es, in a short pamphlet entitled
'Of the Ministry under a Representative Government,' said:--"France in
every quarter expresses the necessity, profoundly acknowledged, of
sterner action in the Government. I have examined the causes of this
universal feeling, and the reasons which could explain why the different
Administrations that have succeeded each other within the last eighteen
months have not given the King's Cabinet the character of strength and
unity which the Ministers themselves feel to be so essential. I believe
that I have found them in the incoherence which existed between the
nature of the adopted government and the ministerial organization, which
it had not been considered necessary to modify, while at the same time
we received a new division of power, and that power assumed an entirely
new character of action." Appealing at every sentence to the practice
and example of England, M. de Vitrolles argued that the Ministry, which
he called _an institution_, should have perfect unity in itself, a
predominant majority in the Chambers, and an actual responsibility in
the conduct of affairs, which would ensure for it, with the Crown, the
requisite influence and dignity. On these three conditions alone could
the Government be effective. A strange reminiscence to refer to at the
present day! By the most confidential intimate of the Count d'Artois,
and to establish the old royalist party in power, parliamentary
legislation was for the first time recommended and demanded for France,
as a necessary consequence of representative government.

I undertook to repulse this attack by unmasking it.[11] I explained, in
reply, the essential principles of representative government, their true
meaning, their real application, and the conditions under which they
could be usefully developed, in the state in which France had been
plunged by our revolutions and dissensions. Above all, I endeavoured to
expose the bitterness of party spirit which lay behind this polished and
erudite tilting-match between political rhetoricians, and the underhand
blows which, in the insufficiency of their public weapons, they secretly
aimed at each other. I believe my ideas were sound enough to satisfy
intelligent minds who looked below the surface and onwards to the
future; but they had no immediate and practical efficacy. When the great
interests of nations and the contending passions of men are at stake,
the most ingenious speculative arguments are a