The cares incident to so important a negotiation had not led the Duke to neglect the internal administration of the country; and while the chambers sanctioned the extraordinary powers required by the government to repress the old and turbulent spirit of Liberalism, the ministry was occupied in taking just and solemn measures against those who, by favouring the return of Buonaparte, had led to the misfortunes of their country, and authorised these terrible reprisals. The fatal trial of Marshal Ney was the first that took place; and now that political ideas are clearer, and we are no longer carried away by declamation, the motives of the great debate that ensued are easily explained. The marshal was summoned before a council of war, by an _ordonnance_ signed under the ministry of Fouché and Talleyrand; and this council having declared itself incompetent, the marshal ought to have been tried by the House of Peers, this being the natural order of jurisdiction. The Duc de Richelieu, on the 11th of November, 1815, carried to the chamber the royal _ordonnance_, which constituted it a court of justice, and, with his heart still full of the sad sacrifices that had been exacted from his country, he expressed himself with warmth and firmness against the authors of the revolution of the Hundred Days; for was it not the actions of those people that had brought a million of foreigners into our land? After the condemnation of the marshal, the Duke, desirous of calming the unruly passions that raged in the country, presented a bill for a general amnesty to the two chambers, in which there were no exceptions, except the names contained in a list drawn up by Fouché. During seasons of agitation, parties always go beyond the plans proposed by governments, and upon this project the chamber of 1815 established its system of _categories_; and the regicides were banished the kingdom, contrary to the personal opinion of Louis XVIII. In the course of the discussion it was proposed to confiscate the property of condemned and banished persons, but Richelieu rejected the measure, saying that "confiscations rendered the evils of war irreparable." And how much generosity was exhibited in this conduct, when we consider that the Duke had himself been deprived, by the most implacable confiscations, of all the property of his family!