Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Time, Volume 1

by François Guizot

FOOTNOTES:

[11] In a publication entitled 'Of Representative Government, and the Actual Condition of France,' published in 1816.

[12] I insert amongst the "Historic Documents" a note which he transmitted to the King, in the course of the month of August, on the question of the dissolution of the Chamber; and in which the fluctuations and fantasies of his mind, more ingenious than judicious, are revealed. (Historic Documents, [No. VII.])

[13] I have added to the "Historic Documents" the letters exchanged on this occasion between M. de Châteaubriand, M. Decazes, and the Chancellor Dambray, which characterize strongly the event and the individuals. (Historic Documents, [No. VIII.])

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CHAPTER V.

GOVERNMENT OF THE CENTRE.

1816-1821.

COMPOSITION OF THE NEW CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.—THE CABINET IN A MAJORITY.—ELEMENTS OF THAT MAJORITY, THE CENTRE PROPERLY SO CALLED, AND THE DOCTRINARIANS.—TRUE CHARACTER OF THE CENTRE.—TRUE CHARACTER OF THE DOCTRINARIANS, AND REAL CAUSE OF THEIR INFLUENCE.—M. DE LA BOURDONNAYE AND M. ROYER-COLLARD AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION.—ATTITUDE OF THE DOCTRINARIANS IN THE DEBATE ON THE EXCEPTIONAL LAWS.—ELECTORAL LAW OF FEBRUARY 5TH, 1817.—THE PART I TOOK ON THAT OCCASION.—OF THE ACTUAL AND POLITICAL POSITION OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES.—MARSHAL GOUVION ST. CYR, AND HIS BILL FOR RECRUITING THE ARMY, OF THE 10TH OF MARCH, 1818.—BILL RESPECTING THE PRESS, OF 1819, AND M. DE SERRE.—PREPARATORY DISCUSSION OF THESE BILLS IN THE STATE COUNCIL.—GENERAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE COUNTRY.—MODIFICATION OF THE CABINET FROM 1816 TO 1820.—IMPERFECTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM.—ERRORS OF INDIVIDUALS.—DISSENSIONS BETWEEN THE CABINET AND THE DOCTRINARIANS.—THE DUKE DE RICHELIEU NEGOCIATES, AT AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, THE ENTIRE RETREAT OF FOREIGN TROOPS FROM FRANCE.—HIS SITUATION AND CHARACTER.—HE ATTACKS THE BILL ON ELECTIONS.—HIS FALL.—CABINET OF M. DECAZES.—HIS POLITICAL WEAKNESS, NOTWITHSTANDING HIS PARLIAMENTARY SUCCESS.—ELECTIONS OF 1819.—ELECTION AND NON-ADMISSION OF M. GRÉGOIRE.—ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE DE BERRY.—FALL OF M. DECAZES.—THE DUKE DE RICHELIEU RESUMES OFFICE.—HIS ALLIANCE WITH THE RIGHT-HAND PARTY.—CHANGE IN THE LAW OF ELECTIONS.—DISORGANIZATION OF THE CENTRE, AND PROGRESS OF THE RIGHT-HAND PARTY.—SECOND FALL OF THE DUKE DE RICHELIEU.—M. DE VILLÈLE AND THE RIGHT-HAND PARTY OBTAIN POWER.

A violent outcry was raised, as there ever has been and always will be, against ministerial interference at the elections. This is the sour consolation of the beaten, who feel the necessity of accounting for their defeat. Elections, taken comprehensively, are almost always more genuine than interested and narrow-minded suspicion is disposed to allow. The desires and ability of the powers in office, exercise over them only a secondary authority. The true essence of elections lies in the way in which the wind blows, and in the impulse of passing events. The decree of the 5th of September, 1816, had given confidence to the moderate party, and a degree of hope to the persecuted of 1815. They all rallied round the Cabinet, casting aside their quarrels, antipathies, and private rancours, combining to support the power which promised victory to the one and safety to the other.

The victory, in fact, remained with the Cabinet, but it was one of those questionable triumphs which left the conquerors still engaged in a fierce war. The new Chamber comprised, in the centre a ministerial majority, on the right a strong and active opposition, and on the left a very small section, in which M. d'Argenson and M. Lafitte were the only names recognized by the public.

The ministerial majority was formed from two different although at that time closely-united elements,—the centre, properly called the grand army of power, and the very limited staff of that army, who soon received the title of doctrinarians.

I shall say of the centre of our assemblies since 1814, what I have just said of M. Cuvier; it has been misunderstood and calumniated, when servility and a rabid desire for place have been named as its leading characteristics. With it, as with others, personal interests have had their weight, and have looked for their gratification; but one general and just idea formed the spirit and bond of union of the party,—the idea that, in the present day, after so many revolutions, society required established government, and that to government all good citizens were bound to render their support. Many excellent and honourable sentiments,—family affection, a desire for regular employment, respect for rank, laws, and traditions, anxieties for the future, religious habits,—all clustered round this conviction, and had often inspired its votaries with rare and trusting courage. I call these persevering supporters of Government, citizen Tories; their defamers are weak politicians and shallow philosophers, who neither understand the moral instincts of the soul, nor the essential interests of society.

The doctrinarians have been heavily attacked. I shall endeavour to explain rather than defend them. When either men or parties have once exercised an influence over events, or obtained a place in history, it becomes important that they should be correctly known; this point accomplished, they may rest in peace and submit to judgment.

It was neither intelligence, nor talent, nor moral dignity—qualities which their acknowledged enemies have scarcely denied them—that established the original character and political importance of the doctrinarians.

Other men of other parties have possessed the same qualities; and between the relative pretensions of these rivals in understanding, eloquence, and sincerity, public opinion will decide. The peculiar characteristic of the doctrinarians, and the real source of their importance in spite of their limited number, was that they maintained, against revolutionary principles and ideas, ideas and principles contrary to those of the old enemies of the Revolution, and with which they opposed it, not to [destroy] but to reform and purify it in the name of justice and truth. The great feature, dearly purchased, of the French revolution was, that it was a work of the human mind, its conceptions and pretensions, and at the same time a struggle between social interests. Philosophy had boasted that it would regulate political economy, and that institutions, laws, and public authorities should only exist as the creatures and servants of instructed reason,—- an insane pride, but a startling homage to all that is most elevated in man, to his intellectual and moral attributes! Reverses and errors were not slow in impressing on the Revolution their rough lessons; but even up to 1815 it had encountered, as commentators on its ill-fortune, none but implacable enemies or undeceived accomplices,—the first thirsting for vengeance, the last eager for rest, and neither capable of opposing to revolutionary principles anything beyond a retrograde movement on the one side, and the scepticism of weariness on the other. "There was nothing in the Revolution but error and crime," said the first; "the supporters of the old system were in the right."—"The Revolution erred only in excess," exclaimed the second; "its principles were sound, but carried too far; it has abused its rights." The doctrinarians denied both these conclusions; they refused to acknowledge the maxims of the old system, or, even in a mere speculative sense, to adhere to the principles of the Revolution. While frankly adopting the new state of French society, such as our entire history, and not alone the year 1789, had made it, they undertook to establish a government on rational foundations, but totally opposed to the theories in the name of which the old system had been overthrown, or the incoherent principles which some endeavoured to conjure up for its reconstruction. Alternately called on to combat and defend the Revolution, they boldly assumed from the outset, an intellectual position, opposing ideas to ideas, and principles to principles, appealing at the same time to reason and experience, affirming rights instead of maintaining interests, and requiring France, not to confess that she had committed evil alone, or to declare her impotence for good, but to emerge from the chaos into which she had plunged herself, and to raise her head once more towards heaven in search of light.

Let me readily admit that there was also much pride in this attempt; but a pride commencing with an act of humility, which proclaims the mistakes of yesterday with the desire and hope of not repeating them today. It was rendering homage to human intelligence while warning it of the limits of its power, respecting the past, without undervaluing the present or abandoning the future. It was an endeavour to bestow on politics sound philosophy, not as a sovereign mistress, but as an adviser and support.

I shall state without hesitation, according to what experience has taught me, the faults which progressively mingled with this noble design, and impaired or checked its success. What I anxiously desire at present is to indicate its true character. It was to this mixture of philosophical sentiment and political moderation, to this rational respect for opposing rights and facts, to these principles, equally new and conservative, anti-revolutionary without being retrograde, and modest in fact although sometimes haughty in expression, that the doctrinarians owed their importance as well as their name. Notwithstanding the numerous errors of philosophy and human reason, the present age still cherishes reasoning and philosophical tastes; and the most determined practical politicians sometimes assume the air of acting upon general ideas, regarding them as sound methods of obtaining justification or credit. The doctrinarians thus responded to a profound and real necessity, although imperfectly acknowledged, of French minds: they paid equal respect to intellect and social order; their notions appeared well suited to regenerate, while terminating the Revolution. Under this double title they found, with partisans and adversaries, points of contact which drew them together, if not with active sympathy, at least with solid esteem: the right-hand party looked upon them as sincere royalists; and the left, while opposing them with acrimony, could not avoid admitting that they were neither the advocates of the old system, nor the defenders of absolute power.

Such was their position at the opening of the session of 1816: a little obscure still, but recognized by the Cabinet as well as by the different parties. The Duke de Richelieu, M. Lainé, and M. Decazes, whether they liked the doctrinarians or not, felt that they positively required their co-operation, as well in the debates of the Chambers as to act upon public opinion. The left-hand party, powerless in itself, accorded with them from necessity, although their ideas and language sometimes produced surprise rather than sympathy. The right, notwithstanding its losses at the elections, was still very strong, and speedily assumed the offensive. The King's speech on opening the session was mild and somewhat indistinct, as if tending rather to palliate the decree of the 5th of September, than to parade it with an air of triumph: "Rely," said he, in conclusion, "on my fixed determination to repress the outrages of the ill-disposed, and to restrain the exuberance of overheated zeal." "Is that all?" observed M. de Châteaubriand, on leaving the royal presence; "if so, the victory is ours:" and on that same day he dined with the Chancellor. M. de la Bourdonnaye was even more explicit. "The King," said he, with a coarse expression, "once more hands his ministers over to us!" During the session of the next day, meeting M. Royer-Collard, with whom he was in the habit of extremely free conversation, "Well," said he, "there you are, more rogues than last year." "And you not so many," replied M. Royer-Collard. The right-hand party, in their reviving hopes, well knew how to distinguish the adversaries with whom they would have to contend.

