Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time Part 21

_Nov. 6th, 1817._--Decree for the organization of the Staff of the military division of the Royal Guard.

_Dec. 10th, 1817._--Decree respecting the system of administration of military supplies.

_Dec. 17th. 1817._--Decree relative to the organization of the Staff of the Corps of Engineers.

_Dec. 17th, 1817._--Decree relative to the organization of the Staff of the Corps of Artillery.

_Dec. 24th, 1817._--Decree upon the organization of Military Schools.

_March 25th, 1818._--Decree relative to the system and sale of gunpowder for purposes of war, mining, or the chase.

_March 25th, 1818._--Decree relative to the system and organization of the Companies of Discipline.

_April 8th, 1818._--Decree for the formation of Departmental Legions in three battalions.

_May 6th, 1818._--Decree relative to the organization of the Corps and School of the Staff.

_May 20th, 1818._--Decree relative to the position and allowances of those not in active service, or on half-pay.

_May 20th, 1818._--Instructions approved by the King relative to voluntary engagements.

_June 10th, 1818._--Decree relative to the organization, system, and teaching of the Military Schools.

_July 8th, 1818._--Decree relative to the organization and system of Regimental Schools in the Artillery.

_July 15th, 1818._--Decree relative to the supply of gunpowder and saltpetre.

_July 23rd, 1818._--Decree respecting the selection of the General Staff of the Army.

_Aug. 3rd, 1818._--Decree relative to the military hierarchy, and the order of promotion, in conformity with the Law of the 10th of March, 1818.

_Aug. 5th, 1818._--Decree relative to the allowances of Staff Officers.

_Aug. 5th, 1818._--Decree relative to the system and expenses of Barracks.

_Sept. 2nd, 1818._--Decree relative to the Corps of Gendarmes of Paris.

_Dec. 30th, 1818._--Decree regulating the organization and system of the Body-guard of the King.

_Dec. 30th, 1818._--Decree regulating the allowances to Governors of Military Divisions.

_Feb. 17th, 1819._--Decree on the composition and strength of the eighty-six regiments of Infantry.

No. X.

M. GUIZOT TO M. DE SERRE.

_Paris, April 12th, 1820._

My dear Friend,

I have not written to you in all our troubles. I knew that you would hear from this place a hundred different opinions, and a hundred opposite statements on the position of affairs; and, although I had not entire confidence in any of those who addressed you, as you are not called upon, according to my judgment, to form any important resolution, I abstained from useless words. Today all has become clearer and more mature; the situation a.s.sumes externally the character it had until now concealed; I feel the necessity of telling you what I think of it, for the advantage of our future proceedings in general, and yours in particular.

The provisional bills have pa.s.sed:--you have seen how: fatal to those who have gained them, and with immense profit to the Opposition. The debate has produced this result in the Chamber, that the right-hand party has extinguished itself, to follow in the suite of the right-centre; while the left-centre has consented to a.s.sume the same position with respect to the extreme left, from which, however, it has begun to separate within the last fifteen days. So much for the interior of the Chamber.

Without, you may be a.s.sured that the effect of these two debates upon the popular ma.s.ses has been to cause the right-hand party to be looked upon as less haughty and exacting; the left, as more firm and more evenly regulated than was supposed: so that, at present, in the estimation of many worthy citizens, the fear of the right and the suspicion of the left are diminished in equal proportions. A great evil is comprised in this double fact. Last year we gained triumphs over the left, without and within the Chamber; at present the left triumphs over us! Last year we still remained, and were considered, as ever since 1815, a necessary and safe rampart against the _Ultras_, who were greatly dreaded, and whose rule seemed possible; today the _Ultras_ are less feared, because their arrival at power is scarcely believed. The conclusion is, that we are less wanted than formerly.

Let us look to the future. The election bill, which Decazes presented eight days before his fall, is about to be withdrawn. This is certain.

It is well known that it could never pa.s.s; that the discussions on its forty-eight articles would be interminable; the _Ultras_ are very mistrustful of this its probable results; it is condemned; they will frame, and are already framing, another. What will this new bill be? I cannot tell. What appears to me certain is, that, if no change takes place in the present position, it will have for object, not to complete our inst.i.tutions, not to correct the vices of the bill of the 5th of February, 1817, but to bring back exceptional elections; to restore, as is loudly proclaimed, something a.n.a.logous to the Chamber of 1815. This is the avowed object, and, what is more, the natural and necessary end.

