egan to warm into the question. Excitement and confusion went on
increasing. It was evidently not the electoral law alone, but the
general policy of the Restoration and the Government of France, that
formed the subject of debate.

In a little work which the historians of this period, M. de Lamartine
amongst others, have published, the King, Louis XVIII. himself has
related the incidents and sudden turns of this ministerial crisis, which
ended, as is well known, in the retirement of the Duke de Richelieu,
with four of his colleagues, and in the promotion of M. Decazes, who
immediately constructed a new Cabinet, of which he was the head, without
appearing to preside, while M. de Serre, appointed to the seals, became
the powerful organ in the Chambers, and the maintenance of the law of
elections was adopted as the symbol. Two sentiments, under simple forms,
pervade this kingly recital: first, a certain anxiety, on the part of
the author, that no blame should be attached to him in his royal
character, or in his conduct towards the Duke de Richelieu, and a desire
to exculpate himself from these charges; secondly, a little of that
secret pleasure which kings indulge in, even under heavy embarrassments,
when they see a minister fall whose importance was not derived from
themselves, and who has served them without expecting or receiving
favours.

"If I had only consulted my own opinion," says the King, in concluding
his statement, "I should have wished M. Decazes, uniting his lot, as he
had always intended, with that of the Duke de Richelieu, to have left
the Ministry with him." It would have been happy for M. Decazes if this
desire of the King had prevailed. Not that he erred in any point of duty
or propriety by surviving the Duke de Richelieu in office, and in
forming a Cabinet without him; an important misunderstanding on a
pressing question had already separated them. M. Decazes, after
tendering his resignation, had raised no obstacle to the Duke's efforts
at finding new colleagues; it was only on the failure of those attempts,
frankly avowed by the Duke himself, and at the formal request of the
King, that he had undertaken to form a ministry. As a friend of
M. de Richelieu, and the day before his colleague, there were certainly
unpleasant circumstances and appearances attached to this position; but
M. Decazes was free to act, and could scarcely refuse to carry out the
policy he had recommended in council, when that which