Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/54

to bring it about. This policy, in spite of its detestable results, still characterises our electoral morals. The programme of the Right, which was the programme of the "Introuvable," survived that Chamber. Chateaubriand later made an ironical offer to support Decazes if he would consent to " change the electoral law, to suppress regular promotion in the army, to restore the right of primogeniture, and to reorganise the monastic orders." In other words, to return to the Three Orders of the ancien régime, Clergy, Noblesse, and Third Estate. To tell the truth, I believe that many who supported this astonishing programme entertained no illusions as to the possibility of realising it, they simply made use of it as a cloak, and a remarkably ill-fitting cloak it was. If there was one thing which in the eyes of the people justified the Revolution, with all its crime and misery, it was the suppression of these three orders and the unjust privileges they entailed. The first work of the Royalists, who were anxious to consolidate the throne, should have been to reassure the people ; as it was, they seized every opportunity of frightening it with this ghost of the ancien régime, which many of