From 1816 to 1848, under each of the two constitutional
monarchies, whether voluntarily or by compulsion, the different cabinets
have acted under this conviction; they have studied to relieve the
central Government, by remitting a portion of its functions, sometimes
to the regular local agents, and at others to more independent
auxiliaries. But, as it too often happens, the remedy was not rapid
enough in operation; mistrust, timidity, inexperience, and routine
slackened its progress; neither the authorities nor the people knew how
to employ it with resolution, or to wait the results with patience. Thus
compelled to sustain the burden of political liberty with that of
administrative centralization, the newly-born constitutional monarchy
found itself compromised between difficulties and contradictory
responsibilities, exceeding the measure of ability and strength which
could be reasonably expected from any Government.

Another evil, the natural but not incurable result of these very
institutions, weighed also upon the Restoration. The representative
system is at the bottom, and on close analysis, a system of mutual
sacrifices and dealings between the various interests which coexist in
society. At the same time that it places them in antagonism, it imposes
on them the absolute necessity of arriving at an intermediate term, a
definite measure of reciprocal understanding and toleration which may
become the basis of laws and government. But also, at the same time, by
the publicity and heat of the struggle, it throws the opposing parties
into an unseemly exaggeration of vehemence and language, and compromises
the self-love and personal dignity of human nature. Thus, by an
inconsistency teeming with embarrassment, it daily renders more
difficult that agreement or submission which, in the end, it has also
made indispensable. Herein is comprised an important difficulty for this
system of government, which can only be surmounted by a great exercise
of tact and conciliation on the part of the political actors
themselves, and by a great preponderance of good sense on that of the
public, which in the end recalls parliamentary factions and their
leaders to that moderation after defeat, from which the inflated passion
of the characters they have assumed too often tends to estrange them.

This necessary regulator, always difficult to find or institute, was
essentially wanting to us under the Restoration; on entering the course,
we wer