1819] Difficulties of Decazes and de Serve 61

of parliamentary reform by which he endeavoured to introduce an element of stability in the electoral system by favouring landed property. There was to be a Chamber of hereditary Peers, with an endowment of 3,500,000 francs. The Chamber of Deputies was to be composed of 456 members, of 30 years of age and upwards, paying in direct taxes 600 francs, and elected for seven years by a complicated electoral system under which the wealthier classes had a double vote.

At the time when Broglie joined in this scheme he was already separated from his friends of the Left. In 1817 he had founded with them the Societe des Amis de la Presse, which soon became the meetingplace of Republicans and Bonapartists. Decazes dissolved this society in 1819; Broglie, driven by Benjamin Constant to explain his position, said that the society had always been illegal and that there was nothing for it but submission. He knew that his own step-father d'Argenson, Manuel, and Lafayette, were allied with conspirators and pretenders, and thought it his duty to terminate his political connexion with them. Meanwhile Decazes, when he realised that the consent of Dessoles, Gouvion Saint-Cyr, and Baron Louis was not to be obtained for a reform of the electoral law, tried through Villele and Corbiere to come to an understanding with Richelieu, who was then travelling in Holland. He sent him (November, 1819) a confidential agent bearing a note from the King and a letter from himself, explaining the situation and enclosing a draft, by Barante, of the proposed legislative measures. At the same time Decazes approached Royer-Collard, to induce him to join the ministry. Royer-Collard also was alarmed by the election of Gregoire, but met every proposal to deal with the situation by remarking that no legislative enactment could save the monarchy: the evil came from men, not from things; to perish was also a solution. But Decazes was so anxious for his assistance that he offered him the Presidency of the Council and his own resignation, whereupon de Serre remarked that self-sacrifice consisted in standing by the colours and not in flying from them. Royer-Collard himself was of opinion that no Prime Minister was possible but Richelieu, and insinuated that he might then take the Education Department himself. His interview with Decazes took place on November 15. The next day de Serre offered the War Office to Broglie. The latter replied that he could give no assistance and only do harm; that he had no influence with the Ultras; and that his vindication of liberty would be looked upon as a relapse into error. When he broke with the Left he changed, not his opinions, but his party. Nobody would believe in his disinterestedness, if he accepted office. On the day on which Broglie declined, Richelieu's answer arrived. He wrote to the King that he, speaking in the presence of God, did not deem himself capable of undertaking the task ; but he promised his general support.

De Serre then unfolded his whole scheme to Royer-Collard, who neither

62 Reconstruction of the Ministry [1819-20

favoured nor opposed it; he still thought it possible to overcome the objection of Richelieu to take office. So late as November 17 de Serre wrote to Decazes that he still hoped "to make the Pope"; i.e. to persuade Royer-Collard to form a ministry. On that very day, after de Serre had produced his plan to the Cabinet, Dessoles, Gouvion SaintCyr, and Louis resigned. Royer-Collard refused at tbe last moment to join the Government. De Serre gave up the intended increase of the Ministry, but succeeded in obtaining the appointment of Roy, LatourMaubourg, and Pasquier, on whom the King specially insisted, as Ministers of Finance, War, and Foreign Affairs respectively. De Serre having declined the Presidency of the Council, that position was given to Decazes.

Royer-Collard expressed his disapproval and disappointment in a letter to de Serre, who replied that the constitution of the Ministry was the result of the refusal of Royer-Collard himself to take office. Louis XVIII wrote to Decazes that the delight of the Comte d'Artois and the Duchess of Angouleme made him fear he had been guilty of folly. The attempt to rally the Left Centre round the standard of de Serre had failed. The Cabinet, reconstructed in a Royalist sense, without conciliating the Royalists, was now dependent on the Right Centre. Villele declined to make any concessions to it. Chateaubriand, in the name of the Ultras, stated, as the conditions for their support of electoral reform, reorganisation of the National Guard, municipal reform, alteration of the system of promotion in the army, reduction of taxation, re-establishment of the religious Orders, and compensation for the victims of the Revolution.