As in the preceding session, the first debates arose on questions of expediency. The Cabinet judged it necessary to demand from the Chambers the prolongation, for another year, of the two provisional laws respecting personal liberty and the daily press. M. Decazes presented a detailed account of the manner in which, up to that period, the Government had used the arbitrary power committed to its hands, and also the new propositions which should restrain it within the limits necessary to remove all apprehended danger. The right-hand party vigorously rejected these propositions, upon the very natural ground that they had no confidence in the Ministers, but without any other reasoning than the usual commonplace arguments of liberalism. The doctrinarians supported the bills, but with the addition of commentaries which strongly marked their independence, and the direction they wished to give to the power they defended. "Every day," said M. de Serre, "the nature of our constitution will be better understood, its benefits more appreciated by the nation; the laws with which you co-operate, will place by degrees our institutions and habits in harmony with representative monarchy; the government will approach its natural perfection,—that unity of principle, design, and action which forms the condition of its existence. In permitting and even in protecting legal opposition, it will not allow that opposition to find resting-points within itself. It is because it can be, and ought to be, watched over and contradicted by independent men, that it should be punctually obeyed, faithfully seconded and served by those who have become and wish to remain its direct agents. Government will thus acquire a degree of strength which can dispense with the employment of extraordinary means: legal measures, restored to their proper energy, will be found sufficient." "There is," said M. Royer-Collard, "a strong objection against this bill; the Government may be asked, 'Before you demand excessive powers, have you employed all those which the laws entrust to you? have you exhausted their efficacy?' ... I shall not directly answer this question, but I shall say to those who put it, 'Take care how you expose your Government to too severe a trial, and one under which nearly all Governments have broken down; do not require from it perfection; consider its difficulties as well as its duties.' ... We wish to arrest its steps in the course it pursues at present, and to impose daily changes. We demand from it the complete development of institutions and constitutional enactments; above all, we require that vigorous unity of principles, system, and conduct without which it will never effectually reach the end towards which it advances. But what it has already done, is a pledge for what it will yet accomplish. We feel a just reliance that the extraordinary powers with which we invest it will be exercised, not by or for a party, but for the nation against all parties. Such is our treaty; such are the stipulations which have been spoken of: they are as public as our confidence, and we thank those who have occasioned their repetition, for proving to France that we are faithful to her cause, and neglect neither her interests nor our own duties."

With a more gentle effusion of mind and heart, M. Camille Jordan held the same language; the bills passed; the right-hand party felt as blows directed against itself the advice suggested to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet saw that in that quarter, as necessary supporters, they had also haughty and exacting allies.

Their demands were not fruitless. The Cabinet, uninfluenced either by despotic views or immoderate passions, had no desire to retain unnecessarily the absolute power with which it had been entrusted. No effort was requisite to deprive it of the provisional laws; they fell successively of themselves,—the suspension of the securities for personal liberty in 1817, the prevôtal courts in 1818, the censorship of the daily press in 1819; and four years after the tempest of the Hundred Days, the country was in the full enjoyment of all its constitutional privileges.

During this interval, other questions, more and less important, were brought forward and decided. When the first overflowing of the reaction of 1815 had a little calmed down, when France, less disturbed with the present, began once more to think of the future, she was called upon to enter on the greatest work that can fall to the lot of a nation. There was more than a new government to establish; it was necessary that a free government should be imbued with vigour. It was written, and it must live,—a promise often made, but never accomplished. How often, from 1789 to 1814, had liberties and political rights been inscribed on our institutes and laws, to be buried under them, and held of no account. The first amongst the Governments of our day, the Restoration, took these words at their true meaning; whatever may have been its traditions and propensities, what it said, it did; the liberties and rights it acknowledged, were taken into real co-operation and action. From 1814 to 1830, as from 1830 to 1848, the Charter was a truth. For once forgetting it, Charles X. fell.

When this work of organization, or, to speak more correctly, when this effectual call to political life commenced in 1816, the question of the electoral system, already touched upon, but without result, in the preceding session, was the first that came under notice. It was included in the scope of the fortieth article of the Charter, which ran thus:—"The electors who nominate the Deputies can have no right of voting, unless they pay a direct contribution of 300 francs, and have reached the age of thirty,"—an ambiguous arrangement, which attempted more than it ventured to accomplish. It evidently contained a desire of placing the right of political suffrage above the popular masses, and of confining it within the more elevated classes of society. But the constitutional legislator had neither gone openly to this point, nor attained it with certainty; for if the Charter required from the electors who were actually to name the Deputies, 300 francs of direct contribution, and thirty years of age, it did not forbid that these electors should be themselves chosen by preceding electoral assemblies; or rather it did not exclude indirect election, nor, under that form, what is understood by the term universal suffrage.

I took part in drawing up the bill of the 5th of February, 1817, which comprised, at that time, the solution given to this important question. I was present at the conferences in which it was prepared. When ready, M. Lainé, whose business it was, as Minister of the Interior, to present it to the Chamber of Deputies, wrote to say that he wished to see me: "I have adopted," he said, "all the principles of this bill, the concentration of the right of suffrage, direct election, the equal privilege of voters, their union in a single college for each department; and I really believe these are the best that could be desired: still, upon some of these points, I have mental doubts and little time to solve them. Help me in preparing the exposition of our objects." I responded, as I was bound, to this confiding sincerity, by which I felt equally touched and honoured. The bill was brought in; and while my friends supported it in the Chamber, from whence my age for the present excluded me, I defended it, on behalf of the Government, in several articles inserted in the 'Moniteur.' I was well informed as to its intent and true spirit, and I speak of it without embarrassment in presence of the universal suffrage, as now established. If the electoral system of 1817 disappeared in the tempest of 1848, it conferred on France thirty years of regular and free government, systematically sustained and controlled; and amidst all the varying influences of parties, and the shock of a revolution, this system sufficed to maintain peace, to develop national prosperity, and to preserve respect for all legal rights. In this age of ephemeral and futile experiments, it is the only political enactment which has enjoyed a long and powerful life. At least it was a work which may be acknowledged, and which deserves to be correctly estimated, even after its overthrow.

A ruling idea inspired the bill of the 5th of February, 1817,—to fix a term to the revolutionary system, and to give vigour to the constitutional Government. At that epoch, universal suffrage had ever been, in France, an instrument of destruction or deceit,—of destruction, when it had really placed political power in the hands of the multitude; of deceit, when it had assisted to annul political rights for the advantage of absolute power, by maintaining, through the vain intervention of the multitude, a false appearance of electoral privilege. To escape, in fine, from that routine of alternate violence and falsehood, to place political power in the region within which the conservative interests of social order naturally predominate with enlightened independence, and to secure to those interests, by the direct election of deputies from the country, a free and strong action upon its Government,—such were the objects, without reserve or exaggeration, of the authors of the electoral system of 1817.

In a country devoted for twenty-five years, on the subject of political elections, whether truly or apparently, to the principle of the supremacy of number, so absurdly called the sovereignty of the people, the attempt was new, and might appear rash. At first, it confined political power to the hands of 140,000 electors. From the public, and even from what was already designated the liberal party, it encountered but slight opposition; some objections springing from the past, some apprehensions for the future, but no declared or active hostility. It was from the bosom of the classes specially devoted to conservative interests, and from their intestine discussions, that the attack and the danger emanated.

During the session of 1815, the old royalist faction, in its moderated views, and when it renounced systematic and retrograding aspirations, had persuaded itself that, at least, the King's favour and the influence of the majority would give it power in the departments as at the seat of government. The decree of the 5th of September, 1816, abolished this double expectation. The old Royalists called upon the new electoral system to restore it, but at once perceived that the bill of the 5th of February was not calculated to produce such an effect; and forthwith commenced a violent attack, accusing the new plan of giving over all electoral power, and consequently all political influence, to the middle classes, to the exclusion of the great proprietors and the people.

At a later period, the popular party, who neither thought nor spoke on the subject in 1817, adopted this argument in their turn, and charged, on this same accusation of political monopoly for the benefit of the middle classes, their chief complaint, not only against the electoral law, but against the entire system of government of which that law was the basis and guarantee.

I collect my reminiscences, and call back my impressions. From 1814 to 1848, under the government of the Restoration, and under that of July, I loudly supported and more than once had the honour of carrying this flag of the middle classes, which was naturally my own. What did we understand by it? Have we ever conceived the design, or even admitted the thought, that the citizens should become a newly privileged order, and that the laws intended to regulate the exercise of suffrage should serve to found the predominance of the middle classes by taking, whether in right or fact, all political influence, on one side from the relics of the old French aristocracy, and on the other from the people?

Such an attempt would have been strangely ignorant and insane. It is neither by political theories nor articles in laws, that the privileges and superiority of any particular class are established in a State. These slow and pedantic methods are not available for such a purpose; it requires the force of conquest or the power of faith. Society is exclusively controlled by military or religious ascendency; never by the influence of the citizens. The history of all ages and nations is at hand to prove this to the most superficial observer.

In our day, the impossibility of such a predominance of the middle classes is even more palpable. Two ideas constitute the great features of modern civilization, and stamp it with its formidable activity; I sum them up in these terms:—There are certain universal rights inherent in man's nature, and which no system can legitimately withhold from any one; there are individual rights which spring from personal merit alone, without regard to the external circumstances of birth, fortune, or rank, and which every one who has them in himself should be permitted to exercise. From the two principles of legal respect for the general rights of humanity, and the free development of natural gifts, ill or well understood, have proceeded, for nearly a century, the advantages and evils, the great actions and crimes, the advances and wanderings which revolutions and Governments have alternately excited in the bosom of every European community. Which of these two principles provokes or even permits the exclusive supremacy of the middle classes? Assuredly neither the one nor the other. One opens to individual endowments every gate; the other demands for every human being his place and his portion: no greatness is unattainable; no condition, however insignificant, is counted as nothing. Such principles are irreconcilable with exclusive superiority; that of the middle classes, as of every other, would be in direct contradiction to the ruling tendencies of modern society.

The middle classes have never, amongst us, dreamed of becoming privileged orders; and no rational mind has ever indulged in such dreams for them. This idle accusation is but an engine of war, erected under cover of a confusion of ideas, sometimes by the hypocritical dexterity, and at others by the blind infatuation of party spirit. But this does not prevent its having been, or becoming again, fatal to the peace of our social system; for men are so constructed that chimerical dangers are the most formidable they can encounter: we fight boldly with tangible substances, but we lose our heads, either from fear or anger, when in presence of phantoms.

It was with real dangers that we had to cope in 1817, when we discussed the electoral system of France. We saw the most legitimate principles and the most jealous interests of the new state of society indistinctly menaced by a violent reaction. We felt the spirit of revolution spring up and ferment around us, arming itself, according to old practice, with noble incentives, to cover the march and prepare the triumph of the most injurious passions. By instinct and position, the middle classes were the best suited to struggle with the combined peril. Opposed to the pretensions of the old aristocracy, they had acquired, under the Empire, ideas and habits of government. Although they received the Restoration with some mistrust, they were not hostile to it; for under the rule of the Charter, they had nothing to ask from new revolutions. The Charter was for them the Capitol and the harbour; they found in it the security of their conquests, and the triumph of their hopes. To turn to the advantage of the ancient monarchy, now become constitutional, this anti-revolutionary state of the middle classes, to secure their co-operation with that monarchy by giving them confidence in their own position, was a line of policy clearly indicated by the state of facts and opinions. Such was the bearing of the electoral bill of 1817. In principle this bill cut short the revolutionary theories of the supremacy of numbers, and of a specious and tyrannical equality; in fact, it brought the new society under shelter from the threats of counter-revolution. Assuredly, in proposing it, we had no intention of establishing any antagonism between the great and small proprietors; but when the question was so laid down, we evinced no hesitation; we supported the bill firmly, by maintaining that the influence, not exclusive but preponderating, of the middle classes was confirmed, on one side by the spirit of free institutions, and on the other in conformity with the interests of France as the Revolution had changed her, and with the Restoration itself as the Charter had defined when proclaiming it.

The election bill occupied the session of 1816. The bill for recruiting was the great subject and work of the session of 1817. The right-hand party opposed it with vehement hostility: it disputed their traditions and disturbed their monarchical tendencies. But the party had to contest with a minister as imperturbable in his convictions and will as in his physiognomy. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr had a powerful, original, and straightforward mind, with no great combination of ideas, but passionately wedded to those which emanated from himself. He had resolved to give back to France what she no longer possessed—an army. And an army in his estimate was a small nation springing from the large one, strongly organized, formed of officers and soldiers closely united, mutually knowing and respecting each other, all having defined rights and duties, and all well trained by solid study or long practice to serve their country effectually when called upon.

