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1807.

CHAP, imperial antechambers; the patriots of 1789 burned with ardour to share in the advantage of the imperial government; even such of the blood-stained Jacobins of 1793 as the guillotine and subsequent proscriptions had spared, sank down into obscure pamphleteers or functionaries in the employment of the despot who had extinguished their extravagant chimeras.* "All the terrorists," says Sir James Mackintosh, "took refuge under Buonaparte's authority. The more base accepted clandestine pensions or insignificant places. Barère wrote slavish paragraphs at Paris; Tallien was provided for by an obscure consulship in Spain; Fouché, one of the most atrocious of the terrorists, had been gradually formed into a good administrator under a civilised despotism."+ When such was the disposition of those who had been the leading parties in the Revolution, both on the royalist and republican side, it may readily be conceived with what eagerness the rising generation, the young men who had grown up to manhood amid the blaze of Napoleon's glory, who knew of the fervour of democracy only as a hideous dream of former days, the immense mass who looked to advancement in life, and saw no hope of attaining it but in the favour of government, rushed into the same career, and how completely every feeling, down to the fall of Napoleon, was absorbed in the general desire to bask in the sunshine of imperial favour. Such was the universality and vehe1 De Staël, mence of this passion, that it superseded every other feelii. 372, 373. ing, whether private, social, or political; and with the d'Exil, 38. exception of a few rigid republicans, such as Carnot and 100, 101. Lafayette, swept before it the whole democratic principles of France.1

Dix Ann.

Las Cas. vii.

The Constituent Assembly had paved the way for this great alteration by the suppression of the privileges of the nobles, and the annihilation of all provincial and

* Barère was employed in this capacity by Napoleon, and dragged out an obscure existence as a hired pamphleteer, and eulogist of the imperial government, till its fall in 1814.-Biog. des Contemporains, ii. 115, 116.

MACKINTOSH's Works, iii. 194.

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gress of the

centralisa

France.

local authority, which necessarily devolved, in every branch CHAP. of the administration, either on the popular assemblies or the central government: the Legislative Assembly followed 46. it up by banishing all the clergy and landholders, and Rapid proissuing the iniquitous decrees for the confiscation of their system of property; and the Convention put the finishing-stroke by inhumanly massacring its leading members, and rendering the reparation of this injustice even to their heirs impossible, by alienating their possessions to the millions of revolutionary proprietors. It is in these frightful deeds of national injustice that we are to look for the remote but certain cause of the rapid centralisation of the subsequent governments, and the unbounded extent of the imperial authority. When Napoleon succeeded to supreme power, he found all local or subordinate sources of influence or authority closed up or annulled, and nothing remained but the central government. The people had effectually succeeded in destroying the counteracting influence of all other bodies or individuals in the state, but they had been unable to retain in their own hands the power which they had, in the first instance, erected on their ruins. Then, as ever in human affairs, the multitude found themselves incapable of self-government; and the only question really was, by whom their rulers were to be nominated. But it was soon found that such had been the corruption, selfishness, incapacity, or wickedness of the functionaries appointed by the masses, that by common consent they 1 Las Cas. had been deprived, either formally or tacitly, of their vii. 101. Do power of nomination; and every appointment, without 372, 373. exception, in the empire, flowed from the central govern- 204, 207. ment.1

Staël, ii.

Thiers, viii.

Not only were the whole members of the council of 47. state, the senate, and the legislative body, selected by the CentralisaEmperor, but he had the appointment of all the officers tion of all in the army and navy, and the police, whether local or general; all the magistrates of every degree: the judges, whether supreme or inferior; all persons employed in the

power in
the imperial
government.

