day, after the close of the levée, and carried to Paris by one of the Ministers to be inserted in the next Moniteur. The Keeper of the Seals himself, M. Chantelauze, who had drawn up the Report of which we have already spoken, sent for M. Sauvo, the conductor of the Moniteur, to receive the Ordinances for publication. M. Sauvo found M. de Montbel with M. Chantelauze, the two Ministers both exhibiting the greatest dejection in their manner; and he did not disguise from them his own consternation, when he came to understand the nature of the Ordinances.*

Of these Ordinances one suspended the liberty of the Press, another annulled the election of the Deputies, and a third arbitrarily changed the constitution of the future Chambers. The Ordinance relative to the Press consisted of nine articles, which placed all the journals, of whatever kind, under the strict surveillance of the Police, so that no periodical writing should appear without authorization, to be renewed every three months, and liable at any time to be revoked or suspended. Had these provisions been constitutional in form, they would have been oppressive to the last degree; but as the Charter assigns the regulation of the Press to the laws that is, the concurrent acts of the King and the two Chambers, this Ordinance was a palpable violation of the Charter.

of the manoeuvres, which have been practised in various parts of the Kingdom to deceive and mislead the electors during the late operations of the Electoral Colleges,' it merely ordains that The Chamber of Deputies of Departments is dissolved.' Such are the words used, but they are altogether false and deceptive. No Chamber of Deputies then existed. Individuals had been elected to be members of a future Chamber hereafter to be organized; but as yet there was no Chamber. The words of the Ordinance, to speak the exact truth, should have been: 'The late elections of Deputies of Departments are annulled;'-for this and this only was what the Ordinance did, under the jesuitical pretence of exercising a constitutional power to dissolve the Chambers.

To comprehend the remaining Ordinance it is necessary to call to mind the actual and past state of the laws for the choice of Deputies. The Charter provides that, The Chamber of Deputies shall be composed of Deputies elected by Electoral Colleges, the organization of which shall be determined by the laws' (art. 35); and that Each Department shall have the same number of Deputies that it has had until the present time' (art. 36). Previous to the law of June, 1820, the number of Deputies had been 258, all returned by Electoral Colleges, of which there was but one for each Department, and consisting of

The second Ordinance is brief and pithy. After setting forth as a preamble the Being informed the whole body of qualified elec

* For Ordinances, vide second part, page 180.

ber of Deputies shall consist only of Deputies of Departments' (art. 1); and that each Department shall have the number of Deputies allotted to it by the 36th article of the Constitutional Charter' (art. 3.)

tors, voting altogether, or in sec- the Charter styled 'Deputies of tions, according to circumstances Departments' (art. 50). This (Loi 5 Février, 1817). After a expression would seem to be the few years' trial of this system, it true legal demomination for all appeared to operate too favorably the Deputies collectively; and it for the democratic principle, and is thus applied even in the Ordithe Ministers devised the inge- nance of July 25th, for dissolving nious legerdemain of the double the Chamber. vote, of which we have before We have premised these exspoken, to augment the power of planations in order that our readthe aristocracy (Loi 29 Juin, ers may fully understand the 1820). The Electoral Colleges mingled meanness, effrontery, and already subsisting were suffered to tyranny of the Ordinance relative remain in substance, with the to the elections. It begins by right of returning the 258 old providing that, Conformably to members as before, only di- the articles 15, 36, and 50 of the vided into permanent sections, Constitutional Charter, the Chamcalled Colleges of Arrondissements. At the same time 172 new members were added, to be chosen by bodies called Departmental Colleges, composed, says the law, of the electors paying the highest tax in number equal to the fourth part of all the electors in the Department' (art. 2). These 172 Deputies, be it observed, were created by a ministerial manœuvre for the sole purpose of giving the nomination of two fifths of all the members to a select body of the aristocracy, in the hope that a small portion at least of the other three fifths would continue favorable to the court-party, so as thus permanent ly to secure a majority to the Ministers. Of course, this addition to the Chamber and the mode of electing the additional members, had always been vehemently censured by the liberal party, whose influence was thus greatly abridged. One thing more is to be remarked, namely, that the members of the elective Chamber are in the language of

Such are, the very terms of the Ordinance; and when we come to render these cabalistical phrases into something more intelligible to us vulgar sublunary mortals, it will be admitted, we think, that M. de Peyronnet, the author of this Ordinance, had practised very diligently upon the maxim of the honest diplomatist, who defined words to be instruments employed for concealing one's meaning.' The signification of the latter article is, Henceforth the Chamber of Deputies shall contain but 258 members; thus repealing the law of June, 1820. The signification of the other article is equally abstruse and recondite, and is veiled in a most contemptible quibble. If the sentence had been worded in the simplicity and directness of an honest purpose, it would

fourth part' should choose half the Deputies.

