Louis Philippe.
Prospects of the Usurpation.
But would it be more reasonable to think that the descendants of Philip would have more chances of reigning than the young heir of Henry IV.? It is vain to contrive different combinations of political ideas: the moral verities remain unchangeable. There are inevitable reactions, instructive, magisterial, avenging. The Monarch who initiated us into liberty, Louis XVI., was made to expiate in his own person the despotism of Louis XIV. and the corruption of Louis XV.: and shall it be said that Louis-Philippe, he or his line, shall not pay the debt of the depravity, of the Regency? Was that debt not contracted anew by "Égalité" at the scaffold of Louis XVI., and did Philip his son not increase the paternal contract when, a faithless guardian, he dethroned his ward? "Égalité" redeemed nothing by losing his life; the tears shed with the last breath redeem nobody: they only wet the breast and do not fall upon the conscience. If the Orleans Branch were able to reign by the right of the vices and crimes of its ancestors, where, then, would Providence be? Never would a more terrible temptation have disquieted the good man. What deludes us is that we measure the designs of Eternity by the scale of our short life. We pass away so quickly that God's punishment cannot always fall within the short moment of our existence: the punishment descends when the time comes; it no longer finds the original culprit, but it finds his House, which leaves room for action.
Rising up in the universal order of things, this reign of Louis-Philippe's, however long it last, will never be anything but an anomaly, a momentary breach of the permanent laws of justice: those laws are violated in a restricted and relative sense; they are followed in an unlimited and general sense. From an enormity that has received the apparent consent of Heaven, we must draw a loftier conclusion: we must deduce from it the Christian proof of the abolition of the Royalty itself. It is this abolition, and not any individual chastisement, that will become the expiation of the death of Louis XVI.; none will be admitted to gird on the diadem, after that just man: as witness Napoleon the Great and Charles X. the Pious. To render the crown completely hateful, it will have been permitted to the son of the regicide to stretch himself for a moment, as a false king, in the blood-stained bed of the martyr.
For the rest, all these arguments, just though they be, will never shake my loyalty to my young King: were none but myself to remain in France, I shall always be proud to have been the last subject of him who was to be the last king.
The Revolution of July has found its King: has it found its representative? I have, at different times, described the men who, from 1789 to this day, have appeared upon the scene. Those men were more or less connected with the old race of mankind: we had a scale of proportion to measure them by. We have now come to generations that no longer belong to the past; studied under the microscope, they do not seem capable of life, and yet they combine with elements in which they move; they are able to breathe an air which we cannot breathe. The future will perhaps discover formulas to calculate the laws of existence of those beings; but the present has no means of appreciating them.