higher classes of
society and that extended to the popular masses. I believe the direct
and defined right of suffrage to be alone effectual in securing the
action of the country upon the Government. On this common condition, the
two systems may constitute a real control over power, and substantial
guarantees for liberty. Which is to be preferred?--this is a question of
epoch, of situation, of degree of civilization, and of form of
government. Universal suffrage is well suited to republican
associations, small or federative, newly instituted or mature in wisdom
and political virtue. The right of voting confined to a more elevated
class, and exercised in a strong assumption of the spirit of order, of
independence, and intelligence, is more applicable to great single and
monarchical states. This was our reason for making it the basis of the
law of 1817. We dreaded republican tendencies, which with us, and in our
days, are nearly synonymous with anarchy; we regarded monarchy as
natural, and constitutional monarchy as necessary, to France; we wished
to organize it sincerely and durably, by securing under this system, to
the conservative elements of French society as at present constituted,
an influence which appeared to us as much in conformity with the
interests of liberty as with those of power.

It was the disunion of the monarchical party that vitiated the electoral
system of 1817, and took away its strength with its truth. By placing
political power in the hands of property, intelligence, independent
position, and great interests naturally conservative, the system rested
on the expectation that these interests would be habitually united, and
would defend, in common accord, order and right against the spirit of
license and revolution, the fatal bias of the age. But, from their very
first steps, the different elements of the great royalist party, old or
new, aristocratic or plebeian, plunged into discord, equally blind to
the weakness with which it infected them all, and thus opening the door
to the hopes and efforts of their common enemies, the revolutionists.
From thence, and not from the electoral law of 1817, or from its
principle, came the mischief which in 1818 it was considered desirable
to check by repealing that enactment.

I am ready to admit in express terms, for it may be alleged with
justice, that, when in 1816 and 1817 we prepared and defended the law of
elections, we might have foreseen the state of genera