e
three propositions were tainted with two capital errors: they assumed,
in fact, that the catastrophe of the 20th of March had been the result
of a widely-spread conspiracy, the authors of which ought to be punished
as they would have been in ordinary times, and by the regular course of
law, if they had miscarried; they assigned to the Chambers the right of
indicating, by general categories, and without limit as to number, the
conspirators to be thus dealt with, although the King, by his decree of
the 24th of July preceding, had merely conferred on them the power of
deciding, amongst the thirty-eight individuals specially excepted by
name, which should be banished and which should be brought to trial.
There was thus, in these projects, at the same time, an act of
accusation under the name of amnesty, and an invasion of the powers
already exercised, as well as of the limits already imposed, by the
royal authority.

The King's Government by no means mistook the bearing of such
resolutions, and maintained its rights, its acts, and promises with
suitable dignity. It hastened to check at once the attempt of the
Chamber. The bill introduced by the Duke de Richelieu on the 8th of
December, was a real act of amnesty, with no other exceptions than the
fifty-six persons named in the two lists of the decree of the 24th of
July, and belonging to the family of the Emperor Napoleon. A single
additional clause, the fatal consequences of which were assuredly not
foreseen, had been introduced into the preamble: the fifth article
excepted from the amnesty all persons against whom prosecutions had been
ordered or sentences passed before the promulgation of the law,--a
lamentable reservation, equally contrary to the principle of the measure
and the object of its framers. The character and essential value of an
amnesty consist in assigning a term to trials and punishments, in
arresting judicial action in the name of political interest, and in
re-establishing confidence in the public mind, with security in the
existing state of things, at once producing a cessation of sanguinary
scenes and dangers. The King's Government had already, by the first list
of exceptions in the decree of the 24th of July, imposed on itself a
heavy burden. Eighteen generals had been sent before councils of war.
Eighteen grand political prosecutions, after the publication of the
amnesty, would have been much even for the strongest and
best-established government to