ce has comprised two races, the victors and the
vanquished. For more than thirteen centuries, the beaten race has
struggled to throw off the yoke of its conquerors. Our history is the
history of this contest. In our own days, a decisive battle has been
fought. That battle is called the Revolution.... The result was not
doubtful. Victory declared for those who had been so long subdued. In
turn they conquered France, and in 1814 were in possession beyond
dispute. The Charter acknowledged this fact, proclaimed that it was
founded on right, and guaranteed that right by the pledge of
representative government. The King, by this single act, established
himself as the chief of the new conquerors. He placed himself in their
ranks and at their head, engaging himself to defend with them, and for
them, the conquests of the Revolution, which were theirs. The Charter
implied such an engagement, beyond all question; for war was on the
point of recommencing. It was easy to foresee that the vanquished party
would not tamely submit to their defeat. Not that it reduced them to the
condition to which they had formerly humiliated their adversaries; they
found rights, if they lost privileges, and, while falling from high
supremacy, might repose on equality; but great masses of men will not
thus abdicate human weakness, and their reason ever remains far in the
rear of their necessity. All that preserved or restored to the ancient
possessors of privilege a gleam of hope, urged and tempted them to grasp
it. The Restoration could not fail to produce this effect. The fall of
privilege had entrained the subversion of the throne; it might be hoped
that the throne would restore privilege with its own re-establishment.
How was it possible not to cherish this hope? Revolutionary France held
it in dread. But even if the events of 1814 had not effected the
Restoration, if the Charter had been given to us from another source and
by a different dynasty, the mere establishment of the representative
system, the simple return to liberty, would have sufficed to inflame and
rouse up once more to combat the old race, the privileged orders. They
exist amongst us; they live, speak, circulate, act, and influence from
one end of France to the other. Decimated and scattered by the
Convention, seduced and kept under by Napoleon, as soon as terror and
despotism cease (and neither are durable) they re-appear, resume
position, and labour to recover all that they have los