1853.] France in 1853. 257
Orleans family have been enlarged upon even to satiety. State reasons may be alleged as an excuse for things which morality condemns; but the vaunted qualities of that family should have placed them above any such justification. State reasons may be alleged for the perpetration of any enormity. We have no doubt that Catherine II. could allege them for the partition of Poland; and the Emperor Nicholas justifies his present conduct towards the Ottoman Empire quite as satisfactorily. Pretensions to virtues far superior to those of ordinary men should, however, place those who are so gifted out of ordinary rules. We have said that we reprobate the decree of the 22d January 1852, but we have no doubt that Louis Napoleon justified that arbitrary act by the law of 1832. The house of Orleans renewed the sentence of perpetual banishment against the family of Napoleon, and of incapability to possess property in the French territory. Louis Philippe owed a heavy debt of gratitude to Charles X. and his family; we have seen how that debt was paid off; no such obligation bound the Buonapartes to the house of Orleans.
But there existed another obstacle in the way of reconciliation between the elder and younger branches of the Bourbons—another outrage which it is scarcely in human nature to forget. The Orleanist party had protested in 1820 against the legitimacy of the present Count de Chambord. In that year a document appeared in London, entitled "Protest of the Duke of Orleans." It was headed as follows: "His Royal Highness declares that he protests formally against the minutes of the 29th September last, which pretend to establish that the child named Charles Ferdinand Dieu-Donné is the legitimate son of the Duchess of Berri. The Duke of Orleans will produce, in fitting time and place, witnesses who can prove the origin of that child and its mother. He will produce all the papers necessary to show that the Duchess of Berri has never been enceinte since the unfortunate death of her husband, and he will point out the authors of the machination of which that very weak-minded princess has been the instrument. Until such time as the favourable moment arrives for disclosing the whole of that intrigue, the Duke of Orleans cannot do otherwise than call attention to the fantastical scene which, according to the above-mentioned minutes, has been played at the Pavilion Marsan (the apartment of the Duchess of Berri at the Tuileries.") The paper then repeats the whole of the account of the accouchement as it appeared in the Journal de Paris, the confidential journal of the government, and shows the alleged contradictions in it, with the view of proving that the whole was an imposture. The Protest and the accompanying details to which we have alluded, were republished in the Courrier Français of the 2d August 1830; and the Courrier Français was devoted to the Orleanist dynasty.
But those are not the only humiliations which the elder Bourbons have suffered from the family of Orleans; and when we are told that the son of the Duchess of Berri is about to take to his bosom the sons of the man who laid bare to the world's mockery the weakness of his mother, we are called upon to believe that that son has become lost to every manly sentiment. We doubt much if this be the case. There can be no sincerity on the part of the Orleanists who first suggested the fusion. They well know that, in the event of a Legitimist restoration, the men who overthrew the throne of his grandfather and drove him into exile, who resisted all attempts to restore them to their country, can never be his advisers—if he be what we hope he is. Could the Duchess of Berri receive at her levee the purchasers of the Jew Deutz, or those who signed and gave to publication the medical report of Blaye? It is a vile intrigue, got up for the sole benefit of the Orleanists. It was not out of love for the house of Bourbon, but from hatred to Louis Napoleon, that the fusion originated; and we agree with M. de Larochejaquelein when he says that "the Orleanists and Legitimists, not being able to effect a fusion of love, try to effect one of hatred, with the predetermined