The speech from the throne insisted on the necessity of amendments in the Charter in order to save the country from the disquietude caused by annual elections. Eight days later the Right moved to annul the election of Gregoire. The Ministers would have been willing to exclude him on a point of form. The Left, who had tried to make him resign, would have accepted this solution. But Laine, representing on this occasion the Right as well as the Right Centre, in a memorable speech insisted on the exclusion on grounds of personal unworthiness; only the extreme Left voted against expulsion. During the debate on a Government motion for a vote on account, pending the introduction of the estimates, the Ultras were so violent that Villele became alarmed and persuaded his friends to vote with the Government against the Left and a few Ultras. Two great speeches by Pasquier and Decazes accentuated the difference between the Government and the Left, which organised petitions in favour of the existing electoral system. A fatal blow was now given to the Ministry by the physical breakdown of de Serre, who, in January, 1820, was obliged to go to Nice to recruit his shattered health.

Before he left, he reluctantly consented to a modification of his electoral plan. The scheme finally put forward was that of de Serre,

1820] Murder of the Duke of Berry 63

with amendments by Richelieu, Pasquier, and Laine. Colleges of the arrondissements were to select colleges of the Departments out of the most, highly taxed landowners; septennial general elections and the reduction of the age qualification were dropped; but the annual election of one-fifth of the deputies was to be suspended for five years. The measure, accepted by the King, was to be introduced on February 14. On the evening of February 13, 1820, the Duke of Berry was stabbed at the door of the Opera House by Louvel. Overcome by grief, Decazes, who had hurried to the scene, scarcely perceived that the wife of the dying Prince turned away from him in horror. On the next day his impeachment, " as an accessory to the murder," was proposed. Chateaubriand wrote, " The hand that struck the blow is not the most guilty." The whole Right, in fact, held Decazes responsible for the catastrophe. On February 15 the Government asked for exceptional laws in restraint of liberty, and the reintroduction of the censorship for five years, and at the same time introduced their measure of electoral reform.

The Left Centre were not consulted. Royer-Collard, Camille Jordan, and Beugnot made it a condition, before consenting to the temporary measures of security, that the existing system of election should be maintained. In the Upper House, Doctrinaires and Royalists rejected the proposal to restore the censorship. Every attempt at conciliation made by Decazes was fruitless. " We have all been killed with the Duke," he wrote to de Serre. With the consent of the King he went to Richelieu on February 18, to whom, at the request of Decazes, Monsieur promised the support of himself and his friends, saying, " I will be the first of your soldiers."

Without confidence in this assurance Richelieu threw himself into the breach. The King's powers of resistance were broken by the tears and supplications of his family. He dismissed the favourite, who was made Ambassador in London and a Duke. Thus disappeared from the parliamentary stage a man, who to exceptional ability and great personal charm united a clear apprehension of the requirements of the modern State. Decazes in 1820 was only forty years old; but, although he lived to an advanced age he never recovered political power. Though he cannot be numbered among great and creative statesmen, he was an excellent administrator, energetic, hard-working, and of a conciliatory disposition. His greatest achievement, the Ordinance of September, 1816, which finally led to his fall, secured years of peaceful development to the Government of the elder branch of the Bourbons.

After his return to power, Richelieu placed the moderate Royalist Simeon at the Home Office and Mounier at the head of the police; Portalis replaced de Serre ad interim; Pasquier, who remained at the Foreign Office, brilliantly vindicated the ministerial policy in the Chamber. The Doctrinaires continued in the Council of State. De Serre charged them with having, by their conduct, brought about the

64 Richelieu's second Ministry [1820

sacrifice of Decazes to the Ultras. De Serre's friends were of a similar opinion; in their letters to him they termed Royer-Collard the greatest master of destruction. Decazes recommended that Broglie should be secured to the Ministry as the least Doctrinaire of the Doctrinaires, now that de Serre no longer belonged to them. Broglie described the situation as desperate, and the King's rule as at an end. " Richelieu," wrote Royer-Collard, " is the last bulwark " ; all opposition was dangerous and he would have nothing to say to it, but he would never agree to the electoral proposals of the Government as they stood ; and, in the debates on the exceptional laws, the hostility of the Doctrinaires became clear. Royer-Collard compared these measures to money raised at usurious interest, which ruins the creditor; the nullification of the representative system by the reintroduction of privilege would prove deadly; the royal standard, which was hoisted on September 5, 1816, was sinking in the hands of incompetent leaders.

