As Lafayette marched his reorganized National Guard, thirty thousand strong, in review before the King, it was clear that the General was the most popular, as well as the most powerful, man in France. And at the public dinner that the city of Paris gave him on August fifteenth, when he congratulated his fellow-citizens on the success and valor with which they had defended their liberties and besought them to preserve the fruits of victory by union and order, he could justly feel that a life devoted to the cause of freedom had not been spent in vain.
The coming years were to show that the people of France had much yet to learn about self-government, but when one contrasts the results of the revolution of 1830 with that of 1789 one sees how far they had progressed in knowledge.
Lafayette’s presence was needed at Louis Philippe’s court to act as a buffer between the sovereign and the people, and again and again he saw revealed the truth of the old adage, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Presently a revolution in Belgium left the throne of that country vacant and it was offered to Lafayette. “What would I do with a crown!” he exclaimed. “Why, it would suit me about as much as a ring would become a cat!”
The duties of his office as Commander of the National Guard, the tact that was constantly required of him as intermediary between the people and the royal court began to wear upon him, and he soon resigned his position as Commander. Then, as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he continued his political labors. In time he saw many incidents that pointed in the direction of new aggressions on the part of the King, and he even came to believe that the fight for liberty was not yet won and never would be so long as a Bourbon occupied the throne of France. But he wanted the desired end to be reached by peaceful means, constantly preached loyalty to the government they had founded as the chief duty of the nation, and when, in 1832, a new revolution seemed imminent he would have no part in it and by his indignant words quickly brought the attempt to an end. He was now seventy-seven years old and great-grandchildren played about his knees at his home at Lagrange.
His work for France and for America and for the world was done. In the spring of 1834 he caught a severe cold, which sapped his strength. On May twentieth of that year he died, having worked almost to the last on problems of government. As his funeral wound through the streets of Paris to the little cemetery of Picpus, in the center of the city, a great throng followed. On that day church-bells tolled in France, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, and England. All nations that loved liberty honored the great apostle of it. In the United States the government and the army and navy paid to Lafayette’s memory the same honors they had given to Washington, the Congress of the United States went into mourning for thirty days and most of the people of the nation followed its example. America vowed never to forget the French hero; and America never has.