[22] This memorial was found again some years afterwards at Warsaw. The Emperor Nicholas wrote to Pozzo di Borgo in 1830, "How rightly you foresaw what would happen! You would have saved us much difficulty and embarrassment."
[23] About twenty-eight millions sterling.
[24] On the 5th of April, 1824, the minister of finance brought forward a plan to substitute rentes at three per cent for those already existing at five per cent, reserving to the holders of the five per cent rentes the option between the repayment of their nominal capital and its conversion into three per cents at the rate of seventy-five. Some modifications were suggested, but the plan failed at the time. In the following year it was renewed, and then it was decreed that the proprietors of five per cent rentes should be allowed till the 22d of June (afterwards extended to the 5th of August) the faculty of demanding from the minister of finance their conversion into three per cents at the price of seventy-five, and till the 22d of September the faculty of requiring their conversion into four and a half per cent stock at par, with a guarantee in both cases against being paid off till September 1835. The rentes so converted were to continue to bear interest at five per cent until the 22d December, 1825.—Editor.
[25] Alexander had gone on a tour of inspection to the southern parts of his empire, and on arriving at a village in the Crimea, he insisted upon attending the service in a church which had long been shut up, in spite of the remonstrances of his attendants, who represented the danger arising from malaria. He was shortly afterwards seized with the fever common in the Crimea, and refused to submit to the strong measures recommended by his medical attendants, resolving to trust to abstinence and the mild remedies he had usually found successful when attacked by illness, but which were insufficient in this instance; and when he at last resigned himself into the hands of his physicians, it was too late. Reports were raised of his having been poisoned, but they were totally devoid of foundation.—Editor.
[26] See "L'Europe pendant le Consulat et l'Empire de Napoleon."
[27] Sapeurs-pompiers.
[28] The Comte de Chabrol had been appointed prefect of the Seine upon the dismissal of Frochot after Mallet's conspiracy, and had distinguished himself by the most inflated expressions of devotion to the Emperor. "What is life," said he, "compared to the immense interests which rest upon the sacred head of the heir of the Empire? For me, whom an unexpected glance of your imperial eye has called from a distance to a post so eminent, what I most value in the distinction is the honour and right of setting the foremost example of loyal devotion!"—Editor.
[29] The law to authorise arbitrary arrests was equivalent to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act in England: and it was originally brought forward by M. Decaze and strenuously supported by Baron Pasquier. It was proposed that it should continue in force for one year, and after a debate which lasted for several sittings, it was passed by a majority of nineteen votes, modified however by the introduction of a clause forbidding arrests to be made under it during the night. A law restraining the liberty of the press was also passed after being most obstinately contested. The majority in the chamber of peers was only two on this occasion.—Editor.
[30] He was accused of great political tergiversation, and M. Vaublanc, a keen royalist, designated him as "a man who never left one administration till he had prepared to enter another, who never deserted one set of friends till he had looked out for another more in favour at court, and who had skipped into successive cabinets with that ease which marked all his movements."—Editor.
[31] At the same moment that he dissolved the chamber of deputies, the king created seventy-six new peers, all of them people devoted to the government.