The Left, encouraged by the success of the Revolution in Spain, and animated by the fiery eloquence of General Foy, who acted as mediator between them and the Doctrinaires, attacked the Government with ever increasing violence. The Right reluctantly provided a feeble and precarious majority. Guizot wrote to de Serre that the monarchical and Liberal reform which he intended was doomed; he ought to resign and clear himself of responsibility, as he no longer had power. RoyerCollard held similar language : "I dreamt of an alliance between order and liberty, between Legitimacy and the Revolution... .1 am now awake." But de Serre had taken his stand. He thought there were signs that both groups of the Right would come to an understanding for the defence of monarchy. Should that come to pass he would gladly see them in power. Till then the only course was to fight on. The notion of deserting his post seemed to him cowardly. Since March there was absolutely no prospect of carrying de Serre's project, either as proposed by Decazes or in its original shape. On April 17 the Government, in agreement with Villele, Corbiere, and Laine, introduced a third scheme, according to which two different classes of electoral colleges were to be created in each Department; those of the arrondissements, with a franchise of 300 francs, were to elect as many candidates as the Department had deputies ; that of the Department, consisting of the most highly taxed fifth of the voters, was to elect the deputies from these lists.

The recognition of property, defined by Benjamin Constant no less than by the Doctrinaires themselves "as the natural, necessary inequality, on which the exercise of political rights reposed," had been the rootidea of the electoral law of 1817. The project of 1820, which introduced the dual vote, transferred political preponderance from the middle class to landed property, which, in spite of all upheavals and changes, to about half of its original extent remained in or had returned into the hands of the old nobility. The Left saw in the new proposals an injury

1820] New electoral proposals 65

to the industrial as opposed to the lauded interest, and a preparatory step towards the reintroduction of privilege. They attacked the withdrawal of the project of Decazes as illegal, with the support of RoyerCollard.

The Ultras considered the measure inadequate and the expression of the mind of the Centre- In another speech, on May 17, Royer-Collard characterised liberty and legitimacy as inseparable ideas, and equality as the corner-stone of French liberty. He repudiated, as before, the doctrine that the sovereign people represented persons and individual wills, not society, its rights and interests. Constitutional theory should make no distinction between owners of large and small properties. Property as such was the moral guarantee of civil capacity. " All the interests and rights of the community are represented by the Lower Chamber. Equality of electors and of votes and direct election are inseparable. Election by majority is alone valid. The representation of minorities is a fraud, a violation of the Charter, a coup d'etat against equality and the representative system; it is the Counter-revolution." Pasquier retorted on the 18th that equality, the fundamental principle of the Charter, was already set at nought, 27,900,000 souls being disfranchised as against about 80,000 voters. He charged Royer-Collard with confounding civil rights, which were equal for all, and political rights, which were not.

The strongest pressure was brought upon de Serre, who returned at this time to Paris, by Broglie, Guizot, and Royer-Collard not to sacrifice himself " to the mutilated Bill and the wretched Ministry." " We have imperishable recollections in common. We have revealed our souls to each other," wrote Royer-Collard. For a whole week, in silence, de Serre listened to orators who accused one another of conspiring with the Left against monarchy, and with the Right in the interest of the Counter-revolution. The excitement was tremendous, in the gallery, at the doors of the House, throughout the country, in the army itself, which Latfitte, Lafayette, and d'Argenson were attempting to corrupt, while Vitrolles intrigued for Monsieur. On May 27 Lafayette spoke. He contended that the obligations of the Charter were reciprocal; the tricolour was insulted by the emigres, the conquests of the Revolution threatened. It would not be well to drive the young generation to the defence of the sacred symbols of truth and justice. De Serre rose. He now began, in the words of Broglie, his Homeric struggle against the Left, which attacked him with fury, against the Right, which branded him as a traitor, against his former allies now incensed against him; he stood alone amongst colleagues, all of whom had sought his assistance and yet were divided by his presence. The hand of death was upon him ; nevertheless he fought with a cool courage and mental activity never surpassed. Lafayette, he said, had alluded to the Revolution. " Have not those times," he continued, " left to the honourable

C. M. H. x. 5