better you are known, your career will become the more
brilliant and secure. Youth, which feels its power, ought always to say,
with the Cardinal de Bernis, "My Lord, I shall wait." The more I see of
France, the more I am impressed with the truth, that those who believe
they have secured the State by compromising the royal authority in these
distant departments, have committed a mistake. All that are honest and
rational are royalists; but, thanks to our own dissensions, they no
longer know how to show themselves such. They thought until then, that
to serve the King was to do what he required through the voice of his
ministers, and they have been lately told that this was an error, but
they have been left in ignorance as to who are his Majesty's real
organs. The enemies to our repose profit by this. The most absurd
stories are propagated amongst the people, and all are the people at so
great a distance. I can imagine that the character of these disturbers
varies in our different provinces. In this, where we have no large
towns, and no aristocracy, we lie at the mercy of all who pretend to
know more than ourselves. Great credit thus attaches to the Half-pays,
who, belonging more to the people than to any other class, and not being
able to digest their last disappointment, trade upon it in every
possible manner, and are always believed because they are the richest in
their immediate locality. The gentlemen Deputies come next upon the
list, estimating themselves as little proconsuls, disposing of all
places, and setting aside prefects. Thus you see how little authority
remains with the King, whose agents are masters and do nothing in his
name. As to the administration of justice, you may readily suppose that
no one thinks of it. The people are in want of bread; their harvest rots
under continual rains; the roads are horrible, the hospitals in the
greatest misery; nothing remains but dismissals, accusations, and
deputations. If you could change them for a little royal authority, we
might still see the end of our sufferings; but make haste, for when the
month of October has arrived it will be too late.

Adieu, my dear friend, present my respects to Madame Guizot, and receive
the fullest assurance of my good wishes.

No. V.

_Fragments selected from a Pamphlet by_ M. GUIZOT, _entitled 'Thoughts
upon the Liberty of the Press,' 1814._

Many of the calamities of France, calamities which might be indefinitely
prolonge