FRENCH POLITICAL THOUGHT
the new order, between a few who verged ^on Republicanism
and others whose real sympathies were with the Bonapartes
(although both Republicanism and Bonapartism might be said
to be politically negligible quantities in ^1815), and those whom
nothing but tradition or personal prejudices prevented from
being the devoted if not uncritical servants of the restored
Monarchy. It may be said that in a general way the Liberals of
1815 were averse both to Jacobinism and to the ancien regime,
and believed in the possibility of the Charter reconciling King
and people, order and freedom; but there were to be found in
the Liberal camp men who put a very different kind of emphasis
on their hatred of an allegiance to these various principles;
and it was not until the systematic formulation of n Liberal
philosophy, the steady refusal of Royalists to compromise with
"Liberal" thought and their resolute equating of Liberalism
with revolution (particularly after the murder in 1820 of the
King's nephew and ultimate heir, the Due de Berry, " killed by
a Liberal idea "), that Liberalism became clearly and definitely
identified—in spite of its various shades of thought—with
opposition to the regime of the Restoration.
Leaving therefore for a later chapter the fuller study of these
variations, unimportant in the days of opposition but serious
after 1830 when Liberalism is in power, it may be enough at
this stage to call a Liberal anyone who believed in constitu-
tional monarchy, with the stress on the adjective, and who
was therefore suspicious of any arbitrariness in authority and
anxious to safeguard citizens from its possible abuses, though
without any clear vision of the method by which this could be
secured, save for an idea, often based on very little knowledge,
that they managed these things better in England, All that
need be added here is a reminder that the forces of those who
may be termed " Liberal " were in 1815 totally disorganized.
Liberalism as a real force had been killed twice, first by the
Jacobins, in their ruthless subordination of all liberty to the
national necessity as they saw it, and in their identification
of "Moderatism" with weakness and treason to the people,
then by Napoleon, in his detestation of all " ideology "-—**,*.
of all endeavour to apply principles, metaphysical or moral, to
JO