The National Register.
London, England, 1815-06-04 00:00:00

JUNE 4.

ton in which he was at the period of his entering France; but These
evints, brought on by criminal collusion, by military conspiracies,
by revolting treasons, can create no right; they are absolutely null
in a legal point Of view ; and in order to the position of Bonaparte
beiha esyenti ,Ilv and legitimately altered, it would he necessary
that the •trP• s hick he has taken to establish himself on the mina
of the government overturned by 'dm, should have been con-
frilled by some legal title. Bonaparte lays it down in his pnbliea-
tions, that
the wishes of the French nation in favour of his re.
establishment oil the throne suffice to constitute this legal title.
The question for the powers to examine may be stated as follows:
Cm the consent, teal or fictitious, explicit or tacit, of the Freneh
ration t • the re-establishment of Bonaparte's power, operate a legal
change in the position of the latter in regard to foreign powers,
and farm a title obligatory on these powers?--The Committee are
of opinion that such cannot by any means be the et et of such
consent ; and the following are their reasons :--The Powers know
too well the prioeiples whicb ought to guide them in their re'ations
with an independent country, to attempt las it is endeavoured to
accuse them) ,4 to impose upon it laws, to interfere in its internal
affair., to prescribe to it a form of government, to give it masters
according to the interests or passions of ifs neighbours (.2). Bot
they al.o know that the liberty of a nation to change its %VStl'ill
of ,•OVPI 1111-11 t must have its just ltutits, awl that it foreign Powers
have not the right to prescribe to it the exercise which it shall make
of that liberty, they have at least indubitably the right of protesting
azainst the ;those which it may make of it at their expense. Ira.
pressed with this principle, the Powers do not deem themselves
authorised to impose a government on France; but they will
never renounce the tight of preventing the establishment France
of a focus of disorders and of subversions to other states, tinder the
title of a Goveri.ment. They will respect the liberty of France in
every way in which it shall not be ineompatilde with their own
security and tie general tranquillity of Europe. In the existing
case, the right of the Allied Sovereigns to interfere in the question
of the wit government of France, is the more ineontestiblc,
inasmuch a• 'he abolition of the power which now claims to he re•
cstablidied there, was the furdamental condition of a treaty of
peace, on which rested all the relations which, up to the return
of fluonaparte to Paris. subsisted between France and the re•t
of Europe. On the day of their entrance into Paris, the Sovereigns
declared that they would never treat of peace with litionaparteN.
This declaration, loudly applauded by France and by Europe,
produced the abdication .4. Napoleon and the CCIIVCIItion of the
llth of April ; it formed the principal basis of the negociatioo ; it
was explicitly pronounced in tl,e preamble of the treaty of Paris.
The French nation, even supposing it perfectly free and united,
cannot withdraw itself from this fundamental coudition withont
abrogating the treaty of Paris and all its existing relations with the
European system. The allied Powers. on the other hand, by insist-
ing on this very condition, only exercise a right which it is impos-
sible to contest to them, unless it be maintained that the most sacred
compacts can be perverted as suits the convenience of either of the
contracting parties. It hence follows, that the will of the people of
France is by no means sufficient to re-establish, in a legal sense, a
Govermnent proselibed by solemn engagements, which that very
people entered into with all the Powers of Europe ; and that they
cahoot, under any pretext, give validity as against these Powers to
the right of recalling to the throne, him, whose exclusion was a con-
dition preliminary to every pacific arrangement with France : the
wish of the French people, even if it were fully ascertained,
world not be the ices null and of no effect in regard to Europe to-
wards re-establishing a power, against which all Europe has been
in a state of permanent protest from the nlst of March, 1811, up
to the 13th of March, 1s15; and in this view, the position of
linonaparte is precisely at this day what it was at these last
nsentiohed periods.

seenNn QUFSTION.
Should the offer to sanction the Treat+, of Paris change the dispositions
if the Potcors7
France has had no reason to complain of the Treaty of Paris.
This Treaty reconciled France with Enrope ; it satisfied al! her
trite interests, %pron.(' all her real advantages, all the elements of
prosperity and gl,try, ‘‘liich a people called to one of the first pl.ices
3,11 the Enropean system could reasonably desire. and only took.
from her that which was to her, tinder the deceitflil exterior of
great national eclat. an inexhaustible source of sufferings, of loin,

(2) It i.i thus that lionawirte's Council of State exprev4 therocielves
in their Report on the intentions of the Powers. See Noniteto of
the latti of April.
(3) Declaration ()film Sift of March. 181