her attribute to please for ever without changing;
but immovable man becomes tiresome, and he is not strong enough to be
perpetually in motion."

In the bosom of this calm and satisfying life, public affairs, the part
I had begun to take in them, the ties of mutual opinion and friendship I
had formed, the hopes I had entertained for my country and myself,
continued nevertheless to occupy much of my attention. I became anxious
to declare aloud my thoughts on the new system under which France was
governed; on what that system had become since 1814, and what it ought
to be to keep its word and accomplish its object. Still a stranger to
the Chambers, it was there alone that I could enter personally into the
field of politics, and assume my fitting place. I was perfectly
unfettered, and at an age when disinterested confidence in the empire of
truth blends with the honest aspirations of ambition; I pursued the
success of my cause, while I hoped for personal distinction. After
residing for two months at the Maisonnette, I published, under this
title, 'On the Government of France since the Restoration, and the
Ministry now in Office,' my first oppositional treatise against the
policy which had been followed since the Duke de Richelieu, by allying
himself with the right-hand party to change the electoral law, had also
changed the seat and tendency of power.

I took up the question, or, to speak more truly, I entered into the
contest, on the ground on which the Hundred Days and the Chamber of 1815
had unfortunately placed it:--Who are to exercise, in the government of
France, the preponderating influence? the victors or the vanquished of
1789? the middle classes, elevated to their rights, or the privileged
orders of earlier times? Is the Charter the conquest of the newly
constituted society, or the triumph of the old system, the legitimate
and rational accomplishment, or the merited penalty of the revolution?

I borrow from a preface which I added last year to a new edition of my
'Course of Lectures on the History of Civilization in France,' some
lines which today, after more than forty years of experience and
reflection, convey the faithful impress of my thoughts.

"It is the blind rivalry of the high social classes, which has
occasioned the miscarriage of our efforts to establish a free
government. Instead of uniting either in defence against despotism, or
to establish practical liberty, the nobility and the citizens have