dreading the
effects of its presence there. Then the Orleans party and the Imperial
party not only marched with each other, but often crossed and ran into
each other; and it was not safe to run the risk of offending the first