icials, from the projects of interior
movement which were announced, the Deputies began to know and arrange
themselves, but still with doubt and confusion; as, in a battalion
unexpectedly called together, the soldiers assemble in disorder, looking
for their arms and colours. The Government propositions soon brought the
different parties to broad daylight, and placed them in contest. The
Session commenced, as might be expected, with measures arising from
incidental circumstances. Of the four bills evidently bearing this
character, two--the suspension of personal liberty, and the
establishment of prevotal courts--were proposed as exceptional and
purely temporary; the others--for the suppression of seditious acts, and
for a general amnesty--were intended to be definitive and permanent.

Measures of expediency, and exceptional laws, have been so often and so
peremptorily condemned in France, that their very name and aspect
suffice to render them suspicious and hateful,--a natural impression,
after so much and such bitter experience! They supply notwithstanding,
and particularly under a constitutional government, the least dangerous
as well as the most efficacious method of meeting temporary and urgent
necessities. It is better to suspend openly, and for a given time, a
particular privilege, than to pervert, by encroachment and subtlety,
the fixed laws, so as to adapt them to the emergency of the hour. The
experience of history, in such cases, confirms the suggestions of
reason. In countries where political liberty is finally established, as
in England, it is precisely after it has obtained a signal triumph, that
the temporary suspension of one or more of its special securities has,
under pressing circumstances, been adopted as a Government measure. In
ruder and less intelligent times, under the dominion of momentary
danger, and as an immediate defence, those rigorous and artful statutes
were enacted in perpetuity, in which all tyrannies have found arms ready
made, without the odium of forging them, and from which a more advanced
civilization, at a later period, has found it so difficult to escape.

It is necessary, I admit, to enable these exceptional laws to accomplish
their end without too much danger, that, beyond the scope of their
operation and during their continuance, the country should retain enough
general liberty, and the authorities sufficient real responsibility, to
confine these measures within their due limits