He was
not happy in this choice, it must be agreed. He took as Minister
of Foreign Affairs and President of the Council the Prince de
Polignac. For a long time public opinion had foreseen this choice,
and dreaded it. At the commencement of the Restoration M. de
Polignac for more than a year had refused to recognize the Charter
and to swear fidelity to it, which made him regarded as the
pronounced enemy of our institutions. Was this antipathy real? I
do not think so. He had for a long time lived in England, as
ambassador, and was thoroughly imbued with principles at once very
constitutional and very aristocratic, after the English fashion.
His devotion was great, as well as his personal merit, but his
resources as a statesman were not so much so; he took his desire
to do well for the capacity to do well, and he mistook."
When he assumed the direction of affairs the Prince de Polignac
was wholly surprised at the systematic and obstinate opposition
that he encountered. As M. Guizot said, "he was sincerely
astonished that he was not willingly accepted as a minister
devoted to the constitutional regime. But the public, without
troubling itself to know if he were sincere or not, persisted in
seeing in him the champion of the old regime and the standard-
bearer of the counter-Revolution."
Although he had passed a part of his life in England, first as
emigre, then as ambassador, and had married as his first wife an
English lady, Miss Campbell, and as his second another, the
daughter of Lord Radcliffe, the Prince de Polignac was French at
heart.
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