satisfies while it keeps us on our guard. It
acts at the same time as a spur and a bridle. Both are good for us. I
know not what would happen if we were without either." M. Manuel pressed
me no longer; he had too much sense to waste time in useless words. We
continued to discourse without further argument, and parted thinking
well, I believe, of each other, but both thoroughly satisfied that we
should never act in concert.

While engaged in the publication of these different treatises, I was
also preparing my course of lectures on Modern History, which I
commenced on the 7th of December, 1820. Determined to make use of the
two influential organs with which public instruction and the press
supplied me, I used them nevertheless in a very different manner. In my
lectures, I excluded all reference to the circumstances, system, or acts
of the Government; I checked every inclination to attack or even to
criticize, and banished all remembrance of the affairs or contests of
the moment. I scrupulously restrained myself within the sphere of
general ideas and by-gone facts. Intellectual independence is the
natural privilege of science, which would be lost if converted into an
instrument of political opposition. For the effective display of
different liberties, it is necessary that each should be confined within
its own domain; their strength and security depend on this prudent
restraint.

While imposing on myself this line of conduct, I did not evade the
difficulty. I selected for the subject of my course the history of the
old political institutions of Christian Europe, and of the origin of
representative government, in the different forms in which it had been
formerly attempted, with or without success. I touched very closely, in
such a subject, on the flagrant embarrassments of that contemporaneous
policy to which I was determined to make no allusion. But I also found
an obvious opportunity of carrying out, through scientific paths alone,
the double object I had in view. I was anxious to combat revolutionary
theories, and to attach interest and respect to the past history of
France. We had scarcely emerged from the most furious struggle against
that old French society, our secular cradle; our hearts, if not still
overflowing with anger, were indifferent towards it, and our minds were
confusedly imbued with the ideas, true or false, under which it had
fallen. The time had come for clearing out that arena covered with
ruins, a