ere both at
the time incapable of governing by maintaining internal peace with
liberty; each had ideas and passions too much opposed to the established
and legal order they would have had to defend; they accepted with great
reluctance, and in a very undefined sense, the one the Charter, and the
other the old Monarchy. Through absolute necessity, power returned to
the hands of the political choir; the floating and impartial section of
the Chambers, the centre, was called to the helm. Under a free system,
the Centre is the habitual moderator and definitive judge of Government,
but not the party naturally pretending to govern. It gives or withholds
the majority, but its mission is not to conquer it. And it is much more
difficult for the centre than for strongly organized parties to win or
maintain a majority; for when it assumes government, it finds before it,
not undecided spectators who wait its acts to pass judgment on them, but
inflamed adversaries resolved to combat them beforehand;--a weak and
dangerous position, which greatly aggravates the difficulties of
Government, whether engaged in the display of power, or the protection
of liberty.

Not only was this the situation of the King's Government from 1816 to
1820, but even this was not regularly and powerfully established. Badly
distributed amongst the actors, the characters were doubtfully filled in
the interior of this new and uncertain party of the centre, on whom the
government, through necessity, devolved. The principal portion of the
heads of the majority in the Chambers held no office. From 1816 to 1819,
several of those who represented and directed the centre, who addressed
and supported it with prevailing influence, who defended it from the
attacks of the right and left-hand parties, who established its power in
debate and its credit with the public, MM. Royer-Collard, Camille
Jordan, Beugnot, and de Serre, were excluded from the Cabinet. Amongst
the eminent leaders of the majority, two only, M. Laine and M. Pasquier
were ministers. The Government, therefore, in the Chambers, relied on
independent supporters who approved of their policy in general, but
neither bore any part in the burden, nor acknowledged any share in the
responsibility.

The doctrinarians had acquired their parliamentary influence and moral
weight by principles and eloquence rather than by deeds; they maintained
their opinions without applying them to practice; the flag of thought
and the