After further delays the Concordat was ratified at Eastertide, 1802. It may be briefly described as follows: The French Government recognized that the Catholic apostolic and Roman religion was the religion of the great majority of the French people, "especially of the Consuls"; but it refused to declare it to be the religion of France, as was the case under the ancien regime. It was to be freely and publicly practised in France, subject to the police regulations that the Government judged necessary for the public tranquillity. In return for these great advantages, many concessions were expected from the Church. The present bishops, both orthodox and constitutional, were, at the Pope's invitation, to resign their sees; or, failing that, new appointments were to be made, as if the sees were vacant. The last proviso was necessary; for of the eighty-one surviving bishops affected by this decision as many as thirteen orthodox and two "constitutionals" offered persistent but unavailing protests against the action of the Pope and First Consul.

A new division of archbishoprics and bishoprics was now made, which gave in all sixty sees to France. The First Consul enjoyed the right of nomination to them, whereupon the Pope bestowed canonical investiture. The archbishops and bishops were all to take an oath of fidelity to the constitution. The bishops nominated the lower clerics provided that they were acceptable to the Government: all alike bound themselves to watch over governmental interests. The stability of France was further assured by a clause granting complete and permanent security to the holders of the confiscated Church lands—a healing and salutary compromise which restored peace to every village and soothed the qualms of many a troubled conscience. On its side, the State undertook to furnish suitable stipends to the clergy, a promise which was fulfilled in a rather niggardly spirit. For the rest, the First Consul enjoyed the same consideration as the Kings of France in all matters ecclesiastical; and a clause was added, though Bonaparte declared it needless, that if any succeeding First Consul were not a Roman Catholic, his prerogatives in religious matters should be revised by a Convention. A similar Concordat was passed a little later for the pacification of the Cisalpine Republic.

The Concordat was bitterly assailed by the Jacobins, especially by the military chiefs, and had not the infidel generals been for the most part sundered by mutual jealousies they might perhaps have overthrown Bonaparte. But their obvious incapacity for civil affairs enabled them to venture on nothing more than a few coarse jests and clumsy demonstrations. At the Easter celebration at Notre Dame in honour of the ratification of the Concordat, one of them, Delmas by name, ventured on the only protest barbed with telling satire: "Yes, a fine piece of monkery this, indeed. It only lacked the million men who got killed to destroy what you are striving to bring back." But to all protests Bonaparte opposed a calm behaviour that veiled a rigid determination, before which priests and soldiers were alike helpless.

In subsequent articles styled "organic," Bonaparte, without consulting the Pope, made several laws that galled the orthodox clergy. Under the plea of legislating for the police of public worship, he reaffirmed some of the principles which he had been unable to incorporate in the Concordat itself. The organic articles asserted the old claims of the Gallican Church, which forbade the application of Papal Bulls, or of the decrees of "foreign" synods, to France: they further forbade the French bishops to assemble in council or synod without the permission of the Government; and this was also required for a bishop to leave his diocese, even if he were summoned to Rome. Such were the chief of the organic articles. Passed under the plea of securing public tranquillity, they proved a fruitful source of discord, which during the Empire became so acute as to weaken Napoleon's authority. In matters religious as well as political, he early revealed his chief moral and mental defect, a determination to carry his point by whatever means and to require the utmost in every bargain. While refusing fully to establish Roman Catholicism as the religion of the State, he compelled the Church to surrender its temporalities, to accept the regulations of the State, and to protect its interests. Truly if, in Chateaubriand's famous phrase, he was the "restorer of the altars," he exacted the uttermost farthing for that restoration.

In one matter his clear intelligence stands forth in marked contrast to the narrow pedantry of the Roman Cardinals. At a time of reconciliation between orthodox and "constitutionals," they required from the latter a complete and public retractation of their recent errors. At once Bonaparte intervened with telling effect. So condign a humiliation, he argued, would altogether mar the harmony newly re-established. "The past is past: and the bishops and prefects ought to require from the priests only the declaration of adhesion to the Concordat, and of obedience to the bishop nominated by the First Consul and instituted by the Pope." This enlightened advice, backed up by irresistible power, carried the day, and some ten thousand constitutional priests were quietly received back into the Roman communion, those who had contracted marriages being compelled to put away their wives. Bonaparte took a deep interest in the reconstruction of dioceses, in the naming of churches, and similar details, doubtless with the full consciousness that the revival of the Roman religious discipline in France was a more important service than any feat of arms.

