whole duty usually consists in adding some exclamatory expression. The sub-prefects have a small salary. The mayors act gratuitously. But even in our own country we have had ridiculous instances enough of services to superiors or the state, which those who rendered them called gratuitous; and in France it may well be supposed that these gratuitous services are not ultimately less expensive to the people than if good salaries were paid for them.

In fact, every kind of business, public or private, where money, or favour, or interest are concerned, must be negotiated by what they call a "douceur," or "pot de vin," or "des epingles pour madame," "une gratification," "une consideration honnette," 29.66 une gage destime,' un cadeau." These are terms to express what in the English idiom is called a bribe. But the French (like all highly civilized persons) never call a thing by its real

name.

This horde of public functionaries thus paid or thus paying themselves, are charged with levying the taxes, with the conscription, and with the police.

To superintend the multiplicity of contributions is dreadful enough, when we consider the want of circulation, and the stoical hardness of the officers of revenue. (p. 38.) But how cruel must be the duty of a mayor, always the father of a family, when he is obliged to conduct the operation of the conscription in all its horrid details: to hear the cries and groans of the parents, to stifle all the sympathies of nature, to contemplate the despair and blasted prospects of their children, and to have neither hope nor consolation to offer them! " They can give no exemption; they have nothing further to do when the lots are drawn but to conduct the conscripts to the borders of the district. The latter are preceded by martial music, and accompanied by sobs and groans, which it is the business of the mayors to stifle if pos sible by causing them to shout forth half broken convulsive sighs of Vive Bonaparte!" (P. 39.) Every year the youth of the departments are sent forth to the alternative of death or, what is worse, of the deepest moral degradation. If ever they return, it is as tygers prowling for prey, and no longer we fear even "des tigres qui dansent." "The public functionaries are the terrible actors of the drama. The mayors can listen to no remonstrance, and the sub-prefect or the minister of war dare not. Certainly the duties of public functionaries must be a cruel and unenviable task!"

In France there is not only a police but a contre police to watch over the operations of the regular police; and the minutiæ

of office, to which the consequent alertness of the officers gives rise, were they less terrible, would be supremely ridiculous. M. Faber gives a few instances. "During the search for Georges all fat men with a remarkable physiognomy were liable to be molested by the police, and many actually were so," &c. &c. We could add thousands of anecdotes in illustration of this part of the subject, but shall confine ourselves to two, which have an immediate reference to our own country.

In the town of F-, when the news of the battle of Trafalgar began to circulate, the prefect ordered a search for the authors of the report; this fact happened six months after that victory. About the same period half a dozen English prisoners upon their parole were confined for having dined together to cominemorate that great event. The denunciation of the prefect's police upon this occasion, afterwards seen at the municipalité, is too curious a specimen to be omitted. It set forth,

1. Que les prisonniers avoient diné à l'Angloise :

2. Qu'ils avoient bu dix-huit bouteilles de vin après diner : 3. Qu'ils avoient parlé de la politique toute la soirée : 4. Qu'ils avoient beaucoup parlé de Milord Nelson:

5. Qu'ils avoient fait de grands eclâts de rire en parlant de la marine Française.

6. Qu'ils avoient fait du tapage, et beaucoup chanté vers les deux heures du matin.

This report, which a country magistrate in England would have laughed out of doors, if presented to him concerning French prisoners, was actually sent up by the prefect, accompanied with notes, to the minister of police, Fouché. But here the farce ended; Fouché saw the ridicule of it, and ordered the prisoners to be released.

At present there is only one newspaper allowed for each department, the editor of which is the commissary of police; and the great object of the country functionaries is to vie with each other in producing addresses, or other pieces of flattery, striking or original enough to be worthy of being copied into the Moniteur.

"When the secretary to the mayor, or the phraseologie clerk has found a new turn of expression to render the address more striking, the delighted mayor complains if it is not inserted in the Moniteur as soon as it is received: in this case no intrigues, no solicitations to the editors are neglected. The master-piece finds its way into all the newspapers, and no expense is spared for its insertion and postage. I know not how the mayor of Amiens conducted himself in his joy, when his secretary had "made the Almighty rest after

having created Bonaparte," but I know that the mayor of P— transmitted twenty-five copies of certain addresses to the same number of editors of newspapers in France, and of these four were in the German language, and two in Italian." (P. 50.)

The Parisians were highly delighted at this "bon mot municipal" of the mayor of Amiens, as they ironically called it; it served them as a subject for calembourgs for a few days. Every body prophesied that the mayor would have a place from Bonaparte. "Le maire a de l'esprit, il aura une place." In fact he really had a place, which made them only laugh again, and add to that contempt with which similar circumstances had inspired them for their chief.

The picture drawn by M. Faber of the audacious hypocrisy with which the functionaries oblige the people to rejoice and be thankful, in spite of their actual misery and discontent, is no less spirited than just.

Illuminations, which the inhabitants can neither afford nor are disposed to make, are blazoned forth as "spontaneous and general."

"These epithets figured one day in a brilliant description of an illumination in the town of B-. I had seen it. In the streets of the whole place were to be seen only five or six candles that gave a gloomy light; and a shoemaker who had the very same day been served with a writ of execution for his share of taxes, had fixed it up in the form of a transparency against a pane of his little window. The temerity of this artisan was attended with no unpleasant consequences: he had nothing to lose; so that the police was content to order him to remove his transparency.' "" (P. 5..)

