Subsequently, during the enforcement of the Act, the bitterness of the attacks upon her husband, who, she knew, wished Ireland well, and the sight of his anxiety, made her for a time less sympathetic with the Irish; but she did not, and could not, approve of the Government’s action at the time.  Among Irishmen, a Government which had first opposed a Tory Coercion Bill, and when in power proposed one themselves, might well excite indignation.  Ireland was already in a state so miserable that the horrors of a civil war with a bare chance of better things beyond must have seemed well worth risking to her people, now the party which had hitherto befriended them had adopted the policy of their oppressors.

On February 26, 1848, the news that Louis Philippe had been deposed reached the House of Commons.  “This is what would have happened here,” said Sir Robert Peel, “if these gentlemen [pointing to the Protectionists] had had their way.”  The astonishment was great, and the fear increased that the Chartist movement and Irish troubles would lead to revolution at home.

The immediate cause of the revolution in France had been Louis Philippe’s opposition to electoral reform; only one Frenchman in about a hundred and fifty possessed a vote under his reign.  “Royalty having been packed off in a hackney coach,” the mildest of Parisian mobs contented itself with smashing the King’s bust, breaking furniture, and firing at the clock of the Tuileries that it might register permanently upon its face the propitious moment of his departure.  He had embarked the next day for England, shaven and in green spectacles, and landed upon our shores under the modest pseudonym of “William Smith.”  England did not welcome him.  His Spanish marriage intrigues had naturally not made him a favourite, and his enemy, Palmerston, was at the Foreign Office.  Two days afterwards Louis Napoleon Bonaparte left England to pay his respects to the Provisional Government.  “I hasten,” he wrote in memorable words, “I hasten from exile to place myself under the flag of the Republic just proclaimed.  Without other ambition than that of being useful to my country, I announce my arrival to the members of the Provisional Government, and assure them of my devotion to the cause which they represent.”  He was, however, courteously requested to withdraw from France, since the law banishing the Napoleon family had not yet been repealed, a circumstance which enabled him to return to England in time to enrol himself in the cause of law and order as a special constable at the Chartist meeting.

    LONDON, February 26, 1848

We and everybody much taken up with the startling and in some respects terrible events in France.  The regency of the Duchess of Orleans rejected by the Chambers, or rather by the Cote Gauche, and a republic proclaimed.  Sad loss of life in Paris—­the King and Queen fled to Eu—­Guizot, it is said, to Brussels.  We dined at the Palace, and found the Queen and