Upon this idea of an army, according to the conception of Marshal St. Cyr, the principles of his bill were naturally framed. Every class in the State was required to assist in the formation of this army. Those who entered in the lowest rank were open to the highest, with a certain advantage in the ascending movement of the middle classes. Those who were ambitious of occupying at once a higher step, were compelled in the first instance to pass certain examinations, and then to acquire by close study the particular knowledge necessary to their post. The term of service, active or in reserve, was long, and made military life in reality a career. The obligations imposed, the privileges promised, and the rights recognized for all, were guaranteed by the bill.

Besides these general principles, the bill had an immediate result which St. Cyr ardently desired. It enrolled again in the new army, under the head of veterans and reserve, the remains of the old discharged legions, who had so heroically endured the penalty of the errors committed by their crowned leader. It effaced also, in their minds, that reminiscence of a distasteful past, while by a sort of special Charter it secured their future.

No one can deny that this plan for the military organization of France, embraced grand ideas and noble sentiments. Such a bill accorded with the moral nature and political conduct of Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, who possessed an upright soul, a proud temperament, monarchical opinions, and republican manners; and who, since 1814, had given equal proofs of loyalty and independence. When he advocated it in the tribune, when, with the manly solemnity and disciplined feeling of an experienced warrior, at once a sincere patriot and a royalist, he recapitulated the services and sufferings of that nation of old soldiers which he was anxious for a few years longer to unite with the new army of France, he deeply moved the public and the Chambers; and his powerful language, no less than the excellent propositions of his bill, consecrated it on the instant in the affectionate esteem of the country.

Violently attacked in 1818, Marshal St. Cyr's recruiting bill has been since that date several times criticised, revised, and modified. Its leading principles have resisted assault, and have survived alteration. It has done more than last, through soundness of principle; it has given, by facts, an astounding denial to its adversaries. It was accused of striking a blow at the monarchy; on the contrary, it has made the army more devotedly monarchical than any that France had ever known,—an army whose fidelity has never been shaken, either in 1830 or 1848, by the influence of popular opinion, or the seduction of a revolutionary crisis. Military sentiment, that spirit of obedience and respect, of discipline and devotion, one of the chief glories of human nature, and the necessary pledge of the honour as of the safety of nations, had been powerfully fomented and developed in France by the great wars of the Revolution and the Empire. It was a precious inheritance of those rough times which have bequeathed to us so many burdens. There was danger of its being lost or enfeebled in the bosom of peaceful inaction, and during endless debates on liberty. It has been firmly maintained in the army which the law of 1818 established and incessantly recruits. This military sentiment is not only preserved; it has become purified and regulated. By the honesty of its promises and the justice of its arrangements in matters of privilege and promotion, the bill of Marshal St. Cyr has imbued the army with a permanent conviction of its rights, of its own legal and individual rights, and, through that feeling, with an instinctive attachment to public order, the common guarantee of all rights. We have witnessed the rare and imposing sight of an army capable of devotion and restraint, ready for sacrifices, and modest in pretension, ambitious of glory, without being athirst for war, proud of its arms, and yet obedient to civil authority. Public habits, the prevailing ideas of the time, and the general character of our civilization have doubtless operated much upon this great result; but the bill of Marshal St. Cyr has had its full part, and I rejoice in recording this honourable distinction, which, amongst so many others, belongs to my old and glorious friend.

The session of 1818, which opened in the midst of a ministerial crisis, had to deal with another question not more important, but even more intricate and dangerous. The Cabinet determined to leave the press no longer under an exceptional and temporary law. M. de Serre, at that time Chancellor, introduced three bills on the same day, which settled definitively the penalty, the method of prosecution, and the qualification for publishing, in respect to the daily papers, while at the same time they liberated them from all censorship.

I am one of those who have been much assisted and fiercely attacked by the press. Throughout my life, I have greatly employed this engine. By placing my ideas publicly before the eyes of my country, I first attracted her attention and esteem. During the progress of my career, I have ever had the press for ally or opponent; and I have never hesitated to employ its weapons, or feared to expose myself to its blows. It is a power which I respect and recognize willingly, rather than compulsorily, but without illusion or idolatry. Whatever may be the form of government, political life is a constant struggle; and it would give me no satisfaction—I will even say more—I should feel ashamed of finding myself opposed to mute and fettered adversaries. The liberty of the press is human nature displaying itself in broad daylight, sometimes under the most attractive, and at others under the most repelling aspect; it is the wholesome air that vivifies, and the tempest that destroys, the expansion and impulsive power of steam in the intellectual system. I have ever advocated a free press; I believe it to be, on the whole, more useful than injurious to public morality; and I look upon it as essential to the proper management of public affairs, and to the security of private interests. But I have witnessed too often and too closely its dangerous aberrations as regards political order, not to feel convinced that this liberty requires the restraint of a strong organization of effective laws and of controlling principles. In 1819, my friends and I clearly foresaw the necessity of these conditions; but we laid little stress upon them, we were unable to bring them all into operation, and we thought, moreover, that the time had arrived when the sincerity as well as the strength of the restored monarchy was to be proved by removing from the press its previous shackles, and in risking the consequences of its enfranchisement.

The greater part of the laws passed with reference to the press, in France or elsewhere, have either been acts of repression, legitimate or illegitimate, against liberty, or triumphs over certain special guarantees of liberty successively won from power, according to the necessity or opportunity of gaining them. The legislative history of the press in England supplies a long series of alternations and arrangements of this class.

The bills of 1819 had a totally different character. They comprised a complete legislation, conceived together and beforehand, conformable with certain general principles, defining in every degree liabilities and penalties, regulating all the conditions as well as the forms of publication, and intended to establish and secure the liberty of the press, while protecting order and power from its licentiousness;—an undertaking very difficult in its nature, as all legislative enactments must be which spring from precaution more than necessity, and in which the legislator is inspired and governed by ideas rather than commanded and directed by facts. Another danger, a moral and concealed danger, also presented itself. Enactments thus prepared and maintained become works of a philosopher and artist, the author of which is tempted to identify himself with them through an impulse of self-love, which sometimes leads him to lose sight of the external circumstances and practical application he ought to have considered. Politics require a certain mixture of indifference and passion, of freedom of thought and restrained will, which is not easily reconciled with a strong adhesion to general ideas, and a sincere intent to hold a just balance between the many principles and interests of society.

I should be unwilling to assert that in the measures proposed and passed in 1819, on the liberty of the press, we had completely avoided these rocks, or that they were in perfect harmony with the state of men's minds, and the exigencies of order at that precise epoch. Nevertheless, after an interval of nearly forty years, and on reconsidering these measures now with my matured judgment, I do not hesitate to look on them as grand and noble efforts of legislation, in which the true points of the subject were skilfully embraced and applied, and which, in spite of the mutilation they were speedily doomed to undergo, established an advance in the liberty of the press, properly understood, which sooner or later cannot fail to extend itself.

The debate on these bills was worthy of their conception. M. de Serre was gifted with eloquence singularly exalted and practical. He supported their general principles in the tone of a magistrate who applies, and not as a philosopher who explains them. His speech was profound without abstraction, highly coloured but not figurative; his reasoning resolved itself into action. He expounded, examined, discussed, attacked, or replied without literary or even oratorical preparation, carrying up the strength of his arguments to the full level of the questions, fertile without exuberance, precise without dryness, impassioned without a shadow of declamation, always ready with a sound answer to his opponents, as powerful on the impulse of the moment as in prepared reflection, and, when once he had surmounted a slight hesitation and slowness at the first onset, pressing on directly to his end with a firm and rapid step, and with the air of a man deeply interested, but careless of personal success, and only anxious to win his cause by communicating to his listeners his own sentiments and convictions.

Different adversaries presented themselves during the debate, from those who had opposed the bills for elections and recruiting the army. The right-hand party attacked the two latter propositions; the left assailed the measures regarding the press. MM. Benjamin Constant, Manuel, Chauvelin, and Bignon, with more parliamentary malice than political judgment, overwhelmed them with objections and amendments slightly mingled with very qualified compliments. Recent elections had lately readmitted into the assembly these leaders of the Liberals in the Chamber of the Hundred Days. They seemed to think of nothing but how to bring once more upon the scene their party, for three years beaten down, and to re-establish their own position as popular orators. Some of the most prominent ideas in the drawing up of these three bills, were but little in conformity with the philosophic and legislative traditions which since 1791 had become current on the subject. They evidently comprised a sincere wish to guarantee liberty, and a strong desire not to disarm power. It was a novel exhibition to see Ministers frankly recognizing the liberty of the press, without offering up incense on its shrine, and assuming that they understood its rights and interests better than its old worshippers. In the opposition of the left-hand party at this period, there was much of routine, a great deal of complaisance for the prejudices and passions of the press attached to their party, and a little angry jealousy of a cabinet which permitted liberal innovation. The public, unacquainted with political factions, were astonished to see bills so vehemently opposed which diminished the penalties in force against the press, referred to a jury all offences of that class, and liberated the journals from the censorship,—measures which in their eyes appeared too confident. The right-hand party held dexterously aloof, rejoicing to see the Ministers at issue with reviving opponents who were likely soon to become their most formidable enemies.

It was during this debate that I ascended the tribune for the first time. M. Cuvier and I had been appointed, as Royal Commissioners, to support the proposed measures,—a false and weak position, which demonstrates the infancy of representative government. We do not argue politics as we plead a cause or maintain a thesis. To act effectively in a deliberative assembly, we must ourselves be deliberators; that is to say, we must be members, and hold our share with others in free thought, power, and responsibility. I believe that I acquitted myself with propriety, but coldly, of the mission I had undertaken. I sustained, against M. Benjamin Constant, the general responsibility for the correctness of the accounts given of the proceedings of the Chambers, and, against M. Daunou, the guarantees required by the bill for the establishment of newspapers. The Chamber appeared to appreciate my arguments, and listened to me with attention. But I kept on the reserve, and seldom joined in the debate; I have no turn for incomplete positions and prescribed parts. When we enter into an arena in which the affairs of a free country are discussed, it is not to make a display of fine thoughts and words; we are bound to engage in the struggle as true and earnest actors.

As the recruiting bill had established a personal and political reputation for Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, so the bills on the press effected the same for M. de Serre. Thus, at the issue of a violent crisis of revolution and war, in presence of armed Europe, and within the short space of three sessions, the three most important questions of a free system—the construction of elective power, the formation of a national army, and the interference of individual opinions in public affairs through the channel of the press—were freely proposed, argued, and resolved; and their solution, whatever might be the opinion of parties, was certainly in harmony with the habits and wishes of that honest and peaceably disposed majority of France who had sincerely received the King and the Charter, and had adopted their government on mature consideration.

During this time, many other measures of constitutional organization, or general legislation, had been accomplished or proposed. In 1818, an amendment of M. Royer-Collard settled the addition to the budget of an annual law for the supervision of public accounts; and in the course of the following year, two ministers of finance, the Baron Louis and M. Roy, brought into operation that security for the honest appropriation of the revenue. By the institution of smaller "Great-books" of the national debt, the state of public credit became known in the departments. Other bills, although laid before the Chambers, produced no result; three, amongst the rest, may be named: on the responsibility of Ministers, on the organization of the Chamber of Peers into a court of justice, and on the alteration of the financial year to avoid the provisional vote of the duty. Others again, especially applicable to the reform of departmental and parochial administrations, and to public instruction, were left in a state of inquiry and preliminary discussion. Far from eluding or allowing important questions to linger, the Government laboriously investigated them, and forestalled the wishes of the public, determined to submit them to the Chambers as soon as they had collected facts and arranged their own plans.

