t; and forthwith
commenced a violent attack, accusing the new plan of giving over all
electoral power, and consequently all political influence, to the middle
classes, to the exclusion of the great proprietors and the people.

At a later period, the popular party, who neither thought nor spoke on
the subject in 1817, adopted this argument in their turn, and charged,
on this same accusation of political monopoly for the benefit of the
middle classes, their chief complaint, not only against the electoral
law, but against the entire system of government of which that law was
the basis and guarantee.

I collect my reminiscences, and call back my impressions. From 1814 to
1848, under the government of the Restoration, and under that of July, I
loudly supported and more than once had the honour of carrying this flag
of the middle classes, which was naturally my own. What did we
understand by it? Have we ever conceived the design, or even admitted
the thought, that the citizens should become a newly privileged order,
and that the laws intended to regulate the exercise of suffrage should
serve to found the predominance of the middle classes by taking, whether
in right or fact, all political influence, on one side from the relics
of the old French aristocracy, and on the other from the people?

Such an attempt would have been strangely ignorant and insane. It is
neither by political theories nor articles in laws, that the privileges
and superiority of any particular class are established in a State.
These slow and pedantic methods are not available for such a purpose; it
requires the force of conquest or the power of faith. Society is
exclusively controlled by military or religious ascendency; never by the
influence of the citizens. The history of all ages and nations is at
hand to prove this to the most superficial observer.

In our day, the impossibility of such a predominance of the middle
classes is even more palpable. Two ideas constitute the great features
of modern civilization, and stamp it with its formidable activity; I sum
them up in these terms:--There are certain universal rights inherent in
man's nature, and which no system can legitimately withhold from any
one; there are individual rights which spring from personal merit alone,
without regard to the external circumstances of birth, fortune, or rank,
and which every one who has them in himself should be permitted to
exercise. From the two principles of legal re