B. Reply of the Chamber of Deputies.

Moniteur. Réimpression de l’ancien moniteur. Thirty-one vols. Paris 1858–1870.

Sire,

It is with an enduring gratification that your faithful subjects, the deputies of the departments, assembled around your throne, have heard from your august lips the flattering testimony of the confidence which you have accorded them. . . .

Summoned by your voice from all points of your kingdom, we bring you from all parts, sire, the homage of a faithful people, once more aroused at having seen you the most beneficent of all in the midst of universal beneficence, and who revere in you the accomplished model of all the most touching virtues. Sire, this people cherish and respect your authority; fifteen years of peace and of liberty, which they owe to your august brother and to you, have profoundly enrooted in their hearts the gratitude which attaches them to your royal family; their reason, matured by experience and by liberty of discussion, says to them that it is especially in matters of authority that antiquity of possession is the most sacred of all titles, and that it is for their welfare as well as for your glory that the ages have placed your throne in a region inaccessible to storms. Their convictions, then, are in accord with their duty in placing before themselves the most sacred rights of your crown as the surest guarantee of their liberties and the integrity of your prerogatives as necessary for the preservation of these rights.

Nevertheless, sire, in the midst of the unanimous sentiments of respect and affection with which your people surround you, there is manifested in their minds a lively disquietude which disturbs the security that France had commenced to enjoy, affects the sources of its prosperity, and, if it should be prolonged, might become disastrous to its repose. Our conscience, our honor, the fidelity to you which we have sworn and which we shall always preserve, impose upon us the duty of disclosing to you the cause of this.

Sire, the Charter, which we owe to the wisdom of your august predecessor, and the advantages of which Your Maiesty is firmly determined to consolidate, consecrates, as a right, the participation of the country in the deliberation upon public interests. That participation ought to be, and is in fact, indirect, wisely measured and circumscribed within limits exactly traced, and which we shall never suffer that anyone should attempt to break; but it is positive in its results; for it is made by the permanent co-operation of the political views of your government with the wishes of your people, the indispensable condition of the regular progress of public affairs. Sire, our loyalty and our devotion to you condemn us to tell you that this co-operation does not exist.

An unjust contempt for the sentiments and the reason of France is to-day the fundamental thought of the administration. Your people are afflicted thereat, because it is injurious to them; they are disturbed thereat, because it is menacing to their liberties!

This contempt could not proceed from your noble heart. No, sire, France no more wishes for anarchy than you wish for despotism; it is fitting that you should have faith in its loyalty, as it has faith in your promises.

Between those who misunderstand a nation so calm and so faithful and us, who with a profound conviction come to set forth in your presence the grievances of a people anxious above everything else for the esteem and confidence of their king, let the lofty wisdom of Your Majesty pronounce! His [your] royal prerogatives have placed in his [your] hands the means of assuring among the powers of the state that constitutional harmony the first and necessary condition of the power of the throne and of the grandeur of France.