I cannot say what the French peers _will_ do; but I can tell you what they
_ought_ to do. "So far," they might say, "as our feelings and interests, as
individuals, are concerned in this matter--if it really be the prevailing
wish of our fellow-countrymen to destroy the hereditary peerage--we shall,
without regret, retire into the ranks of private citizens: but we are bound
by the provisions of the existing constitution to consider ourselves
collectively as essential to the well-being of France: we have been placed
here to defend what France, a short time ago at least, thought a vital part
of its government; and, if we did not defend it, what answer could we make
hereafter to France itself, if she should come to see, what we think to be
an error, in the light in which we view it? We should be justly branded as
traitors and cowards, who had deserted the post which we were specially
appointed to maintain. As a House of Peers, therefore,--as one substantive
branch of the legislature, we can never, in honour or in conscience,
consent to a measure of the impolicy and dangerous consequences of which we
are convinced.
"If, therefore, this measure is demanded by the country, let the king and
the deputies form themselves into a constituent assembly; and then,
assuming to act in the name of the total nation, let them decree the
abolition. In that case we yield to a just, perhaps, but revolutionary,
act, in which we do not participate, and against which we are, upon the
supposition, quite powerless. If the deputies, however, consider themselves
so completely in the character of delegates as to be at present absolutely
pledged to vote without freedom of deliberation, let a concise, but
perspicuous, summary of the ablest arguments that can be adduced on either
side be drawn up, and printed, and circulated throughout the country; and
then, after two months, let the deputies demand fresh instructions upon
this point. One thing, as men of honour, we declare beforehand--that, come
what will, none of us who are now peers will ever accept a peerage created
_de novo_ for life."
_November_ 20. 1831.