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adjourn or dissolve it: in the latter case, another must be formed in three months. Taxes shall be equal, and imposed only by law; the land-tax to be fixed only for a year; and the budget to be annually presented at the opening of the session. The law shall fix the mode and amount of recruiting for the army. The judges shall be independent, and hold their situations for life. Trial by jury, and publicity of trial in criminal matters, are preserved. The king may pardon. The penalty of confiscation of goods is abolished. The person of the king is sacred and inviolable; all his acts are to be signed by a minister, who shall be responsible for any violation of the laws which those acts may contain. The freedom of worship and conscience are guaranteed; the ministers of religion are treated and protected alike; and all Frenchmen are equally admissible to civil and military offices. The liberty of the press is entire, with the exception of offences which may result from its abuse. The public debt is guaranteed, and the sale of the national domains maintained. The ancient obility resume their titles, and the new preserve theirs hereditarily: the legion of honour is maintained, with its prerogatives. The senate is to consist of not less than 150, and not more than 200 members, whose dignity is immoveable and hereditary; the present senators form part of this number, and continue to enjoy their present endow ments; the king names the rest, and supplies all vacancies. The legislative body shall be chosen immediately by the electoral bodies; and each department shall continue to send the same number of deputies as at present: the deputies shall preserve their pay: the present deputies shall continue till replaced by an election to take place for the session of 1816. The ordinary tribunals existing at present are to be preserved till altered by law. The courts of cassation, the courts of appeal, and the tribunals of the first instance, propose three candidates for each vacancy of judge; and the king chooses one of the three, and names the first presidents and public ministers of the courts and tribunals. The military on service and on half-pay or pension, and their widows, preserve their rank, honours, and pay. Every person may address by petition every constituted authority. All the existing laws remain till legally repealed; the civil code shall be called the Code of the French. The present constitution shall be. submitted to the acceptance of the French people: Louis Stanislaus Xavier shall be proclaimed king as. CHRIST. OBSERV. No 148.

soon as he shall have signed and sworn to an act stating his acceptance of the constitution.

The Count d'Artois, the brother of the king, who repaired to Paris soon after it was taken possession of by the Allies, and was received with the most enthusiastic expressions of joy, has been appointed LieutenantGeneral of France. He has signified his brother's willingness to accept the basis of this constitution, implying that there are some of its details which require to be modified. Louis XVIII. bimself left London on the 23d instant for Paris.

It is now time to turn to Bonaparte. When he discovered that the allies had adopted the bold policy of advancing at once to Paris, and had already for two or three days been pushing forward in that direction, he made an effort to repair the error he had committed, by an immediate and rapid pursuit. It was now, however, too late. Exhausted as his troops were by the fatigues they had undergone, deprived of the supplies he had relied ou receiving from Paris, but which had been intercepted, disappointed of his reinforcements, and harassed by the clouds of cavalry which hung on the flank and rear of his armies, he was still more than two days' march from Paris on the day on which the Allies entered it. On hearing of this event, he established his head-quarters at Fontainbleau, intending there to collect and re-organize his force. He soon found, however, that he could no, longer rely on the support of his generals or army. He therefore transmitted a proposition to Paris, offering to abdicate in fa-. vour of his son. This insidious proposal was instantly rejected; on which he declared his entire renunciation, for himself and his heirs, of the throne of France. The moment his military power was broken, it appeared that he stood alone and unsupported in a country, where, a few days before, he had disposed at pleasure of the lives and destinies of its inhabitants.

Bonaparte has selected the island of Elba as the place of bis future residence. Six millions of livres annually (250,000l. sterling), it is said, are to be allowed for the sup-port of himself and his family, including the Empress Maria Louisa, who, it seems, has separated herself from him.