The Ordinance, of course, never took effect, and therefore is only important in a historical point of view. It was illegal in the same way the others were, inasmuch as it did that by royal decree, which according to the Charter could only be done by enacted laws. It operated in fact a total change of the whole constitution of the Chambers. We have taken pains to give a just account of the mode in which it was devised, because this does not appear to have been well understood out of France, and could not be, indeed, without careful examination of the pre-existing laws on the subject. We should add that another Ordinance convoked the Electoral Colleges according to the new system, and appointed a meeting of the new Chambers that were to be thus unconstitutionally elected, for the 28th of September.

have been, Henceforth the of candidates, out of whom the Deputies shall be chosen by the Departinental Colleges alone.' The singular phraseology actually employed was adopted in a spirit of low cunning, in order to have it seem that the Ordinance was but a restoration of the Charter. So far as regarded the number of Deputies contemplated by the Ordinance it was indeed a return to the Charter; but if the 172 new members elected under the law of 1820 were all unconstitutional, by whom were they introduced and for what purpose? Were they not the creation of the Government? Was not their creation a mere trick, a device, a far-fetched expedient, to enable the Government to return members favorable to themselves, out of the ranks and by the votes of the high aristocracy alone? But what right had M. de Peyronnet to assert, as he impliedly did, that the Deputies chosen by the Colleges of Arrondissements, that is, by the whole body of electors, were not Deputies of Departments within the true intent of the Charter? He undertakes virtually to affirm that none, but Deputies chosen by the newly invented Colleges of June, 1820, are Deputies in any sense, and by force of this notable discovery disfranchises at once all those electors, who under the law of 1817 voted either in the mass or in sections, and under the law of 1820 were permanently organized into sections. The whole electoral power was thus thrown into the hands of the famous fourth part,'-les électeurs les plus imposés,-nothing being assigned to the other three fourths but the right of nominating a list

When these ordinances appeared in the Moniteur, and began to be generally known, as they were read in the gardens, Cafés and Cabinets de Lecture, nothing could exceed the consternation they universally occasioned. People in general had, perhaps, been lulled into comparative tranquillity, supposing that the great struggle would not take place until after the regular meeting of the Chambers. They supposed it would be so, because they presumed the King would act with some degree. of discretion, and they saw the manifest advantage to him in having the crisis deferred until the Chambers should take some step

principle, have always been zealous friends of the popular cause. Vast numbers of schools and colleges frequented by ardent young men thrown loose from the restraints of domesticity, have at all times furnished busy agents in the political movements of this remarkable city. A spirit of liberty was a distinguishing trait of the great scholars and writers, who gave celebrity to the literary departments of the seminaries of education, to which we refer.Cultivators of the fine arts, men of letters by profession, from the humbler writers for the daily Press or the stage, up to the great names of the Institute, a host of men connected with the professions of medicine and law,

of a violent or unreasonable character, so as to give a color of necessity to his arbitrary designs, and thus make sure of the sympathies of Europe. They supposed it would be so, because they saw no token of preparation, on the part of the Ministers, to encounter a popular movement. And they were astounded at the profligate audacity of the Ministers, in thus rooting up all the dearest bulwarks of the Charter at once, and in a manner as insulting to the sense of the Nation, as it was destructive of their liberties. But indignation, a determination to make a stand for their rights, desire of organization, and a looking around for means of resisting the Government, soon took the place in the minds of all men, in short, most of those, who of the stupor and amazement of depended upon the culture of their the first impression. The leading understandings for subsistence or spirits saw that it was a crisis for for fame, were as a matter of boldness not for caution; for ac- course opposed to the policy of tion, not for deliberation. The the Government. It would be incasus belli had arrived. If a sin- structive to inquire why it is that, gle encroachment on the Charter in France, the intellectual classes had come at a time, the liberals are so generally found on the side might have doubted and reasoned of the public rights. An Ameriand calculated, and waited for the can would feel no hesitation in next blow, before making a de- saying that it was the homage of monstration themselves; but here reason to the cause of liberty; a was a sheet of the Moniteur, French Ultra would be driven at abolishing the Charter as it were least to admit that the Bourbons in a paragraph, here were the must have played the game of guarantees of the public liberty despotism badly, to have driven dashed out at once by a single from them all the enthusiastic bold sweep of the ministerial hearts, all the brilliant geniuses, sponge-and the emergency left all the cultivated minds of a Nano alternative to the Nation but tion, which had nearly worshipped slavery or civil war. They could the iron sceptre of Napoleon. not hesitate which to choose. But remarkable as it is that a vast majority of the classes we have described should have been found ripe for Revolution, it is more so

Paris contains an extraordinary proportion of intelligent residents, who, by education, taste, or