proprietors to take
their chance for the payment of interest on the remainder. This
remnant was afterwards converted into the present five per cent stock.
I had the curiosity very lately to inquire what price it bore in
the market, and I was told that the price had somewhat risen from
confidence in the new Government, and was actually as high as
_seventeen_. I really at first supposed that my informer meant
seventeen years' purchase for every pound of interest, and I began to
be almost jealous of revolutionary credit; but I soon found that he
literally meant seventeen pounds for every hundred pounds capital
stock of five per cent, that is, a little more than three and a half
years' purchase. So much for the value of revolutionary property, and
for the attachment with which it must inspire its possessors towards
the system of government to which that value is to be ascribed!

On the question, Sir, how far the restoration of the French monarchy,
if practicable, is desirable, I shall not think it necessary to say
much. Can it be supposed to be indifferent to us or to the world,
whether the throne of France is to be filled by a prince of the House
of Bourbon, or by him whose principles and conduct I have endeavoured
to develop? Is it nothing, with a view to influence and example,
whether the fortune of this last adventurer in the lottery of
revolutions shall appear to be permanent? Is it nothing whether a
system shall be sanctioned which confirms by one of its fundamental
articles that general transfer of property from its ancient and lawful
possessors, which holds out one of the most terrible examples of
national injustice, and which has furnished the great source of
revolutionary finance and revolutionary strength against all the
Powers of Europe?

In the exhausted and impoverished state of France, it seems for a
time impossible that any system but that of robbery and confiscation,
anything but the continued torture, which can be applied only by the
engines of the revolution, can extort from its ruined inhabitants more
than the means of supporting, in peace, the yearly expenditure of its
Government. Suppose, then, the heir of the House of Bourbon reinstated
on the throne; he will have sufficient occupation in endeavouring, if
possible, to heal the wounds, and gradually to repair the losses, of
ten years of civil convulsion; to reanimate the drooping commerce,
to rekindle the industry, to replace the capital, and to rev