- perilous year. of 1792. These were times of real danger. Surely you will acknowlege, also, that I took as effective a part in the restoration as yourselves. My case is your own, therefore; and you can have no reason for rejecting my testimony or impeaching my intentions.'

It is clear that, when an indemnity for loss is demanded, it must be sought as a matter of right: there must be two parties, the plaintiff, who has sustained the loss, and the defendant, who must be proved to have inflicted it. In this instance, however, who is to try the cause? It must be adjudged by the parties themselves; and will they lend an impartial ear to the principles of equity? They are interested in the issue. Here is a small fractional part of the people of France, small considered numerically, but not with reference to their station and opulence, asking an impost to be assessed on the whole population of France, as an indemnity for losses which they have sustained by the confiscation of property once possessed by themselves or their immediate ancestors, but forfeited according to the then existing laws of the state, by their own act of emigration. A question of justice,' says the Abbé, is not to be settled by any regard to numbers. Whatever drift this observation has, and it is given as a concession to the advocates for indemnity, we think it ought to be taken in a qualified sense: for the summum jus may otherwise slide into the summa injuria, and the "right o'er-rigid harden into wrong." Grant, for the sake of argument, that it was unjust to disturb the relations of property as the penalty for an act of civil disobedience; and grant that the supreme power of the state had no right to confiscate the property of a few, viz. of those who withdrew from its territory through fear, or loyalty to the monarch, or hostility to the new order of things:-grant all this, still the confiscated property in the lapse of thirty years has undergone such innumerable transfers, that it would be wholly impracticable to track its windings and recognize its identity. If, however, we suppose even this possible, a second act of injustice must be committed in order to efface the first. By divisions and subdivisions, this property has been spread over an incomparably greater surface, and is in the hands of a much greater number of proprietors now than it was before. Must confiscation be inflicted on them, without even the imputation of any civil offence, for the purpose of retribution to others who were charged with it? This cannot be. Indemnification, therefore, must come from the nation, and an impost must be assessed on the people at large: but national policy is national justice, and in all questions of national policy the in

terests

terests of the majority ought to preponderate. Numbers, therefore, must not be disregarded; nor indeed are they disregarded by the Abbé, although his argument is too strong to need support from the consideration of them. In making this observation, however, we must not be understood to insinuate that the property of individuals may at any time be exposed to the arbitrary confiscation of the state. The interests of the majority of society require that the property of individuals should be as effectually protected against any. arbitrary invasion from the state as against invasion from individuals: if public utility, therefore, requires the sacrifice of private property, as may be the case in cutting roads or canals, opening streets, &c., - indemnity is due to the proprietor.

The first epoch of emigration was in 1789, when the nobility of France reckoned about 18,000 families: at five to a family, here was a total of 90,000 nobles. Less than half this number emigrated; and of these, many escaped the penalty of confiscation by a timely return to the bosom of their country, or by having left some member of their family in France during their absence. It is estimated, accordingly, that the property of about 7000 noble families, or 35,000 individuals, may have been confiscated. The private property of the emigrant clergy was not considerable, although their numbers amounted to nearly 25,000. The remaining emigrants consisted principally of military. It is on 7000 noble families, chiefly, that the rigor of confiscation has fallen. On the other side, the actual population of France in 1823 was 30,465,291. Ten millions of persons are supposed to have been concerned in the purchase of the national domains: but five millions of these may be set down as having taken property belonging only to the church, colleges, hospitals, corporations, &c. The result of the whole is that there are about 25 millions and a half of people now in France, who never derived the least personal advantage from these confiscations, but who are nevertheless called to reimburse them. And at what expence? This is a question of detail which, however necessary to be examined in France after the principle has been admitted, would be a most unprofitable topic for us; be it 800,000,000 or a milliard of francs, c'est la même chose here. *

• Emi

The Moniteur of the 12th Oct. 1824, has given the following calculation, as the result of the investigation of the agens du domain, appointed to make out the number and value of the sales of real property effected in virtue of the laws of confiscation:

Num

Emigration,' says the Abbe-for he chooses to personify the subject must prove, before it can claim indemnity, that it had the right of leaving its own country and taking arms in a foreign one; that it had a right to call in the aid of foreigners; to promise them a partition of French territory for the purpose of engaging their assistance to excite in France insurrections against the established order of government; and to declare the King captive, while the sovereigns of Europe recognized his freedom by the acceptance of his public acts and of his ambassadors, and by the residence of their ambassadors at his court. Emigration must prove that the Revolution which it sought to destroy, that of 1798, was illegitimate; and that France had fallen into a state which admitted no reparation but by the force of arms, and which imposed on each citizen the necessity of taking justice into his own hands,' &c.

