e rest,
which Heaven forbid!

You see, my dear friend, that I speak to you with the most unmeasured
frankness. It is because I have a profound conviction of the present
evil and of the possibility of future safety. In this possibility you
are a necessary instrument. Do not suffer yourself, while at a distance,
to be compromised in what is neither your opinion nor your desire.
Regulate your own destiny, or at least your position in the common
destiny of all; and if you must fall, let it be for your own cause, and
in accordance with your own convictions.

I add to this letter the Bill prepared by M. de Serre in November, 1819,
and which he intended to present to the Chambers, to complete the
Charter, and at the same time to reform the electoral law. It will be
seen how much this Bill differed from that introduced in April, 1820,
with reference to the law of elections alone, and which M. de Serre
supported as a member of the second Cabinet of the Duke de Richelieu.

BILL FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF THE LEGISLATURE.

Art. 1. The Legislature assumes the name of Parliament of France.

Art. 2. The King convokes the Parliament every year.

Parliament will be convoked extraordinarily, at the latest, within two
months after the King attains his majority, or succeeds to the throne;
or under any event which may cause the establishment of a Regency.

_Of the Peerage._

Art. 3. The Peerage can only be conferred on a Frenchman who has
attained his majority, and is in the exercise of political and civil
rights.

Art. 4. The character of Peer is indelible; it can neither be lost nor
abdicated, from the moment when it has been conferred by the King.

Art. 5. The exercise of the rights and privileges of Peer can only be
suspended under two conditions:--1. Condemnation to corporal punishment;
2. Interdiction pronounced according to the forms prescribed by the
Civil Code. In either case, by the Chamber of Peers alone.

Art. 6. The Peers are admissible to the Chamber at the age of
twenty-one, and can vote when they have completed their twenty-fifth
year.

Art. 7. In case of the death of a Peer, his successor in the Peerage
will be admitted as soon as he has attained the required age, on
fulfilling the forms prescribed by the decree of the 23rd of March,
1816, which decree will be annexed to the present law.

Art. 8. A Peerage created by the King cannot henceforward, during the
life of the titulary, be declared transmissible,