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CHAP. collection of the revenue, the customs, and excise; all the ministers of the church; all the teachers of youthall the professors in the universities, academies, and schools; all persons in the post-office, or concerned in the administration of the roads, bridges, harbours, fortresses, and cities in the empire. The Emperor skilfully availed himself of this immense patronage to flatter the vanity and feed the cupidity of the middle class who had brought about the Revolution. "The vanity," says Mackintosh,* "of that numerous, intelligent, and active part of the community-merchants, bankers, manufacturers, tradesmen, lawyers, physicians, surgeons, artists, actors, men of letters had been humbled by the monarchy, and had triumphed in the Revolution. They rushed into the stations which the gentry, emigrant, beggared, or exiled, had filled; the whole government fell into their hands. In a country deprived of its whole original landed proprietors by the confiscations of the Revolution, bereaved of commerce and colonies by the events of the war, and almost destitute of capital or private fortunes from the preceding convulsions, these different employments constituted the only avenues to subsistence or eminence which remained to those who were either averse to, or above the rank of, manual labour or retail trade. This state of matters, incident to a people highly excited and inspired with the strongest feelings of individual ambition, alone can account for the universal passion for government employment which seized all ranks of the French nation during the latter years of the reign of Napoleon. And before we censure them as volatile and inconsistent, when we contrast this mania with the democratic fervour of vii. 101. De 1789, we would do well to reflect whether any other Frangi. people, under similar circumstances, would have remained more steadfast to their original professions; and whether both dispositions of the public mind were not, in truth, at bottom,1 the result of the same thirst after individual

1 Las Cas.

Stael, Rév.

372, 374. Ib. Dix

Ann.d'Exil, 38, 39.

* MACKINTOSH's Works, iii. 189.

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distinction, varying in the effect it produced according to CHAP. the change in the means of obtaining elevation which the altered circumstances of society had occasioned."*

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1807.

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Napoleon seized with all his wonted ability on the Policy of the Empeextraordinary combination of circumstances which had thus in a manner thrown absolute power into his hands. gards this. "His system of government," says Madame de Stael, was founded on three bases-To satisfy the interests of men at the expense of their virtue; to deprave public opinion, by falsehoods or sophisms perpetually repeated from the press; and to convert the passion for freedom into that for military glory. He followed up this system. with rare ability." The Emperor himself has given us some important information on his designs, and what he had effected in this respect. "I had established," said he, "a government the most compact, carrying on its operations with the most rapidity, and capable of the most nervous efforts of any that ever existed upon earth. And, truly, nothing less was required to triumph over the immense difficulties with which we were surrounded, and produce the marvels which we accomplished. The organisation of the prefectures, their action, and results, were alike admirable. The same impulse was given at the same instant to more than forty millions of men ; and by the aid of these centres of local activity, the movement was as rapid at all the extremities as at the heart of the empire. Strangers who visited us were astonished at this system; and they never failed to attribute the immense results which were obtained to that uniformity of action pervading so great a space. Each prefect, with the authority and local patronage with which he was

* Napoleon has left some valuable observations on this important subject. "One excuse for the boundless thirst for employments which existed under the empire," said he, "is to be found in the misfortunes and convulsions of the Revolution. Every one was displaced; every one felt himself under the necessity of seating himself again; and it was in order to aid that feeling, and give way to that universal necessity, that I felt the propriety of endowing all the principal offices with so much riches, power, and consideration; but in time I would have changed that by the mere force of opinion."-LAS Cas. vii. 102.

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CHAP. invested, was in himself a little Emperor; but nevertheless, as he enjoyed no force except from the central authority, owed all his lustre to official employment, and had no natural or hereditary connection with the territory over which his dominion extended, the system had all the advantages of the feudal government, without any of its inconveniences. It was indispensable to clothe them with all that authority; I found myself made dictator by the force of circumstance; it was necessary, therefore, that all the minor authorities should be entirely dependent on and in complete harmony with the grand central moving power. The spring with which I covered the soil required a prodigious elasticity, an unbounded tension, if we would avert the strokes which were levelled at our authority. Education may subsequently effect a change; but our generation was inspired with such a thirst for power, and exercised it in so arrogant a manner, to give it the mildest name, and at the same time were so headlong in their passion to fawn upon greatness and wear the chains of vii. 97, 99. slavery, that no other system of government was practicable."1

1 Las Cas.

49.

But with all his admiration for the centralised governHe re-estab- ment which he had established, and of the machinery of honour. of little emperors, prefects, mayors, adjuncts, and other

lishes titles

Principles

on which

this was founded.

functionaries, by which it was carried into effect, no man knew better than Napoleon that is was not in such a system that the foundation for a durable dynasty on the throne could be laid. The system of prefects enjoying absolute power, but deriving all their consideration from transient government appointments, was in reality nothing else but the old and long-established rule of oriental pashalics, held in subjection by a vigorous sultaun; and all history told that such governments rarely descended, in the same family, to the third generation from the original founder. "An aristocracy," says Napoleon, "is the true, the only support of a monarchy; without it, the state is a vessel without a rudder-a balloon in the air.

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