to follow him blindly, without first
examining whether he was leading them, to safety or to ruin.

The unsettled feeling of the middle classes in 1815 was a legitimate and
patriotic disquietude. What they wanted, and what they had a right to
demand, for the advantage of the entire nation as well as for their own
peculiar interests, was that peace and liberty should be secured to
them; but they had good reason to question the power of Napoleon to
accomplish these objects.

Their doubts materially increased when they ascertained the Manifesto of
the Allied Powers assembled at the Congress of Vienna, their declaration
of March 13th, and their treaty of the 25th. Every reflecting mind of
the present day must see, that unless the nation had obstinately closed
its eyes, it could not delude itself as to the actual situation of the
Emperor Napoleon, and his prospects for the future. Not only did the
Allied Powers, in proclaiming him the enemy and disturber of the peace
of the whole world, declare war against him to the last extremity, and
engage themselves to unite their strength in this common cause, but they
professed themselves ready to afford to the King of France and the
French nation the assistance necessary to re-establish public
tranquillity; and they expressly invited Louis XVIII. to give his
adhesion to their treaty of March 25th. They laid it down also as a
principle, that the work of general pacification and reconstruction
accomplished in Paris by the treaty of the 30th of May, 1814, between
the King of France and confederated Europe, was in no degree nullified
by the violent outbreak which had recently burst forth; and that they
should maintain it against Napoleon, whose return and sudden
success--the fruit of military and revolutionary excitement--could
establish no European right whatever, and could never be considered by
them as the prevailing and true desire of France:--a solemn instance of
the implacable judgments that, assisted by God and time, great errors
draw down upon their authors!

The partisans of Napoleon might dispute the opinion of the Allied Powers
as to the wishes of France; they might believe that, for the honour of
her independence, she owed him her support; but they could not pretend
that foreign nations should not also have their independence at heart,
nor persuade them that, with Napoleon master of France, they could ever
be secure. No promises, no treaties, no embarrassments, no reverses,