The vengeance against Napoleon’s adherents was thus announced in the Royal proclamation of the 28th of June, which was countersigned by Prince Talleyrand, at one time a revolutionist, and afterwards Foreign Minister of the Emperor: “I wish to exclude from my presence none but those whose celebrity is a matter of grief to France and of horror to Europe. In the plot which they hatched, I perceive many of my subjects misled and some guilty. I promise—I who never promised in vain (all Europe knows)—to pardon to misled Frenchmen, all that has passed since the day when I quitted Lille, amidst so many tears, up to the day when I re-entered Cambrai, amidst so many acclamations. But the blood of my people has flowed, in consequence of a treason of which the annals of the world present no example. That treason has summoned foreigners into the heart of France. Every day reveals to me a fresh disaster. I owe it then to the dignity of my Crown, to the interest of my people, to the repose of Europe, to except from pardon the instigators and authors of this horrible plot. They shall be designated to the vengeance of the laws by the two Chambers, which I propose forthwith to assemble” (_Annual Register_ , 1815; _State Papers_ , p. 393). ----- “Up to the moment of the capitulation of Paris,” says a contemporary writer, “the Chambers continued their deliberations, and on the day when the humiliation of the country seemed complete, the national representatives issued a declaration of the rights of Frenchmen, resembling in its spirit and in its principal features the Bill of Rights claimed by the Parliament of England from William III., and it is surely a tribute of no ordinary value offered to the Constitution of England, that, at the very time when her army was at the gates of the French capital, our national institutions were the objects of the perpetual eulogy, and the subjects of the imitation, of the statesmen of the hostile nation. The constancy of the Chambers was put to a severe trial. The King had arrived at Compiègne, and nearly a million of foreign troops were hastening from every quarter to re-instate him on the throne, and yet not one member in either House thought proper to propose his restoration.... The national representatives also addressed the people with a firmness of tone, and in a spirit of independence, that will entitle them to the admiration of future ages:—'A Monarch,' say they, in language similar to that held by the Convention Parliament of England, 'cannot offer any guarantee, if he does not swear to observe the Constitution framed by the national representation, and accepted by the people; it hence follows, that any government which shall have no other title than the acclamation and the will of a party, or which shall be imposed by force, and every government which shall not guarantee the rights and liberties of a