Chapter IV: The Chamber of 1815 (1)

1815-1816.

FALL OF M. DE TALLEYRAND AND FOUCHE.--FORMATION OF THE DUKE DE
RICHELIEU'S CABINET.--MY CONNECTION AS SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE WITH M. DE MARBOIS, KEEPER OF THE GREAT
SEAL.--MEETING AND ASPECT OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.--INTENTIONS
AND ATTITUDE OF THE OLD ROYALIST FACTION.--FORMATION AND
COMPOSITION OF A NEW ROYALIST PARTY.--STRUGGLE OF CLASSES UNDER
THE CLOAK OF PARTIES.--PROVISIONAL LAWS.--BILL OF AMNESTY.--THE
CENTRE BECOMES THE GOVERNMENT PARTY, AND THE RIGHT THE
OPPOSITION.--QUESTIONS UPON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE STATE
AND THE CHURCH.--STATE OF THE GOVERNMENT BEYOND THE
CHAMBERS.--INSUFFICIENCY OF ITS RESISTANCE TO THE SPIRIT OF
REACTION.--THE DUKE OF FELTRI AND GENERAL BERNARD.--TRIAL OF
MARSHAL NEY.--CONTROVERSY BETWEEN M. DE VITROLLES AND ME.--CLOSING
OF THE SESSION.--MORTIFICATIONS IN THE CABINET.--M. LAINE MINISTER
OF THE INTERIOR.--I LEAVE THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE AND ENTER THE
STATE COUNCIL AS MASTER OF REQUESTS.--THE CABINET ENTERS INTO
CONTESTS WITH THE RIGHT-HAND PARTY.--M. DECAZES.--POSITION OF
MESSRS. ROYER-COLLARD AND DE SERRE.--OPPOSITION OF M. DE
CHATEAUBRIAND.--THE COUNTRY RISES AGAINST THE CHAMBER OF
DEPUTIES.--EFFORTS OF M. DECAZES TO BRING ABOUT A DISSOLUTION.--THE
KING DETERMINES ON IT.--DECREE OF THE 5TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1816.

Three months had scarcely elapsed and neither Fouche nor M. de Talleyrand were any longer in the Ministry. They had fallen, not under the pressure of any new or unforeseen event, but by the evils connected with their personal situation, and their inaptitude for the parts they had undertaken to play. M. de Talleyrand had effected a miracle at Vienna; by the treaty of alliance concluded on the 3rd January, 1815, between France, England, and Austria, he had put an end to the coalition formed against us in 1813, and separated Europe into two parties, to the advantage of France. But the event of the 20th of March had destroyed his work; the European coalition was again formed against the Emperor and against France, who had made herself, or had permitted herself to be made, the instrument of Napoleon. There was no longer a chance of breaking up this formidable alliance. The same feeling of uneasiness and mistrust of our faith, the same desire for a firm and lasting union, animated the sovereigns and the nations. They had speedily arranged at Vienna the questions which had threatened to divide them. In this fortified hostility against France the Emperor Alexander participated, with extreme irritation towards the House of Bourbon and M. de Talleyrand, who had sought to deprive him of his allies. The second Restoration was no longer like the first, the personal glory and work of M. de Talleyrand; the honour was chiefly due to England and the Duke of Wellington. Instigated by self-love and policy, the Emperor Alexander arrived at Paris on the 10th of July, 1815, stern and angrily disposed towards the King and his advisers.

France and the King stood, nevertheless, in serious need of the goodwill of the Russian Emperor, encompassed as they were by the rancorous and eager ambition of Germany. Her diplomatists drew up the geographical chart of our territory, leaving out the provinces of which they desired to deprive us. Her generals undermined, to blow into the air, the monuments which recalled their defeats in the midst of their victories. Louis XVIII. resisted with much dignity these acts of foreign barbarism; he threatened to place his chair of state upon the bridge of Jena, and said publicly to the Duke of Wellington, "Do you think, my Lord, that your Government would consent to receive me if I were again to solicit a refuge?" Wellington restrained to the utmost of his power the violence of Bluecher, and remonstrated with him by arguments equally urgent and politic; but neither the dignity of the King, nor the amicable intervention of England were sufficient to curb the overweening pretensions of Germany. The Emperor Alexander alone could keep them within bounds. M. de Talleyrand sought to conciliate him by personal concessions. In forming his cabinet, he named the Duke de Richelieu, who was still absent, Minister of the Royal Household, while the Ministry of the Interior was held in reserve for Pozzo di Borgo, who would willingly have left the official service of Russia to take part in the Government of France. M. de Talleyrand placed much faith in the power of temptations; but, in this instance, they were of no avail. The Duke de Richelieu, probably in concert with the King himself, refused; Pozzo di Borgo did not obtain, or dared not to solicit, the permission of his master to become, once more, a Frenchman. I saw him frequently, and that mind, at once quick and decisive, bold and restless, felt keenly its doubtful situation, and with difficulty concealed its perplexities. The Emperor Alexander maintained his cold reserve, leaving M. de Talleyrand powerless and embarrassed in this arena of negotiation, ordinarily the theatre of his success.

