they had not yet acquired foresight.
They gladly embraced this opportunity of making themselves, with some
display, the champions of a Constitutional principle which in fact was
in no danger, but which power had assumed the air of eluding or
disavowing. Three of the five honourable members who had been the first
to restrain the Imperial despotism--Messrs. Raynouard, Gallois, and
Flaugergues--were the declared adversaries of the bill; and in
consequence of not having been boldly presented, from the opening, under
its real and legitimate aspect, the measure entailed more discredit on
the Government than it afforded them security.

The liberty of the press, that stormy guarantee of modern civilization,
has already been, is, and will continue to be the roughest trial of free
governments, and consequently of free people, who are greatly
compromised in the struggles of their rulers; for in the event of
defeat, they have no alternative but anarchy or tyranny. Free nations
and governments have but one honourable and effective method of dealing
with the liberty of the press,--to adopt it frankly, without undue
complaisance. Let them not make it a martyr or an idol, but leave it in
its proper place, without elevating it beyond its natural rank. The
liberty of the press is neither a power in the State, nor the
representative of the public mind, nor the supreme judge of the
executive authorities; it is simply the right of all citizens to give
their opinions upon public affairs and the conduct of Government,--a
powerful and respectable privilege, but one naturally overbearing, and
which, to be made salutary, requires that the constituted authorities
should never humiliate themselves before it, and that they should impose
on it that serious and constant responsibility which ought to weigh upon
all rights, to prevent them from becoming at first seditious, and
afterwards tyrannical.

The third measure of importance in which I was concerned at this epoch,
the reform of the general system of public instruction, by a Royal
ordinance of the 17th of February, 1815, created much less sensation
than the Law of the Press, and produced even less effect than noise; for
its execution was entirely suspended by the catastrophe of the 20th of
March, and not resumed after the Hundred Days. There were more important
matters then under consideration. This measure was what is now called
the de-centralization of the University.[6] Seventeen separate
Un