ly vote _for_ or
_against_. This Billet d'Etat is in French, still the official
language--the only one used in the deliberations in former days.

The whole takes us back in thought to Norman or early English times.
Probably even the Norman patois of the modern rural deputies is the
speech of the present time nearest to that in which our ancestors
transacted their business.

This legislative body represents the King's Council, in the same way
that the supreme judicial body, still bearing the name of La Cour
Royale, represents the King's Court.

The decisions of the States are subject to the approval of the Privy
Council, to whom there is a right of appeal.

CHAPTER II

THE SECURITY OF THE NOTES

Guernsey, like other places, fell on evil days early in the nineteenth
century, the period of history with which we have to deal; and the
islanders suffered from the burden of a heavy debt and from the
depression and want of employment which followed the close of the
Napoleonic wars.

Its condition at this time is graphically described in the following
extracts taken from a document presented by the States to the Privy
Council in 1829.

"In this Island, eminently favoured by nature, antecedently to the new
roads first projected by Sir John Doyle, Bart., nothing had been done by
art or science towards the least improvement; nothing for the display or
enjoyment of local beauties and advantages; not a road, not even an
approach to Town, where a horse and cart could pass abreast; the deep
roads only four feet six inches wide, with a footway of two to three
feet, from which nothing but the steep banks on each side could be seen,
appeared solely calculated for drains to the waters, which running over
them rendered them every year deeper and narrower. Not a vehicle,
hardly a horse kept for hire; no four-wheeled carriage existed of any
kind, and the traveller landing in a town of lofty houses, confined and
miserably paved streets, from which he could only penetrate into the
country by worse roads, left the island in haste and under the most
unfavourable impressions.

"In 1813 the sea, which had in former times swallowed up large tracts,
threatened, from the defective state of its banks, to overflow a great
extent of land. The sum required to avert the danger was estimated at
more than L10,000, which the adjoining parishes subject to this charge
were not in a condition to raise. The state of the finance was not more
c