Sire,-Your ministers would be little worthy of the confidence with which your Majesty honours them, if they longer delayed to place before your eyes a view of our internal situation, and to point out to your high wisdom the dangers of the periodical press.

"At no time for these fifteen years has this situation presented itself under a more serious and more afflicting aspect. Notwithstanding an actual prosperity of which our annals afford no example, signs of disorganization, and symptoms of anarchy manifest themselves at almost every point of the kingdom.

"The successive causes which have concurred to weaken the springs of the monarchical government tend now to impair and to change the nature of it. Stripped of its moral force, authority, lost in the capital and the provinces, no longer contends, but at a disadvantage, with the factious. Pernicious and subversive doctrines, loudly professed, are spread and propagated among all classes of the population. Alarms, too generally credited, agitate people's minds, and trouble society. On all sides the present is called upon for pledges of security for the future.

"An active, ardent, indefatigable malevolence labours to ruin all the foundations of order, and to snatch from France the happiness it enjoys under the sceptre of its kings. Skilful in turning to advantage all discontents, and to ex

cite all hatreds, it foments among the people a spirit of distrust and hostility towards power, and endeavours to sow everywhere the seeds of trouble and civil war; and already, Sire, recent events have proved, that political passions, hitherto confined to the summits of society, begin to penetrate the depths of it, and to stir up the popular classes. It is proved, also, that these masses would never move without danger, even to those who endeavour to rouse them from repose.

"A multitude of facts, collected in the course of the electoral operations, confirm these data, and would offer us the too certain presage of new commotions, if it was not in the power of your Majesty to avert the misfortune.

"Everywhere, also, if we observe with attention, there exists a necessity of order, of strength, and of duration; and the agitations which appear to be the most contrary to it are, in reality, only the expression and the testimony of it.

"It must be acknowledged, these agitations, which cannot be increased without great dangers, are almost exclusively produced and excited by the liberty of the press. A law on the elections, no less fruitful of disorders, has doubtless concurred in maintaining them; but it would be denying what is evident, to refuse seeing in the journals, the principal focus of a corruption, the progress of

which is every day more sensible, and the first source of the calamities which threaten the kingdom. "Experience, Sire, speaks more loudly than theories. Men who are, doubtless, enlightened, and whose good faith is not suspected, led away by the ill-understood example of a neighbouring people, may have believed that the advantages of the periodical press would balance its inconveniences, and that its excesses would be neutralized by contrary excesses. It is not so; the proof is decisive, and the question is now judged in the public mind,

"At all times, in fact, the periodical press has been, and it is in its nature to be, only an instrument of disorder and sedition.

"What numerous and irrefragable proofs may be brought in support of this truth! It is by the violent and incessant action of the press that the too sudden and too frequent variations of our internal policy are to be explained. It has not permitted a regular and stable system of government to be established in France, nor any constant attention to be devoted to introduce into all the branches of the administration the ameliorations of which they are susceptible. All the ministries since 1814, though formed under divers influences, and subject to opposite directions, have been exposed to the same attacks, and to the same license of the passions. Sacrifices of

every kind, concessions of power, alliances of party, nothing has been able to save them from this common destiny.

"This comparison alone, so fertile in reflections, would suffice to assign to the press its true, its invariable character. It endeavours

by constant, persevering, dailyrepeated efforts, to relax all the bonds of obedience and subordination, to weaken all the springs of public authority, to degrade and debase it in the opinion of the people, to create against it everywhere embarrassment and resistance.

"Its art consists not in substituting to a too easy submission of mind a prudent liberty of examination, but to reduce to a problem the most positive truths; not to excite upon political questions frank and useful controversy, but to place them in a false light, and to solve them by sophisms.

