But, as before these excesses, it may still be maintained with certain modifications; it suffices almost to retouch it, to establish exemptions and the privilege of substitution as rights, which were once simply favors,[3275] reduce the annual contingent, limit the term of service, guarantee their lasting freedom to those liberated, and thus secure in 1818 a recruiting law satisfactory and efficacious which, for more than half a century, will attain its ends without being too detrimental or too odious, and which, among so many laws of the same sort, all mischievous, is perhaps the least pernicious.
***** [Footnote 3201: "The Ancient Regime," book II., ch.

2, 3, 4, and book V.
(Laff.

I.pp.95 to 125 and pp.

245 to 308.)] [Footnote 3202: La Bruyere is, I believe, the first of these precursors.
Cf.

his chapters on "The Great," on "Personal Merit," on "The Sovereign and the Republic," and his chapter on "Man," his passages on "The Peasants," on "Provincial Notes," etc.