n its nature, as all legislative enactments
must be which spring from precaution more than necessity, and in which
the legislator is inspired and governed by ideas rather than commanded
and directed by facts. Another danger, a moral and concealed danger,
also presented itself. Enactments thus prepared and maintained become
works of a philosopher and artist, the author of which is tempted to
identify himself with them through an impulse of self-love, which
sometimes leads him to lose sight of the external circumstances and
practical application he ought to have considered. Politics require a
certain mixture of indifference and passion, of freedom of thought and
restrained will, which is not easily reconciled with a strong adhesion
to general ideas, and a sincere intent to hold a just balance between
the many principles and interests of society.

I should be unwilling to assert that in the measures proposed and passed
in 1819, on the liberty of the press, we had completely avoided these
rocks, or that they were in perfect harmony with the state of men's
minds, and the exigencies of order at that precise epoch. Nevertheless,
after an interval of nearly forty years, and on reconsidering these
measures now with my matured judgment, I do not hesitate to look on them
as grand and noble efforts of legislation, in which the true points of
the subject were skilfully embraced and applied, and which, in spite of
the mutilation they were speedily doomed to undergo, established an
advance in the liberty of the press, properly understood, which sooner
or later cannot fail to extend itself.

The debate on these bills was worthy of their conception. M. de Serre
was gifted with eloquence singularly exalted and practical. He supported
their general principles in the tone of a magistrate who applies, and
not as a philosopher who explains them. His speech was profound without
abstraction, highly coloured but not figurative; his reasoning resolved
itself into action. He expounded, examined, discussed, attacked, or
replied without literary or even oratorical preparation, carrying up the
strength of his arguments to the full level of the questions, fertile
without exuberance, precise without dryness, impassioned without a
shadow of declamation, always ready with a sound answer to his
opponents, as powerful on the impulse of the moment as in prepared
reflection, and, when once he had surmounted a slight hesitation and
slowness at the first ons