IX. 1820. 48. M. Decazes. Thus fell, never again to rise, M. Decazes; for though CHAP. he was appointed ambassador to London, and retained the confidence of the king, yet he never again formed part of the Ministry, and his career as a public man Character of was at an end. It is impossible to deny that he was possessed of considerable abilities. No man raises himself from a humble station to the rule of empire, without being possessed of some talents, which, if they are not of the first order, are at least of the most marketable description. It is generally characters of that description which are most successful in maintaining themselves long at the head of affairs. Genius anticipates the march of events, and is often shipwrecked because the world is behind its views; heroism recoils from the concessions requisite for success, and fails to conquer, because it disdains to stoop. It is pliant ability which discerns the precise mode of elevation, and adopts the principles requisite for immediate success. M. Decazes had this pliant ability in the very highest degree. Discerning in character, he at once scanned the king's disposition, and perceived the foibles which required to be attended to in order to gain his confidence. Able in the conduct of affairs, he made himself serviceable in his employment, and attracted his notice by the valuable information which he communicated, both in his own department and that of others. Energetic and ready in the tribune, he defended the ministerial measures with vigour and success. against the numerous attacks with which they were assailed. He acquired the surprising ascendancy which he gained over the mind of the king mainly by studying his disposition, and proposing measures in the Cabinet which were in a manner the reflection of those which he perceived were already contemplated in the royal breast; but the temporary success which they met with proved that both had correctly discerned, if not the ultimate consequences of their measures, at least the immediate signs of the VOL. II. U 49. Merits of his mea sures as a statesman. IX. 1820. CHAP. times. The Royalists justly reproach him with having established, by the royal authority, an electoral system of the most democratic character, and thrown himself into the arms of the Liberals, who made use of the advantage thus gained to undermine the monarchy. But, in justice to him, it must be recollected that the working of representative governments was then very little understood, and the practical results of changes, now obvious to all, were then only discerned by a few; that his situation was one surrounded with difficulties, and in which any false step might lead to perdition; and that if the course he pursued was one which entailed ultimate dangers of the most serious kind on the monarchy, it was, perhaps, the only one which enabled it to shun the immediate perils with which it was threatened. In common with the king, his leading idea was reconciliation; his principle, concession; his policy, to disarm opposition by anticipating its demands. This view was a benevolent and amiable one, but unfortunately more suited to the Utopia of Sir Thomas More than the storm-beaten monarchy of the Bourbons; and experience has proved that such a policy, in presence of an ambitious and unscrupulous enemy, only postpones the danger to aggravate it. 50. parties in bly after M. Decazes' fall. The Assembly, by the fall of M. Decazes, and the Division of infusion of Royalist members into the Cabinet, was divided differently from what it had hitherto been. The intermediate third party was extinguished by the fall of M. Decazes. The Royalists and Liberals now formed two great parties which divided the whole Assembly between them the centre all adhered to the right or left. This circumstance rendered the situation of the Ministry more perilous in the outset, but more secure in the end; it was more difficult for them to gain a majority in the first instance, but, once gained, it was more likely to adhere permanently to them. It is a great evil, both for Government and Opposition, to have a third party between them, the votes of which may cast the balance either way; for IX. 1820. it imposes upon both the necessity of often departing CHAP. from their principles, and avoiding immediate defeat by permanently degrading themselves in the eyes of the country. The Doctrinaires all retired with their chief, M. Decazes, but they voted on important questions with the new Ministry; and the abilities of M. Guizot, M. de Staël, M. de Barante, and M. de Saint-Aulaire, who formed the strength of that party, were too well known 334, 337; not to make their adhesion a matter of eager solicita- 312, 314; tion, and no slight manoeuvring, on both sides of the 394. Assembly.1 1 Cap. vi. Lam. vi. Lac. ii. 391 51. the Duke and execu Louvel. Two painful scenes took place before the measures of the new Ministers were brought forward in the Chamber Funeral of of Deputies-the funeral of the Duke de Berri, and de Berri, the trial and execution of his assassin. The