"with that France which I left to them so brilliant? I left them peace, and I find war at my return; I left them victories, and I find defeats. What, in short, have they done with the hundred thousand Frenchmen, all of them my acquaintances and my companions in arms, who are now no more?" Then all at once concluding his harangue, in a calm tone he added, "This state of things cannot last; it would lead us in three years to despotism." He took upon himself the charge of hasten ing the accomplishment of his pre diction. The first symptoms of tyranny cannot be watched too carefully; for when once it has grown up to a certain point, it can no longer be stopped in its career. A single man enchains the will of a multitude of individuals, the greater part of whom, taken separately, would wish to be free, but who nevertheless submit because they dread one another, and dare not communicate their thoughts free ly. A minority not very numer. ous is often sufficient to resist in succession every portion of the majority which is unacquainted with its own strength. In spite of the differences of time and place, there are points of resemblance in the history of all nations who have fallen under the yoke. It is generally after long civil troubles that tyranny is established, because it offers the hope of shelter to all the exhausted and timorous factions. Buonaparte said of himself with reason, that he could play admirably upon the instrument of power. In truth, as he is attached to no principles, nor restrained by any obstacles, he presents himself in the arena of circumstances like a wrestler, no less supple than vigorous, and discovers at the first glance the points in every man or association of men, which may promote his private designs. His scheme for arriving at the dominion of France rested upon three principal bases,-to satisfy men's interests at the expense of their virtues, to deprave public opinion by sophisms, and to give the nation war for an object instead of liberty. We shall see him follow these different paths with uncommon ability. The French, alas! seconded him only too well; yet it is his fatal genius which should be chiefly blamed; for as an arbitrary government had at all times prevented the nation from acquiring fixed ideas upon any subject, Buonaparte set its passions in motion without having to struggle against its principles. He had it in his power to do honour to France, and to establish himself firmly by upright institutions: but his contempt of the human race had quite dried up his soul, and he believed that there was no depth but in the region of evil. We have already seen him decree a constitution, in which there existed no securities. Besides, he took great care to leave the laws that had been published during the revolution unrepealed, that he might at his pleasure select from this accursed arsenal the weapon which suited him. The extraordinary commissions, the transportations, the banishments, the slavery of the press, measures unfortunately introduced in the name of liberty, were were extremely useful to tyranny. When he employed them, he alleged as a pretext, sometimes reasons of state, sometimes the urgency of the conjuncture, sometimes the activity of his adversaries, sometimes the necessity of maintaining tranquillity. Such is the artillery of the phrases by which absolute power is defended, for circumstances never have an end; and in proportion as restraint by illegal measures is increased, the disaffected become more numerous, which serves to justify the necessity of new acts of injustice. The establishment of the sovereignty of law is always deferred till tomorrow, a vicious circle of reasoning which it is difficult to leave; for liberty will scarcely be permitted till that public spirit prevail which can result only from the enjoyment of liberty. The constitution gave Buonaparte two colleagues: he chose with singular sagacity, for his assistant consuls, two men, who were of no use but to disguise the unity of his despotism: the one was Cambacérès, a lawyer of great learning, who had been taught in the convention to bend methodically before terror; the other, Lebrun, a man of highly cultivated mind and highly polished manners, who had been trained under the chancellor Mau. peou, under that minister, who, satisfied with the degree of arbitrary power which he found in the monarchy as it then existed, had substituted for the parliaments of France one named by himself. Cambacérès was the interpreter of Buonaparte to the revolutionists, Lebrun to the royalists: both translated the same text into two different languages. Thus two able ministers were charged with the task of adapting the old system and the new to the mixed mass of the third. The one, a great noble who had been engaged in the revolution, told the royalists, that it was their interest to recover monarchical institutions, at the expense of renouncing the ancient dynasty. The other, who, though a creature of the era of disaster, was ready to promote the re-establishment of courts, preached to the republicans the necessity of abandoning their political opinions, in order to preserve their places. Among these knights of circumstances, the grand master Buonaparte could create such conjunctures as he desired; while the others manoeuvred according to the wind with which the genius of the storms had filled their sails. The political army of the First Consul was composed of deserters from the two parties. The royalists sacrificed to him their fidelity to the Bourbons; the patriots, their attachment to liberty: so that no independent style of thinking could show itself under his dominion; for he was more willing to pardon a selfish calculation than a disinterested opinion. It was by the bad side of the human heart that he hoped to gain possession of it. Buonaparte took the Tuileries for his abode : and even the choice of this residence was a stroke of policy. It was there that the king of France was accustomed to be seen; circum2 F 2 stances stances connected with monarchy were there presented to every eye; and the very influence of the walls on the minds of spectators was, if we may say so, sufficient for the restoration of regal power. Towards the concluding days of the last century, I saw the First Consul enter the palace built by our kings: and though Buonaparte was still very far from the magnificence which he afterwards displayed, there was visible in all around him an eagerness to vie in the courtier arts of oriental servility, which must have persuaded him that it was a very easy matter to govern the earth. When his carriage arrived in the court of the Tuileries, his valets opened the door and put down the steps with a vio lence which seemed to say, that even inanimate substances were insolent when they retarded his progress for a moment. He neither looked at, nor thanked any person, as if he were afraid of being thought sensible to the homage which he required. As he ascended the staircase in the midst of the crowd which pressed to follow him, his eyes were not fixed on any object or any person in particular. There was an air of vagueness and want of thought in his physiognomy, and his looks expressed only what it always becomes him to show indifference to fortune, and disdain for men. One circumstance, which was singularly favourable to the power of Buonaparte, was, that he had nothing but the mass of the nation to manage. All individual existence had been annihilated by ten years of tumult, and no of thing acts upon