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Untitled Article
the French . ministry to the Chamber of Deputies for the Abolition of the Hereditary Peerage . Of the adoption of this measure there can be no doubt . Its proposition is an act of homage on the part " of M . Casimir
Perner to the power of public opinion . A very large proportion of the representatives of the people had pledged themselves at the late elections . No ministry could have sustained the privilege of hereditary legislation ; or have ( effected any thing , but its own instant annihilation , by making the attempt . The only thing was done which dextrous men could do . They anticipated the opposition , by themselves introducing the measure ; and
they endeavoured so to frame it as to save out of the wreck as much as possible for the cause of Royalty and Aristocracy . It is only the hereditary character of the Peerage which they propose to abolish . There is still to be a House of Peers ; its members are to be nominated by the King , and to hold their privileges for life . The arrangement is to be a permanent one . The ministers proposed it as provisional . On this point they were beaten in the bureaux . We may infer that whatever modifications are made In the progress of the measure are likely to be in a popular direction .
It is painful and disheartening to have occasion to write thus of a French ministry so soon after July 1830 . A great mistake was committed by the patriots in their eagerness to placate the masters of Europe , and resume their place amongst the people of kings . They should first have remodelled their institutions , so far as was needful to secure the full and lasting possession of the blessings for which they had fought , bled , and conquered . They have obtained more than a mere change of dynasty ; but not so much
more , by a vast amount , as they were prepared for deserved , and might have secured . They talked of a King surrounded by republican institutions . They should have completed the magic circle first , before they raised the spirit in its centre . " Citizen King" was a new combination of titles . It was scarcely to be expected that it should be a permanent one .
It was easy , then , to add the King to the Citizen ; not so easy now to prevent the Citizen from being absorbed in the King . Had their Republican Institutions been framed , there would have been little difficulty in surmounting them with a diadem . We cannot laud the confidence which trusted to His Majesty , and His Majesty's Ministers , the establishment of
the Republican Institutions . Is it not monstrous that , even now , and in so enlightened a country as France , the people ' s portion of the legislature should be returned by only between two and three hundred thousand electors ? Of all the monopolies in the world , the worst is a monopoly of legislation . The suffrage must be extended in France . There will be no peace else , either for king or people . It is the only means for restoring the confidence which both parties felt in the hour of triumph . We would fain hope yet that something was learned by Philip of Orleans in his adversity ; and that the whole of it has not been forgotten . If the new Peerage should " work well , " it will very much surprise us .
Untitled Article
704 Politics of the Month .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 704, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/52/
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