olitical enactment which has enjoyed a long and powerful life. At
least it was a work which may be acknowledged, and which deserves to be
correctly estimated, even after its overthrow.

A ruling idea inspired the bill of the 5th of February, 1817,--to fix a
term to the revolutionary system, and to give vigour to the
constitutional Government. At that epoch, universal suffrage had ever
been, in France, an instrument of destruction or deceit,--of
destruction, when it had really placed political power in the hands of
the multitude; of deceit, when it had assisted to annul political
rights for the advantage of absolute power, by maintaining, through the
vain intervention of the multitude, a false appearance of electoral
privilege. To escape, in fine, from that routine of alternate violence
and falsehood, to place political power in the region within which the
conservative interests of social order naturally predominate with
enlightened independence, and to secure to those interests, by the
direct election of deputies from the country, a free and strong action
upon its Government,--such were the objects, without reserve or
exaggeration, of the authors of the electoral system of 1817.

In a country devoted for twenty-five years, on the subject of political
elections, whether truly or apparently, to the principle of the
supremacy of number, so absurdly called the sovereignty of the people,
the attempt was new, and might appear rash. At first, it confined
political power to the hands of 140,000 electors. From the public, and
even from what was already designated the liberal party, it encountered
but slight opposition; some objections springing from the past, some
apprehensions for the future, but no declared or active hostility. It
was from the bosom of the classes specially devoted to conservative
interests, and from their intestine discussions, that the attack and the
danger emanated.

During the session of 1815, the old royalist faction, in its moderated
views, and when it renounced systematic and retrograding aspirations,
had persuaded itself that, at least, the King's favour and the influence
of the majority would give it power in the departments as at the seat of
government. The decree of the 5th of September, 1816, abolished this
double expectation. The old Royalists called upon the new electoral
system to restore it, but at once perceived that the bill of the 5th of
February was not calculated to produce such an effec