The revolution which has thus taken place has discovered to the world more of the bileousness of Bonaparte's government, than will suit the taste of his warm admirers in this country; of whom, we are sorry to say, there have been and still are some among us. Such was the ignorance of public events

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which prevailed, that the revolution which had taken place in Holland in November last, was not known in Paris when the allies entered it. When the Bastile was forced by the populace of Paris in 1789, seven state prisoners were found in it: the number found in Bonaparte's state prisons is said to amount to upwards of 1200.-A number of Belgian priests, who had, for years, been confined in different castles for having refused to say prayers for Napoleon, although they had made repeated acts of submission, have been set at liberty.-Upwards of 300 students belonging to one of the Universities in Flanders, and among them 40 clergymen, had been sent to join the army: an order has been issued by the Provisional Gevernment for their liberation.-A vast number of children had been forcibly taken from their parents by Bonaparte, to be educated according to his own views in his public establishments: the Provisional Government has ordered that parents should be allowed to reclaim their children so circumstanced*. -But it were endless to state all the particuJars of his tyranny which recent events have brought to light. One of his last acts, while Paris was yet in his power, was to rob the treasury of all the specie contained in it, and he afterwards augmented this fund by seizing on the public chests of several of the departments. The Provisional Government have issued orders for the recovery of this property.

It was the policy of Bonaparte to throw great obstacles in the way of communica tion by letters, or even by special messengers, between one part of France and another, and between France and the rest of the world. Immense masses of letters were found in the Post-office of Paris, which had been accumulating there for years, and which were immediately forwarded to their destination. And so trained to the habit of stopping the circulation of letters, journals, &c. were the public functionaries of France, that it was found very difficult at first to convey to the departments a knowledge of the recent events in Paris. On

* Mr. Cobbett, who seems anxious to prevent, as far as he can, the return of the world to peace and order, and who seems particularly unortified at the failure of all his predictions of the ultimate defeat and disgrace of the allies, and the continued pre-eminence of Bonaparte, has flagitiously represented this humane order as the suppression of Bonaparte's institutions for the education of poor children.

the 10th instant the knowledge of those events had not yet reached Toulouse; where an engagement took place on that day, between Lord Wellington and Soult, which ended in the defeat of the latter and the occupation of Toulouse by his lordship on the 12th, to the great joy of the inhabitants. The particulars of this battle are not yet known, but it appears to have been very sanguinary. We hope that strict inquisition will be made for the persons whose culpable negligence (if not their criminal premeditation) has led to this useless effusion of human blood. An event of the same melancholy description has taken place at Bayonne. And at Hamburgli, Davoust appears to be still indulging the ferocity of his disposition by acts of the most wanton cruelty.-Means have been taken for effectually sheathing the sword along the whole line of the late extensive warfare; and, we trust, we have now heard the last tale of blood which is to afflict Europe for many years.

This brief view of the wonderful occurrences of the past month, which we have abstained from interrupting by any observations of our own, cannot fail to suggest to Our readers many useful topics of remark. The lessons which they are calculated to convey to kings and nations are highly in. structive, and we trust will not be lost upon them. Indeed, they appear to have already produced their effect on the minds of the allied sovereigns. The singular moderation which has marked all their proceedings has been as gratifying as their success has been complete. War, as conducted by them, has worn, not a hustile, but a friendly aspect ; and admits of being compared to those parental severities which are employed to restrain the follies and reclaim the wanderings of a child. Much, however, as we admire the spirit of moderation by which the allied powers have been influenced, in one point we cannot but think that they (and here we include Great Britain in the number) were induced to make an unjustifiable sacrifice of the hopes of Europe, from their eagerness to bring the war to a close. They would have made peace with Bonaparte! They would have made peace with him too on terms which would have left him master of the destinies of nearly thirty millions of people, and in a situation once more to have put the yoke on their own necks. We shudder to think what would at this moment have been our prospects and the prospects of the world, had Bonaparte assented to the terms proposed to him by the allies,.

And why he did not assent to them can only be explained on the same principle of infatuation, which" turned into foolishness" the counsel of another usurper in ancient times, and which produced also the same happy issue, the destruction of the usurper's power, and the restoration of the lawful monarch, by the universal voice of his subjects. The case of Bonaparte, however, as it appears to us, bears a nearer resemblance to that of Pharaoh, than of any other monarch ancient or modern. "And in very deed, for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth." And, surely, if the elevation and fall of Pharaoh were expressly intended to magnify the Divine Power, and to produce beneficial impressions on the hearts of those who witnessed them, it is impossible to deny that the career of Bonaparte,-the "solar height" to which he has been raised, the "starless night" in which he has set*,—is, if possible, still more pregnant with impor tant instruction. Nor does the resemblance of the two cases hold merely in their outline. From the declaration of the allied sovereigns, issued after the rupture of the perilous negocia tions at Chatillon (far more full of danger, in our view, than the fiercest storm of war), it appears that Bonaparte had, in the hour of defeat, manifested a willingness to accept the terms that were offered to him; but meeting unexpectedly with some considerable suceess, all his proud hopes revived: "his heart was hardened:" he would no longer listen to any compromise. In less than a fortnight, this man, who made the world to tremble, with whom the utmost hope of Europe in arms aspired only to what might be deemed an honourable accommodation, becomes as abject as he had been proud; and accepts life, and an ignoble subsistence, on the terms of a miserable exile to a petty island. So may the oppressor cease throughout the universe!

