French Peerage Abolished

I cannot say what the French peers _will_ do; but I can tell you what they / _ought_ to do. "So far," they might say, "as our feelings and interests, as / individuals, are concerned in this matter -- if it really be the prevailing / wish of our fellow-countrymen to destroy the hereditary peerage -- we shall, / without regret, retire into the ranks of private citizens: but we are bound / by the provisions of the existing constitution to consider ourselves / collectively as essential to the well-being of France: we have been placed / here to defend what France, a short time ago at least, thought a vital part / of its government; and, if we did not defend it, what answer could we make / hereafter to France itself, if she should come to see, what we think to be / an error, in the light in which we view it? We should be justly branded as / traitors and cowards, who had deserted the post which we were specially / appointed to maintain. As a House of Peers, therefore, -- as one substantive / branch of the legislature, we can never, in honour or in conscience, / consent to a measure of the impolicy and dangerous consequences of which we / are convinced.

"If, therefore, this measure is demanded by the country, let the king and / the deputies form themselves into a constituent assembly; and then, / assuming to act in the name of the total nation, let them decree the / abolition. In that case we yield to a just, perhaps, but revolutionary, / act, in which we do not participate, and against which we are, upon the / supposition, quite powerless. If the deputies, however, consider themselves / so completely in the character of delegates as to be at present absolutely / pledged to vote without freedom of deliberation, let a concise, but / perspicuous, summary of the ablest arguments that can be adduced on either / side be drawn up, and printed, and circulated throughout the country; and / then, after two months, let the deputies demand fresh instructions upon / this point. One thing, as men of honour, we declare beforehand -- that, come / what will, none of us who are now peers will ever accept a peerage created / _de novo_ for life. "