The weakness of Fouche was different, and sprang from other causes. It was not that the foreign sovereigns and their ministers regarded him more favourably than they did M. de Talleyrand, for his admission into the King's cabinet had greatly scandalized monarchical Europe; the Duke of Wellington alone persisted in still upholding him; but none amongst the foreigners either attacked him or appeared anxious for his downfall. It was from within that the storm was raised against him. With a strangely frivolous presumption, he had determined to deliver up the Revolution to the King, and the King to the Revolution, relying upon his dexterity and boldness to assist him in passing and repassing from camp to camp, and in governing one by the other, while alternately betraying both. The elections which took place at this period throughout France, signally falsified his hopes. In vain did he profusely employ agents, and circular addresses; neither obtained for him the slightest influence; the decided Royalists prevailed in nearly every quarter, almost without a struggle. It is our misfortune and our weakness, that in every great crisis the vanquished become as the dead. The Chamber of 1815 as yet appeared only in the distance, and already the Duke of Otranto trembled as though thunderstruck by the side of the tottering M. de Talleyrand. In this opposite and unequal peril, but critical for both, the conduct of these two men was very different. M. de Talleyrand proclaimed himself the patron of constitutional monarchy, boldly and greatly organized as in England. Modifications conformable to the views of the Liberal party were in some instances immediately acceded to, and in others promised by the Charter. Young men were permitted to enter the Chamber of Deputies. Fourteen Articles relative to the constitution of this Chamber were submitted for the inspection of the next Legislative Assembly. The Peerage was made hereditary. The censorship, to which works under twenty printed sheets had been subjected, was abolished. A grand Privy Council, on important occasions, united the principal men of every party. It was neither the urgent necessity of the moment, nor prevailing public opinion, that imposed on restored royalty these important reforms: they were enacted by the Cabinet from a desire of encouraging free institutions, and of giving satisfaction to the party,--I ought rather to say to the small section of enlightened and impatient spirits.

The real intentions and measures of Fouche were of a more personal nature. Violently menaced by the reaction in favour of royalty, he at first endeavoured to appease by feeding it. He consented to make himself the instrument of proscription against the very men who, but a short time before, were his agents, his confederates, his accomplices, his colleagues, and his friends. At the same time that he published memorials and circulars showing the necessity of clemency and forgetfulness of the past, he placed before the Royal Council a list of one hundred and ten names, to be excluded from all amnesty; and when strict inquiry had reduced this number to eighteen, subject to courts-martial, and to thirty-eight provisionally banished, he countersigned without hesitation the decree which condemned them. A few days afterwards, and upon his request, another edict revoked all the privileges hitherto accorded to the daily papers, imposed upon them the necessity of a new license, and subjected them to the censorship of a commission, in which several of the principal royalist writers, amongst others Messieurs Auger and Fievee, refused to sit under his patronage. As little did the justice or national utility of his acts affect the Duke of Otranto in 1815, as in 1793; he was always ready to become, no matter at what cost, the agent of expediency. But when he saw that his severe measures did not protect himself, and perceived the rapidly approaching danger, he changed his tactics; the minister of the monarchical reaction became again the factious revolutionist. He caused to be secretly published and circulated, "Reports to the King," and the "Notes to the Foreign Ministers," less calculated to enlighten the authorities he addressed, than to prepare for himself arms and allies against the Government and the party, from which he saw that he was about to be excluded. He was of the number of those who try to make themselves feared, by striving to injure when they are no longer permitted to serve.

Neither the liberal reforms of M. de Talleyrand, nor the revolutionary menaces of the Duke of Otranto, warded off the danger which pressed on them. Notwithstanding their extraordinary abilities and long experience, both mistook the new aspect of the times, either not seeing, or not wishing to see, how little they were in unison with the contests which the Hundred Days had revived. The election of a Chamber decidedly Royalist, surprised them as an unexpected phenomenon; they both fell at its approach, and within a few days of each other; left, nevertheless, after their common downfall, in opposite positions. M. de Talleyrand retained credit; the King and his new Cabinet loaded him with gifts and royal favours; his colleagues during his short administration, Messieurs de Jaucourt, Pasquier, Louis and Gouvion St. Cyr, received signal marks of royal esteem, and retired from the scene of action as if destined to return. Having accepted the trifling and distant embassy to Dresden, Fouche hastened to depart, and left Paris under a disguise which he only changed when he reached the frontier, fearful of being seen in his native land, which he was fated never again to behold.