This end will be pursued without accomplishment; such a bill will either fail in the debate, or in the application. If it pa.s.ses, and after the debate which it cannot fail to provoke, the fundamental question, the question of the future, will escape from the Chamber, and seek its solution without, in the intervention of the ma.s.ses. If the bill is rejected, the question may be confined within the Chamber; but it will no longer be the Ministry in office who will have the power and mission of solving it. If a choice is left to us, which I am far from despairing of, it will lie between a lamentable external revolution and a ministerial revolution of the most complete character. And this last chance, which is our only one, will vanish if we do not so manage as to offer the country, for the future, a ministry boldly const.i.tutional.

In this position of affairs, what it is indispensable that you should be made acquainted with, and what you would discover in five minutes if you could pa.s.s five minutes here, is, that you are no longer a Minister, and that you form no portion of the Ministry in office. It would be impossible to induce you to speak with them as they speak, or as they are compelled to speak. The situation to which they are reduced has been imposed by necessity; they could only escape from it by completely changing their ground and their friends, by recovering eighty votes from the one hundred and fifteen of the actual Opposition, or by an appeal to a new Chamber. This last measure it will never adopt; and by the side of the powerlessness of the existing Cabinet, stands the impossibility of escaping from it by the aid of the right-hand party. An _ultra_ ministry is impossible. The events in Spain, whatever they may ultimately lead to, have mortally wounded the governments of _coups d'etat_ and ordinances.

I have looked closely into all this, my dear friend; I have thought much on the subject when alone, more than I have communicated to others. You cannot remain indefinitely in a situation so critical and weak, so dest.i.tute of power for immediate government, and so hopeless for the future. I see but one thing to do at present; and that is, to prepare and hold back those who may save the Monarchy. I cannot see, in the existing state of affairs, any possibility of labouring effectively for its preservation. You can only drag yourselves timidly along the precipice which leads to its ruin. You may possibly not lose in the struggle your reputation for honest intentions and good-faith; but this is the maximum of hope which the present Cabinet can reasonably expect to preserve. Do not deceive yourself on this point; of all the plans of reform, at once monarchical and liberal, which you contemplated last year, nothing now remains. It is no longer a bold remedy which is sought for against the old revolutionary spirit; it is a miserable expedient which is adopted without confidence. It is not fit for you, my dear friend, to remain garotted under this system. Thank Heaven! you were accounted of some importance in the exceptional laws. As to the const.i.tutional projects emanating from you, there are several--the integral renewing of the Chamber, for example--which have rather gained than lost ground, and which have become possible in another direction and with other men. I know that nothing happens either so decisively or completely as has been calculated, and that everything is, with time, an affair of arrangement and treaty. But as power is situated at present, you can do nothing, you are nothing; or rather, at this moment, you have not an inch of ground on which you can either hold yourself erect, or fall with honour. If you were here, either you would emerge, within a week, from this impotent position, or you would be lost with the rest, which Heaven forbid!

You see, my dear friend, that I speak to you with the most unmeasured frankness. It is because I have a profound conviction of the present evil and of the possibility of future safety. In this possibility you are a necessary instrument. Do not suffer yourself, while at a distance, to be compromised in what is neither your opinion nor your desire.

Regulate your own destiny, or at least your position in the common destiny of all; and if you must fall, let it be for your own cause, and in accordance with your own convictions.

I add to this letter the Bill prepared by M. de Serre in November, 1819, and which he intended to present to the Chambers, to complete the Charter, and at the same time to reform the electoral law. It will be seen how much this Bill differed from that introduced in April, 1820, with reference to the law of elections alone, and which M. de Serre supported as a member of the second Cabinet of the Duke de Richelieu.

BILL FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF THE LEGISLATURE.

Art. 1. The Legislature a.s.sumes the name of Parliament of France.

Art. 2. The King convokes the Parliament every year.

Parliament will be convoked extraordinarily, at the latest, within two months after the King attains his majority, or succeeds to the throne; or under any event which may cause the establishment of a Regency.

_Of the Peerage._

Art. 3. The Peerage can only be conferred on a Frenchman who has attained his majority, and is in the exercise of political and civil rights.

Art. 4. The character of Peer is indelible; it can neither be lost nor abdicated, from the moment when it has been conferred by the King.

Art. 5. The exercise of the rights and privileges of Peer can only be suspended under two conditions:--1. Condemnation to corporal punishment; 2. Interdiction p.r.o.nounced according to the forms prescribed by the Civil Code. In either case, by the Chamber of Peers alone.

Art. 6. The Peers are admissible to the Chamber at the age of twenty-one, and can vote when they have completed their twenty-fifth year.

Art. 7. In case of the death of a Peer, his successor in the Peerage will be admitted as soon as he has attained the required age, on fulfilling the forms prescribed by the decree of the 23rd of March, 1816, which decree will be annexed to the present law.

Art. 8. A Peerage created by the King cannot henceforward, during the life of the t.i.tulary, be declared transmissible, except to the real and legitimate male children of the created Peer.