I still preserve a deep remembrance of the State Council in which these various bills were first discussed. This Council had not then any defined official existence or prescribed action in the constitution of the country; politics nevertheless were more prominently argued there, and with greater freedom and effect, than at any other time; every shade, I ought rather to say every variation, of the royalist party, from the extreme right to the edge of the left, were there represented; the politicians most in repute, the leaders of the majority in the two Assemblies, were brought into contact with the heads of administration, the old senators of the Empire, and with younger men not yet admissible to the Chambers, but introduced by the Charter into public life. MM. Royer-Collard, de Serre, and Camille Jordan sat there by the side of MM. Siméon, Portalis, Molé, Bérenger, Cuvier, and Allent; and MM. de Barante, Mounier, and myself deliberated in common with MM. de Ballainvilliers, Laporte-Lalanne, and de Blaire, unswerving representatives of the old system. When important bills were examined by the Council, the Ministers never failed to attend. The Duke de Richelieu often presided at the general sittings. The discussion was perfectly free, without oratorical display or pretension, but serious, profound, varied, detailed, earnest, erudite, and at the same time practical. I have heard Count Bérenger, a man of disputatious and independent temper, and a quasi-republican under the Empire, maintain there, with ingenious and imposing subtlety, universal suffrage, and distinctions of qualification for voting, against direct election and the concentrated right of suffrage. MM. Cuvier, Siméon, and Allent were the constant defenders of traditional and administrative influence. My friends and I argued strongly for the principles and hopes of liberty strongly based, which appeared to us the natural consequences of the Charter and the necessary conditions for the prosperity of the Restoration. Reforms in criminal legislation, the application of trial by jury to offences of the press, the introduction of the elective principle into the municipal system, were argued in the Council of State before they were laid before the Chambers. The Government looked to the Council, not only for a study of all questions, but for a preparatory and amicable experience of the ideas, desires, and objections it was destined to encounter at a later period, in a rougher contest, and a more tumultuous theatre.

The Cabinet, composed as it was at the time when the decree of the 5th of September, 1816, appeared, was not equal to that line of policy, continually increasing in moderation, sometimes resolutely, liberal, and, if not always provident, at least perpetually active. But the same progress which accompanied events, affected individuals. During the course of the year 1817, M. Pasquier, Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, and M. Molé replaced M. Dambray, the Duke of Feltri, and M. Dubouchage in the departments of justice, war, and the marine. From that time the Ministers were not deficient either in internal unity, or in parliamentary and administrative talent. They endeavoured to infuse the same qualities into all the different branches and gradations of government, and succeeded tolerably in the heart of the State. Without reaction or any exclusive spirit, they surrounded themselves with men sincerely attached to a constitutional policy, and who by their character and ability had already won public esteem. They were less firm and effective in local administration; although introducing more changes than are generally believed, they were unable to reconcile them with their general policy. In many places, acts of violence, capricious temper, haughty inexperience, offensive pretension and frivolous alarm, with all the great and little party passions which had possessed the Government of 1815, continued to weigh upon the country. These proceedings kept up amongst the tranquil population a strong sentiment of uneasiness, and sometimes excited active malcontents to attempts at conspiracy and insurrection, amplified at first with interested or absurd credulity, repressed with unmitigated rigour, and subsequently discussed, denied, extenuated, and reduced almost to nothing by never-ending explanations and counter-charges. From thence arose the mistakes, prejudices, and false calculations of the local authorities; while the supreme powers assumed alternately airs of levity or weakness, which made them lose, in the eyes of the multitude, the credit of that sound general policy from which they, the masses, experienced little advantage. The occurrences at Lyons in June 1817, and the long debates of which they became the subject after the mission of redress of the Duke of Ragusa, furnish a lamentable example of the evils which France at this period had still to endure, although at the head of government the original cause had disappeared.

Things are more easily managed than men. These same Ministers, who were not always able to compel the prefects and mayors to adopt their policy, and who hesitated to displace them when they were found to be obstinate or incapable, were ever prompt and effective when general administration was involved, and measures not personal were necessary for the public interest. On this point, reflection tells me that justice has not been rendered to the Government of the day; religious establishments, public instruction, hospital and prison discipline, financial and military administration, the connection of power with industry and commerce, all the great public questions, received from 1816 to 1820 much salutary reform and made important advances. The Duke de Richelieu advocated an enlightened policy and the public good; he took pride in contributing to both. M. Lainé devoted himself with serious and scrupulous anxiety to the superintendence of the many establishments included in his department, and laboured to rectify existing abuses or to introduce salutary limitations. The Baron Louis was an able and indefatigable minister, who knew to a point how regularity could be established in the finances of the State, and who employed for that object all the resources of his mind and the unfettered energy of his will. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr had, on every branch of military organization, on the formation and internal system of the different bodies, on the scientific schools as well as on the material supplies, ideas at once systematic and practical, derived either from his general conception of the army or from long experience; and these he carried into effect in a series of regulations remarkable for the unity of their views and the profound knowledge of their details. M. Decazes was endowed with a singularly inquiring and inventive mind in seeking to satisfy doubts, to attempt improvements, to stimulate emulation and concord for the advantage of all social interests, of all classes of citizens, in connection with the Government; and these combined objects he invariably promoted with intelligent, amiable, and eager activity. In a political point of view, the Administration left much to regret and to desire; but in its proper sphere it was liberal, energetic, impartial, economical from probity and regularity, friendly to progress at the same time that it was careful of order, and sincerely impressed with the desire of giving universal prevalence to justice and the public interest.[14]

Here was undoubtedly a sensible and sound Government, in very difficult and lamentable circumstances; and under such rule the country had no occasion to lament the present or despair of the future. Nevertheless this Government gained no strength by permanence; its enemies felt no discouragement, while its friends perceived no addition to their power or security. The Restoration had given peace to France, and laboured honestly and successfully to restore her independence and rank in Europe. Under this flag of stability and order, prosperity and liberty sprang up again together. Still the Restoration was always a disputed question.

If we are to believe its enemies, this evil was inherent and inevitable. According to them the old system, the emigrants, the foreigners, the hatreds and suspicions of the Revolution devoted the House of Bourbon to their obstinately precarious situation. Without disputing the influence of such a fatal past, I cannot admit that it exercised complete empire over events, or that it suffices in itself to explain why the Restoration, even in its best days, always was and appeared to be in a tottering state. The mischief sprang from more immediate and more personal causes. In the Government of that date there were organic and accidental infirmities, vices of the political machine and errors of the actors, which contributed much more than revolutionary remembrances to prevent its firm consolidation.

A natural and important disagreement exists between the representative government instituted by the Charter, and the administrative monarchy founded by Louis XIV. and Napoleon. Where administration and policy are equally free, when local affairs are discussed and decided by local authorities or influences, and neither derive their impulse nor solution from the central power, which never interferes except when the general interest of the State absolutely requires it to do so,—as in England, and in the United States of America, in Holland and Belgium, for instances,—the representative system readily accords with an administrative Government which never appeals to its co-operation except on important and rare occasions. But when the supreme authority undertakes at the same time to govern with freedom, and to administer by centralization,—when it has to contend, at the seat of power, for the great affairs of the State, and to regulate, under its own responsibility, in all the departments, the minor business of every district,—two weighty objections immediately present themselves: either the central power, absorbed by the care of national questions, and occupied with its own defence, neglects local affairs, and suffers them to fall into disorder and inaction; or it connects them closely with general questions, making them subservient to its own interests; and thus the whole system of administration, from the hamlet to the palace, degenerates into an implement of government in the hands of political parties who are mutually contending for power.

I am certainly not called upon today to dwell on this evil; it has become the hackneyed theme of the adversaries of representative government, and of political liberty. It was felt long before it was taken advantage of; but instead of employing it against free institutions, an attempt was made to effect its cure. To achieve this end, a double work was to be accomplished; it was necessary to infuse liberty into the administration of local affairs, and to second the development of the local forces capable of exercising authority within their own circle. An aristocracy cannot be created by laws, either at the extremities or at the fountain-head of the State; but the most democratic society is not stripped of natural powers ready to display themselves when called into action. Not only in the departments, but in the divisions, in the townships and villages, landed property, industry, employments, professions, and traditions have their local influences, which, if adopted and organized with prudence, constitute effectual authority. From 1816 to 1848, under each of the two constitutional monarchies, whether voluntarily or by compulsion, the different cabinets have acted under this conviction; they have studied to relieve the central Government, by remitting a portion of its functions, sometimes to the regular local agents, and at others to more independent auxiliaries. But, as it too often happens, the remedy was not rapid enough in operation; mistrust, timidity, inexperience, and routine slackened its progress; neither the authorities nor the people knew how to employ it with resolution, or to wait the results with patience. Thus compelled to sustain the burden of political liberty with that of administrative centralization, the newly-born constitutional monarchy found itself compromised between difficulties and contradictory responsibilities, exceeding the measure of ability and strength which could be reasonably expected from any Government.

Another evil, the natural but not incurable result of these very institutions, weighed also upon the Restoration. The representative system is at the bottom, and on close analysis, a system of mutual sacrifices and dealings between the various interests which coexist in society. At the same time that it places them in antagonism, it imposes on them the absolute necessity of arriving at an intermediate term, a definite measure of reciprocal understanding and toleration which may become the basis of laws and government. But also, at the same time, by the publicity and heat of the struggle, it throws the opposing parties into an unseemly exaggeration of vehemence and language, and compromises the self-love and personal dignity of human nature. Thus, by an inconsistency teeming with embarrassment, it daily renders more difficult that agreement or submission which, in the end, it has also made indispensable. Herein is comprised an important difficulty for this system of government, which can only be surmounted by a great exercise of tact and conciliation on the part of the political actors themselves, and by a great preponderance of good sense on that of the public, which in the end recalls parliamentary factions and their leaders to that moderation after defeat, from which the inflated passion of the characters they have assumed too often tends to estrange them.

This necessary regulator, always difficult to find or institute, was essentially wanting to us under the Restoration; on entering the course, we were launched, without curb, on this precipice of extreme demonstrations and preconceived ideas, the natural vice of parties in every representative government. How many opportunities presented themselves from 1816 to 1830, when the different elements of the monarchical party could, and in their struggle ought to have paused on this brink, at the point where the danger of revolution commenced for all! But none had the good sense or courage to exercise this provident restraint; and the public, far from imposing it on them, excited them still more urgently to the combat,—as at a play, in which people delight to trace the dramatic reflection of their own passions.

