Louis Philippe, the new king, promised to approve certain very liberal measures known as the program of the Hôtel de Ville; Lafayette saw to that. The king even agreed in conversation with Lafayette that the United States had the best form of government on earth. He had spent some years in America and probably knew. He was called, enthusiastically or mockingly, as the case might be, the Bourgeois King; but the suspicion that his sympathies with the people were only assumed proved well founded. As time wore on it became manifest that he was as eager for arbitrary power as ever Louis XIV had been, without possessing Louis XIV's great ability. At first, however, everything was rose-colored. A few days after the new king had ascended the throne Lafayette wrote: "The choice of the king is good. I thought so, and I think so still more since I know him and his family. Things will not go in the best possible way, but liberty has made great progress and will make still more. Besides, I have done what my conscience dictated; and if I have made a mistake, it was made in good faith." That belief at least he could keep to the end. Two weeks after Louis Philippe became king Lafayette was appointed general in command of the National Guards of the kingdom, a position he held from August until Christmas. Then a new law abolished the office in effect but not in [Pg 288]appearance. Lafayette sent the king his resignation and refused to reconsider it or even to talk the matter over, as the king asked him to do. "No, my dear cousin, I understand my position," Lafayette wrote Philip de Ségur. "I know that I weigh like a nightmare on the Palais Royal; not on the king and his family, who are the best people in the world, and I love them tenderly, but on the people who surround them.... Without doubt I have been useful in his advancement. But if I sacrificed for him some of my personal convictions, it was only on the faith of the program of the Hôtel de Ville. I announced a king basing his reign on republican institutions. To that declaration, which the people seem to forget, I attach great importance; and it is that which the court does not forgive.... From all this the conclusion follows that I have become bothersome. I take my stand. I will retain the same friendliness for the royal family, but I have only one word of honor, and I cannot change my convictions." So once again, near the close of his life, he found himself in opposition to a government he had helped to create. [Pg 289]XXX SEVENTY-SIX YEARS YOUNG Although he had resigned the office to which the king had appointed him, Lafayette continued to hold his place in the Chamber of Deputies; the office to which the people had elected him. Here he worked in behalf of the oppressed of his own and other nations; the Irish, for example, and the Poles, in whose struggles for liberty he was deeply interested.