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1807.

A true aristocracy, however, must be ancient; therein CHAP. consists its real force; and that was the only thing which I could not create. Reasonable democracy will never aspire to anything more than obtaining an equal power of elevation to all. The true policy in these times was to employ the remains of the aristocracy with the forms and the spirit of democracy. Above all, it was necessary to take advantage of the ancient historic names-it was the only way to throw the halo of antiquity over our modern institutions. My designs on this point were quite formed, but I had not time to bring them to maturity. It was this, that every lineal descendant of an old marshal or minister should be entitled at any time to get himself declared a duke by the government, upon proving that he had the requisite fortune; every descendant of a general, or governor of a province, was to obtain the title of count upon exhibiting a similar endowment. This system would have advanced some, excited the hopes of others, awakened the emulation of all, without injuring any one; pretty toys, it is true, but such as are indispensable for the government of men. Old and corrupted nations cannot be ruled on the same principle as simple and virtuous ages: for one, in these times, who would sacrifice all to the public good, there are thousands and millions who are influenced only by their interests, their vanity, or their enjoyments. To attempt to regenerate such a people in a day would be an act of madness. The true genius of the workman consists in making a right use of the materials which he has at his disposal, to extract good even from the elements which appear at first sight most adverse to his designs; and therein is the real secret of the revival of titles, ribbons, and crosses. And, after all, these toys are attended with few inconveniences, and are not without some advantages. In the state of civilisation in which we are placed, they are proper to awaken the respect of the multitude, and not without influence in producing a v. 23, 25. feeling of self-respect in their owners: they satisfy the

1 Las Cas.

CHAP. vanity of the weak, without giving any just cause of offence to the strong."

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50.

Re-estab

lishinent of

titles of

honour. March 11,

1808.

1 Ante, ch.

Proceeding on these principles, a senatus-consultum, in March 1808, re-established hereditary titles of honour, hereditary under the denomination of Prince, Duke, Count, Baron, and Chevalier. The persons so ennobled were empowered to entail a certain income, under the name of majorats, in favour of their direct descendants. This was the first formal re-establishment of a nobility; but Napoleon had previously, on repeated occasions, exercised the power of conferring titles on the leading persons in his government or army without any other authority than his own will; and among others had, by a patent dated 28th May 1807, created Lefebvre Duke of Dantzic, with a hereditary succession to his son; and all the marshals of the empire, as well as the grand officers of the imperial court, had already been created princes or dukes, shortly after the 42, § 34. campaign of Austerlitz.1 But these titles were all connected with foreign estates or possessions, or named after some glorious foreign exploit, and did not infringe, except indirectly, on the equality in France itself, which it had been the great object of the Revolution to establish. Now, however, this fundamental principle was openly 3 Moniteur, violated; and in the lifetime of the generation which had 1808. waded through oceans of blood to abolish these distinctions, they were re-established in greater numbers, and in a more rigid style of etiquette than ever. There is nothing surprising, however, in this; on the contrary, it was the natural consequence of the passions which produced the Revolution. "Napoleon's nobility," says Mackintosh, "was an institution framed to secure the triumph of all those vanities which had produced the Revolution, and to guard against the possibility of a second humiliation. It was composed of a revolutionary aristocracy, with some of the ancient nobility, compelled to lend lustre to it by accepting titles inferior to their own, with many lawyers, men of letters, merchants, &c.,

March 11,

Montg. vi. 303, 305.

Dum. xix. 231.

L.

whom the ancient system of the French monarchy had CHAP. formerly excluded from such distinction."*

1808.

the subject

lative body.

Such a stretch, coming so soon after the universal pas- 51. sion for equality, which, bursting forth in 1789, had since Speeches on convulsed France and Europe, was of itself sufficiently in the legis remarkable; but it was rendered still more so by the speeches by which it was ushered into the legislative body. "Senators!" said Cambacérès; "know that you are no longer obscure plebeians or simple citizens. The statute which I hold in my hand confers on you the majestic title of Count. I myself, senators, am no longer merely the citizen Cambacérès; as are the other great dignitaries of the empire, I am a prince, your most serene highness and my most serene person, as well as all the other holders of the great dignities of the empire, will be endowed with one of the grand-duchies reserved by 1 Ante, ch. the imperial decree of 30th March 1806. As the son 42, § 34. of a prince cannot, in the noble hierarchy, descend to a lower rank than that of a duke, all our children will enjoy that title. But the new order of things erects no impassable or invidious barrier between the citizens; every career remains open to the virtues and talents of all; the advantage which it awards to tried merit will prove no injury to that which has not yet been put to the test." Thunders of applause shook the senate at this announcement; and that body, composed almost entirely of persons of plebeian birth, whom success in the Revolution had raised to eminence, and many of whom had voted in the Convention for the death of Louis, not only accepted with gratitude the imperial gift, which was

These observations at once explain the cause of this change. It is a secret envy of the lustre of rank which makes men declaim against its vanity when it is beyond their reach; when they have the prospect of gaining it, they become its most strenuous supporters. Republics, in old and currupted societies, are never established but from the prevalence of an extravagant and insatiable thirst for riches or distinction in the majority of the middle classes. Thence the easy and rapid transition from the excitement of democracy to the servility of adulation, equally conspicuous in France after the Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848.