a people like military success: to resist this inclination on their part, instead of profiting by it, a great strength of reason is requisite. Nobody in France could believe his situation secure; men of all classes, whether ruined or enriched, banished or recompensed, found themselves, if I may say so, one by one alike in the hands of power. Thousands of Frenchmen were upon the list of emigrants, thousands more had acquired national domains; thousands were proscribed as priests or nobles; and thousands others feared to be so for their revolutionary deeds. Buonaparte, who constantly marched between two opposite interests, took care not to terminate these inquietudes by fixed laws, which would enable every man to know his rights. To this or that man he gave back his property; from this or that other he took it away for ever. A decree concerning the restitution of woods reduced one man to misery, while another recovered more than he had originally possessed. Sometimes he restored the estate of the father to the son, or that of the elder brother to the younger, according as he was satisfied or dissatisfied with their attachment to his person. There was not a Frenchman who had not something to ask of the government; and that something was life for favour then consisted, not in the frivolous pleasure which it can impart, but in the hope of revisiting the land in which he was born, and of recovering a part at least of what he once possessed. The First Consul had reserved to himself, under some some pretext or other, the power of disposing of the lot of all and of every one. This unheard-of state of dependance excuses in a great measure the nation. Is universal heroism to be expected; and was there not need of heroism to run the risk of the ruin and the banishment which impended over all, and which might fall by the application of a decree. A singular concurrence of circumstances placed the laws of the period of terror, and the military force created by republican enthusiasm, at the disposal of one man. What an inheritance for an able despot! Two very different plans of conduct presented themselves to Buonaparte when he was crowned emperor of France. He might confine himself to the barrier of the Rhine and the Alps, which Europe did not dispute with him after the battle of Marengo, and render France, thus enlarged, the most powerful empire in the world. The example of constitutional liberty in France would have acted gradually, but with certainty, on the rest of Europe. It would no longer have been said that freedom is suitable only for England, because it is an island; or for Holland, because it is a plain; or for Switzerland, because it is a mountainous country; and a continental monarchy would have been seen flourishing under the shadow of the law, than which there is nothing more holy upon earth, except the religion from which it emanates. Many men of genius have exerted all their efforts to do a little good, and to leave some traces of their institutions behind them, Destiny, in its prodigality towards Buonaparte, put into his hands a nation at that time containing forty millions of men, a nation whose amiable manners gave it a powerful influence on the opinions and taste of Europe. An able ruler, at the opening of the present century, might have rendered France happy and free without any effort, merely by a few virtues. Napoleon is guilty not less for the good which he has not done, than for the evils of which he is accused. In short, if his devouring activity felt itself straitened in the finest monarchy in the world; if to be merely emperor of France was too pitiful a lot for a Corsican, who, in 1790, was a subaltern, he should at least have stirred up Europe by the pretext of some great advantages to herself. The re-establishment of Poland, the independence of Italy, the deliverance of Greece, were schemes that had an air of grandeur; states might have felt an interest in the revival of other states. But was the earth to be inundated with blood, that prince Jerome might fill the place of the Elector of Hesse; and that the Germans might be governed by French rulers, who took to themselves fiefs of which they could scarcely pronounce the titles, though they bore them; but on the revenues of which they easily laid hold in every language? Why should Germany have submitted to French influence? This influence communicated no new knowledge, and established no liberal institutions within her limits, except contributions and conscriptions still heavier t heavier than all that had been imposed by her ancient masters. There were, without doubt, many reasonable changes to be made in the constitutions of Germany; all enlightened men knew it; and for a long time accordingly they had shown themselves favourable to the cause of France, because they hoped to derive from her an improvement of their own condition. But without speaking of the just indignation which every people must feel at the sight of foreign soldiers in their territory, Buonaparte did nothing in Germany but with the view of establishing there his own power and that of his family: was such a nation made to serve as a footstool to his vanity? Spain too could not but reject with horror the perfidious means which Buonaparte employed to enslave her. What then did he offer to the empires which he wished to subjugate? Was it liberty? Was it strength? Was it riches? No; it was himself, always himself, with whom the world was to be regaled in exchange for every earthly blessing. The Italians, in the confused hope of being finally united in one state; the unfortunate Poles, who implore hell as well as heaven that they may again become a people, were the only nations who served the emperor voluntarily. But he had such a horror for the love of liberty, that, though he needed the Poles as auxiliaries, he hated in them the noble enthusiasm which condemned them to obey him. This man, so able in the arts of dissimulation, could not avail himself even hypocritically of the pa triotic sentiments from which he might have drawn so many resources; he could not handle such a weapon, and he was always afraid lest it should be shivered in his hand. At Posen, the Polish deputies came to offer him their fortunes and their lives for the re-establishment of Poland. Napoleon answered them with that gloomy voice, and that hurried declamation, which have been remarked in him when under constraint, consisting of a few words about liberty, well or ill put together, which cost him such an effort that it was the only lie which he could not pronounce with apparent ease. Even when the applauses of the people were in his favour, the people were still disagreeable to him. This instinct of despotism made him raise a throne without foundation, and forced him to fail in what was his vocation here below, the establishment of political reform. He The means of the Emperor to enslave Europe were audacity in war and craft in peace. signed treaties when his enemies were half beaten, that he might not drive them to despair, but yet weaken them so much, that the axe which remained in the trunk of the tree might cause it at length to perish. He gained some friends among the old sovereigns by showing himself in every thing the enemy of freedom. Accordingly, it was the nations who finally rose up against him; for he had offended them more even than kings. Yet it is surprising still to find partisans of Buonaparte elsewhere than among the French, to whom he at least gave victory as a compensation for |