med 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 chan