ry remained timid and inactive. Evidently doubtful of themselves,
they feared the opinion in which they were held by others. A year before
this time, at the opening of the session of 1829, when the Cabinet of
M. de Martignac still held power, and the department of Foreign Affairs
had fallen vacant by the retirement of M. de la Ferronnays,
M. de Polignac had endeavoured, in the debate on the address in the
Chamber of Peers, to dissipate, by a profession of constitutional faith,
the prejudices entertained against him. His assurances of attachment to
the Charter were not, on his part, a simply ambitious and hypocritical
calculation; he really fancied himself a friend to constitutional
government, and was not then meditating its overthrow; but in the
mediocrity of his mind, and the confusion of his ideas, he neither
understood thoroughly the English society he wished to imitate, nor the
French system he desired to reform. He believed the Charter to be
compatible with the political importance of the old nobility, and with
the definitive supremacy of the ancient Royalty; and he flattered
himself that he could develop new institutions by making them assist in
the preponderance of influences which it was his distinct object to
limit or abolish. It is difficult to measure the extent of conscientious
illusions in a mind weak but enthusiastic, ordinary, but with some
degree of elevation, and mystically vague and subtle. M. de Polignac
felt honestly surprised at not being acknowledged as a minister devoted
to constitutional rule; but the public, without troubling themselves to
inquire into his sincerity, had determined to regard him as the champion
of the old system, and the standard-bearer of the counter-revolution.
Disturbed by this reputation, and fearing to confirm it by his acts,
M. de Polignac did nothing. His Cabinet, sworn to conquer the Revolution
and to save the Monarchy, remained motionless and sterile. The
Opposition insultingly taxed them with their impotence: they were
christened "the Braggadocio Ministry," "the most helpless of Cabinets;"
and to all this they gave no answer, except by preparing the expedition
to Algiers, and by convoking the assembly of the Chambers, ever
protesting their fidelity to the Charter, and promising themselves, as
means of escape from their embarrassments, a conquest and a majority.

M. de Polignac was ignorant that a minister does not entirely govern by
his own acts, and that he is respons