Independent minds of every shade and opinion were employing uniform language at the time of the publication of my pamphlet. La Fayette, Camille Jordan[148], Ducis, Lemercier[149], Lanjuinais[150], Madame de Staël, Chénier, Benjamin Constant, Le Brun[151] thought and wrote as I did[152].

God, in His patient eternity, brings justice sooner or later: at moments when Heaven seems to slumber, it is always a fine thing that the disapproval of an honest man should keep watch and remain as a curb upon the absolute power. France will not disown the noble souls which protested against her servitude, when all lay prostrate, when there were so many advantages in so lying, so many favours to receive in return for flattery, so many persecutions to undergo in return for sincerity. Honour then to the La Fayettes, the de Staëls, the Benjamin Constants, the Camille Jordans, the Ducis, the Lemerciers, the Lanjuinais, the Chéniers, who, standing erect amidst the grovelling crowd of peoples and of kings, dared to despise victory and protest against tyranny!

*

Napoleon deposed.

On the 2nd of April, the Senators, to whom we owe one clause only of the Charter of 1814, the contemptible clause preserving their pensions, decreed the deposition of Bonaparte. If this decree, which emancipated France but brought infamy upon those who issued it, offers an affront to the human race, at the same time it teaches posterity the price of grandeurs and fortune, when these have disdained to take their stand upon bases of morality, justice and liberty.

Decree of the Conservative Senate.

"The Conservative Senate, taking into consideration that in a constitutional monarchy the monarch exists only by virtue of the constitution or the social compact;

"That Napoleon Bonaparte, for some time maintaining a firm and prudent government, had given the nation cause to reckon, in the future, upon acts of wisdom and justice; but that subsequently he destroyed the compact which united him to the French people, notably by levying imports and establishing taxes, otherwise than by virtue of the law, against the express tenor of the oath which he took on his accession to the throne, in conformity with Clause 53 of the Constitutions of the 28 Floréal Year XII.;

"That he was guilty of this attempt upon the rights of the people at the very time when he had without necessity adjourned the Legislative Body, and caused a report made by that body, whose title and whose relation to the national representation he contested, to be suppressed as criminal;

"That he undertook a series of wars in violation of Clause 50 of the Act settling the Constitution of the Year VIII., which lays down that any declaration of war shall be proposed, discussed, decreed and promulgated like the laws;

"That he has unconstitutionally issued several decrees bearing the penalty of death, namely, the two decrees of the 5th of March last, tending to cause a war to be considered as national which was undertaken only in the interest of his own unmeasured ambition;

"That he has violated the laws of the Constitution by his decrees concerning the State prisons;

"That he has annihilated the responsibility of the ministers, put down all the powers and destroyed the independence of the courts of jurisdiction;

"Taking into consideration that the liberty of the press, established and perpetuated as one of the rights of the nation, has been constantly subjected to the arbitrary censorship of his police, and that, at the same time, he has always made use of the press to fill France and Europe with fabricated facts, with false maxims, with doctrines favourable to despotism and with outrages against foreign governments;

"That acts and reports, passed by the Senate, have undergone alterations when made public;

"Taking into consideration that, instead of reigning with a sole view to the interest, the happiness and the glory of the French people, according to the terms of his oath, Napoleon has completed the misfortunes of the country by his refusal to treat on conditions which the national interest obliged him to accept and which did not compromise the honour of France; by his abuse of all the means entrusted to him in men and money; by his abandonment of the wounded without aid, medical requisites, or supplies; by various measures which resulted in the ruin of the towns, the depopulation of the rural districts, famine and infectious disease;

"Taking into consideration that, owing to all these causes, the Imperial Government established by the Senatus-Consultum of the 28 Floréal Year XII., or 18 May 1804, has ceased to exist, and that the manifest desires of all Frenchmen call into being an order of things of which the first result would be the restoration of general peace, and which would also mark the epoch of a solemn reconciliation between all the States of the great family of Europe, the Senate declares and decrees as follows: Napoleon deposed from the throne; hereditary right abolished in his family; the French people and the army released from their oath of fidelity to him."

*

The Roman Senate was less harsh when it declared Nero a public enemy: history is but a repetition of the same facts applied to varying men and times.

Can one picture to one's self the Emperor reading this official document at Fontainebleau? What must he have thought of what he had done, and of the men whom he had summoned to be his accomplices in his oppression of our liberties? When I published my pamphlet De Bonaparte et des Bourbons, could I have expected to see it amplified and converted into a decree of deposition by the Senate? What prevented those legislators, in the days of prosperity, from discovering the evils of which they reproached Bonaparte with being the author, from perceiving that the Constitution had been violated? What zeal suddenly seized these mutes for "the liberty of the press"? How did they, who had overwhelmed Napoleon with adulation upon his return from each of his wars, now come to find that he had undertaken those wars "only in the interest of his own unmeasured ambition"? How did they, who had flung him so many conscripts to devour, suddenly melt at the thought of the wounded soldiers "abandoned without aid, medical requisites, or supplies"? There are times at which contempt should be but frugally dispensed, because of the large number of those in need of it: I pity them for this moment, because they will need it again during and after the Hundred Days.

By the Decree of the Senate.