"The press has thus excited confusion in the most upright minds, -has shaken the most firm convictions, and produced, in the midst of society, a confusion of principles which lends itself to the most fatal attempts. It is by anarchy in doctrines, that it paves the way for anarchy in the state. It is worthy of remark, Sire, that the periodical press has not even fulfilled its most essential condition-that of publicity. What is strange, but what may be said with truth, is, that there is no publicity in France, taking this word in its just and strict sense. In this state of things, facts, when they are not entirely fictitious, do not come to the knowledge of several millions of readers, except mutilated and disfigured in the most odious manner. A thick cloud raised by the journals conceals the truth, and, in some manner, intercepts the light between the government and the people. The kings-your prede cessors, Sire, always loved to communicate with their subjects: this is a satisfaction which the

press has not thought fit that your Majesty should enjoy.

"A licentiousness which has passed all bounds, has, in fact, not respected, even on the most solemn occasions, either the express will of the king, or the words pronounced from the throne. Some have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, others have been the subject of perfidious commentaries, or of bitter derision. It is thus that the last act of the royal power-the proclamationwas discredited by the public, even before it was known by the electors.

"This is not all. The press tends to no less than to subjugate the sovereignty, and to invade the powers of the state. The pretended organ of public opinion, it aspires to direct the debates of the two Chambers; it is incontestible, that it brings into them the weight of an influence no less fatal than decisive. This domination has assumed, especially within these two or three years, in the Chamber of Deputies, a manifest character of oppression and tyranny. We have seen, in this interval of time, the journals pursue with their insults and their outrages, the members whose votes appeared to them uncertain or suspected. Too often, Sire, the freedom of debate in that Chamber has sunk under the reiterated blows of the press.

"The conduct of the oppositionjournals, in the most recent circumstances, cannot be characterized in terms less severe. After having themselves called forth an address derogatory to the prerogatives of the throne, they have not feared to re-establish as a principle the election of the 221 deputies whose work it is: and yet your Majesty

repulsed the address as offensive: you had publicly planned the refusal of concurrence which was expressed in it: you had announced your immutable resolution to defend the rights of your Crown, which were so openly compromised. The periodical journals have paid no regard to this; on the contrary, they have taken it upon them to renew, to perpetuate, and to aggravate, the offence. Your Majesty will decide whether this presumptuous attack shall remain longer unpunished.

"But of all the excesses of the press, the most serious, perhaps, remains to be pointed out. From the very beginning of that expedition, the glory of which throws so pure and so durable a splendour on the noble crown of France, the press has criticised, with unheardof violence, the causes, the means, the preparations, the chances of success. Insensible to the national honour, it was not its fault if our flag did not remain degraded by the insults of a barbarian. Indifferent to the great interests of humanity, it has not been its fault if Europe has not remained subject to a cruel slavery, and a shameful tribute.

"This was not enough. By a treachery which our laws might have reached, the press has eagerly published all the secrets of the armament; brought to the knowledge of foreigners the state of our forces, the number of our troops, and that of our ships; they pointed out the stations, the means to be employed to surmount the variableness of the winds, and to approach the coast. Every thing, even the place of landing, was divulged, as if to give the enemy more certain means of defence; and, a thing unheard of among

civilized people, the press has not hesitated, by false alarms on the dangers to be incurred, to cause discouragement in the army, and pointing out to its hatred the commander of the enterprise, it has, as it were, excited the soldiers to raise against him the standard of revolt, or to desert their colours. This is what the organs of a party, which pretends to be national, have dared to do.

"What it dares to do every day in the interior of the kingdom tends to no less than to disperse the elements of public peace, to dissolve the bonds of society, and evidently to make the ground tremble under our feet. Let us not fear to disclose here the whole extent of our evils, in order the better to appreciate the whole extent of our resources. A system of defamation, organized on a great scale, and directed with unequalled perseverance, reaches, either near at hand or at a distance, the most humble of the agents of the government. None of your subjects, Sire, is secure from an insult, if he receives from his sovereign the least mark of confidence or satisfaction. A vast net thrown over France envelops all the public functionaries. Placed in a constant state of accusation, they seem to be in a manner cut off from civil society; only those are spared whose fidelity wavers, only those are praised whose fidelity gives way the others are marked by the faction, to be in the sequel, without doubt, sacrificed to popular vengeance.

