_Lives of the Chancellors_, viii., 470.

[134] Campbell, _Lives of the Chancellors_, viii., 476.

[135] _Annual Register_, lxxviii. (1836), p. 244

CHAPTER XVIII.

FOREIGN RELATIONS UNDER WILLIAM IV.

In 1830 the closing months of Wellington's administration were disturbed
by the French and Belgian revolutions. The former of these was
occasioned by the publication on July 25 of three ordinances,
restricting the liberty of the press, dissolving the chambers, and
amending the law of elections. The Parisian populace rose against this
infringement of the constitution. In the course of a three days'
street-fight (the 27th to the 29th) the troops were driven out of Paris.
On the 30th a few members of the chambers, who had continued in session,
invited Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to assume the office of
lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and he was proclaimed on the
following day. On August 7 the chamber of deputies offered him the
crown, which he accepted, and on the 9th he was proclaimed "King of the
French". On the 2nd Charles X. and the dauphin had renounced their
rights in favour of the young Duke of Bordeaux, and on the 16th they
sailed from Cherbourg to England. The change of dynasty was accompanied
by a transference to the _bourgeoisie_ of such political influence as
had hitherto belonged to the clergy and _noblesse_. It remained to be
seen whether it would also be accompanied by a change of foreign policy.

[Pageheading: _RECOGNITION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE._]

The new French revolution occasioned no slight perturbation in the
European courts. To say nothing of the fear of the precedent being
followed in other lands, there was no longer any guarantee that France
would respect the arrangements effected by the treaties of Vienna and
Paris. Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed not to recognise Louis
Philippe, and entered into a convention for mutual aid in the event of
French aggression. Aberdeen, the British foreign secretary, declared
that the time had come for applying the treaty of Chaumont, which, as
extended at Paris, pledged Great Britain and the three eastern powers to
act together in case fresh revolution and usurpation in France should
endanger the repose of other states. Wellington, however, saw that the
cause of the elder Bourbon line was hopeless, and held now, as in 1815,
that if France was not to menace the peace of Europe, her political
positi