The çoisRenéRestoration gave an impulse to men's minds; it set free the thought suppressed by Bonaparte: the intellect, like a caryatic figure relieved of the entablature that bent its brow, lifted up its head. The Empire had struck France with dumbness; liberty restored touched her and gave her back speech: oratorical talents existed which took up matters where the Mirabeaus and Cazalès had left them, and the Revolution continued its course.
My labours were not limited to the tribune, so new to me. Appalled at the systems which men were embracing and at France's ignorance of the principles of representative government, I wrote and had printed the _Monarchie selon la Charte._ This publication marked one of the great epochs of my political life: it made me take rank among the publicists; it served to determine opinion on the nature of our government. The English papers praised the work to the skies; among us, the Abbé Morellet even could not recover from the transformation of my style and the dogmatic precision of the truths.
The _Monarchie selon la Charte_ is a constitutional catechism: from it have been taken the greater part of the propositions which are put forward as new to-day. Thus the principle that "the King reigns but does not govern" is found fully set forth in Chapters IV., V., VI. and VII. on the Royal Prerogative.
The constitutional principles having been laid down in the first part of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_, I examine in the second the systems of the three ministries which till then had followed upon one another, from 1814 to 1816; in this part are brought together predictions too well verified since and expositions of doctrines at that time unperceived. These words appear in Chapter XXVI., in the Second Part:
"It passes as unquestionable, in a certain party, that a revolution of the nature of our own can end only by a change of dynasty; others, more moderate, say by a change in the order of right of succession to the Crown."
As I was finishing my work, appeared the ordinance of the 5th of September 1816[11]: this measure dispersed the few Royalists assembled to reconstruct the Legitimate Monarchy. I hastened to write the _Postscript_, which caused an explosion of anger on the part of M. le Duc de Richelieu and of Louis XVIII.'s favourite, M. Decazes.