government, and
rendering France a republic, or a monarchy, as they pleased.

[Footnote 66: The chamber of peers was of course thus
annihilated, and excluded from any share in the
government.]

M. Regnault represented, that either of these propositions would tend
to throw the state into the labyrinth of a complete disorganization;
that they could not be adopted, without announcing to the foreign
powers, that there was no established order of things in France, no
acknowledged rights, no fixed principles, no basis for a government:
yet, soon falling himself into the error of his opponents, he
proposed, 1st, to name, instead of the council of regency, prescribed
by the fundamental laws, to which he had just referred, an executive
committee of five members, two from the chamber of peers, and three
from that of deputies, who should exercise the functions of government
provisionally.

2dly. In order not to disturb the unity of power, to leave to this
committee the choice and direction of the commissioners, to be sent to
negotiate with the allies.

In times of doubt and fear, a middle course is always most agreeable
to the majority; and the majority of the chamber adopted the sort of
conduct proposed by M. Regnier, without perceiving its inconsistency:
for, to elude the acknowledgment of the Emperor Napoleon II. was to
declare to foreigners, _what it had been desirous of avoiding_, that
there were no established rights in France, and that the throne and
even the government were vacant.

In the existing state of things there were only two courses to be
pursued: either to proclaim Napoleon II. constitutionally, as its
essence, its duty, its interest, prescribed:

Or, if, from a cowardly condescension, it would not decide any thing
without the assent of the allies, to unite the two chambers into a
national assembly, and wait the course of events. In this case it
would not have placed the fate of the revolution of the 20th of March
in the hands of five individuals; it would have acquired an imposing
and national character, which would have given to its acts, its
negotiations, and even its resistance, a degree of strength and
dignity, that the unusual kind of government, to which it had just
given birth, could never obtain.

The resolution taken by the representatives was immediately carried to
the chamber of peers.

Prince Lucien was the first who rose to combat it. He eloquent