standard of action were in different hands. In the Chambers, the
Ministers often appeared as the clients of the orators; the orators
never looked upon their cause as identical with that of the Ministers;
they preserved this distinction while supporting them; they had their
own demands to make before they assented; they qualified their approval,
and even sometimes dissented altogether. As the questions increased in
importance and delicacy, so much the more independence and discord
manifested themselves in the bosom of the ministerial party, with
dangerous notoriety. During the session of 1817, M. Pasquier, then
Chancellor, presented a bill to the Chamber of Deputies, which, while
temporarily maintaining the censorship of the daily papers, comprised in
other respects some modifications favourable to the liberty of the
press. M. Camille Jordan and M. Royer-Collard demanded much greater
concessions, particularly the application of trial by jury to press
offences; and the bill, reluctantly passed by the Chamber of Deputies,
was thrown out by the Chamber of Peers, when the Duke de Broglie urged
the same amendments on similar principles. In 1817 also, a new Concordat
had been negotiated and concluded at Rome by M. de Blacas. It contained
the double and contradictory defect of invading by some of its
specifications the liberties of the old Gallican Church; while, by the
abolition of the Concordat of 1801, it inspired the new French society
with lively alarms for its civil liberties. Little versed in such
matters, and almost entirely absorbed in the negotiations for relieving
France from the presence of foreigners, the Duke de Richelieu had
confided this business to M. de Blacas, who was equally ignorant and
careless of the importance of the old or new liberties of France,
whether civil or religious. When this Concordat, respecting which the
Ministers themselves were discontented and doubtful when they had
carefully examined it, was presented to the Chamber of Deputies by
M. Laine, with the measures necessary for carrying it into effect, it
was received with general disfavour. In committee, in the board
appointed to report on it, in the discussions in the hall of conference,
all the objections, political and historical, of principle or
circumstance, that the bill could possibly excite, were argued and
explained beforehand, so as to give warning of the most obstinate and
dangerous debate. The doctrinarians openly declared for this