"'Notwithstanding that, she is convinced that I am the person who prevents your royal highness from employing her in your political relations, and that I am jealous of Benjamin Constant. She is resolved on revenge.'
"'Ha, ha!—and what can she do?'
"'A very great deal of mischief, Monseigneur. She has numerous partisans; and if she declares herself Bonapartiste, we must look to ourselves.'
"'That would be curious.'
"'Oh, I shall take upon myself to prevent her going so far; but she will be Royalist no longer, and we shall suffer from that.'
"At this time I had not the remotest idea of what a mere man, still less a mere woman, could do in France: but now I understand it perfectly, and if Mme. de Staël was living—Heaven pardon me!—I would strike up a flirtation with her."
From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.
THE SMUGGLER MALGRE LUI.
There is perhaps no more singular anomaly in the history of the human mind than the very different light in which a fraud is viewed according to the circumstances in which it is practised. The singular revelations made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer by a late deputation will probably be fresh in the remembrance of most of our readers. Even the learned gentleman himself could hardly maintain his professional gravity when informed of the ingenious contrivances adopted for defrauding the revenue. Advertisements floating through the air attached to balloons, French gloves making their way into the kingdom in separate detachments of right and left hands, mutilated clocks travelling without their wheels—such were some of the divers modes by which the law was declared to be evaded, and the custom-house officers baffled. We are by no means disposed either to think or speak with levity of this system of things. However much a man may succeed in reconciling any fraud to his own conscience, or however leniently it may be viewed by his fellow-men, it will yet assuredly help to degrade his moral nature, and its repetition will slowly, but surely, deaden the silent monitor within his breast. All we affirm is the well-known fact, that laws are in most cases ineffective, except in so far as they harmonize with the innate moral convictions of mankind; and that many a man who would not for worlds cheat his next door neighbor of a penny, will own without a blush, and perhaps even with a smile of triumph, that he has cheated the government of thousands! It is not often, however, that so daring and successful a stroke of this nature is effected as that which we find related of a celebrated Swiss jeweller, who actually succeeded in making the French director-general of the customs act the part of a smuggler!