body of the tion of prince was laid in state for several days in the Louvre, March 14. and afterwards carried with every possible magnificence to the ancestral but now untenanted vaults of Saint-Denis. The king, accompanied by the Duke and Duchess of Angoulême, attended the mournful ceremony, which was celebrated with every circumstance of external splendour which could impress the imagination, and every reality of woe which could melt the heart : "When a prince to the fate of a peasant has yielded, The tapestry waves dark in the dim-lighted hall; With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded, And pages stand mute by the canopied pall; Through the courts at deep midnight the torches are gleaming, Such was the emotion of the Duchess d'Angoulême at IX. 1820. CHAP. confession. He admitted the enormity of his crime, but still insisted that on public grounds it was justifiable.* His answers, when interrogated, evinced the deplorable atheism in which the dreams of the Revolution ended. "I was sometimes a Catholic," said he, "sometimes a theophilanthropist." "Do you not fear the Divine justice?" asked the Prevost de Montmorency. "God is a mere name," replied the assassin. He was executed on the 7th June, and evinced on the scaffold the same strange ii. 383, 391. indifference which had characterised his demeanour ever since the murder.1 1 Moniteur, June 8, 1820; Ann. Hist. iii. 129; Lac. 52. measures of 66 The first steps of the new Ministers were directed Ministerial to the prosecution of the measures prepared by the the session: former ones, arming Government with extraordinary against the powers of arrest, and restraining the licentiousness of the Argument first. press. Much difficulty was at first experienced in arranging terms of accommodation with the Royalists on the right, so as to secure a majority in the Chambers, but at length the terms were agreed on; and these were, that the powers of arrest were to be conferred on Government for a limited period, that the press was to be restrained, and that a new electoral law was to be introduced, restoring the double step in elections. Nothing could equal the vehemence with which these laws were assailed by the Opposition, when they were introduced. That on the law of arrest was the first that came under discussion. "It belongs to the wisdom of the Chambers," said General Foy and Benjamin Constant," to defend a throne which misfortune has rendered more august and more dear to fidelity. Let us beware lest, in introducing a law more odious than useful, we substitute for the present public grief other grounds of discontent which may cause the first to be forgotten. The prince whom "C'était une action horrible, c'est vrai," disait Louvel, "quand on tue un autre homme cela ne peut passer pour vertu, c'est un crime. Je n'y aurais jamais été entraîné sans l'intérêt que je prenais à la nation suivant moi: je croyais bien faire suivant mon idée."-Moniteur, June 4, 1820; Procès de Louvel, 37. IX. 1820. we mourn pardoned with his dying breath his infamous CHAP. assassin. Let us take care that the example of that sublime death is not lost for the nation, the royal family, and the public morality; that posterity may not reproach us with having sacrificed the public liberties on a hecatomb at the funeral of a Bourbon. 53. "The abyss of a counter-revolution is about to open : a system is announced which will attack successively all Continued. our rights, all the guarantees which the nation sighed for in vain in 1789, and hailed with such gratitude in 1814. The regime of 1788 is to be revived by the three laws which are proposed at the same time, the first reviving lettres de cachet, the second establishing the slavery of the press, the third fettering the organs of freedom whom it sends to the Chamber. Experience has demonstrated in every age, and more especially in the disastrous epoch of the Revolution, that if a government once yields to a party, that party will not fail soon to subjugate it. The present time affords a proof of it. The barrier, feeble and tottering as it was, which the Ministry opposed to the counter-revolution, shakes, and is about to be thrown down. Perhaps the Ministry does not at this moment foresee it; but all the laws which you are called on now to pass, will be turned to the profit of the counter-revolution, and that principle is to be applied to the proposed law, compared to that of 1817. That which in 1817 was, from the pressure of circumstances, merely irregular, Ann. Hist. will in 1820 be terrible; that which in 1817 was only iii. 61, 81; vicious in principle, will in 1820 become terrible in its 398. application." 1 1 Lac. ii. 397, the Govern On the other hand, it was answered by the Duke de 54. Richelieu and the Duke de Fitz-james, on the part of the Answer by Government: "Is it possible that any one can be so ment. blind to existing circumstances, and the dangers which menace the State and the royal family? Does any one persist in asserting that the assassination of the 13th February is an isolated act? Have the persons who |