The Cabinet of the Duke de Richelieu entered upon office warmly welcomed by the King, and even by the party which had gained the ascendency through the present elections. It was indeed a new and thoroughly royalist Ministry. Its head, recently arrived in France, honoured by all Europe, and beloved by the Emperor Alexander, was to King Louis XVIII. what the king himself was to France, the pledge of a more advantageous peace. Two of his colleagues, Messieurs Decazes and Dubouchage, had taken no part in public affairs previous to the Restoration. The four others, Messieurs Barbe-Marbois, de Vaublanc, Coretto, and the Duke of Feltri, had recently given proofs of strong attachment to the regal cause. Their union inspired hope without suspicion, in the public mind, as well as in that of the triumphant party. I was intimately acquainted with M. de Marbois; I had frequently met him at the houses of Madame de Rumford and Madame Suard. He belonged to that old France which, in a spirit of generous liberality, had adopted and upheld, with enlightened moderation, the principles most cherished by the France of the day. I held under him, in the capacity of a confidential friend, the post of Secretary-General to the Ministry of Justice, to which M. Pasquier, then keeper of the great seal, had nominated me under the Cabinet of M. de Talleyrand. Hardly was the new minister installed in office, when the Chamber of Deputies assembled, and in its turn established itself. It was almost exclusively Royalist. With considerable difficulty, a few men, members of other parties, had obtained entrance into its ranks. They found themselves in a state of perpetual discomfort, isolated and ill at ease, as though they were strangers of suspicious character; and when they endeavoured to declare themselves and explain their sentiments, they were roughly driven back into impotent silence. On the 23rd of October, 1815, in the debate on the Bill presented by M. Decazes for the temporary suspension of personal liberty, M. d'Argenson spoke of the reports which had been spread abroad respecting the massacre of Protestants in the south. A violent tumult arose in contradiction of his statements; he explained himself with great reserve. "I name no facts," replied he, "I bring forward no charges; I merely say that vague and contradictory rumours have reached me; ... the very vagueness of these rumours calls for a report from the minister, on the state of the kingdom." M. d'Argenson was not only defeated in his object, and interrupted in his speech, but he was expressly called to order for having alluded to facts unfortunately too certain, but which the Government wished to smother up by silencing all debate on the question.

For the first time in five-and-twenty years, the Royalists saw themselves in the ascendant. Thoroughly believing that they had obtained a legitimate triumph, they indulged unreservedly in the enjoyment of power, with a mixture of aristocratic arrogance and new-born zeal, as men do when little accustomed to victory, and doubtful of the strength they are so eager to display.

Very opposite causes plunged the Chamber of 1815 into the extreme reaction which has stamped its historical character. In the first place, and above all others, may be named, the good and evil passions of the Royalists, their moral convictions and personal resentments, their love of order and thirst for vengeance, their pride in the past and their apprehensions for the future, their determination to re-establish honour and respect for holy observances, their old attachments, their sworn pledges, and the gratification of lording it over their conquerors. To the violence of passion was joined a prudent calculation of advantage. To strengthen their party, and to advance individual fortunes, it was essential for the new rulers of France to possess themselves everywhere of place and power; therein lay the field to be worked, and the territory to be occupied, in order to reap the entire fruits of victory. Finally must be added, the empire of ideas, more influential than is commonly supposed, and often exercising more power over men, without their being conscious of it, than prejudice or interest. After so many years of extraordinary events and disputes, the Royalists had, on all political and social questions, systematic views to realize, historical reminiscences to act upon, requirements of the mind to satisfy. They hastened to apply their hands to the work, believing the day at last arrived when they could, once more, assume in their own land, morally as well as physically, in thought and deed, the superiority which had so long been wrested from them.

As it happens in every great crisis of human associations, these opposing principles in the reaction of 1815, had each its special and exclusively effective representative in the ranks of the Royalists. The party had their fighting champion, their political advocate, and their philosopher. M. de la Bourdonnaye led their passions, M. de Villele their interests, and M. de Bonald their ideas; three men well suited to their parts, for they excelled respectively, the first in fiery attack, the second in prudent and patient manoeuvring, and the third in specious, subtle, and elevated exposition; and all three, although unconnected by any previous intimacy, applied their varied talents with unflinching perseverance to the common cause.

And what, after all, was the cause? What was, in reality, the end which the leaders of the party, apparently on the very verge of success, proposed to themselves? Had they been inclined to speak sincerely, they would have found it very difficult to answer the question. It has been said and believed by many, and probably a great portion of the Royalists imagined, in 1815, that their object was to abolish the Charter, and restore the old system: a commonplace supposition of puerile credulity; the battle-cry of the enemies, whether able or blind, of the Restoration. In the height of its most sanguine hopes, the Chamber of 1815 had formed no idea so extreme or audacious. Replaced as conquerors upon the field, not by themselves, but by the errors of their adversaries and the course of European events, the old Royalist party expected that the reverses of the Revolution and the Empire would bring them enormous advantages, and restitution; but they were yet undecided as to the use they should make of victory in the government of France, when they found themselves in the undisturbed possession of power. Their views were as unsettled and confused as their passions were violent; above all things, they coveted victory, for the haughty pleasure of triumph itself, for the definitive establishment of the Restoration, and for their own predominance, by holding power at the centre of government, and throughout the departments by administration.

But in those social shocks there are deeper questions involved than the actors are aware of. The Hundred Days inflicted on France a much heavier evil than the waste of blood and treasure it had cost her; they lit up again the old quarrel which the Empire had stifled and the Charter was intended to extinguish,--the quarrel between old and new France, between the emigrants and the revolutionists. It was not alone between two political parties, but between two rival classes, that the struggle recommenced in 1815, as it originally exploded in 1789.

