controversy. Nothing
contributed more to the establishment of the Empire than the violence
of Bonaparte's enemies, as they favored the plan of establishing an
hereditary monarchy, the existence of which should not be bound up with
the existence of an individual. During the reign of Napoleon I. the
opposition was quiet, but it was organized, and its conduct was from
first to last illegal, as it corresponded with the banished princes, and
with the foreign enemies of France. The Mallet affair, in 1812, which
came so very near effecting the Emperor's dethronement when he was in
the midst of his Russian disasters, shows how frail was his tenure
of power when he was absent from Paris, and how extensive were the
ramifications of the informal conspiracy that existed against him. "You
have found the tail, but not the head," were the words in which the
bold conspirator let his judges know that the danger was not over. The
Legislative Body endeavored to act as an opposition party in France
after the disasters of 1813, and the Emperor, after giving them a
lecture, dismissed them. The Allies would never have dared to cross
the French frontier, had they not been advised of the existence of
disaffection, which was ready to become treason, in their enemy's
country. The opposition to Louis XVIII.'s government was highly
treasonable in its character; and so was that which Napoleon encountered
during the Hundred Days. When the second Restoration had been effected,
the French government found itself in a strange predicament. The
extraordinary Chamber of Deputies which then met, "the Impracticable
Chamber," was so intensely royalist in its sentiments, that it alarmed
every reasonable friend of monarchy in Europe. It would have subjected
the king himself to its will, in order that it might be free to punish
the enemies of royalty with even more vigor and cruelty than the
Jacobins had punished its friends. There was to be a revival of the
Terror by the party which had suffered in 1793, and for the purpose of
exterminating imperialists, republicans, and moderate monarchists. Lord
Macaulay has compared this Chamber with the first English Parliament
that was called after the restoration of the House of Stuart. The
comparison is unfair to the Parliament. There had been a long and a
bitter war between parties in England, and the Cavaliers remembered,
because they were events of yesterday, the terrible series of defeats
they had experienced, from Ed