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1808.

CHAP. thus the price of abandoning all their former principles, and put on with alacrity the state livery which was the badge of their servitude, but unanimously embodied 1 Moniteur, their devotion in an address to the Emperor on the oc1808. casion, which must be given entire, as one of the most 304, 306. memorable monuments of political tergiversation and baseness that the history of the world has to exhibit.1*

March 11,

Montg. vi.

52.

of the new

The institution of this new hereditary noblesse was Endowment attended with one peculiarity, which was at once indipeers, with cative of the ephemeral basis on which it was founded, and the incapability of the infant order to answer any of those important purposes in the state which an ancient and independent aristocracy affords. Most of the new

revenues

from foreign

states.

the senate

to the Em

peror on the subject.

"Sire! the senate presents to your august Majesty the tribute of its gratiAddress of tude for the goodness which has prompted you to communicate, by his most Serene Highness, the Chancellor of the Empire, the two statutes relative to the creation of imperial titles, of the 30th March 1806, and the 19th August in the same year. By that great institution, Sire, your Majesty has affixed the seal of durability to all the others which France owes to your wisdom. In proportion, Sire, as one observes the mutual links which connect together the different parts, so multiplied and yet so firmly united, of that great fabric; in proportion as time, which alone can develop the full extent of its benefits, shall have fully unfolded them, what effects may not be anticipated from your august wisdom! A new value given to the recompenses which your Majesty never fails to award to real merit, in what obscurity soever fortune may have placed it, and how varied soever may be the services which it has rendered to the state; new motives to imitate such great examples; fresh bonds of fidelity, devotion, and love towards our country, its sovereign and his dynasty; a closer bond of union between our institutions and those of confederate or friendly nations; fathers recompensed in what is most dear to them; the recollections of families rendered more touching; the memory of our ancestors enshrined; the spirit of order, of economy, and of conservatism strengthened by its most obvious interest, that of its descendants; the first bodies of the empire and the most noble of our institutions drawn closer together; all dread of the return of the odious Feudal System for ever abolished; every recollection foreign to what you have established extinguished; the splendour of the new families deriving fresh lustre from the rays of the crown; the origin of their illustration rendered contemporary with your glory; the past, the present, and the future attached to your power, as, in the sublime conceptions of the great poets of antiquity, the first link of the great chain of destiny was placed in the hands of the gods :— such, Sire, are the results of the institution to which your Majesty has given life. The combination of such important results, affording security to those to whom the present is as nothing when there is no guarantee for the future, consolidates in its foundations, fortifies in all its parts, brings to perfection in its proportions, and embellishes in its ornaments, the immense social edifice, at the summit of which is placed the resplendent throne of the greatest of monarchs. See Moniteur, 11th March 1808; and MONTGAILLARD, vi. 306, 308. The extraordinary nature of this address will not be duly appreciated unless it

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nobles were soldiers of fortune; almost all of them were CHAP. destitute of any property but such as their official emoluments, or the opportunities they had enjoyed of foreign plunder, had afforded. To obviate this inconvenience, and prevent the new nobility from degenerating into a mere set of titled menials or pensioned functionaries, Napoleon fell upon the expedient of attaching to these titles rich endowments, drawn from the revenues of foreign countries conquered by the French arms, or held by them in subjection.* All the French marshals and the chief dignitaries of the empire were in this manner quartered on the German or Italian states, and is recollected that a considerable portion of these obsequious senators, now so ready to wear the imperial livery, and form a part in the great pyramid which supported the throne, were once furious Jacobins, stained with the worst atrocities of the Reign of Terror, and almost all at one period ardent supporters of the principles of liberty and equality. It is sufficient to mention the names of Cambacérès, Fouché, Sièyes, Merlin de Douai, Beugnot, Cornudet, Fontanes, Fabre de l'Aude, &c., besides a host of others.

* As a specimen of the manner in which the imperial generals or dignitaries were endowed out of the revenues of the conquered or subject states, it may be sufficient to cite those who were allocated on the domains of the small Electorate of Hanover, with the total revenues assigned to each, as a first gift out of the spoils of the empire. Many were far more richly endowed afterwards some three or four fold, as additional riches came to the disposal of the mighty conqueror.

Total revenue
ultimately

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received.

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