e launched, without curb, on this precipice of extreme
demonstrations and preconceived ideas, the natural vice of parties in
every representative government. How many opportunities presented
themselves from 1816 to 1830, when the different elements of the
monarchical party could, and in their struggle ought to have paused on
this brink, at the point where the danger of revolution commenced for
all! But none had the good sense or courage to exercise this provident
restraint; and the public, far from imposing it on them, excited them
still more urgently to the combat,--as at a play, in which people
delight to trace the dramatic reflection of their own passions.

A mischievous, although inevitable, distribution of parts between the
opposing parties aggravated still more, from 1816 to 1820, this want of
forecast in men, and this extravagance of public passions. Under the
representative system, it is usually to one of the parties distinctly
defined and firmly resolved in their ideas and desires, that the
government belongs: sometimes the systematic defenders of power, at
others the friends of liberty, then the conservatives, and lastly the
innovators, direct the affairs of the country; and between these
organized and ambitious parties are placed the unclassed opinions and
undecided wishes, that political chorus which is ever present watching
the conduct of the actors, listening to their words, and ready to
applaud or condemn them according as they satisfy or offend their
unfettered judgment. This is, in fact, the natural bias and true order
of things under free institutions. It is well for Government to have a
public and recognized standard, regulated on fixed principles, and
sustained in action by steady adherents; it derives from that position,
not only the strength and consistent coherence that it requires, but the
moral dignity which renders power more easy and gentle by placing it
higher in the estimation of the people. It is not the chance of events
or the personal ambition of men alone, but the interests and inclination
of the public, which have produced, in free countries, the great,
acknowledged, permanent, and trusty political parties, and have usually
confided power to their hands. At the Restoration it was impossible,
from 1816 to 1820, to fulfil this condition of a Government at once
energetic and restrained. The two great political parties which it found
in action, that of the old system and of the revolution, w