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NEW ENGLAND PALLADIUM & COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER
Boston, Tuesday March 21, 1815
ARTICLE
FRANCE
Paris, December 31, 1815
PROROGATION OF THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES:
Address by the President.
In the sitting of the Chamber of yesterday, after some routine
business had been disposed of, the President addressed them as
follows:
"Gentlemen -- Before his Majesty's Minister arrives to
announce our separation, permit me, who have been happily in a
situation to collect your deliberations, to present to you an
abstract of their leading results.
If, confiding in the royal impartiality, you have laid some
restraints on the liberty of the press, your object was to enjoy
in a short time more surely its invaluable benefits, when those
laws shall have been prepared which are destined to give security
to the Government, to morals, and the peace of families.
Like his Majesty, you would have wished that the public burdens
had been less heavy; but it was necessary, on the one hand, to
provide for the wants of the army, for an immense public debt;
and, on the other, to revive that public credit which gives the
means of discharging it, and facility for new resources. If a
just confidence has this year led you to vote various general
appropriations, all Frenchmen expect with you, that in the next
session, detailed accounts, supported by documents for every
receipt and disbursement, will enable you to examine whether it
is not possible to hasten the fulfillment of the wishes of our
King for the relief of his people.
You were deeply concerned at the necessity of re-establishing
certain taxes against which a portion of the French protested;
but when those who pay them reflect that indirect imposts are the
surest resource of modern States, that it is under their shelter
that agriculture and our first manufactures, can best prosper;
when they reflect that the law is only temporary, and that you
are about deliberating with your fellow citizens for the purpose
of discovering a system of imposts appropriate to our territory,
our productions, our habits, and the beneficent wishes of his
Majesty, some will resign themselves to necessity, and others to
hope.
If you have not yet been able to repair great calamities, your
justice has at least reserved the power of seconding the noble
voice which was heard in the Chamber of Peers. You probably also
regret, Gentlemen, that you have not been occupied about the fate
of those men by whom the religious foundations of society are
strengthened; true philosophy and religion appear inclined to
unite, in order to fortify morals, and give the public mind a
surer light.
National spirit in which we have been charged with being
deficient, animated all your deliberations. It was conspicuous in
the laws relative to industry; and we will reply to those who may
be inclined to accuse us of too much partiality, that error
itself is honorable when it is patriotic.
The national spirit has displayed itself on the subject of laws
relative to commerce. Though you enlarged, so to speak, the
circle of representation, by stationing around you the
intelligence of the Chambers of Commerce, you have still only
been able to make some preparations for a better system. In a
country to which the tides of the ocean had been rendered almost
useless, it was impossible to do more for the present; but public
opinion, appreciating the prudence of our attempts, foresees that
when the state of Europe and that of your Colonies shall have
been regulated, you will then be called upon to assist in the
enactment of laws truly national.
A national spirit, eminently French, manifested itself among you
in those laws which regard the person of the Monarch; you were
the true organs of all whom you represent, when you voted that
same civil list with which grief reminds us that Louis XVI
endowed the Crown; and above all when you unanimously resolved
that France was responsible for the debts of her king.
It is thus, gentlemen, that you have reconciled to a
representative Government its greatest adversaries. On again
finding warriors equal to their ancestors, they perceive that
fine feeling, the soul of monarchies, which, diffused through the
whole nation, requires still more energy, and places in the hands
of a King of France a more powerful engine. The honor of the
country, to borrow the expressions of a man of whom France feels
proud (M. Chateaubriand) -- the honor of the country, by
uniting all Frenchmen, will continue the miracles which Heaven
caused to break forth on the appearance of a son of St. Louis.
Let us depart, then, in peace to our homes, to meditate on that
law of re-election, about which several of us are already
occupied, and which should satisfy the noble emulation of all
Frenchmen, to contribute with the Sovereign to the common
prosperity. Let us return to our provinces with security. We
leave in his capital, surrounded with the love of his people, and
the devotedness of the army, a King whom we consider as the first
guardian of the public liberty."
The Chamber ordered the President's speech to be printed.
The Abbe Montesquieu then appeared with a Message from the King,
adjourning Parliament to the 1st of May 1815.
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-Napoleon Bonaparte
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