“Gentlemen: When in compliance with the rules of this house, I announced my intention of addressing you on the concerns of a preceding year, I had not heard the reading of the report of your committee, which I consider a true model of that kind of labor; but such is my conviction that the state of public accounts for former years affords useful data to the discussion of a future budget, I will indulge a few remarks in addition to what has already been said on the subject.
“I beg leave in the first place to call your attention to the state of our social organization, for I am undoubtedly one of those who cannot forget that, by the revolution of ’89, a long series of oppressions, arising not only out of hereditary, sacerdotal, and judiciary privileges and institutions, but also from the prostitution of our commercial, agricultural, and domestic interests, have been erased from the codes of France. The seeds of improvement and public welfare, disseminated through almost every class of our countrymen, notwithstanding the baneful influence of persecutions, miseries, and despotisms, have at last been brought to maturity. The return of peace cannot fail to have promoted their development, and the enjoyment of public liberty promises successful and abundant harvest. But whilst nations advance, governments retrograde; and let us consider, gentlemen, what is our present situation.
“A redundant luxuriance of ministerial bounties, resting upon factitious administrations, which themselves are founded upon nothing; a multitude of offices created for the sake of emolument, and emoluments for the sake of patronage; every section of France sacrificed to a system of concentration, of which our metropolis, prosperous in so many other respects, presents those deplorable contrasts which our honorable colleague, Mr. Charles Dupin, has lately introduced to your notice; the precious lights of academies, of public lectures and learned schools, above all, of the polytechnic school, dazzling the eyes of a population, who, as some have just observed, are still denied the means of learning the first elements of reading, and in the midst of whom it is yet made a question whether it is proper that the people should be able to read; in a word, an unexampled host of generals, staff officers, privileged bodies, foreign corps, but few soldiers and a nation, formerly one entire army, who for a long time conquered all Europe combined against her independence, but now disorganized and disarmed, as if a conquered people: with this state of things, can it be believed, gentlemen, that a few trifling amendments of committees, and some oratorical criticisms, will be adequate to the thorough reform of a social existence that might be called the inverse ratio of constitutional order!
“There is no bitterness in my observations, gentlemen; they are dictated by the conscience of a simple individual, and in the interest of those who, in undertaking to manage the affairs of a mighty nation, should at least use their endeavor to persuade the people that if they themselves had the power of managing their own concerns, they would not exercise it to greater advantage.
“The public debt, enormously increased for the last fifteen years, the civil list, the crown revenue, the pensions of the royal family, are not within the limits of our control. Every debt is sacred, but some are yet in suspense. For example, whilst all the European powers were largely indemnified according to their pretensions (English claims even to three times the amount allowed to French creditors), had the United States shown some hostile feelings towards us, or had they merely asserted their claims in concert with the other powers, their demands would have been immediately liquidated. But they have never yet been adjusted, because that nation would not join the enemies of France, who were then to be found in her bosom, notwithstanding what has sometimes been said at this tribune to the contrary.
“With regard to the civil list, gentlemen, it might perhaps be desirable, both for its proper management and the personal comfort of the king, that the appropriations not included within the king’s personal expenses should have been granted under the forms of accountability adopted in the civil list of England.
“The appropriation for the criminal judiciary department furnishes me another opportunity of again proffering my warmest wishes for the abolition of capital punishment, which the uncertainty of human comprehension renders so alarming, and which must particularly appall those generations who have so irretrievably suffered from the furies of parties; and also for the abolishment of branding, called for on all sides. May the minister at the head of the judiciary department affix his name to these two salutary measures!
“One of my honorable friends has adverted to the gratuitous magistracy of English justices of the peace. I do not envy this pretended benefit of our neighbors, and it is my opinion that those great proprietors are not the most proper persons to exercise a sovereign jurisdiction over all the petty offences committed within their department; but I cheerfully concur in the unanimous voice for restoring the principle of temporary election in justices of the peace.
“Nothing can be more gratifying to my feelings than to have heard, on the last discussion on trials by jury, the pledge that the propriety of extending the benefit of this institution to the transgressions of the press will be taken into consideration at the next session.
“I cannot withhold my assent to the observations of the report on the whole of ministerial budgets. I had myself said at this tribune in 1819, ‘It would be highly beneficial that every ministry should inquire, with all conscientious severity, into what is necessary to the due performance of their duties, and should propose in all remaining details, terms as generous and complete as they please, for the security and comforts of those actually in office, provided that ministers should be divested of all parasitical service, and children brought up to a more profitable labor than the industry of obtaining situations, which is so detrimental to every kind of industry, and to the independence of a vast number of citizens.’ The specification,—I mean the application,—which can never be too minute, of every appropriation to every item of expenditure, has already made some progress; but how profuse those specifications, beyond which there is ministerial exertion, when compared with English budgets, of which I now hold in my hand three departments,—the artillery, war, and navy; and yet this is not a cheap government, to use an expression that has so often been charged upon me, and which I am so unwilling to deny.