A mischievous, although inevitable, distribution of parts between the opposing parties aggravated still more, from 1816 to 1820, this want of forecast in men, and this extravagance of public passions. Under the representative system, it is usually to one of the parties distinctly defined and firmly resolved in their ideas and desires, that the government belongs: sometimes the systematic defenders of power, at others the friends of liberty, then the conservatives, and lastly the innovators, direct the affairs of the country; and between these organized and ambitious parties are placed the unclassed opinions and undecided wishes, that political chorus which is ever present watching the conduct of the actors, listening to their words, and ready to applaud or condemn them according as they satisfy or offend their unfettered judgment. This is, in fact, the natural bias and true order of things under free institutions. It is well for Government to have a public and recognized standard, regulated on fixed principles, and sustained in action by steady adherents; it derives from that position, not only the strength and consistent coherence that it requires, but the moral dignity which renders power more easy and gentle by placing it higher in the estimation of the people. It is not the chance of events or the personal ambition of men alone, but the interests and inclination of the public, which have produced, in free countries, the great, acknowledged, permanent, and trusty political parties, and have usually confided power to their hands. At the Restoration it was impossible, from 1816 to 1820, to fulfil this condition of a Government at once energetic and restrained. The two great political parties which it found in action, that of the old system and of the revolution, were both at the time incapable of governing by maintaining internal peace with liberty; each had ideas and passions too much opposed to the established and legal order they would have had to defend; they accepted with great reluctance, and in a very undefined sense, the one the Charter, and the other the old Monarchy. Through absolute necessity, power returned to the hands of the political choir; the floating and impartial section of the Chambers, the centre, was called to the helm. Under a free system, the Centre is the habitual moderator and definitive judge of Government, but not the party naturally pretending to govern. It gives or withholds the majority, but its mission is not to conquer it. And it is much more difficult for the centre than for strongly organized parties to win or maintain a majority; for when it assumes government, it finds before it, not undecided spectators who wait its acts to pass judgment on them, but inflamed adversaries resolved to combat them beforehand;—a weak and dangerous position, which greatly aggravates the difficulties of Government, whether engaged in the display of power, or the protection of liberty.

Not only was this the situation of the King's Government from 1816 to 1820, but even this was not regularly and powerfully established. Badly distributed amongst the actors, the characters were doubtfully filled in the interior of this new and uncertain party of the centre, on whom the government, through necessity, devolved. The principal portion of the heads of the majority in the Chambers held no office. From 1816 to 1819, several of those who represented and directed the centre, who addressed and supported it with prevailing influence, who defended it from the attacks of the right and left-hand parties, who established its power in debate and its credit with the public, MM. Royer-Collard, Camille Jordan, Beugnot, and de Serre, were excluded from the Cabinet. Amongst the eminent leaders of the majority, two only, M. Lainé and M. Pasquier were ministers. The Government, therefore, in the Chambers, relied on independent supporters who approved of their policy in general, but neither bore any part in the burden, nor acknowledged any share in the responsibility.

The doctrinarians had acquired their parliamentary influence and moral weight by principles and eloquence rather than by deeds; they maintained their opinions without applying them to practice; the flag of thought and the standard of action were in different hands. In the Chambers, the Ministers often appeared as the clients of the orators; the orators never looked upon their cause as identical with that of the Ministers; they preserved this distinction while supporting them; they had their own demands to make before they assented; they qualified their approval, and even sometimes dissented altogether. As the questions increased in importance and delicacy, so much the more independence and discord manifested themselves in the bosom of the ministerial party, with dangerous notoriety. During the session of 1817, M. Pasquier, then Chancellor, presented a bill to the Chamber of Deputies, which, while temporarily maintaining the censorship of the daily papers, comprised in other respects some modifications favourable to the liberty of the press. M. Camille Jordan and M. Royer-Collard demanded much greater concessions, particularly the application of trial by jury to press offences; and the bill, reluctantly passed by the Chamber of Deputies, was thrown out by the Chamber of Peers, when the Duke de Broglie urged the same amendments on similar principles. In 1817 also, a new Concordat had been negotiated and concluded at Rome by M. de Blacas. It contained the double and contradictory defect of invading by some of its specifications the liberties of the old Gallican Church; while, by the abolition of the Concordat of 1801, it inspired the new French society with lively alarms for its civil liberties. Little versed in such matters, and almost entirely absorbed in the negotiations for relieving France from the presence of foreigners, the Duke de Richelieu had confided this business to M. de Blacas, who was equally ignorant and careless of the importance of the old or new liberties of France, whether civil or religious. When this Concordat, respecting which the Ministers themselves were discontented and doubtful when they had carefully examined it, was presented to the Chamber of Deputies by M. Lainé, with the measures necessary for carrying it into effect, it was received with general disfavour. In committee, in the board appointed to report on it, in the discussions in the hall of conference, all the objections, political and historical, of principle or circumstance, that the bill could possibly excite, were argued and explained beforehand, so as to give warning of the most obstinate and dangerous debate. The doctrinarians openly declared for this premature opposition; and their support produced a strong effect, as they were known to be sincere friends to religion and its influences. It is true, M. Royer-Collard was accused of being a Jansenist; and thus an attempt was made to depreciate him in the eyes of the true believers of the Catholic Church. The reproach was frivolous. M. Royer-Collard had derived, from family traditions and early education, serious habits, studious inclinations, and an affectionate respect for the exalted minds of Port-Royal, for their virtue and genius; but he neither adopted their religious doctrines nor their systematic conclusions on the relative ties between Church and State. On all these questions he exercised a free and rational judgment, as a stranger to all extreme passion or sectarian prejudice, and not in the least disposed, either as Catholic or philosopher, to engage in obscure and endless quarrels with the Church. "I seek not to quibble with religion," he was wont to say; "it has enough to do to defend itself and us from impiety." The opposition of M. Royer-Collard to the Concordat of 1817 was the dissent of a politician and enlightened moralist, who foresaw the mischief which the public discussion, and adoption or rejection of this bill, would inflict on the influence of the Church, the credit of the Restoration, and the peace of the country. The Cabinet had prudence enough not to brave a danger which it had created, or suffered to grow on its steps. The report on the bill was indefinitely adjourned, and a fresh negotiation was opened with Rome by sending Count Portalis on a special mission, which ended in 1819 by the tacit withdrawal of the Concordat of 1817. The Duke de Richelieu, pressed by his colleagues, and his own tardy reflections, coincided in this retrograde movement; but he maintained a feeling of displeasure at the opposition of the doctrinarians and others on this occasion, which he sometimes gratified himself by indulging. In the month of March, 1818, some one, whose name I have forgotten, demanded of him a trifling favour. "It is impossible," replied he sharply; "MM. Royer-Collard, de Serre, Camille Jordan, and Guizot will not suffer it."

I had no reason to complain that my name was included in this ebullition. Although not a member of the Chamber, I openly adopted the opinions and conduct of my friends; I had both the opportunity and the means, in the discussions of the Council of State, in the drawing-room, and through the press,—channels which all parties employed with equal ardour and effect. In spite of the shackles which restrained the papers and periodical publications, they freely exercised the liberty which the Government no longer attempted to dispute, and to which the most influential politicians had recourse, to disseminate far and wide the brilliant flames or smouldering fire of their opposition. M. de Châteaubriand, M. de Bonald, M. de Villèle, in the 'Conservative,' and M. Benjamin Constant in the 'Minerva,' maintained an incessant assault on the Cabinet. The Cabinet in its defence, multiplied similar publications, such as the 'Moderator,' the 'Publicist,' and the 'Political and Literary Spectator.' But, for my friends and our cause, the defences of the Cabinet were not always desirable or sufficient; we therefore, from 1817 to 1820, had our own journals and periodical miscellanies,—the 'Courier,' the 'Globe,' the 'Philosophical, Political, and Literary Archives,' and the 'French Review;' and in these we discussed, according to our principles and hopes, sometimes general questions, and at others the incidental subjects of current policy, as they alternately presented themselves. I contributed much to these publications. Between our different adversaries and ourselves the contest was extremely unequal: whether they came from the right or the left, they represented old parties; they expressed ideas and sentiments long in circulation; they found a public predisposed to receive them. We were intruders in the political arena, officers seeking to recruit an army, moderate innovators. We attacked, in the name of liberty, theories and passions long popular under the same denomination. We defended the new French society according to its true rights and interests, but not in conformity with its tastes or habits. We had to conquer our public, while we combated our enemies. In this difficult attempt our position was somewhat doubtful: we were at the same time with and against the Government, royalists and liberals, ministerialists and independents; we acted sometimes in concert with the Administration, sometimes with the Opposition, and we were unable to avail ourselves of all the weapons of either power or liberty. But we were full of faith in our opinions, of confidence in ourselves, of hope in the future; and we pressed forward daily in our double contest, with as much devotion as pride, and with more pride than ambition.

All this has been strenuously denied; my friends and I have often been represented as deep plotters, greedy for office, eager and shrewd in pushing our fortunes through every opening, and more intent on our own ascendency than on the fate or wishes of the country,—a vulgar and senseless estimate, both of human nature and of our contemporary history. If ambition had been our ruling principle, we might have escaped many efforts and defeats. In times when the most brilliant fortunes, political or otherwise, were easily within reach of those who thought of nothing else, we only desired to achieve ours on certain moral conditions, and with the object of not caring for ourselves. Ambition we had, but in the service of a public cause; and one which, either in success or adversity, has severely tried the constancy of its defenders.

The most clear-sighted of the cabinet ministers in 1817, M. Decazes and M. Pasquier, whose minds were more free and less suspicious than those of the Duke de Richelieu and M. Lainé, were not deceived on this point: they felt the necessity of our alliance, and cultivated it with anxiety. But when it becomes a question of how to govern in difficult times, allies are not enough; intimate associates are necessary, devoted adherents in labour and peril. In this character, the doctrinarians, and particularly M. Royer-Collard, their leader in the Chambers, were mistrusted. They were looked upon as at once imperious and undecided, and more exacting than effective. Nevertheless, in November, 1819, after the election of M. Grégoire and in the midst of their projected reforms in the electoral law, M. Decazes, at the strong instigation of M. de Serre, proposed to M. Royer-Collard to join the Cabinet with one or two of his friends. M. Royer-Collard hesitated at first, then acceded for a moment, and finally declined. "You know not what you would do," said he to M. Decazes; "my method of dealing with affairs would differ entirely from yours: you elude questions, you shift and change them, you gain time, you settle things by halves; I, on the contrary, should attack them in front, bring them into open view, and dissect them before all the world. I should compromise instead of assisting you." M. Royer-Collard was in the right, and defined himself admirably, perhaps more correctly than he imagined. He was more calculated to advise and contest than to exercise power. He was rather a great spectator and critic than an eminent political actor. In the ordinary course of affairs he would have been too absolute, too haughty, and too slow. In a crisis, I question whether his mental reservations, his scruples of conscience, his horror of all public excitement, and his prevailing dread of responsibility, would have permitted him to preserve the cool self-possession, with the firm and prompt determination, which circumstances might have required. M. Decazes pressed him no further.

Even at this moment, after all I have seen and experienced, I am not prone to be discouraged, or inclined to believe that difficult achievements are impossible. However defective may be the internal constitution and combinations of the different parties who co-operate in carrying on public affairs, the upright conduct of individuals may remedy them; history furnishes more than one example of vicious institutions and situations, the evil results of which have been counteracted by the ability of political leaders and the sound sense of the public. But when to the evils of position, the errors of men are added,—when, instead of recognizing dangers in their true tendency, and opposing firm resistance, the chiefs and followers of parties either yield to or accelerate them, then the mischievous effects of pernicious courses inevitably and rapidly develop themselves. Errors were not wanting from 1816 to 1820 in every party, whether of Government or Opposition, of the centre, the right, or the left, of the ministers or doctrinarians. I make no parade of impartiality; in spite of their faults and misfortunes, I continue, with a daily increasing conviction, to look upon the Government I served, and the party I supported, to have been the best; but, for our own credit, let leisure and reflection teach us to acknowledge the mistakes we committed, and to prepare for our cause—which assuredly will not die with us—a more auspicious future.