An unfavourable position for founding a Government, and, above all, a free Government. A certain degree of excitement and emulation invariably exists between the people and the political parties, which constitutes the very life of the social body, and encourages its energetic and wholesome development. But if this agitation is not confined to questions of legislature and the conduct of public affairs,--if it attacks society in its very basis,--if, instead of emulation between parties, there arises hostility amongst classes, the movement ceases to be healthy, and changes to a destroying malady, which leads on to the most lamentable disorders, and may end in the dissolution of the State. The undue ascendency of one class over another, whether of the aristocracy or the people, becomes tyranny. The bitter and continued struggle of either to obtain the upper hand, is in fact revolution, imminently impending or absolutely declared. The world has witnessed, in two great examples, the diametrically opposite results to which this formidable fact may lead. The contest between the Patricians and Plebeians held Rome for ages between the cruel alternations of despotism and anarchy, which had no variety but war. As long as either party retained public virtue, the republic found grandeur, if not social peace, in their quarrel; but when Patricians and Plebeians became corrupted by dissension, without agreeing on any fixed principle of liberty, Rome could only escape from ruin by falling under the despotism and lingering decline of the Empire. England presents to modern Europe a different spectacle. In England also, the opposing parties of nobles and democrats long contended for the supremacy; but, by a happy combination of fortune and wisdom, they came to a mutual compromise, and united in the common exercise of power: and England has found, in this amicable understanding between the different classes, in this communion of their rights and mutual influence, internal peace with greatness, and stability with freedom.

I looked forward to an analogous result for my own country, from the form of government established by the Charter. I have been accused of desiring to model France upon the example of England. In 1815, my thoughts were not turned towards England; at that time I had not seriously studied her institutions or her history. I was entirely occupied with France, her destinies, her civilization, her laws, her literature, and her great men. I lived in the heart of a society exclusively French, more deeply impregnated with French tastes and sentiments than any other. I was immediately associated with that reconciliation, blending, and intercourse of different classes, and even of parties, which seemed to me the natural condition of our new and liberal system. People of every origin, rank, and calling, I may almost say of every variety of opinion,--great noblemen, magistrates, advocates, ecclesiastics, men of letters, fashion, or business, members of the old aristocracy, of the Constituent Assembly, of the Convention, of the Empire,--lived in easy and hospitable intercourse, adopting without hesitation their altered positions and views, and all apparently disposed to act together in goodwill for the advantage of their country. A strange contradiction in our habits and manners! When social relations, applicable to mental or worldly pleasures, are alone involved, there are no longer distinctions of classes, or contests; differences of situation and opinion cease to exist; we have no thought but to enjoy and contribute in common our mutual possessions, pretensions, and recommendations. But let political questions and the positive interests of life once more spring up,--let us be called upon, not merely to assemble for enjoyment or recreation, but to assume each his part in the rights, the affairs, the honours, the advantages, and the burdens of the social system,--on the instant, all dissensions re-appear; all pretences, prejudices, susceptibilities, and oppositions revive; and that society which had seemed so single and united, resumes all its former divisions and differences.

This melancholy incoherence between the apparent and actual state of French society revealed itself suddenly in 1815. The reaction provoked by the Hundred Days destroyed in the twinkling of an eye the work of social reconciliation carried on in France for sixteen years, and caused the abrupt explosion of all the passions, good or evil, of the social system, against all the works, beneficial or mischievous, of the Revolution.

Attacked also by another difficulty, the party which prevailed at the opening of the session, in the Chamber of 1815, fell into another mistake. The aristocratic classes in France, although generously devoted, in public dangers, to the king and the country, knew not how to make common cause either with the crown or the people; they have alternately blamed and opposed, royal power and public liberty. Isolating themselves in the privileges which satisfied their vanity without giving them real influence in the State, they had not assumed, for three centuries, either with the monarch, or at the head of the nation, the position which seemed naturally to belong to them. After all they had lost, and in spite of all they ought to have learned at the Revolution, they found themselves in 1815, when power reverted to their hands, in the same undefined and shifting position. In its relations with the great powers of the State, in public discussion, in the exercise of its peculiar rights, the Chamber of 1815 had the merit of carrying into vigorous practice the constitutional system, which, in 1814, had scarcely emerged from its torpor under the Empire; but in its new work it lost sight of equity, moderation, and the favourable moment. It wished at the same time to control France and the King. It was independent and haughty, often revolutionary in its conduct towards the monarch, and equally violent and contra-revolutionary as regarded the people. This was to attempt too much; it ought to have chosen between the two, and to have declared itself either monarchical or popular. The Chamber of 1815 was neither the one nor the other. It appeared to be deeply imbued with the spirit of the old system, envenomed by the ideas or examples of the spirit of the revolution; but the spirit of government, even more essential under constitutional than under absolute power, was wanting altogether.

Thus, an opposition was seen to spring up quickly within its own bosom,--an opposition which became at once popular and monarchical, for it equally defended against the ruling party, the crown they had so rashly insulted, and the country they had profoundly disturbed. After some sharp contests, sustained with acrimonious determination on both sides, this opposition, strong in the royal support as in public sympathy, frequently obtained a majority, and became the party of the Government.

