as the most available person to preserve order and law, to gain the confidence of the country, and to preserve the Constitution,—­which guaranteed personal liberty, the freedom of the Press, the inviolability of the judiciary, and the rights of electors to the Chamber of Deputies, in which was vested the power of granting supplies to the executive government.  Times were not ripe for a republic, and only a few radicals wanted it.  The nation desired a settled government, yet one ruling by the laws which the nation had decreed through its representatives.  Louis Philippe swore to everything that was demanded of him, and was in all respects a constitutional monarch, under whom the French expected all the rights and liberties that England enjoyed.  All this was a step in advance of the monarchy of Louis XVIII.  Louis Philippe was rightly named “the citizen king.”

This monarch was also a wise, popular, and talented man.  He had passed through great vicissitudes of fortune.  At one time he taught a school in Switzerland.  He was an exile and a wanderer from country to country.  He had learned much from his misfortunes; he had had great experiences, and was well read in the history of thrones and empires.  He was affable in his manners, and interesting in conversation; a polished gentleman, with considerable native ability,—­the intellectual equal of the statesmen who surrounded him.  His morals were unstained, and his tastes were domestic.  His happiest hours were spent in the bosom of his family; and his family was harmonious and respectable.  He was the idol of the middle class; bankers, merchants, lawyers, and wealthy shopkeepers were his strongest supporters.  All classes acquiesced in the rule of a worthy man, as he seemed to all,—­moderate, peace-loving, benignant, good-natured.  They did not see that he was selfish, crafty, money-loving, bound up in family interests.  This plain-looking, respectable, middle-aged man, as he walked under the colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli, with an umbrella under his arm, looked more like a plain citizen than a king.  The leading journals were all won over to his side.  The Chamber of Deputies by a large majority voted for him, and the eighty-three Departments, representing thirty-five millions of people, by a still larger majority elected him king.  The two Chambers prepared a Constitution, which he unhesitatingly accepted and swore to maintain.  He was not chosen by universal suffrage, but by one hundred and fifty thousand voters.  The Republicans were not satisfied, but submitted; so also did the ultra-Royalists.  It was at first feared that the allied Powers, under the influence of Metternich, would be unfriendly; yet one after another recognized the new government, feeling that it was the best, under the circumstances, that could be established.