But while we cannot commend the policy which would have permitted Bonaparte to retain his guilty dominion, and would have given him (so gratuitously, as it has appeared to us) another opportunity of making

Ode to Bonaparte, by Lord Byron. After the remarks we have taken the liberty of making in the present Number, on the want of a moral in the Corsair of Lord Byron, we shall be excused, we trust, if we seize this opportunity of briefly expressing the unfeigned pleasure we have derived from this spirited and seasonable effusion of his lordship's genius.

"God's fair world" his "footstool;" and while we rejoice, that Providence has here favoured us beyond our hopes or our efforts-has averted the evil we would have brought on ourselves; still we contemplate with the ut most satisfaction and gratitude the magna nimity of that forbearance and clemency which have been displayed in the conduct of the allied sovereigns. They have spared Bonaparte. They have saved and blessed France. May we not anticipate from such men, when they shall return in triumph to their own dominions, that the benign arts of peace will be cultivated by them no less sedulously and successfully than those of wat have been; and that their efforts will be employed in the improvement of their subjects, and in the communication of the same blessings to them, which they have been made the honoured instruments of restoring to other nations?

What abundant cause have we to bless God, not only for this signal revolution, but for the manner in which it has been effected! With the exception of the unhappy events at Toulouse and Bayonne, the very thought of which, under all the circumstances, is sickening to the heart, there has been (as we have already remarked) every thing to rejoice at and nothing to lament. It was justly feared, even after Paris had fallen, that streams of blood would have flowed in France, before the delighted eye could survey her fields, as now, rescued from the scourge of war, and resting under the shade of her ancient kings. But the voice of Him who

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speaks and all is calm," has been heard even amid the tumult of conflicting nations; and the cries of terror, agony, and death (those never-failing attendants on the march of foreign invasion and civil strife) have been changed, as in a moment, into strains of joy and melody. To take only one example-think of the hopeless captive,pining under the prospect of added years of exile and wretch. edness, and who finds himself at once restored to his home and happiness! Think on the greetings which will hail the return of 350,000 individuals, who are now confined in the prisons of England and France and Russia! In short, to whatever side we direct our view, instead of the ghastly forms of desolation and death, we meet only with sights of pleasantness and peace.

Shall we be excused, if, amid all this profusion of joy, we should venture to sound a note which may appear somewhat discordant? Our eye involuntarily turns from these visions of delight, which we have been contemplating, to the plains of Africa and the plantations of the Western World. Surely it cannot

be, that all these great events, which have given to Europe the promise of lasting repose and independence; that all this enginery of happiness, all these joys which swell the bosom, and all those exultations which rend the skies; should be the harbingers of misery to any other quarter of the globe. Surely it cannot be, that the nations who have so nobly fought the battle of the civilized world, that those distinguished men, who have guided and controuled their gallant efforts, and who have shed even round the brow of war something of the mild radiance of peace ;-it cannot be, that they should turn a deaf ear to the groans of suffering humanity in other regions; that they should permit the very achievements by which they have broken the chains of Europe, to have the effect of winding only a heavier chain around the wretched inhabit ants of Africa, and sinking them deeper in barbarism and blood. And yet we cannot help giving way to some fearful forebodings on this subject. We have as yet caught no sound which would indicate that, either in France or Holland, in Spain or Portugal, the sense of their past sufferings, or gratitude for their recent rescue, had excited one feeling of commiseration for Africa, or prompted one wish for the termination of her more aggravated wrongs. We trust, how ever, that our forebodings will prove groundless; and that the same gracious and beneficent Being, who has of late afforded such visible manifestations of his power over the minds of his creatures; who has taught conquerors, even in the moment of victory, and with the means of vengeance in their hands, to stay the tide of carnage, and to indulge in the luxury of doing good; and who has united the hearts of the mingled myriads of Europe in the same great cause as the heart of one man; will lead the congregated rulers of the earth to erect one trophy more to humanity and justice; to