The centre, in its governing mission, had considerable advantages; it suffered neither from moral embarrassments nor external clogs, it was perfectly free and unshackled,—essential qualifications in a great public career, and which at that time belonged neither to the right nor to the left-hand party.

The right had only accepted the Charter on the eve of its promulgation, and after strenuous resistance; a conspicuous and energetic section of the party still persisted in opposing it. That division which had seats in the Chambers, sided from day to day with the constitutional system,—the officers as intelligent and reflecting men, the soldiers as staunch and contented royalists; but neither, in these recognized capacities, inspired confidence in the country, which looked upon their adhesion to the Charter as constrained or conditional, always insincere and covering other views. The right, even while honestly accepting the Charter, had also party interests to satisfy; when it aspired to power, it was not solely to govern according to its principles, and to place the restored monarchy on a solid basis: it had private misfortunes to repair and positions to re-assume. It was not a pure and regular party of Tory royalists. The emigrants, the remains of the old court and clergy, were still influential amongst them, and eagerly bent on carrying out their personal expectations. By its composition and reminiscences, the party was condemned to much reserve and imprudence, to secret aspirations and indiscreet ebullitions, which, even while it professed to walk in constitutional paths, embarrassed and weakened its action at every step.

The situation of the left was no less confused. It represented, at that exact epoch, not the interests and sentiments of France in general, but the interests and sentiments of that portion of France which had ardently, indistinctly, and obstinately promoted and sustained the Revolution, under its republican or imperial form. It cherished against the House of Bourbon and the Restoration an old habit of hostility, which the Hundred Days had revived, which the most rational of the party could scarcely throw off, the most skilful with difficulty concealed, and the gravest considered it a point of honour to display as a protest and corner-stone. In November 1816, a man of probity, as sincere in the renunciation of his opinions of 1789 as he had formerly been in their profession, the Viscount Matthieu de Montmorency, complained, in a drawing-room of the party, that the Liberals had no love for legitimacy. A person present defended himself from this reproach. "Yes," said M. de Montmorency, with thoughtless candour, "you love legitimacy as we do the Charter." A keen satire on the false position of both parties under the government of the Charter and of legitimacy!

But if the right-hand party or the left, if the members of either in the Chambers, had followed only their sincere convictions and desires, the greater portion, I am satisfied, would have frankly accepted and supported the Restoration with the Charter, the Charter with the Restoration. When men are seriously engaged in a work and feel the weight of responsibility, they soon discover the true course, and would willingly follow it. But, both in the right and left, the wisest and best-disposed feared to proclaim the truth which they saw, or to adopt it as their rule of conduct; both were under the yoke of their external party, of its passions as of its interests, of its ignorance as of its passions. It has been one of the sorest wounds of our age, that few men have preserved sufficient firmness of mind and character to think freely, and act as they think. The intellectual and moral independence of individuals disappeared under the pressure of events and before the heat of popular clamours and desires. Under such a general slavery of thought and action, there are no longer just or mistaken minds, cautious or rash spirits, officers or soldiers; all yield to the same controlling passion, and bend before the same wind; common weakness reduces all to one common level; hierarchy and discipline vanish; the last lead the first; for the last press and drive onwards, being themselves impelled by that tyranny from without, of which they have been the most blind and ready instruments.

As a political party, the centre, in the Chambers from 1816 to 1820, was not tainted by this evil. Sincere in its adoption of the Restoration and the Charter, no external pressure could disturb or falsify its position. It remained unfettered in thought and deed. It openly acknowledged its object, and marched directly towards it; selecting, within, the leaders most capable of conducting it there, and having no supporters without who looked for any other issue. It was thus that, in spite of its other deficiencies for powerful government, the centre was at that time the fittest party to rule, the only one capable of maintaining order in the State, while tolerating the liberty of its rivals.

But to reap the full fruits of this advantage, and to diminish at the same time the natural defects of the centre in its mission, it was necessary that it should adopt a fixed idea, a conviction that the different elements of the party were indispensable to each other; and that, to accomplish the object pursued by all with equal sincerity, mutual concessions and sacrifices were called for, to maintain this necessary union. When Divine wisdom intended to secure the power of a human connection, it forbade divorce. Political ties cannot admit this inviolability; but if they are not strongly knit, if the contracting parties are not firmly resolved to break them only in the last extremity and under the most imperious pressure, they soon end, not only in impotence, but in disorder; and by their too easy rupture, policy becomes exposed to new difficulties and disturbances. I have thus pointed out the discrepancies and different opinions which, from the beginning, existed between the two principal elements of the centre: the Ministers, with their pure adherents, on the one side, and the doctrinarians on the other. From the second session after the decree of the 5th of September, 1816, these differences increased until they grew into dissensions.

While acknowledging the influence of the doctrinarians in the Chambers, and the importance of their co-operation, neither the Ministers nor their advocates measured correctly the value of this alliance, or the weight of the foundation from which that value was derived. Philosophers estimate too highly the general ideas with which they are prepossessed; politicians withhold from general ideas the attention and interest they are entitled to demand. Intelligence is proud and sensitive; it looks for consideration and respect, even though its suggestions may be disallowed; and those who treat it lightly or coldly sometimes pay heavily for their mistake. It is, moreover, an evidence of narrow intellect not to appreciate the part which general principles assume in the government of men, or to regard them as useless or hostile because we are not disposed to adopt them as guides. In our days, especially, and notwithstanding the well-merited disrepute into which so many theories have fallen, philosophic deduction, on all the leading questions and facts of policy, is a sustaining power, on which the ablest and most secure ministers would do wisely to rely. The doctrinarians at that period represented this power, and employed it fearlessly against the spirit of revolution, as well as in favour of the constitutional system. The Cabinet of 1816 undervalued the part they played, and paid too little attention to their ideas and desires. The application of trial by jury to offences of the press was not, I admit, unattended by danger; but it was much better to try that experiment, and by so doing to maintain union in the Government party, than to divide it by absolutely disregarding, on this question, M. Camille Jordan, M. Royer-Collard, and their friends.

All power, and, above all, recent power, demands an impression of grandeur in its acts and on its insignia. Order, and the regular protection of private interests, that daily bread of nations, will not long satisfy their wants. To secure these is an inseparable care of Government, but they do not comprise the only need of humanity. Human nature finds the other enjoyments for which it thirsts in opposite distinctions, moral or physical, just or unjust, solid or ephemeral. It has neither enough of virtue nor wisdom to render absolute greatness indispensable; but in every position it requires to see, conspicuously displayed, something exalted, which may attract and occupy the imagination. After the Empire, which had accustomed France to all the delights of national pre-eminence and glory, the spectacle of free and lofty thought displaying itself with moral dignity, and some show of talent, was not deficient in novelty or attraction, while the chance of its success outweighed the value of the cost.

The Ministers were not more skilful in dealing with the personal tempers than with the ideas of the doctrinarians, who were as haughty and independent in character as they were elevated in mind, and ready to take offence when any disposition was evinced to apply their opinions and conduct without their own consent. Nothing is more distasteful to power than to admit, to any great extent, the independence of its supporters; it considers them treated with sufficient respect if taken into confidence, and is readily disposed to view them as servants. M. Lainé, then Minister of the Interior, wrote one morning to M. Cuvier to say that the King had just named him Royal Commissioner, to second a bill which would be presented on the following day to the Chamber of Deputies. He had not only neglected to apprise him before of the duty he was to undertake, but he did not even mention in the note the particular bill he instructed him to support. M. Cuvier, more subservient than susceptible, with power, made no complaint of this treatment, but related it with a smile. A few days before, the Minister of Finance, M. Corvetto, had also appointed M. de Serre Commissioner for the defence of the budget, without asking whether this appointment was agreeable to him, or holding any conference even on the fundamental points of the budget he was expected to carry through. On receiving notice of this nomination, M. de Serre felt deeply offended. "It is either an act of folly or impertinence," said he loudly; "perhaps both." M. de Serre deceived himself; it was neither the one nor the other. M. Corvetto was an extremely polite, careful, and modest person; but he was of the Imperial school, and more accustomed to give orders to agents than to concert measures with members of the Chambers. By habits as well as ideas, the doctrinarians belonged to a liberal system,—troublesome allies of power, on the termination of a military and administrative monarchy.

I know not which is the most difficult undertaking,—to transform the functionaries of absolute power into the supporters of a free Government, or to organize and discipline the friends of liberty into a political party. If the Ministers sometimes disregarded the humour of the doctrinarians, the doctrinarians in their turn too lightly estimated the position and task of the Ministers. They had in reality, whatever has been said of sectarian passions and ideas, neither the ambition nor the vanity of a coterie; they possessed open, generous, and expanded minds, extremely accessible to sympathy; but, too much accustomed to live alone and depend on themselves, they scarcely thought of the effect which their words and actions produced beyond their own circle; and thus social faults were laid to their charge which they had not the least desire to commit. Their political mistakes were more real. In their relations with power, they were sometimes intemperate and offensive in language, unnecessarily impatient, not knowing how to be contented with what was possible, or how to wait for amelioration without too visible an effort. These causes led them to miscalculate the impediments, necessities, and practicable resources of the Government they sincerely wished to establish. In the Chambers, they were too exclusive and pugnacious, more intent on proving their opinions than on gaining converts, despising rather than desiring recruits, and little gifted with the talent of attraction and combination so essential to the leaders of a party. They were not sufficiently acquainted with the difficulties of carrying out a sound scheme of policy, nor with the infinite variety of efforts, sacrifices, and cares which are comprised in the art of governing.

From 1816 to 1818 the vices of their position and the mistakes committed, infused into the Government and its party a continual ferment, and the seeds of internal discord which prevented them from acquiring the necessary strength and consistency. The mischief burst forth towards the end of 1818, when the Duke de Richelieu returned from the conferences of Aix-la-Chapelle, reporting the withdrawal of the foreign armies, the complete evacuation of our territory, and the definitive settlement of the financial burdens which the Hundred Days had imposed on France. On his arrival he saw his Cabinet on the point of dissolution, and vainly attempted to form a new one, but was finally compelled to abandon the power he had never sought or enjoyed, but which, assuredly, he was unwilling to lose by compulsion in the midst of his diplomatic triumph, and to see it pass into hands determined to employ it in a manner totally opposed to his own intentions.

A check like this, at such a moment, and to such a man, was singularly unjust and unseasonable. Since 1815, the Duke de Richelieu had rendered valuable services to France and to the King. He alone had obtained some mitigation to the conditions of a very harsh treaty of peace, which nothing but sincere and sad devotion had induced him to sign, while feeling the full weight of what he sacrificed in attaching to it his illustrious name, and seeking no self-glorification from an act of honest patriotism. No man was ever more free from exaggeration or quackery in the display of his sentiments. Fifteen months after the ratification of peace, he induced the foreign powers to consent to a considerable reduction in the army of occupation. A year later, he limited to a fixed sum the unbounded demands of the foreign creditors of France. Finally, he had just signed the entire emancipation of the national soil four years before the term rigorously prescribed by treaties. The King, on his return, thanked him in noble words: "Duke de Richelieu," he said, "I have lived long enough, since, thanks to you, I have seen the French flag flying over every town in France." The sovereigns of Europe treated him with esteem and confidence. A rare example of a statesman, who, without great actions or superior abilities, had, by the uprightness of his character and the unselfish tenor of his life, achieved such universal and undisputed respect! Although the Duke de Richelieu had only been engaged in foreign affairs, he was better calculated than has been said, not so much to direct effectively as to preside over the internal government of the Restoration. A nobleman of exalted rank, and a tried Royalist, he was neither in mind or feeling a courtier nor an Emigrant; he had no preconceived dislike to the new state of society or the new men; without thoroughly understanding free institutions, he had no prejudice against them, and submitted to their exercise without an effort. Simple in his manners, true and steady in his words, and a friend to the public good, if he failed to exercise a commanding influence in the Chambers, he maintained full authority near the King; and a constitutional Government, resting on the parliamentary centre, could not, at that period, have possessed a more worthy or more valuable president.

