By  a  method  which  was  not  that  of  Casimir  Perier,
but  equally  well  adapted  to  the  changed  circumstances  of  the
time  and  equally  successful,  Mole  was  securing  order  and
peace  and  establishing  the  dynasty.    Between  1837  ^^^  1839

B.  I.  13


194      Louis  Philippe  and  the  Opposition      [CH.
there  was  no  anarchist  crime,  and  only  one  repubhcan
conspiracy,  got  up  by  a  working-man  of  Alsace,  Aloys  Huber
by  name,  a  dreamer  and  a  mystic,  and  his  friend  Steuble.
"The  Legitimist  party,"  wrote  the  Due  d'Orleans,  while
visiting  the  south  of  France,  "  has  crumbled  away  to  nothing
in  every  direction,  ever  since  the  clergy  deserted  it."  The
Government,  now  free  from  all  anxiety,  was  ready  to  under-
take its  proper  duty  of  governing.
With  the  support  of  Parliament  and  especially  of  the
Chamber  of  Peers,  they  carried  further  the  work  of  legisla-
tion, the  foundations  of  which  the  bourgeoisie  had  been
wise  enough  to  lay  in  1830  for  the  benefit  of  modern  society.
They  decided  to  increase  the  nimiber  of  Justices  of  the
Peace,  kept  an  eye  over  lunatics,  passed  regulations  as  to
bankruptcy  and  insolvency,  and  by  a  law  of  April  1838
extended  the  principle  of  Councils  General  in  the  depart-
ments, and  of  local  political  life,  so  as  to  accustom  the
French  to  the  use  of  liberty.
In  the  same  fashion  they  proposed  to  advance  the  well-
being  and  prosperity  of  the  nation,  which  had  never  before
been  so  well  established.  In  1836  M.  de  Barante  remarked
that  the  lower  classes  for  the  last  fifty  years  had  not  looked
better  off,  or  more  contented  with  their  growing  prosperity.
