After the publication of the _Monarchie selon la Charte_ and at the opening of the new session in the month of November 1816, I continued my contests. In the House of Peers, in the sitting of the 23rd of that month, I moved a proposition to the effect that the King be humbly begged to order an investigation into the proceedings at the last elections. The corruption and violence of the Ministry during those elections were flagrant. In giving my opinion on the Bill relating to Supply (21 March 1817), I spoke against Clause II. of that Bill: it had to do with the State forests which they proposed to appropriate for the Sinking Fund, in order afterwards to sell one hundred and fifty thousand hectares. These forests consisted of three kinds of properties: the ancient domains of the Crown, a few commanderies of the Order of Malta, and the remainder of the goods of the Church. I do not know why, even to-day, I find a sad interest in my words; they bear some resemblance to my Memoirs: "With all due deference to those who have administered only during our troubles, it is not the material security but the ethics of a people that constitute the public credit. Will the new owners make good the titles of their new property? To deprive them there will be quoted to them instances of inheritances of nine centuries taken away from their former possessors. Instead of those inalienable patrimonies in which the same family outlived the race of the oaks, you will have unfixed properties in which the reeds will scarcely have time to spring up and die before they change masters. The homes will cease to be the guardians of domestic morality; they will lose their venerable authority; rights-of-way open to all comers, they will no longer be hallowed by the grandfather's chair and the cradle of the new-born child. "Peers of France, it is your cause that I am pleading here, not mine: I am speaking to you in the interests of your children; I shall have no concern with posterity; I have no sons; I have lost my father's fields, and a few trees which I have planted will soon cease to be mine." [Sidenote: The Comte de Villèle.]