"When the French government takes, it affects to give." If his majesty, always occupied in consulting the happiness of his people, expresses his wish to advance the interests of commerce, it always ends in imposing a new tax. If a district has been laid waste by storms or inundations, and applies for a remission of their taxes-his majesty deeply affected cannot grant the remission, because it would establish a dangerous precedent, but grants (on paper) a donation of 10,000 francs, which, if it issues from his treasury, seldom if ever reaches the sufferers. If part of a city is destroyed by fire, Bonaparte decrees that it shall be rebuilt at the public expense. A tax perhaps is levied on the inhabitants for the purpose, but even a supplementary decree for accelerating the labours of the re-construction cannot procure the first stone to be laid; nevertheless the portrait of the hero" who rebuilds their asylums" is hung up in the town-halls,

and the wits take their revenge by saying, "Our town has been twice rebuilt, once upon paper, and once upon canvas." Laws out of end were passed by the "rebuilder of Lyons" for repairing the ravages made in that beautiful city du in, the revolution, and money decreed from the treasury; but the square Bouaparte remains a heap of rubbish as before, and the apparent generosity of the decrees became a cruel mockery.

Now this alternation of hope deferred ending in cruel disappointment would, one should think, be a sufficient punishment and degradation of the people in the eyes of an ordinary tyrant. But Bonaparte is no ordinary tyrant; his people cannot groan in peace, and pour forth their silis of despair in private. He grudges them the enjoyment of their secret sen iments, pursues them even into their last asylum, mto the inmost recesses of their hearts, and poisons their sole remaining consolation, that of their own consciences. They must stifle every teeling, and call up the voice of joy, and gratulation, and contentment to greet their oppressor. We insert the following specimen of the honours paid upon his entry into one of his good cities which had been thus basely deceived.

"At the distance of a quarter of a league from the city was erected a triumphal arch of the Doric order, adorned internally with various decorations in bronze, sculpture, basso-relievos, &c. emblematical of the wealth and magnificence which the city cannot fail to derive from the benevolent notice and protection of the sovereign whom it adores. The bronze of the columns denotes the fidelity of the citizens to the institutions of the empire, represented by lions bearing palm branches and legionary standards. In the centre of the interior of the arch was an eagle surrounded by bees, with four garlands of fruit of a gold colour, in the midst of which appeared these words-Hanover, France, Italy, and Savoy, countries whose crowns he has united, and which he has blessed with wealth and plenty.” Above was represented the apotheosis of Buonaparte; in the same manner as that of Augustus, by an eagle flying with his portrait towards the sky. (P. 81.)

We can really pursue the disgusting details no further, but shall close our observations on the civil administration of France with the following eloquent extracts from M. Faber.

"Here is now exhibited the most extraordinary phenomenon ever known, a moral prodigy unexampled in the history of mankind. I mean the regular, systematic, elaborate, organization of falsehood, as the basis of the government, and the soul of all its public acts: a total abnegation in favour of the military ruler, of all individual feeling, of all personal character, almost of all private thought. The pub. lic functionaries universally, who perform the parts and speak the

language assigned to them by their master, give up all moral liberty, sacrifice totally, and without reserve, truth, conviction, conscience, honour, and principle. When the senators, counsellors of state, or any of the chief dignitaries of the empire speak, we know that they do, of course, but repeat the words of their master, and ply their trade of servility. But when we hear the same words reiterated eagerly, and enforced with every artifice of rhetoric, by those who are supposed to be the immediate representatives of the people, who call themselves their organs, who speak in their name, we naturally. feel the most lively sentiments of contempt and indignation. It is from this class of men that the system of imposture receives its strongest support. Their baseness is, in some degree, infectious, and contaminates the world." (P. 48.).

"As for the French themselves, they have lost as a nation not only their civil and political, but their moral liberty; that which confers dignity on man, which comforts and supports him under adversity. This moral subjection of the French exhibits one of the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of the world, that of a numerous nation, in which not only there is no individual who dares utter what he thinks, but in which almost every individual is habitually employed in counterfeiting before the whole universe sentiments which he knows to be false; a nation in which falsehood is organized into a political system, and fraud and imposture have become the basis of the state."

We shall now take leave for the present of M. Faber's work, after recording an anecdote concerning that department of the administration which relates to shipbuilding. The story is naturally interesting to us, and upon its perfect accuracy our readers may implicitly rely. The names of the principals in the conversation are now before us, (they are very respectable in France,) but for obvious reasons we cannot disclose them. Since the last campaign in Germany Buonaparte has bent very anxious thoughts on the means of creating a navy proportionate to the extent and influence of the French empire; and we know that he has lately held many consultations on the subject with his various ingenieurs constructeurs de la marine. The objects. which he particularly wished to ascertain were, the price of building and the time necessary for constructing 300 ships of the line, 600 frigates, with cutters and gunboats in proportion, during a general maritime peace, in all the ports of the empire. After much inquiry into the particulars, concerning the price of materials, &c. it was agreed that it would require about eight years, and a milliard and a half, (i. e. about sixty millions sterling), to complete the projected armada on the admitted hypothesis of a general peace, and all the ports and naval resources of the empire at the disposition of the constructeurs.