a. The
Deputies had become stock-jobbers, partners in large enterprises of
internal improvements, and _timidly_ conservative, as are always the
representatives of mere property. The Chamber, instead of representing
the essence of the nation, represented merely the moneyed classes of
society.

Such was the Chamber of Deputies to which Lamartine was chosen by an
electoral college, devoted to the Dynastic opposition. He entered it
in 1833, not a technical politician or orator as Odillon Barrot, not
as a skillful tactitioner like Thiers, not as a man with one idea as
the Duke de Broglie, not as the funeral orator of departed grandeur
like Berryer, nor as the embodiment of a legal abstraction like Dupin,
or a man of the devouring ambition and skill in debate of Francois
Pierre Guillaume Guizot: Lamartine was simply a _humanitaire_. Goaded
by the sarcasm of Cormenin, he declared that he belonged to no party,
that he sought for no parliamentary conquest--that he wished to
triumph through the force of ideas, and through no power of
persuasion. He was the very counterpart of Thiers, the most sterile
orator and statesman of France. Lamartine had studied the French
Revolution, he saw the anarchical condition of society, and the
ineffectual attempt to compress instead of organizing it; and he
conceived the noble idea of collecting the scattered fragments, and
uniting them into a harmonious edifice. While the extreme left were
employed in removing the pressure from above, Lamartine was quietly
employed in laying the foundation of a new structure, and called
himself _un democrate conservateur_.[9] He spoke successfully and with
great force against the political monopoly of real property, against
the prohibitive system of trade, against slavery, and the punishment
of death.[10] His speeches made him at once a popular character; he
did not address himself to the Chamber, he spoke to the French people,
in language that sunk deep into the hearts of the masses, without
producing a striking effect in the Legislature. At that time already
had the king singled him out from the rest of the opposition. He
wished to secure his talents for his dynasty; but Lamartine was not in
search of a _portefeuille_, and escaped without effort from the
temptation.

In November, 1837, he was re-elected to the Chamber from Bergues and
Macon, his native town. He decided in favor of the latter, and took
his seat as a member for that place. He supported the Mo