“The unbought grace of life,” says Mr Burke, “the _cheap defence of nations_, is at an end.” What a commentary has the triumph of the Barricades, the government of Louis Philippe, afforded on these words! M. Garnier Pages, in his Financial Report, has unfolded the state of the French finances, the confusion and disastrous state of which he is fain to ascribe to the prodigal expenditure and unbounded corruption of Louis Philippe. He tells us, and we doubt not with truth, that during the seventeen years of his government, the expenditure has been raised from 900,000,000 francs, (£36,000,000,) to 1700,000,000 francs, (£68,000,000;) that the debt has been increased during that period by £64,000,000; and that the nation was running, under his direction, headlong into the gulf of national bankruptcy. He observes, with a sigh, how moderate in comparison, how cheap in expenditure, and pacific in conduct, was the government of Charles X., which never brought its expenditure up to £40,000,000. It is all true—it is what we predicted eighteen years ago would be the inevitable result of a democratic revolt; it is the consummation we invariably predicted of the transports following the fall of Charles X. The republicans, now so loud in reprobation of the expenditure of the Citizen King, forget that his throne was of their own making; that he was a successful democratic usurper; that his power was established to the sound of the shouts of the republicans in all Europe, amidst the smoke of the Barricades. A usurping government is necessarily and invariably more costly than a legitimate one; because, having lost the loyalty of the heart, it has no foundation to rest on, but the terrors of the senses, or the seductions of interest. It was for precisely the same reason that William III. in ten years raised the expenditure of Great Britain from £1,800,000 a year, to £6,000,000; and that, in the first twenty years of the English government subsequent to the Revolution, the national debt had increased from £600,000 to £54,000,000. When the moral and cheap bond of loyalty is broken, government has no resource but an appeal to the passions or interests of the people. The Convention tried an appeal to their republican passions, and they brought on the Reign of Terror. Napoleon tried an appeal to their military passions, and he brought on the subjugation of France by Europe. Louis Philippe, as the only remaining resource, appealed to their selfish interests, and he induced the revolution of 1848. Mankind cannot escape from the gentle influence of moral obligations, but to fall under the reaction of conquest, the debasement of corruption, or the government of force.