I had no seat at that time in the Chamber of Deputies. It has often been said that I took a more important share in the Government of the day than could be attributed to me with truth. I have never complained of this, nor shall I complain now. I accept the responsibility, not only of my own actions, but of those of the friends I selected and supported. The monarchical and constitutional party formed in 1815, became on the instant my own. I shall acknowledge frankly what experience has taught me of their mistakes, while I feel proud of having been enrolled in their ranks.

This party was formed abruptly and spontaneously, without premeditated object, without previous or personal concert, under the simple necessity of the moment, to meet a pressing evil, and not to establish any particular system, or any specific combination of ideas, resolutions, or designs. Its sole policy was at first confined to the support of the Restoration against the reaction: a thankless undertaking, even when most salutary; for it is useless to contend with a headlong counter-current. While you are supporting the power whose flag serves as a cloak to reaction, it is impossible to arrest the entire mischief you desire to check; and you seem to adopt that which you have been unable to subdue. This is one of the inevitable misconstructions which honest men, who act conscientiously, in stormy days, must be prepared to encounter.

Neither in its composition nor plans had the new Royalist party any special or decided character. Amongst its rising leaders, as in its more undistinguished ranks, there were men of every origin and position, collected from all points of the social and political horizon. M. de Serre was an emigrant, and had been a lieutenant in the army of Conde; MM. Pasquier, Beugnot, Simeon, Barante and St. Aulaire, had possessed influence under Napoleon; MM. Royer-Collard and Camille Jordan were opposed to the Imperial system. The same judgment, the same opinion upon the events of the day and the chances of the morrow, upon the rights and legitimate interests of the throne and country, suddenly united these men, hitherto unknown to each other. They combined, as the inhabitants of the same quarter run from all sides and, without acquaintance and never having met before, work in concert to extinguish a great fire.

A fact, however, disclosed itself, which characterized already the new royalist party in the impending struggle. Equally disturbed by the pretensions of the old aristocrats, the monarchy and the citizens formed a close league for mutual support. Louis XVIII. and young France resumed together the policy of their fathers. It is fruitless for a people to deny or forget the past; they cannot either annihilate or abstract themselves from it; situations and emergencies will soon arise to force them back into the road on which they have travelled for ages.

Selected as President by the Chamber itself, and also by the King, M. Laine, while preserving, with a dignity at the same time natural and slightly studied, the impartiality which his situation required, inclined nevertheless towards the opinions of the moderate minority, and supported them by his moral influence, sometimes even by his words. The ascendency of his character, the gravity of his manners, and, at certain moments, the passionate overflowing of his soul, invested him with an authority which his abilities and knowledge would scarcely have sufficed to command.

The Session had not been many days open, and already, from conversation, from the selection of the officials, from the projects of interior movement which were announced, the Deputies began to know and arrange themselves, but still with doubt and confusion; as, in a battalion unexpectedly called together, the soldiers assemble in disorder, looking for their arms and colours. The Government propositions soon brought the different parties to broad daylight, and placed them in contest. The Session commenced, as might be expected, with measures arising from incidental circumstances. Of the four bills evidently bearing this character, two--the suspension of personal liberty, and the establishment of prevotal courts--were proposed as exceptional and purely temporary; the others--for the suppression of seditious acts, and for a general amnesty--were intended to be definitive and permanent.

Measures of expediency, and exceptional laws, have been so often and so peremptorily condemned in France, that their very name and aspect suffice to render them suspicious and hateful,--a natural impression, after so much and such bitter experience! They supply notwithstanding, and particularly under a constitutional government, the least dangerous as well as the most efficacious method of meeting temporary and urgent necessities. It is better to suspend openly, and for a given time, a particular privilege, than to pervert, by encroachment and subtlety, the fixed laws, so as to adapt them to the emergency of the hour. The experience of history, in such cases, confirms the suggestions of reason. In countries where political liberty is finally established, as in England, it is precisely after it has obtained a signal triumph, that the temporary suspension of one or more of its special securities has, under pressing circumstances, been adopted as a Government measure. In ruder and less intelligent times, under the dominion of momentary danger, and as an immediate defence, those rigorous and artful statutes were enacted in perpetuity, in which all tyrannies have found arms ready made, without the odium of forging them, and from which a more advanced civilization, at a later period, has found it so difficult to escape.

It is necessary, I admit, to enable these exceptional laws to accomplish their end without too much danger, that, beyond the scope of their operation and during their continuance, the country should retain enough general liberty, and the authorities sufficient real responsibility, to confine these measures within their due limits, and to control their exercise. But, in spite of the blindness and rage of the beaten parties, we have only to read the debates in the Chambers of 1815, and the publications of the time, to be convinced that at that epoch liberty was far from having entirely perished; and the history of the ministers who were then in power unanswerably demonstrates that they sustained the weight of a most effective responsibility.

