the reign of Charles X. were a
period of reaction,--a return to the Middle Ages in both State and
Church, a withering blast on all noble aspirations. Even the prime
minister Villele, a legitimatist and an ultra-royalist, was too liberal
for the king; and he was dismissed to make room for Martignac, and he
again for Polignac, who had neither foresight nor prudence nor ability.
The generals of the republic and of the empire were removed from active
service. An indemnity of a thousand millions was given by an obsequious
legislature to the men who had emigrated during the Revolution,--a
generous thing to do, but a premium on cowardice and want of patriotism.
A base concession was made to the sacerdotal party, by making it a
capital offence to profane the sacred vessels of the churches or the
consecrated wafer; thus putting the power of life and death into the
hands of the clergy, not for crimes against society but for an insult to
the religion of the Middle Ages.

But the laws passed against the Press were the most irritating of all.
The Press had become a power which it was dangerous to trifle with,--the
one thing in modern times which affords the greatest protection to
liberty, which is most hated by despots and valued by enlightened minds.
A universal clamor was raised against this return to barbarism, this
extinction of light in favor of darkness, this discarding of the
national reason. Royalists and liberals alike denounced this culminating
act of high treason against the majesty of the human mind, this
death-blow to civilization. Chateaubriand, Royer-Collard, Dupont (de
l'Eure), even Labourdonnais, predicted its fatal consequences; and their
impassioned eloquence from the tribune became in a few days the public
opinion of the nation, and the king in his infatuation saw no remedy for
his increasing unpopularity but in dissolving the Chamber of Deputies
and ordering a new election,--the blindest thing he could possibly do.
It was now seen that he was determined to rule in utter defiance of the
charter he had sworn to defend, and on the principles of undisguised
absolutism. All parties now coalesced against the king and his
ministers. The king then began to tamper with the military in order to
establish by violence the old regime. It was found difficult to fill
ministerial appointments, as everybody felt that the ship of State was
drifting upon the rocks. The king even determined to dissolve the new
Chamber of Deputies b