"The declaration which has been brought to this Chamber is to me much less complicated than it appears to those of my noble colleagues who profess an opinion different from mine. There is one fact in this declaration which appears to me to govern all the others, or rather to destroy them. Were we under a regular order of things, I should doubtless carefully examine the various changes which it is proposed to make in the Charter. Many of these changes have been proposed by myself. I am surprised only that the reactionary measure regarding the peers created by Charles X. should have been proposed to this Chamber. I shall not be suspected of any fondness for the system by which these 'batches' were created; and you know that, when threatened with them, I combated the very menace: but to make ourselves the judges of our colleagues and to erase whom we please from the list of the peerage, whenever we find ourselves the stronger party, would seem to me to savour of proscription. Do they want to destroy the peerage? Be it so: it better becomes us to surrender our existence than to beg for our lives. "I reproach myself already for the few words I have uttered on a point which, important as it is, becomes insignificant when merged in the great proposition before us. France is without a guide; and I am now to consider what must be added to or cut away from the masts of a vessel which has lost its rudder! I lay aside, then, whatever is of a secondary interest in the declaration of the Elective Chamber; and, fixing on the single enunciated fact of the vacancy of the throne, whether true or pretended, I advance directly to my object. "But a previous question ought first to be attended to: if the throne be vacant, we are free to choose the future form of our government. "Before offering the crown to any individual whatever, it is well to ascertain under what political system the social body is to be constituted. Are we to establish a republic or a new monarchy? "Does a republic or a new monarchy offer sufficient guarantees to France of strength, durability and repose? "A republic would first of all have the recollections of the republic itself to contend with. Those recollections are far from being effaced. The time is not yet forgotten when Death made his frightful progress among us, with Liberty and Equality for supporters. If you were plunged again into anarchy, how would you reanimate the Hercules on his rock who alone was able to stifle the monster? In the course of a thousand years, your posterity may see another Napoleon. As for you, you must not expect it.