remained separate, intent on mutually excluding or supplanting each
other, and both refusing to admit equality or superiority. Pretensions
unjust in principal, and vain in fact! The somewhat frivolous pride of
the nobility has not prevented the citizens of France from rising, and
taking their place on a level with the highest in the State. Neither
have the rather puerile jealousies of the citizens hindered the nobility
from preserving the advantages of family celebrity and the long tenure
of situation. In every arranged society which lives and increases there
is an internal movement of ascent and acquisition. In all systems that
are destined to endure, a certain hierarchy of conditions and ranks
establishes and perpetuates itself. Justice, common sense, public
advantage, and private interest, when properly understood, all require a
reciprocal acknowledgment of these natural facts of social order. The
different classes in France have not known how to adopt this skilful
equity. Thus they have endured, and have also inflicted on their
country, the penalty of their irrational egotism. For the vulgar
gratification of remaining, on the one side insolent, on the other
envious, nobles and citizens have continued much less free, less
important, less secure in their social privileges, than they might have
been with a little more justice, foresight, and submission to the divine
laws of human associations. They have been unable to act in concert, so
as to become free and powerful together; and consequently they have
given up France and themselves to successive revolutions."

In 1820, we were far from this free and impartial appreciation of our
political history and the causes of our disasters. Re-engaged for five
years in the track of the old rivalries of classes and the recent
struggles of revolution, we were entirely occupied with the troubles and
dangers of the moment, and anxious to conquer, without bestowing much
thought on the price or future embarrassments of victory. I upheld with
enthusiasm the cause of the new society, such as the Revolution had made
it, holding equality in the eye of the law as the first principle, and
the middle classes as the fundamental element. I elevated this cause,
already so great, by carrying it back to the past, and by discovering
its interests and vicissitudes in the entire series of our history. I
have no desire to palliate my thoughts or words. "For more than thirteen
centuries," I said, "Fran