Of the two temporary bills introduced into the Chamber in 1815, that respecting the prevotal courts met with the least opposition. Two very superior men, MM. Royer-Collard and Cuvier, had consented to become its official advocates, in the character of Royal Commissioners; and during the discussion, M. Cuvier took the lead. The debate was a very short one; two hundred and ninety members voted for the bill, ten only rejected it. The division may create surprise. The bill, in principle, comprised the heaviest possible infringement on common right, and the most formidable in practical application, by the suppression, in these courts, of the greater part of the privileges accorded in the ordinary modes of jurisdiction. A clause in the bill went almost to deprive the King of his prerogative of pardon, by ordering the immediate execution of the condemned criminals, unless the prevotal court itself assumed the functions of grace by recommending them to royal clemency. One of the most enthusiastic Royalists of the right-hand party, M. Hyde de Neuville, objected energetically, but without effect, to a clause so harsh and anti-monarchical. The two most intractable of passions, anger and fear, prevailed in the Chamber; it had its own cause, as well as that of the King, to defend and avenge, and persuaded itself that it could neither strike too soon nor too strongly when both were attacked.

On this occasion, as well as on others, the memory of M. Cuvier has been unjustly treated. He has been accused of pusillanimity and servile ambition. The charge indicates little knowledge of human nature, and insults a man of genius on very slight grounds. I lived much with M. Cuvier. Firmness in mind and action was not his most prominent quality; but he was neither servile, nor governed by fear in opposition to his conscience. He loved order, partly for his own personal security, but much more for the cause of justice, civilization, the advantage of society, and the progress of intellect. In his complaisance for power, he was more governed by sincere inclination than egotism. He was one of those who had not learned from experience to place much confidence in liberty, and whom the remembrance of revolutionary anarchy had rendered easily accessible to honest and disinterested apprehensions. In times of social disturbance, men of sense and probity often prefer drifting towards the shore, to running the risk of being crushed, with many dear objects, on the rocks upon which the current may carry them.

In the debate on the bill which suspended for a year the securities for personal liberty, M. Royer-Collard, while supporting the Government, marked the independence of his character, and the mistrustful foresight of the moralist with regard to the power which the politician most desired to establish. He demanded that the arbitrary right of imprisonment should be entrusted only to a small number of functionaries of high rank, and that the most exalted of all, the Ministers, should in every case be considered distinctly responsible. But these amendments, which would have prevented many abuses without interfering with the necessary power, were rejected. Inexperience and precipitation were almost universal at the moment. The Cabinet and its most influential partisans in the Chambers had scarcely any knowledge of each other; neither had yet learned to conceive plans in combination, to settle the limits or bearing of their measures, or to enter on a combat with preconcerted arrangements.

A combined action and continued understanding, however, between the Government and the moderate Royalists, became every day more indispensable; for the divergence of several new parties which began to be formed, and the extent of their disagreements, manifested themselves with increasing strength from hour to hour. In proposing the act intended to repress sedition, M. de Marbois, a gentle and liberal nature, inclined to mild government, and little acquainted with the violent passions that fermented around him, had merely looked upon these acts as ordinary offences, and had sent the criminals before the tribunals of correctional police, to be punished by imprisonment only. Better informed as to the intentions of a portion of the Chamber, the committee appointed to examine the bill, of which M. Pasquier was the chairman, endeavoured to restrain the dissentients, while satisfying them to a certain extent. Amongst seditious acts, the committee drew a line between crimes and offences, assigning crimes to the Court of Assizes, to be punished by transportation, and prescribing for simple offences fine and imprisonment. This was still too little for the ultra-members of the party. They demanded the penalty of death, hard labour, and confiscation of property. These additions were refused, and the Chamber, by a large majority, passed the bill as amended by the committee. Undoubtedly there were members of the right-hand party who would not have dared to contest the propositions of MM. Piet and de Salaberry, but who rejoiced to see them thrown out, and voted for the bill. How many errors would men escape, and how many evils would they avoid, if they had the courage to act as they think right, and to do openly what they desire!

All these debates were but preludes to the great battle ready to commence, on the most important of the incidental questions before the Chamber. It is with regret that I use the word _question_. The amnesty was no longer one. On returning to France, the King, by his proclamation from Cambray, had promised it; and, with kings, to promise is to perform. What sovereign could refuse the pardon, of which he has given a glimpse to the condemned criminal? The royal word is not less pledged to a nation than to an individual. But in declaring, on the 28th of June, 1815, that he would only except from pardon "the authors and instigators of the plot which had overturned the throne," the King had also announced "that the two Chambers would point them out to the punishment of the laws;" and when, a month later, the Cabinet had, upon the report of the Duke of Otranto, arrested the individuals excepted in the two lists, the decree of the 24th of July again declared that "the Chambers should decide upon those amongst them who should be expatriated or brought to trial." The Chambers were therefore inevitably compromised. The amnesty had been declared, and yet it still remained a question, a bill was still considered necessary.

