fences, assigning crimes to the Court of
Assizes, to be punished by transportation, and prescribing for simple
offences fine and imprisonment. This was still too little for the
ultra-members of the party. They demanded the penalty of death, hard
labour, and confiscation of property. These additions were refused, and
the Chamber, by a large majority, passed the bill as amended by the
committee. Undoubtedly there were members of the right-hand party who
would not have dared to contest the propositions of MM. Piet and
de Salaberry, but who rejoiced to see them thrown out, and voted for the
bill. How many errors would men escape, and how many evils would they
avoid, if they had the courage to act as they think right, and to do
openly what they desire!

All these debates were but preludes to the great battle ready to
commence, on the most important of the incidental questions before the
Chamber. It is with regret that I use the word _question_. The amnesty
was no longer one. On returning to France, the King, by his proclamation
from Cambray, had promised it; and, with kings, to promise is to
perform. What sovereign could refuse the pardon, of which he has given a
glimpse to the condemned criminal? The royal word is not less pledged to
a nation than to an individual. But in declaring, on the 28th of June,
1815, that he would only except from pardon "the authors and instigators
of the plot which had overturned the throne," the King had also
announced "that the two Chambers would point them out to the punishment
of the laws;" and when, a month later, the Cabinet had, upon the report
of the Duke of Otranto, arrested the individuals excepted in the two
lists, the decree of the 24th of July again declared that "the Chambers
should decide upon those amongst them who should be expatriated or
brought to trial." The Chambers were therefore inevitably compromised.
The amnesty had been declared, and yet it still remained a question, a
bill was still considered necessary.

Four members of the Chamber of Deputies hastened to take the
initiative in this debate, three of them with extreme violence,
M. de la Bourdonnaye being the most vehement of the three. He had
energy, enthusiasm, independence, political tact as a partisan, and a
frank and impassioned roughness, which occasionally soared to eloquence.
His project, it was said, would have brought eleven hundred persons
under trial. Whatever might be the correctness of this calculation, th