onsidered, as ever since
1815, a necessary and safe rampart against the _Ultras_, who were
greatly dreaded, and whose rule seemed possible; today the _Ultras_ are
less feared, because their arrival at power is scarcely believed. The
conclusion is, that we are less wanted than formerly.

Let us look to the future. The election bill, which Decazes presented
eight days before his fall, is about to be withdrawn. This is certain.
It is well known that it could never pass; that the discussions on its
forty-eight articles would be interminable; the _Ultras_ are very
mistrustful of this its probable results; it is condemned; they will
frame, and are already framing, another. What will this new bill be? I
cannot tell. What appears to me certain is, that, if no change takes
place in the present position, it will have for object, not to complete
our institutions, not to correct the vices of the bill of the 5th of
February, 1817, but to bring back exceptional elections; to restore, as
is loudly proclaimed, something analogous to the Chamber of 1815. This
is the avowed object, and, what is more, the natural and necessary end.
This end will be pursued without accomplishment; such a bill will either
fail in the debate, or in the application. If it passes, and after the
debate which it cannot fail to provoke, the fundamental question, the
question of the future, will escape from the Chamber, and seek its
solution without, in the intervention of the masses. If the bill is
rejected, the question may be confined within the Chamber; but it will
no longer be the Ministry in office who will have the power and mission
of solving it. If a choice is left to us, which I am far from despairing
of, it will lie between a lamentable external revolution and a
ministerial revolution of the most complete character. And this last
chance, which is our only one, will vanish if we do not so manage as to
offer the country, for the future, a ministry boldly constitutional.

In this position of affairs, what it is indispensable that you should be
made acquainted with, and what you would discover in five minutes if you
could pass five minutes here, is, that you are no longer a Minister, and
that you form no portion of the Ministry in office. It would be
impossible to induce you to speak with them as they speak, or as they
are compelled to speak. The situation to which they are reduced has been
imposed by necessity; they could only escape from it by completely