of the right of suffrage, and the incompatibility of certain functions with the office of Deputy, might and must be the natural and legitimate consequences of the upward movement of society and political liberty.  They did not think the reforms necessary or well-timed, and were therefore justified in delaying them as much as possible, provided they should one day allow to be accomplished by others what they thought themselves still strong enough to refuse.”  “We have too much and too long maintained a good policy,” said Guizot afterward.

A frequent and formidable sign that men’s minds are secretly agitated is the anxiety by which they are seized with reference to intrigues and vices which they suppose around them.  It would be a serious error to see always a symptom of moral improvement in the clamors against electoral or parliamentary corruption.  Immediately after the ministerial success in the general elections of 1846, this precursory indication of storms appeared on the horizon.  Guizot raised the question to its proper point of view.  “Leave to countries which are not free,” said he, “leave to absolute governments, that explanation of great results by small, feeble, or dishonorable human acts.  In free countries, when great results are produced it is from great causes that they spring.  A great fact has been shown in the elections just completed; the country has given its adhesion, its earnest and free adhesion, to the policy presented before it.  Do not attribute this fact to several pretended electoral manoeuvres.  You have no right to come to explain, or qualify by wretched suppositions, a grand idea of the country thus grandly and freely manifested.”  The rumors of electoral corruptions were soon followed by rumors of parliamentary corruptions; but the majority of the Chamber declared themselves “content” with the ministerial explanations.  The “Contents” figured in the opposition attacks by the side of the “Pritchardists.”

Several improper abuses of long standing existed in certain branches of the Administration; some posts in the Treasury had been the object of pecuniary transactions between those who held the posts and were resigning, and the candidates who presented themselves to replace them.  A bill proposed on January 20, 1848, by Hebert, who had become keeper of the seals, formally forbade any such transaction, under assigned penalties.  Several months previously (June, 1847) M. Teste, formerly Minister of Public Works, and then president of the Cour de Cassation, was seriously compromised in the scandalous trial of General Cubieres and Pellapra.  Convicted of having received a large sum of money in connection with the mining concession, he was brought before the Peers, and being led from question to question and from discussion to discussion, soon made a confession of his crime.  He, as well as his accomplices, underwent the just penalty.