The next link in the chain of events,—a final treaty of peace between France and Europe having been concluded (on the 30th of May),—was the promulgation of the long-promised constitution; for the sovereigns who were still in Paris, and with whom the Restoration had commenced, were anxious to leave it; and they said that they could not do so until the promises they had made to the French nation were fulfilled.
The 4th of June, therefore, was fixed for this national act.
The King had promised, as it has been seen, that the frame of a constitution should be submitted to the Senate and the legislative body.
He appointed the Abbé Montesquieu, whom we have already named, and a M. Ferrand, a person of some consideration with the Royalist party, to sketch the outline of this great work, assisted by M. de Beugnot, an accomplished gentleman, not very particular in his principles, but very adroit in his phraseology; when done, such sketch was submitted to and approved by the King, and passed on to two commissions, one chosen from the Senate and the other from the legislative body, the king reserving to himself the right of settling disputed points.
The result was generally satisfactory, for though the constitution was so framed as to give it the air of being a grant from the royal authority, it contained the most essential principles of a representative government, namely:—
Equality before the law, and in the distribution of taxation,—the admissibility of all to public employments,—the inviolability of the monarch,—the responsibility of ministers,—the freedom of religion,—the necessity of annual budgets;—and, finally, the permission to express in print and by publication all opinions—such permission being controlled by laws, which were to repress or punish its abuse.
There was to be a lower chamber with the qualification for the electors of the payment of three hundred francs, direct taxes; and, for the eligible, of one thousand francs.
The upper chamber was not then made hereditary, though the King might give an hereditary peerage. A great portion of the Senate, the dukes and peers before the Revolution, and other persons of distinction, formed the house of peers. The legislative body was to act as the lower chamber until the time for which the members had been chosen was expired. The senators, not carried on into the peerage, were given as a pension the payment that formerly attached to their function.
The King bargained that the new constitution should be called “La Charte Constitutionnelle;” “Charte” being an old word that the kings had formerly employed, and that it should be dated in the nineteenth year of his reign.
The preamble also stated that “the King, in entire possession of his full rights over this beautiful kingdom, only desires to exercise the authority he holds from God and his ancestors, in determining the bounds of his own power.” A phrase which somewhat resembles one of Bolingbroke’s, who says: “The infinite power of God is limited by His infinite wisdom.”