that had been afterwards modified in a larger and more liberal sense. The fourth merely recalled the majority of the members who had been removed from the Council of State for the last two years.
The Ordinances were inspired by a fatuous policy ; they were illegal, if not in the letter, at any rate in the spirit ; but it is difficult to construe them into treason or even attempt against the country. The same evening, whilst a harmless ebullition of popular feeling was going on in the street, Casimir-Périer and General Sebastiani, together with some other deputies, examined the situation, and formally expressed their opinion that one ought to abide by the letter of the law. At the same moment, Thiers was holding forth in the office of the Constitutionel, and drawing up a protest exhorting the newly-elected Chamber to take no notice of the Ordinances, but to meet on the 3rd of August as if nothing had happened. The whole of the next day (27th of July) passed without bringing about any change. Printers, touched in their material interests by the suppression of several newspapers, and students, always enamoured of desperate solutions, went about stirring up the mob. Three meetings
