The French Assembly has finally voted the restoration of the
Orleans Domains, or rather of the portion of them which has not been alienated. This portion is worth £1,440,000, divisible among no less than eight families descended from Louis Philippe. The debate was not remarkable, except as bringing out the fact upon which Napoleon doubtless relied in ordering the confiscation. It is a fundamental law of the French Monarchy, renewed by the Con- stituent Assembly in 1790, that the landed property of any Prince who succeeds to the Throne shall be perpetually and irrevocably incorporated with the Crown domains. Louis Philippe evaded this law by handing over the vast domain of his house to his children before he accepted the Crown, an act declared by Berryer to be legal, but certainly somewhat mean. Napoleon on his accession treated it as a colourable evasion of the law, and re- annexed the property to the Crown domain, whence it is once more separated. These facts seem to be admitted by the friends of the family, who, however, point out that these laws contem- plated the King remaining King until he died, and that Louis Philippe never was King in the old Legitimist sense.
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