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"The periodical press has not displayed less ardour in pursuing with its poisoned darts religion and its priests. Its object is, and always will be, to root out of the heart of the people even the last germ of religious sentiments. Sire,

do not doubt that it will succeed in this, by attacking the foundations of the press, by poisoning the sources of public morals, and by covering the ministers of the altars by derision and contempt.

"No strength, it must be confessed, is able to resist a dissolving power so active, as the press at all times, when it has been freed from its fetters, has made an irruption and invasion in the state. One cannot but be singularly struck with the similitude of its effects during these last fifteen years, notwithstanding circumstances, and notwithstanding the changes of the men who have figured on the political stage. Its destiny, in a word, is to recommence the Revolu tion, the principles of which it loudly proclaims. Placed and replaced at various intervals under the yoke of the censorship, it has always resumed its liberty only to recommence its interrupted work. In order to continue it with the more success, it has found an active auxiliary in the departmental press, which, engaging in combat local jealousies and hatreds, striking terror into the minds of timid men, harassing authority by endless intrigues, has exercised a decisive influence on the elections.

"These last effects, Sire, are transitory; but effects more durable are observed in the manners and in the character of the nation. An ardent, lying, and passionate spirit of contention the school of scandal and licentiousness-has produced in it important changes, and profound alterations: it gives a false direction to people's minds, it fills them with prejudices-diverts them from serious studies-retards them in the progress of the sciences and the arts-excites among us a fermentation, which is constantly

increasing-maintains, even in the bosom of our families, fatal dissensions, and might, by degrees, throw us back into barbarism.

"Against so many evils, engendered by the periodical press, the law and justice are equally obliged to confess their want of power. It would be superfluous to inquire into the causes which have weakened the power of repression, and have insensibly made it an ineffectual weapon in the hands of the authorities. It is sufficient to appeal to experience, and to show the present state of things.

"Judicial forms do not easily lend themselves to an effectual repression. This truth has long since struck reflecting minds; it has lately become still more evident. To satisfy the wants which caused its institution, the repression ought to be prompt and strong; it has been slow, weak, and almost null. When it interferes, the mischief is already done, and the punishment, far from repairing it, only adds the scandal of the discussion.

"The judicial prosecution is wearied out, but the seditious press is never weary. The one stops because there is too much to prosecute, the other multiplies its strength by multiplying its transgressions. In these divers circumstances the prosecutions have had their appearances of activity or of relaxation. But what does the press care for zeal or lukewarmness in the public prosecutor? It seeks in multiplying its successes the certainty of their impunity.

"The insufficiency, or even the inutility of the institutions established in the laws now in force, is demonstrated by facts. It is equally proved by facts, that the public safety is endangered by the licentiousness of the press. It is

time, it is more than time, to arrest its ravages.

"Give ear, Sire, to the prolonged cry of indignation and of terror which rises from all points of your kingdom. All peaceable men, the upright, the friends of order, stretch to your Majesty their suppliant hands. All implore you to preserve them from the return of the calamities by which their fathers or themselves have been so severely afflicted. These alarms are too real not to be listened to-these wishes are too legitimate not to be regarded.

"There is but one means to satisfy them: it is to return to the Charter (rentrer dans la Charte).

"If the terms of the 8th Article are ambiguous, its spirit is manifest. It is certain that the Charter has not given the liberty of the journals and of periodical writings. The right of publishing one's personal opinions certainly does not imply the right of publishing the opinions of others. The one is the use of a faculty which the law might leave free or subject to restrictions: the other is a commercial speculation, which, like others, and more than others, supposes the superintendence of the public authority.

"The intentions of the Charter on this subject are accurately explained in the law of the 21st of October, 1814, which is in some measure the appendix to it: this is the less doubtful, as this law was presented to the Chambers on the 5th of July-that is to say, one month after the promulgation of the Charter. In 1819, at the time when a contrary system prevailed in the Chambers, it was openly proclaimed there that the periodical press was not governed by the enactments of the 8th Article. This truth is besides attested by the.