These proposals called forward M. Durbach, who charged Ferrand with the fatal purpose of opening the door on the vast subject of national domains. "Already," continued the orator, "the two extremities of the kingdom have resounded with the words of the minister, as with the claps which precede the thunderbolt. The effect which they have produced has been so rapid and so general, that all civil transactions have been at once suspended. A general distrust and excessive fear have caused a stagnation, the effects of which even the royal treasury has felt. The proprietors of national property can no longer sell or mortgage their estates. They are suddenly reduced to poverty in the very bosom of wealth. Whence arises this calamity? The cause of it is the declaration of the minister, that the property they possess does not legally belong to them. For this is, in fact, the consequence of his assertion, that 'the law recognises in the emigrants a right to property which always existed.'" The celebrated Maréchal Macdonald, a friend at once of monarchy and freedom, of France and the Bourbons, undertook to bring forward a plan for satisfying the emigrants, as far as the condition of the nation permitted; and giving, at the same time, some indemnity for the pensions assigned by Buonaparte to his veteran soldiers, which, during his reign, had been paid from countries beyond the verge of France, until after the retreat from Moscow, when they ceased to be paid at all. The maréchal's statement of the extent of the sale of the national domains, shows how formidable the task of undoing that extensive transference of property must necessarily have been; the number of persons directly or indirectly interested in the question of their security, amounting to nine or ten millions. "Against this Colossus," continued the maréchal, "whose height the eye cannot measure, some impotent efforts would affect to direct themselves; but the wisdom of the King has foreseen this danger, even for the sake of those imprudent persons who might have exposed themselves to it." He proceeded, in a very eloquent strain, to eulogize the conduct of the emigrants, to express respect for their persons, compassion for their misfortunes, honour for their fidelity, and proceeded to observe, that the existence of these old proprietors, as having claims on the estates which had been acquired by others, placed them in a situation which ought not to exist. He therefore proposed that the nation should satisfy the claims of these unfortunate gentlemen, if not in full, at least upon such terms of composition as had been applied to other national obligations. Upon this footing, he calculated that an annuity of twelve millions of livres yearly, would pay off the claims of the various emigrants of all descriptions. He next drew a picture of the distressed veteran soldiers; pensioners of the state who had been reduced to distress by the discontinuance of their pensions, bought with