ition, which
demonstrates the infancy of representative government. We do not argue
politics as we plead a cause or maintain a thesis. To act effectively in
a deliberative assembly, we must ourselves be deliberators; that is to
say, we must be members, and hold our share with others in free
thought, power, and responsibility. I believe that I acquitted myself
with propriety, but coldly, of the mission I had undertaken. I
sustained, against M. Benjamin Constant, the general responsibility for
the correctness of the accounts given of the proceedings of the
Chambers, and, against M. Daunou, the guarantees required by the bill
for the establishment of newspapers. The Chamber appeared to appreciate
my arguments, and listened to me with attention. But I kept on the
reserve, and seldom joined in the debate; I have no turn for incomplete
positions and prescribed parts. When we enter into an arena in which the
affairs of a free country are discussed, it is not to make a display of
fine thoughts and words; we are bound to engage in the struggle as true
and earnest actors.

As the recruiting bill had established a personal and political
reputation for Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, so the bills on the press
effected the same for M. de Serre. Thus, at the issue of a violent
crisis of revolution and war, in presence of armed Europe, and within
the short space of three sessions, the three most important questions of
a free system--the construction of elective power, the formation of a
national army, and the interference of individual opinions in public
affairs through the channel of the press--were freely proposed, argued,
and resolved; and their solution, whatever might be the opinion of
parties, was certainly in harmony with the habits and wishes of that
honest and peaceably disposed majority of France who had sincerely
received the King and the Charter, and had adopted their government on
mature consideration.

During this time, many other measures of constitutional organization,
or general legislation, had been accomplished or proposed. In 1818, an
amendment of M. Royer-Collard settled the addition to the budget of an
annual law for the supervision of public accounts; and in the course of
the following year, two ministers of finance, the Baron Louis and
M. Roy, brought into operation that security for the honest
appropriation of the revenue. By the institution of smaller
"Great-books" of the national debt, the state of public credit