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!