ng, too, conducts himself in
a way that gives me a bad opinion of him; he is too complaisant to
the rage for equality, and stoops more than he need do; in fact,
he overdoes it. It is a piece of abominably bad taste (to say no
worse) to have conferred a pension on the author of the
Marseillaise hymn; for what can be worse than to rake up the old
ashes of Jacobinism, and what more necessary than to distinguish
as much as possible this Revolution from that of 1789? Then he
need not be more familiar as King than he ever was as Duke of
Orleans, and affect the manners of a citizen and a plainness of
dress and demeanour very suitable to an American President, but
unbecoming a descendant of Louis XIV.

The new Charter is certainly drawn up with great moderation, the
few alterations which have been made approximating it to the
spirit of the English Constitution, and in the whole of the
proceedings the analogies of our revolution have been pretty
closely followed. But there has been a remarkable deviation,
which I think ominous, and I can't imagine how it has escaped
with so little animadversion here. That is the cavalier manner in
which the Chamber of Peers has been treated, for the Deputies not
only assumed all the functions of Government and legislation, and
disposed by their authority of the Crown without inviting the
concurrence of the other Chamber, but at the same time they
exercised an enormous act of authority over the Chamber of Peers
itself in striking off the whole of that great promotion of
Charles X., which, however unwise and perhaps unconstitutional,
was perfectly legal, and those Peers had, in fact, as good a
right to their peerages as any of their colleagues. They have
reconstructed the Chamber of Peers, and conferred upon it certain
rights and privileges; but the power which can create can also
destroy, and it must be pretty obvious after this that the Upper
Chamber will be for the future nothing better than a superior
Court of Judicature, depending for its existence upon the will of
the popular branch. There are some articles of the old Charter
which I am astonished at their keeping, but which they may
possibly alter[4] at the revision which is to take place next
year, those particularly which limit the entrance to the Chamber
of Deputies to men of forty, and which give the initiation of
laws to the King. But on the whole it is a good sign that they
should alter so little, and looks like extreme caution and