But at the close of 1818 the Duke de Richelieu felt himself compelled, and evinced that he was resolved, to engage in a struggle in which the considerations of gratitude and prosperity I have here reverted to proved to be ineffective weapons on his side. In virtue of the Charter, and in conformity with the electoral law of the 5th of February, 1817, two-fifths of the Chamber of Deputies had been renewed since the formation of his Cabinet. The first trial of votes, in 1817, had proved satisfactory to the Restoration and its friends; not more than two or three recognized names were added to the left-hand party, which, even after this reinforcement, only amounted to twenty members. At the second trial in 1818, the party acquired more numerous and much more distinguished recruits; about twenty-five new members, and amongst them MM. de La Fayette, Benjamin Constant, and Manuel, were enrolled in its ranks. The number was still weak, but important as a rallying point, and prognostic. An alarm, at once sincere and interested, exhibited itself at court and in the right-hand party; they found themselves on the eve of a new revolution, but their hopes were also excited: since the enemies of the House of Bourbon were forcing themselves into the Chamber, the King would at length feel the necessity of replacing power in the hands of his friends. The party had not waited the issue of these last elections to attempt a great enterprise. Secret notes, drawn up under the eye of the Count d'Artois, and by his most intimate confidants, had been addressed to the foreign sovereigns, to point out to them this growing mischief, and to convince them that a change in the advisers of the crown was the only safe measure to secure monarchy in France, and to preserve peace in Europe. The Duke de Richelieu, in common with his colleagues, and with a feeling of patriotism far superior to personal interest, felt indignant at these appeals to foreign intervention for the internal government of the country. M. de Vitrolles was struck off from the Privy Council, as author of the principal of the three Secret notes. The European potentates paid little attention to such announcements, having no faith either in the sound judgment or disinterested views of the men from whom they emanated. Nevertheless, after the elections of 1818, they also began to feel uneasy. It was from prudence, and not choice, that they had sanctioned and maintained the constitutional system in France; they looked upon it as necessary to close up the Revolution. If, on the contrary, it once again opened its doors, the peace of Europe would be more compromised than ever; for then the Revolution would assume the semblance of legality. But neither in France nor in Europe did any one at that time, even amongst the greatest alarmists and the most intimidated, dream of interfering with the constitutional system; in universal opinion it had acquired with us the privileges of citizenship. The entire evil was imputed to the law of elections. It was at Aix-la-Chapelle, while surrounded by the sovereigns and their ministers, that the Duke de Richelieu was first apprised of the newly-elected members whom this law had brought upon the scene. The Emperor Alexander expressed to him his amazement; the Duke of Wellington advised Louis XVIII. "to unite himself more closely with the Royalists." The Duke de Richelieu returned to France with a determination to reform the electoral law, or no longer to incur the responsibility of its results.

Institutions attacked have no voice in their own defence, and men gladly charge on them their individual errors. I shall not commit this injustice, or abandon a sound idea because it has been compromised or perverted in application. The principle of the electoral law of the 5th of February, 1817, was good in itself, and still remains good, although it was insufficient to prevent the evil of our own want of foresight and intemperate passions.

When a free government is seriously desired, we must choose between the principle of the law of the 5th of February, 1817, and universal suffrage,—between the right of voting confined to the higher classes of society and that extended to the popular masses. I believe the direct and defined right of suffrage to be alone effectual in securing the action of the country upon the Government. On this common condition, the two systems may constitute a real control over power, and substantial guarantees for liberty. Which is to be preferred?—this is a question of epoch, of situation, of degree of civilization, and of form of government. Universal suffrage is well suited to republican associations, small or federative, newly instituted or mature in wisdom and political virtue. The right of voting confined to a more elevated class, and exercised in a strong assumption of the spirit of order, of independence, and intelligence, is more applicable to great single and monarchical states. This was our reason for making it the basis of the law of 1817. We dreaded republican tendencies, which with us, and in our days, are nearly synonymous with anarchy; we regarded monarchy as natural, and constitutional monarchy as necessary, to France; we wished to organize it sincerely and durably, by securing under this system, to the conservative elements of French society as at present constituted, an influence which appeared to us as much in conformity with the interests of liberty as with those of power.

It was the disunion of the monarchical party that vitiated the electoral system of 1817, and took away its strength with its truth. By placing political power in the hands of property, intelligence, independent position, and great interests naturally conservative, the system rested on the expectation that these interests would be habitually united, and would defend, in common accord, order and right against the spirit of license and revolution, the fatal bias of the age. But, from their very first steps, the different elements of the great royalist party, old or new, aristocratic or plebeian, plunged into discord, equally blind to the weakness with which it infected them all, and thus opening the door to the hopes and efforts of their common enemies, the revolutionists. From thence, and not from the electoral law of 1817, or from its principle, came the mischief which in 1818 it was considered desirable to check by repealing that enactment.

I am ready to admit in express terms, for it may be alleged with justice, that, when in 1816 and 1817 we prepared and defended the law of elections, we might have foreseen the state of general feeling under which it was to be applied. Discord between the components of the monarchical party was neither a strange nor a sudden fact; it existed at that time; the Royalists of old and new France were already widely separated. I incline to think that, even had we attached more importance to their future contests, we should still have pursued the same course. We were in presence of an imperative necessity: new France felt that she was attacked, and required defence; if she had not found supporters amongst the Royalists, she would have sought for them, as she has too often done, in the camp of the Revolution. But what may explain or even excuse a fault cannot effect its suppression. Our policy in 1816 and 1817 regarded too lightly the disagreements of the monarchical party, and the possible return of the Revolutionists; we miscalculated the extent of both dangers. It is the besetting error of men entrammelled in the fetters of party, to forget that there are many opposite facts which skilful policy should turn to profitable account, and to pass over all that are not inscribed with brilliancy on their standard.

On leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, where he had been so fortunate, the Duke de Richelieu, although far from presumptuous, expected, I have no doubt, to be equally successful in his design of repealing the law of elections. Success deceives the most unassuming, and prevents them from foreseeing an approaching reverse. On his arrival, he found the undertaking much more difficult than he had anticipated. In the Cabinet, M. Molé alone fully seconded his intentions. M. Decazes and Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr declared strongly for the law as it stood. M. Lainé, while fully admitting that it ought to be modified, refused to take any part in the matter, having been, as he said, the first to propose and maintain it. M. Roy, who had lately superseded M. Corvetto in the department of finance, cared little for the electoral question, but announced that he would not remain in the Cabinet without M. Decazes, whom he considered indispensable, either in the Chambers or near the King's person. Discord raged within and without the Ministry. In the Chambers, the centre was divided; the left defended the law vehemently; the right declared itself ready to support any minister who proposed its reform, but at the same time repudiated M. Decazes, the author of the decree of the 5th of September, 1816, and of all its consequences. The public began to warm into the question. Excitement and confusion went on increasing. It was evidently not the electoral law alone, but the general policy of the Restoration and the Government of France, that formed the subject of debate.

In a little work which the historians of this period, M. de Lamartine amongst others, have published, the King, Louis XVIII. himself has related the incidents and sudden turns of this ministerial crisis, which ended, as is well known, in the retirement of the Duke de Richelieu, with four of his colleagues, and in the promotion of M. Decazes, who immediately constructed a new Cabinet, of which he was the head, without appearing to preside, while M. de Serre, appointed to the seals, became the powerful organ in the Chambers, and the maintenance of the law of elections was adopted as the symbol. Two sentiments, under simple forms, pervade this kingly recital: first, a certain anxiety, on the part of the author, that no blame should be attached to him in his royal character, or in his conduct towards the Duke de Richelieu, and a desire to exculpate himself from these charges; secondly, a little of that secret pleasure which kings indulge in, even under heavy embarrassments, when they see a minister fall whose importance was not derived from themselves, and who has served them without expecting or receiving favours.

"If I had only consulted my own opinion," says the King, in concluding his statement, "I should have wished M. Decazes, uniting his lot, as he had always intended, with that of the Duke de Richelieu, to have left the Ministry with him." It would have been happy for M. Decazes if this desire of the King had prevailed. Not that he erred in any point of duty or propriety by surviving the Duke de Richelieu in office, and in forming a Cabinet without him; an important misunderstanding on a pressing question had already separated them. M. Decazes, after tendering his resignation, had raised no obstacle to the Duke's efforts at finding new colleagues; it was only on the failure of those attempts, frankly avowed by the Duke himself, and at the formal request of the King, that he had undertaken to form a ministry. As a friend of M. de Richelieu, and the day before his colleague, there were certainly unpleasant circumstances and appearances attached to this position; but M. Decazes was free to act, and could scarcely refuse to carry out the policy he had recommended in council, when that which he had opposed acknowledged itself incapable. Yet the new Cabinet was not strong enough for the enterprise it undertook; with the centre completely shaken and divided, it had to contend against the right-hand party more irritated than ever, and the left evidently inimical, although through decency it lent to Government a precarious support. The Cabinet of M. Decazes, as a ministerial party, retained much inferior forces to those which had surrounded the Duke de Richelieu, and had to contest with two bitter enemies, the one inaccessible to peace or truce, the other sometimes appearing friendly, but suddenly turning round and attacking the Ministry with eager malevolence, when an opportunity offered, and with hesitating hostility when compelled to dissemble.

The doctrinarians, who, in co-operation with M. Decazes, had defended the law of elections, energetically supported the new Cabinet, in which they were brilliantly represented by M. de Serre. Success was not wanting at the commencement. By a mild and active administration, by studied care of its partisans, by frequent and always favourably received appeals to the royal clemency in behalf of the exiles still excepted from amnesty, even including the old regicides, M. Decazes sought and won extensive popularity; Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr satisfied the remnants of the old army, by restoring to the new the ablest of its former leaders; M. de Serre triumphantly defended the Ministry in the Chambers; his bills, boldly liberal, and his frank opposition to revolutionary principles, soon acquired for him, even with his adversaries, a just reputation for eloquence and sincerity. In the parliamentary arena it was an effective and upright Ministry; with the country it was felt to be a Government loyally constitutional. But it had more brilliancy than strength; and neither its care of individual interests, nor its successes in the tribune, were sufficient to rally round it the great Government party which its formation had divided. Discord arose between the Chambers themselves. The Chamber of Peers, by adopting the proposition of the Marquis Barthélemy, renewed the struggle against the electoral law. In vain did the Chamber of Deputies repel this attack; in vain did the Cabinet, by creating sixty new Peers, break down the majority in the palace of the Luxembourg; these half triumphs and legal extremes decided nothing. Liberal governments are condemned to see the great questions perpetually revived which revolutions bequeath to society, and which even glorious despotism suspends without solving. The right-hand party was passionately bent on repossessing the power which had recently escaped them. The left defended, at any cost, the Revolution, more insulted than in danger. The centre, dislocated and doubtful of the future, wavered between the hostile parties, not feeling itself in a condition to impose peace on all, and on the point of being confounded in the ranks of one side or the other. The Cabinet, ever victorious in daily debate, and supported by the King's favour, felt itself nevertheless feebly surrounded and precariously placed, with the air of expecting a favourable or a hostile incident, to bring the security it wanted, or to overthrow it altogether.