Since the above remarks were sent to press, the formal cessation of hostilities between Great Britain and France has been officially

give one more proof of their reverence for God and their love to man, by pronouncing an irreversible sentence of extinction on the traffic in slaves, and by mutually engaging to carry that sentence into full execution. If this is not done, a new and more extensive slave trade will speedily cominence. The miseries of Europe have granted some respite to Africa ; but, without the universal abolition of the slave trade, the bright day of happiness which has begun to dawn on Europe will only prepare tenfold wretchedness for the African race. Now, also, no interests would be compromised by such a measure, except in the case, perhaps, of Portugal. The glorious work might be accomplished without the merit or the pain of a sacrifice. But, whatever may be effected at the congress of nations, of this, at least, we assure ourselves, that our own Government knows too well what is due to public opinion, and to the almost unanimous representations of the legislature on this great question, to consent to relinquish a single colony we now hold, but on the express condition that the abolition of the slave trade shall be an irreversible law of the state to which it is restored. It would, indeed, be a monstrous return for the accumulation of mercies which Europe has been receiving at the hands of God, if they were only to be the signal for renewing, in Africa, the career of pillage, desolation, and blood, which her own protracted sufferings had so providentially contributed to suspend. We are most anxious to cherish brighter hopes; and, with the utmos! earnestness, we call upon all whom our voice can influence, to employ their unceasing prayers and their persevering efforts to prevent the cruel disappointment which would attend the failure of those hopes at this critical moment.

Our limits prevent our enlarging on this and soine other topics. We must therefore defer them.

announced. The official details of the battles of Toulouse and Bayonne have also been received. The loss has been severe.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

J. J. H. has been received.

A. H.; J. J.; A. B.; E. H. J., are under consideration.

T. B. will be inserted.

ERRATA.

Present No. p. 205, col. 1. l. 5 from bottom, after sterling, insert a semicolon. p. 209, col. 2. l. 4, for circumstances which appear, read circum:tance which

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Nour Volumes for 1810 and 1811

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we gave a very copious view. of the progress of the Protestant, Missions on the coast of Coromandel, from their commencement in 1706 to the close of the year 1710. A work has recently appeared which enables us to continue this account, for the chief part of the time which, has intervened between that period and the present day. The work is entitled," An. Abstract of the Annual Reports and Correspondence of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, from the Commencement of its Connexion with the East India Missions, A. D. 1709, to the present Day; together with the Charges delivered to the Missionaries at different Periods, on their Departure for their several Missions: published by Direction of the Board of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge." The Editor of this work we understand to be the Rev. Archdeacon, Pott. It was projected at the time that the great question of affording legal facilities to those who might be ac tuated by the desire to propagate the faith of Christ in India was before the legislature. It appeared too late to co-operate, as it would have done, in producing the wise decision which was adopted. It will serve, however, to demonstrate the wisdom of that decision, and perhaps to obviate the prejudices of many wellmeaning men, who were led, by the ill-founded alarms of persons pretending to local knowledge, to regard with considerable jealousy any CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 149.

attempt to convert the natives of India to Christianity.

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To pleas of insuperable difficulty," observes the pious Editor, "of danger, and alas! (for it is so saiu) of inexpedience, it is time to oppose the documents of plain facts, and the long course of experiment, pursued with unremitting efforts, and followed by none of the disastrous consequences which are now SO anxiously predicted. Facts and experiments they are which have a tract of years beyond the customary life of man, to vouch for them as practicable, safe, and full of substantial benefit; and all this under weak encouragements, it must be owned, with limited and languid patronage, and with deficient means. It is in order to produce this evidence of fact, and these plain lessons of experience, that the following Abstract has been formed and put forth; by which it will appear that the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, for above a century, has supplied its succours, when its means were least abundant, for the propagation and support of the cause and interests of Christian truth, of religious knowledge, and of conversion in the eastern world.

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