Four members of the Chamber of Deputies hastened to take the initiative in this debate, three of them with extreme violence, M. de la Bourdonnaye being the most vehement of the three. He had energy, enthusiasm, independence, political tact as a partisan, and a frank and impassioned roughness, which occasionally soared to eloquence. His project, it was said, would have brought eleven hundred persons under trial. Whatever might be the correctness of this calculation, the three propositions were tainted with two capital errors: they assumed, in fact, that the catastrophe of the 20th of March had been the result of a widely-spread conspiracy, the authors of which ought to be punished as they would have been in ordinary times, and by the regular course of law, if they had miscarried; they assigned to the Chambers the right of indicating, by general categories, and without limit as to number, the conspirators to be thus dealt with, although the King, by his decree of the 24th of July preceding, had merely conferred on them the power of deciding, amongst the thirty-eight individuals specially excepted by name, which should be banished and which should be brought to trial. There was thus, in these projects, at the same time, an act of accusation under the name of amnesty, and an invasion of the powers already exercised, as well as of the limits already imposed, by the royal authority.

The King's Government by no means mistook the bearing of such resolutions, and maintained its rights, its acts, and promises with suitable dignity. It hastened to check at once the attempt of the Chamber. The bill introduced by the Duke de Richelieu on the 8th of December, was a real act of amnesty, with no other exceptions than the fifty-six persons named in the two lists of the decree of the 24th of July, and belonging to the family of the Emperor Napoleon. A single additional clause, the fatal consequences of which were assuredly not foreseen, had been introduced into the preamble: the fifth article excepted from the amnesty all persons against whom prosecutions had been ordered or sentences passed before the promulgation of the law,--a lamentable reservation, equally contrary to the principle of the measure and the object of its framers. The character and essential value of an amnesty consist in assigning a term to trials and punishments, in arresting judicial action in the name of political interest, and in re-establishing confidence in the public mind, with security in the existing state of things, at once producing a cessation of sanguinary scenes and dangers. The King's Government had already, by the first list of exceptions in the decree of the 24th of July, imposed on itself a heavy burden. Eighteen generals had been sent before councils of war. Eighteen grand political prosecutions, after the publication of the amnesty, would have been much even for the strongest and best-established government to bear. The Duke de Richelieu's Cabinet, by the fifth article of the bill, imposed on itself, in addition, the prospective charge of an indefinite number of political prosecutions, which might rise up in an indefinite time; and no one could possibly foresee in what part of the kingdom, or under what circumstances. The evil of this short-sightedness continued, with repeated instances rapidly succeeding each other, for more than two years. It was the prolonged application of this article which destroyed the value and almost the credit of the amnesty, and compromised the royal Government in that reaction of 1815 which has left such lamentable reminiscences.

A member of the right-hand party, who was soon destined to become its leader, and who until then had taken no share in the debate, M. de Villele, alone foresaw the danger of the fifth article, and hesitated not to oppose it. "This article," said he, "seems to me too vague and expansive; exceptions to amnesty, after such a rebellion as that which has taken place in our country, deliver over inevitably to the rigour of the laws all the excepted individuals. Now rigorous justice demands that, in such cases, none should be excepted but the most guilty and the most dangerous. Having no pledge or certain proof that the individuals attainted by the fifth article have deserved this express exception, I vote that the article be struck out." Unfortunately for the Government, this vote of the leader of the opposition passed without effect.

Independently of the question itself, this discussion produced an important result: it settled the division of the Chamber into two great parties, the right-hand side and the centre; the one the opponent, and the other the ally of the Cabinet. The differences of opinion which manifested themselves on this occasion were too keen, and were maintained on both sides with too much animosity, not to become the basis of a permanent classification. The right-hand party persisted in requiring several categories of exceptions to the amnesty, confiscations under the name of indemnity for injuries done to the State, and the banishment of the regicides who had been implicated during the Hundred Days. The centre, and the Cabinet in union, firmly resisted these propositions. M. Royer-Collard and M. de Serre, amongst others, exhibited in the course of this debate as much political intelligence as moral rectitude and impassioned eloquence. "It is not always the number of executions that saves empires," said M. Royer-Collard; "the art of governing men is more difficult, and glory is acquired at a loftier price. If we are prudent and skilful, we shall find that we have punished enough; never, if we are not so." M. de Serre applied himself chiefly to oppose the confiscations demanded under the title of indemnities. "The revolutionists have acted thus," said he; "they would do the same again if they could recover power. It is precisely for this reason that you ought not to imitate their detestable example; and by a distorted interpretation of an expression which is not open and sincere, by an artifice scarcely worthy of the theatre.... Gentlemen, our treasury may be low, but let it be pure." The categories and the indemnities were definitively rejected. At the last moment, and in the midst of almost universal silence, the banishment of the regicides was alone inscribed upon the act. Under the advice of his ministers, the King felt that he could not, in obedience to the will of Louis XVI., refuse his sanction to the amnesty, and leave this formidable question in suspense. There are Divine judgments which human authority ought not to forestall; neither is it called upon to reject them when they are declared by the course of events.

