e charter
of 1814. There is scarcely a trace of the spirit of departing
absolutism; there is not a sign of the coming republic. It is agreed
that precedent is dead, and the world just going to begin. There are
no clear views on certain grave matters of detail, on an Upper House,
Church and State, and primary education. Free schools, progressive
taxation, the extinction of slavery, of poverty, of ignorance, are
among the things advised. The privileged orders are prepared for a
vast surrender in regard to taxes, and nobody seems to associate the
right of being represented in future parliaments with the possession
of property. On nine-tenths of all that is material to a constitution
there is a general agreement. The one broad division is that the
Commons wish that the States-General shall form a single united
Assembly, and the other orders wish for three. But on this supreme
issue the Commons are all agreed, and the others are not. An ominous
rift appears, and we already perceive the minority of nobles and
priests, who, in the hour of conflict, were to rule the fate of
European society. From all these papers, the mandate of united France,
it was the function of true statesmanship to distil the essence of a
sufficient freedom.

These instructions were intended to be imperative. Nine years before,
Burke, when he retired from the contest at Bristol, had defined the
constitutional doctrine on constituency and member; and Charles Sumner
said that he legislated when he made that speech. But the ancient
view, on which instructions are founded, made the deputy the agent of
the deputing power, and much French history turns on it. At first the
danger was unfelt; for the instructions were often compiled by the
deputy himself, who was to execute them. They were a pledge even more
than an order.

The nation had responded to the royal appeal, and there was agreement
between the offer and the demand. The upper classes had opposed and
resisted the Crown; the people were eager to support it, and it was
expected that the first steps would be taken together. The comparative
moderation and serenity of the Instructions disguised the unappeasable
conflict of opinion and the furious passion that raged below.

The very cream of the upper and middle class were elected; and the
Court, in its prosperous complacency, abandoned to their wisdom the
task of creating the new institutions and permanently settling the
financial trouble. It persisted in