In the course of his work, the Abbé has brought forwards the discussion of a multitude of collateral questions; all of which he contrives, with his usual alertness and dexterity, to make apply to the subject before him. We have not fewer than eighty-seven chapters, on the right of emigration in general; on pacific and belligerent emigration; on the right of arming against our country, and of calling foreign aid to repress intestine commotions; (rather a ticklish topic this, after the prostration of Spain before the gilded arms of France ;) on the duties of citizens at home, and the relinquishment of their rights abroad; on the history of the different emigrations and the various acts of recall, amnesty, confiscation, &c. &c.: the whole forming a compound of desultory and miscellaneous but not uninteresting matter. The book is not one to send us to sleep: for, though some authors sacrifice their own repose in kindly giving it to their readers, this is never the Abbé's case: always awake himself, he generally takes care that his company shall feel no inclination to nod.

M. D'Ecqevilly reckons five distinct emigrations. The first, which was a measure of mere personal precaution and safety, took place after 14th July, 1789, with the approbation or rather the order of Louis XVI. The second was the great armed emigration of 1791 and 1792, formed on a systematic

(Vol. ii. p. 367.)

If the principle of indemnity be recognized, however, it ought to cover the loss of personal property, including the value of annui

ties, debts, &c., as well as of real property.

policy.

policy. The third was, like the first, a measure of safety, which immediately followed the dreadful day of 10th August, 1792, and continued during the revolutionary government. This was perfectly justifiable in its object and principle: for nothing can be clearer than that it is lawful to withdraw from our country, when our country can no longer furnish us with protection in person and property. The fourth was l'emigration forcée; in plain words, banishment: the non-juring priests were thus banished by the law of August 26. 1792. This was compulsory, forced on men for the sake of confiscating their property. The fifth was a fictitious emigration; an inscription on the list of emigrants of persons actually present, or in employment; like the last, for the sake of confiscation. For the honor of human nature, the number of these is very limited; and the iniquity of confiscations under such pretences is so enormous and palpable, that individuals suffering under them are fairly intitled to indemnity, provided that they did not bear arms against their native soil. In a state of disgust and exasperation, however, should they have so far committed themselves as to have borne arms, however they may be intitled to pardon, they are not intitled to more. Even here, it is at least a question whether the aggrieved parties ought not to seek redress from those who fraudulently duped them under the name of the law, rather than from the law itself.

Now let us see how far the march of confiscation corresponds with that of emigration. The first legislative act was dated Jan. 28th, 1791, when the King announced to the Constituent Assembly that "he emigrants were exciting hostile dispositions among some of the German princes, and were also arming themselves." On the 9th of July, 1791, a law passed recalling the emigrants, under a penalty of triple imposition for disobedience; and the King issued a proclamation a week afterward, urgently enforcing the recall. On the 8th of Nov. the Legislative Assembly made a law, inflicting the punishment of death on emigrants who should not return by the 1st of Jan. 1792. On the 9th of Feb. 1792, the property of emigrants was sequestered; and on the 30th of March it was appropriated as an indemnity due to the nation for the expence of carrying on the war. On the 25th of July, appeared the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto, — and on the 27th followed confiscation. The Abbé has gone into a detail of the various laws affecting the emigrants, with a chronological minuteness which we have not room to indulge: but the result of the whole is that confiscation was not by any means inflicted as a penalty on simple emigration, although it had been carried to an alarming extent. The first notice taken

taken of it occurred, as we have seen, eighteen months after the first great wave had flowed out of the kingdom, and noť till it had billowed itself up, and threatened to return and burst in furious breakers on the parent-shore. As long as the emigrants retained a pacific character, no notice was taken of them but, as their numbers increased, their views changed: they sought every where to find and to create enemies to the Constituent Assembly, which they openly declared themselves in arms to overthrow: they were menaced, and they braved these menaces: they were recalled, and allowed time to return; they listened not to the call, but employed the time in doubling their exertions to raise armies for the invasion of their country. The act of confiscation did not pass till two days after the Vandal manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick. Who, then, will contend that the country was not justified in confiscating the property of those of its citizens who had brought hostile forces against it, as the means of indemnifying the expence of repelling them? What was the mad-brained manifesto of the Prince De Condé, in the year 1790, but a blustering defiance, provoking and justifying confiscation? It was couched in these terms: "The French people are led away by the factious, but they will open their eyes, and blush for the crimes which the intrigues and ambition of their leaders have induced them to commit. They will restore with their own hands the throne of their kings, or I will cast myself under the ruins of the monarchy. The nobility is one: it is the cause of all princes and all gentlemen which I defend: they will rally under the glorious standard which I will unfold at their head. Yes, I will go, -in spite of all the horror which a descendant of St. Louis must naturally. feel at the thought of staining his sword with the blood of Frenchmen, I will go at the head of the nobility of all nations," &c. The nobility of all nations! As if they had cosmopolite rights! or any rights beyond those assigned to them in their own respective countries; and as if France were amenable to the nobility of Europe! Did not this manifesto justify a confiscation of the Prince De Conde's property? If he carried war into his country, was not his country justified in making his estates bear the expence of repelling it? It is not as a matter of generosity, but as a matter of right, that the emigrants claim indemnity; and this may account in some measure, probably, for the sensation throughout the country, which the demand is said to have produced. The governments of Europe are too expensive, perhaps, to afford acts of generosity: but one of the new republics across the Atlantic has set them an example which they must at any rate admire. After the execu