To the differences on the questions of expediency, every day were added the disagreements on the questions of principle. The Government itself excited but few. A bill on elections, introduced by the Minister of the Interior, M. de Vaublanc, was the only one which assumed this character. The debate was long and animated. The leading men on the opposite sides of the Chamber, MM. de Villele, de la Bourdonnaye, de Bonald, Royer-Collard, Pasquier, de Serre, Beugnot, and Laine, entered into it anxiously. But the ministerial plan was badly conceived, based upon incompatible foundations, and giving to the elections more of an administrative than of a political character. The principal orators of the Centre rejected it, as well as a counter-project proposed by the committee, in which the right-hand party prevailed, and which the Cabinet also disapproved. The last proposal was ultimately carried, but with important amendments, and vehemently opposed to the last. The Chamber of Deputies passed it by a weak majority, and in the Chamber of Peers it was thrown out. Although the different parties had clearly indicated their impressions and desires on the electoral system, the details were as yet obscure and unsettled. The question remained in abeyance. From the Chamber itself emanated the other propositions which involved matters of principle; they sprang from the right-hand party, and all tended to the same point--the position of the Church in the State. M. de Castelbajac proposed that the bishops and ministers should be authorized to receive and hold in perpetuity, without requiring the sanction of Government, all donations of property, real or personal, for the maintenance of public worship or ecclesiastical establishments. M. de Blangy demanded that the condition of the clergy should be materially improved, and that the married priests should no longer enjoy the pensions which had been given to them in their clerical character. M. de Bonald called for the abolition of the law of divorce. M. Lacheze-Murel insisted that the custody of the civil records should be given back to the ministers of religion. M. Murard de St. Romain attacked the University, and argued that public education should be confided to the clergy. The zeal of the new legislators was, above all other considerations, directed towards the re-establishment of religion and the Church, as the true basis of social power.

At the outset, the uneasiness and opposition excited by these proposals were less animated than we can at present imagine. More immediate dangers occupied the adversaries of Government and the public mind. A general sentiment in favour of religion as a necessary principle of order and morality, prevailed throughout the country; a sentiment revived even by the crisis of the Hundred Days, the moral wounds which that crisis had revealed, and the social dangers it had partially disclosed. The Catholic Church had not yet become the mark of the reaction which a little later was raised against it. The clergy took no direct part in these debates. The University had been, under the Empire, an object of suspicion and hostility on the part of the Liberals. The movement in favour of religious influences scarcely astonished those whom it displeased. But in the very bosom of the Chamber whence this movement emanated, there were enlightened understandings, who at once perceived its full range, and I foresaw the angry dissensions which sooner or later would be stirred up in the new social system by some of these propositions, so utterly opposed to its most fundamental and cherished principles. They applied themselves, with resolute good sense, to extract from the measures introduced, a selection conformable to the true interests of society and the Church. The law of divorce was abolished. The position of the parish priests, of the assistant ministers, and of several ecclesiastical establishments received important amelioration. The scandal of married clergymen still receiving official pensions ceased. But the proposal of assigning to the clergy the care of the civil records, and the control of public instruction, fell to the ground. The University, well defended and directed by M. Royer-Collard, remained intact. And with regard to the privilege demanded for the clergy, of receiving every kind of donation without the interference of the civil authorities, the Chamber of Peers, on a report, as judicious as it was elegantly composed, by the Abbe de Montesquiou, reduced it to these conditions,--that none but religious establishments recognized by law should exercise this right, and that in every individual instance the authority of the King should be indispensable. The Chamber of Deputies adopted the measure thus amended, and from this movement, which threatened to disturb so completely the relations of the Church and State, nothing eventuated to infringe seriously either on the old maxims or the modern principles of French society.

The Cabinet co-operated loyally in these debates and wise resolutions, but with less decision and ascendency than that evinced by the moderate Royalists in the Chambers. It brought into the question neither the depth of thought, nor the power of eloquence, which give a Government the control over legislative assemblies, and raise it, even in spite of its deficiencies, in public estimation. The Duke de Richelieu was universally respected. Amongst his colleagues, all men of high character and loyalty, there were several who were endowed with rare knowledge, ability, and courage. But the Cabinet wanted unity and brilliant reputation; important conditions under any system, but pre-eminently so under a free government.

Outside the Chambers, the Ministry had to sustain a still more weighty load than the pressure from within, and one which they were not better able to encounter. France had become a prey, not to the most tyrannical or the most sanguinary, but to the most vexatious and irritating of all the passing influences which the vicissitudes of frequent revolutions impose upon a nation. A party long vanquished, trampled on, and finally included in a general amnesty, the party of the old Royalty, suddenly imagined that they had become masters, and gave themselves up passionately to the enjoyment of a new power which they looked upon as an ancient right. God forbid that I should revive the sad remembrances of this reaction! I only desire to explain its true character. It was, in civil society, in internal administration, in local affairs, and nearly throughout the entire land of France, a species of foreign invasion, violent in certain places, offensive everywhere, and which occasioned more evil to be dreaded than it actually inflicted; for these unexpected victors threatened and insulted even where they refrained from striking. They seemed inclined to indemnify themselves by arrogant temerity, for their impotence to recover all that they had lost; and to satisfy their own consciences in the midst of their revenge, they tried to persuade themselves that they were far from inflicting on their enemies the full measure of what they had themselves suffered.