tself satisfied. The Chamber
seemed more desirous of discharging a debt of conscience, and of
escaping from all responsibility in the evils which it foresaw, than of
making a sound effort to prevent them. "If the Chamber of Peers had
spoken out more distinctly," said M. Royer-Collard to me, shortly after
the Revolution, "it might have arrested the King on the brink of the
abyss, and have prevented the Decrees." But the Chamber of Peers had
little confidence in their own power to charm away the danger, and
feared to aggravate it by a too open display. The entire weight of the
situation fell upon the Chamber of Deputies.

The perplexity was great,--great in the majority of sincere Royalists,
in the Committee charged to draw up the Address, and in the mind of
M. Royer-Collard who presided, both in the Committee and the Chamber,
and exercised on both a preponderating influence. One general sentiment
prevailed,--a desire to stay the King in the false path on which he had
entered, and a conviction that there was no hope of succeeding in this
object, but by placing before him an impediment which it would be
impossible for him personally to misunderstand. It was evident, when he
dismissed M. de Martignac and appointed M. de Polignac to succeed him,
that he was not alone influenced by his fears as a King. In this act
Charles X. had, above all considerations, been swayed by his passions of
the old system. It became indispensable that the peril of this tendency
should be clearly demonstrated to him, and that where prudence had not
sufficed, impossibility should make itself felt. By expressing, without
delay or circumlocution, its want of confidence in the Cabinet, the
Chamber in no way exceeded its privilege; it expressed its own judgment,
without denying to the King the free exercise of his, and his right of
appealing to the country by a dissolution. The Chamber acted
deliberately and honestly; it renounced empty or ambiguous words, to
assert the frank and strong measures of the constitutional system. There
was no other method of remaining in harmony with the public feeling so
strongly excited, and of restraining it by legitimate concessions. There
was reason to hope that language at once firm and loyal would prove as
efficacious as it was necessary; already, under similar circumstances,
the King had not shown himself intractable, for two years before, in
January, 1828, he had dismissed M. de Villele, almost without a
struggle, a