The events which men call accidents are never wanting in such situations. During the space of a few months the Cabinet of 1819 experienced two,—the election of M. Grégoire, and the assassination of the Duke de Berry; and these two decided its fate.

It is difficult to look upon the election of M. Grégoire as an accident; it was proposed and settled beforehand in the central committee established at Paris to superintend elections in general, and which was called the managing committee. This particular election was decided on at Grenoble in the college assembled on the 11th of September, 1819, by a certain number of votes of the right-hand party, which at the second round of balloting were carried to the credit of the left-hand candidate, and gave him a majority which otherwise he could not have obtained. To excuse this scandal, when it became known, some apologists pretended that M. Grégoire was not in fact a regicide, because, even though he had approved of the condemnation of Louis XVI. in his letters to the Convention, his vote at least had not been included in the fatal list. Again, when the admission of the deputy was disputed in the Chamber, the left-hand party, to get rid of him, while eluding the true cause of refusal, eagerly proposed to annul the election on the ground of irregularity. When improvident violence fails, men gladly shelter themselves under pusillanimous subtlety. It was unquestionably in the character of a Conventional regicide, and with premeditated reflection, not by any local or sudden accident, that M. Grégoire had been elected. No act was ever more deliberately arranged and accomplished by party feelings. Sincere in the perverse extravagancies of his mind, and faithful to his avowed principles, although forgetful and weak in their application, openly a Christian, and preaching tolerance under the Convention, while he sanctioned the most unrelenting persecution of the priests who refused to submit to the yoke of its new church; a republican and oppositionist under the Empire, while consenting to be a senator and a Count, this old man, as inconsistent as obstinate, was the instrument of a signal act of hostility against the Restoration, to become immediately the pretext for a corresponding act of weakness. A melancholy end to a sad career!

The assassination of the Duke de Berry might with much more propriety be called an accident. On the trial it was proved by evidence that Louvel had no accomplices, and that he was alone in the conception as in the execution of his crime. But it was also evident that hatred against the Bourbons had possessed the soul and armed the hand of the murderer. Revolutionary passions are a fire which is kindled and nourished afar off; the orators of the right obtained credit with many timid and horror-stricken minds, when they called this an accident;—as it is also an accident if a diseased constitution catches the plague when it infects the air, or if a powder-magazine explodes when you strike fire in its immediate neighbourhood.

M. Decazes endeavoured to defend himself against these two heavy blows. After the election of M. Grégoire, he undertook to accomplish alone what at the close of the preceding year he had refused to attempt in concert with the Duke de Richelieu. He determined to alter the law of elections. It was intended that this change should take place in a great constitutional reform meditated by M. de Serre, liberal on certain points, monarchical on others, and which promised to give more firmness to royalty by developing representative government. M. Decazes made a sincere effort to induce the Duke de Richelieu, who was then travelling in Holland, to return and reassume the presidency of the Council, and to co-operate with him in the Chambers for the furtherance of this bold undertaking. The King himself applied to the Duke de Richelieu, who positively declined, more from disgust with public affairs and through diffidence of his own power, than from any remains of ill-humour or resentment. Three actual members of the Cabinet of 1819, General Dessoles, Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, and Baron Louis, declared that they would not co-operate in any attack on the existing law of elections. M. Decazes determined to do without them, as he had dispensed with the Duke de Richelieu, and to form a new Cabinet, of which he became the president, and in which M. Pasquier, General Latour-Maubourg, and M. Roy replaced the three retiring ministers. On the 29th of November the King opened the session. Two months passed over, and the new electoral system had not yet been presented to the Chamber. Three days after the assassination of the Duke de Berry, M. Decazes introduced it suddenly, with two bills to suspend personal liberty, and re-establish the censorship of the daily press. Four days later he fell, and the Duke de Richelieu, standing alone before the King and the danger, consented to resume power. M. Decazes would have acted more wisely had he submitted to his first defeat, and induced the King after the election of M. Grégoire, to take back the Duke de Richelieu as minister. He would not then have been compelled to lower with his own hand the flag he had raised, and to endure the burden of a great miscarriage.

The fall of the Cabinet of 1819, brought on a new crisis, and a fresh progress of the evil which disorganized the great Government party formed during the session of 1815, and by the decree of the 5th of September, 1816. To the successive divisions of the centre, were now added the differences between the doctrinarians themselves. M. de Serre, who had joined the Cabinet with M. Decazes to defend the law of elections, now determined, although sick and absent, to remain there with the Duke de Richelieu to overthrow it, without any of the compensations, real or apparent, which his grand schemes of constitutional reform were intended to supply. I tried in vain to dissuade him from his resolution.[15] In the Chamber of Deputies, M. Royer-Collard and M. Camille Jordan vehemently attacked the new electoral plan; the Duke de Broglie and M. de Barante proposed serious amendments to it in the Chamber of Peers. All the political ties which had been cemented during five years appeared to be dissolved; every one followed his own private opinion, or returned to his old bias. In the parliamentary field, all was uncertainty and confused opposition; a phantom appeared at each extremity, revolution and counter-revolution, exchanging mutual menaces, and equally impatient to come to issue.

Those who wish to give themselves a correct idea of parliamentary and popular excitement, pushed to their extreme limit, and yet retained within that boundary by legal authority and the good sense of the public,—sufficient to arrest the country on the brink of an abyss, although too weak to block up the road that leads to it,—should read the debate on the new electoral bill introduced into the Chamber of Deputies on the 17th of April, 1820, by the second Cabinet of the Duke de Richelieu, and discussed for twenty-six days in that Chamber, accompanied with riotous gatherings without, thoughtlessly aggressive and sternly repressed. If we are to believe the orators of the left, France and her liberties, the Revolution and its conquests, the honour of the present, and the security of the future, were all lost if the ministerial bill should pass. The right, on the other hand, looked upon the bill as scarcely strong enough to save the monarchy for the moment, and declared its resolution to reject every amendment which might diminish its powers. On both sides, pretensions and claims were equally ungovernable. Attracted and excited by this legal quarrel, the students, the enthusiastic young Liberals, the old professional disturbers, the idlers and oppositionists of every class, were engaged daily with the soldiers and the agents of police, in conflicts sometimes sanguinary, and the accounts of which redoubled the acrimony of the debate withindoors. In the midst of this general commotion, the Cabinet of 1820 had the merit of maintaining, while repressing all popular movement, the freedom of legislative deliberation, and of acting its part in these stormy discussions with perseverance and moderation. M. Pasquier, their Minister for Foreign Affairs, endowed with rare self-command and presence of mind, was on this occasion the principal parliamentary champion of the Cabinet; and M. Mounier, Director-General of the Police, controlled the street riots with as much prudence as active firmness. The charge so often brought against so many ministers, against M. Casimir Perrier in 1831, as against the Duke de Richelieu in 1820, of exciting popular commotions only to repress them, does not deserve the notice of sensible men. At the end of a month, all these debates and scenes, within and without, ended in the adoption, not of the ministerial bill, but of an amendment which, without destroying in principle the bill of the 5th of February, 1817, so materially vitiated it, to the advantage of the right, that the party felt themselves bound to be satisfied. The greater portion of the centre, and the more moderate members of the left, submitted for the sake of public peace. The extreme left and the extreme right, M. Manuel and M. de la Bourdonnaye entered a protest. The new electoral system was clearly destined to shift the majority, and, with the majority, power, from the left to the right; but the liberties of France, and the advantages gained by the Revolution, were not endangered by the change.

This question once settled, the Cabinet had to pay its debts to the right-hand party,—rewards to those who had supported it, and punishments to its opposers. In spite of old friendships, the doctrinarians figured of necessity in the last category. If I had desired it, I might have escaped. Not being a member of either Chamber, and beyond the circle of constrained action, I could in my capacity of State Councillor have maintained reserve and silence after giving my advice to the Government; but on entering public life, I had resolved on one uniform course,—to express my true thoughts on every occasion, and never to separate myself from my friends. M. de Serre included me, with good reason, in the measure which removed them from the Council; on the 17th of June, 1820, he wrote to MM. Royer-Collard, Camille Jordan, Barante, and myself, to inform us that we were no longer on the list. The best men readily assume the habits and style of absolute power. M. de Serre was certainly not deficient in self-respect or confidence in his own opinions; he felt surprised that in this instance I should have obeyed mine, without any other more coercive necessity, and evinced this feeling by communicating my removal with unqualified harshness. "The evident hostility," he said to me, "which, without the shadow of a pretext, you have lately exhibited towards the King's Government, has rendered this step inevitable." My answer was simply this:—"I expected your letter. I might have foreseen, and I did anticipate it, when I openly evinced my disapprobation of the acts and speeches of the Ministry. I congratulate myself that I have nothing to alter in my conduct. Tomorrow, as yesterday, I shall belong only and entirely to myself."[16]

The decisive step was taken; power had changed its course with its friends. After having turned it to this new direction, the Duke de Richelieu and his colleagues made sincere efforts during two years to arrest its further progress. They tried all methods of conciliation or resistance; sometimes they courted the right, at others the remains of the centre, and occasionally even the left, by concessions of principle, and more frequently of a personal nature. M. de Châteaubriand was sent as Ambassador to Berlin, and General Clauzel was declared entitled to the amnesty. M. de Villèle and M. Corbière obtained seats in the Cabinet, the first as minister without a portfolio, and the other as president of the Royal Council of Public Instruction; they left it, however, at the expiration of six months, under frivolous pretexts, but foreseeing the approaching fall of the Ministry, and not wishing to be there at the last moment. They were not deceived. The elections of 1821 completed the decimation of the weak battalion which still endeavoured to stand firm round tottering power. The Duke de Richelieu, who had only resumed office on a personal promise from the Count d'Artois of permanent support, complained loudly, with the independent spirit of a nobleman of high rank and of a man of honour, that the word of a gentleman, pledged to him, had not been kept. Vain complaints, and futile efforts! The Cabinet obtained time with difficulty; but the right-hand party alone gained ground. At length, on the 19th of December, 1821, the last shadow of the Government of the Centre vanished with the ministry of the Duke de Richelieu. The right and M. de Villèle seized the reins of power. "The counter-revolution is approaching!" exclaimed the left, in a mingled burst of satisfaction and alarm. M. de Villèle thought differently; a little before the decisive crisis, and after having, in his quality of vice-president, directed for some days the deliberations of the Chamber of Deputies, he wrote as follows to one of his friends:—"You will scarcely believe how my four days of presidency have succeeded. I received compliments on every side, but particularly, I own it to my shame, from the left, whom I have never conciliated. They expected, without doubt, to be eaten up alive by an ultra. They are inexhaustible in eulogium. Finally, those to whom I never speak, now address me with a thousand compliments. I think in this there is a little spite against M. Ravez. But, be that as it may, if a president were just now to be elected, I should have almost every vote in the Chamber.... For myself, impartiality costs me nothing. I look only to the success of the affairs I have undertaken, and have not the slightest prejudice against individuals. I am born for the end of revolutions."