"Amongst the electors by whom I am surrounded here, I have met with nothing but moderate, patient, and loyal dispositions. M. de Daunant has just been elected, on the 13th of July instant, by the Divisional College of Nismes; he had 296 votes against 241 given in favour of M. Daniel Murjas, president of the college. When the result was announced, the official secretary proposed to the assembly to pass a vote of thanks to the president, who, notwithstanding his own candidateship, had presided with most complete impartiality and loyalty. The vote was carried on the instant, in the midst of loud cries of "Long live the King!" and the electors, as they retired, found in all quarters the same tranquillity and gravity which they had themselves preserved in the discharge of their own duties."
On the 12th of July, when news of the capture of Algiers arrived, I wrote thus:—"And so the African campaign is over, and well over; ours, which must commence in about two months, will be rather more difficult; but no matter; I hope this success will not stimulate power to the last madness, and I prefer our national honour to all parliamentary considerations."
I do not pretend to assert that the foregoing sentiments were those of all who, whether in the Chambers or in the country, had approved the Address of the Two Hundred and Twenty-one, and who, at the elections, voted for its support. The Restoration had not achieved such complete conquests in France. Inactive, but not resigned, the secret societies were ever in existence; ready, when opportunity occurred, to resume their work of conspiracy and destruction. Other adversaries, more legitimate but not less formidable, narrowly watched every mistake of the King and his Government, and sedulously brought them under public comment, expecting and prognosticating still more serious errors, which would lead to extreme consequences. Amongst the popular masses, a deeply rooted instinct of suspicion and hatred to all that recalled the old system and the invasion of the foreigners, continued to supply arms and inexhaustible hopes to the enemies of the Restoration. The people resemble the ocean, motionless and almost immutable at the bottom, however violent may be the storms which agitate the surface. Nevertheless, the spirit of legality and sound political reason had made remarkable progress; even during the ferment of the elections, public feeling loudly repudiated all idea of a new revolution. Never was the situation of those who sincerely wished to support the King and the Charter more favourable or powerful; they had given evidences of persevering firmness by legitimate opposition, they had lately maintained with reputation the principles of representative government, they enjoyed the esteem and even the favour of the public; the more violent party, through necessity, and the country, with some hesitation, mingled with honest hope, followed in their rear. If at this critical moment they could have succeeded with the King as with the Chambers and the country,—if Charles X., after having by the dissolution pushed his royal prerogative to the extreme verge, had listened to the strongly manifested wishes of France, and selected his advisers from amongst those of the constitutional Royalists who stood the highest in public consideration, I say, with a feeling of conviction which may appear foolhardy, but which I maintain to this hour, that there was every reasonable hope of surmounting the last decisive trial; and that the country taking confidence at once in the King and in the Charter, the Restoration and constitutional government would have been established together.
But the precise quality in which Charles X. was deficient, was that expansive freedom of mind which conveys to a monarch a perfect intelligence of the age in which he lives, and endows him with a sound appreciation of its resources and necessities. "There are only M. de La Fayette and I who have not changed since 1789," said he, one day; and he spoke truly. Through all the vicissitudes of his life he ever remained what his youthful training had made him at the Court of Versailles and in the aristocratic society of the eighteenth century—sincere and light, confident in himself and in his own immediate circle, unobservant and irreflective, although of an active spirit, attached to his ideas and his friends of the old system as to his faith and his standard. Under the reign of his brother Louis XVIII., and during the scission of the monarchical party, he became the patron and hope of that Royalist opposition which boldly availed itself of constitutional liberties, and presented in his own person a singular mixture of persevering intimacy with his old companions, and of a taste for the new popularity of a Liberal. When he found himself on the throne, he made more than one coquettish advance to this popular disposition, and sincerely flattered himself that he governed according to the Charter, with his old friends and his ideas of earlier times. M. de Villèle and M. de Martignac lent themselves to his views in this difficult work; and after their fall, which he scarcely opposed, Charles X. found himself left to his natural tendencies, in the midst of advisers little disposed to contradict, and without the power of restraining him. Two fatal mistakes then established themselves in his mind; he fancied that he was menaced by the Revolution, much more than was really the fact; and he ceased to believe in the possibility of defending himself, and of governing by the legal course of the constitutional system. France had no desire for a new revolution. The Charter contained, for a prudent and patient monarch, certain means of exercising the royal authority and of securing the Crown. But Charles X. had lost confidence in France and in the Charter. When the Address of the Two Hundred and Twenty-one Deputies came triumphant through the elections, he believed that he was driven to his last entrenchment, and reduced to save himself without the Charter, or to perish by a revolution.
A few days before the Decrees of July, the Russian ambassador, Count Pozzo di Borgo, had an audience of the King. He found him seated before his desk, with his eyes fixed on the Charter, opened at Article 14. Charles X. read and re-read that article, seeking with honest inquietude the interpretation he wanted to find there. In such cases, we always discover what we are in search of; and the King's conversation, although indirect and uncertain, left little doubt on the Ambassador's mind as to the measures in preparation.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] "Peers of France, Deputies of Departments, I have no doubt of your co-operation in carrying out the good measures I propose. You will repulse with contempt the perfidious insinuations which malevolence seeks to propagate. If criminal manœuvres were to place obstacles in the way of my government, which I neither can, nor wish to, foresee, I should find the power of surmounting them in a resolution to maintain the public peace, in the just confidence of the French people, and in the devotion which they have always demonstrated for their King."
[21] I think no one who reads the six concluding paragraphs of this Address, which alone formed the subject of debate, can fail to appreciate, in the present day, the profound truth of the sentiments and the apt propriety of the language.
"Assembled at your command from all points of the kingdom, we bring to you, Sire, from every quarter, the homage of a faithful people, still further inspired by having found you the most beneficent of all, in the midst of universal beneficence, and which reveres in your person the accomplished model of the most exemplary virtues. Sire, this people cherishes and respects your authority; fifteen years of peace and liberty which it owes to your august brother and to yourself, have deeply rooted in its heart the gratitude due to your august family: its reason, matured by experience and freedom of discussion, tells it that in questions of authority, above all others, antiquity of possession is the holiest of titles, and that it is as much for the happiness of France as for your personal glory, that ages have placed your throne in a region inaccessible to storms. The conviction of the nation accords then with its duty in representing to it the sacred privileges of your crown as the surest guarantee of its own liberties, and the integrity of your prerogatives as necessary to the preservation of public rights."
"Nevertheless, Sire, in the midst of these unanimous sentiments of respect and affection with which your people [surround] you, there has become manifest in the general mind a feeling of inquietude which disturbs the security France had begun to enjoy, affects the sources of her prosperity, and might, if prolonged, become fatal to her repose. Our conscience, our honour, the fidelity we have pledged and which we shall ever maintain, impose on us the duty of unveiling to you the cause."