He was right: in healing a great schism in France he was dealing a deadly blow at the revolutionary feeling of which it was a prominent manifestation. In the words of one of his Ministers, "The Concordat was the most brilliant triumph over the genius of Revolution, and all the following successes have without exception resulted from it."[159]

After this testimony it is needless to ask why Bonaparte did not take up with Protestantism. At St. Helena, it is true, he asserted that the choice of Catholicism or Protestantism was entirely open to him in 1801, and that the nation would have followed him in either direction: but his religious policy, if carefully examined, shows no sign of wavering on this subject, though he once or twice made a strategic diversion towards Geneva, when Rome showed too firm a front. Is it conceivable that a man who, as he informed Joseph, was systematically working to found a dynasty, should hesitate in the choice of a governmental creed? Is it possible to think of the great champion of external control and State discipline as a defender of liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment?

The regulation of the Protestant cult in France was a far less arduous task. But as Bonaparte's aim was to attach all cults to the State, he decided to recognize the two chief Protestant bodies in France, Calvinists and Lutherans, allowing them to choose their own pastors and to regulate their affairs in consistories. The pastors were to be salaried by the State, but in return the Government not only reserved its approval of every appointment, but required the Protestant bodies to have no relations whatever with any foreign Power or authority. The organic articles of 1802, which defined the position of the Protestant bodies, form a very important landmark in the history of the followers of Luther and Calvin. Persecuted by Louis XIV. and XV., they were tolerated by Louis XVI.; they gained complete religious equality in 1789, and after a few years of anarchy in matters of faith, they found themselves suddenly and stringently bound to the State by the organizing genius of Bonaparte.

In the years 1806-1808 the position of the Jews was likewise defined, at least for all those who recognized France as their country, performed all civic duties, and recognized all the laws of the State. In consideration of their paying full taxes and performing military service, they received official protection and their rabbis governmental support.

Such was Bonaparte's policy on religious subjects. There can be little doubt that its motive was, in the main, political. This methodizing genius, who looked on the beliefs and passions, the desires and ambitions of mankind, as so many forces which were to aid him in his ascent, had already satisfied the desires for military glory and material prosperity; and in his bargain with Rome he now won the support of an organized priesthood, besides that of the smaller Protestant and Jewish communions. That he gained also peace and quietness for France may be granted, though it was at the expense of that mental alertness and independence which had been her chief intellectual glory; but none of his intimate acquaintances ever doubted that his religion was only a vague sentiment, and his attendance at mass merely a compliment to his "sacred gendarmerie."[l60]

Having dared and achieved the exploit of organizing religion in a half-infidel society, the First Consul was ready to undertake the almost equally hazardous task of establishing an order of social distinction, and that too in the very land where less than eight years previously every title qualified its holder for the guillotine. For his new experiment, the Legion of Honour, he could adduce only one precedent in the acts of the last twelve years.

The whole tendency had been towards levelling all inequalities. In 1790 all titles of nobility were swept away; and though the Convention decreed "arms of honour" to brave soldiers, yet its generosity to the deserving proved to be less remarkable than its activity in guillotining the unsuccessful. Bonaparte, however, adduced its custom of granting occasional modest rewards as a precedent for his own design, which was to be far more extended and ambitious.

In May, 1802, he proposed the formation of a Legion of Honour, organized in fifteen cohorts, with grand officers, commanders, officers, and legionaries. Its affairs were to be regulated by a council presided over by Bonaparte himself. Each cohort received "national domains" with 200,000 francs annual rental, and these funds were disbursed to the members on a scale proportionate to their rank. The men who had received "arms of honour" were, ipso facto to be legionaries; soldiers "who had rendered considerable services to the State in the war of liberty," and civilians "who by their learning, talents, and virtues contributed to establish or to defend the principles of the Republic," might hope for the honour and reward now held out. The idea of rewarding merit in a civilian, as well as among the military caste which had hitherto almost entirely absorbed such honours, was certainly enlightened; and the names of the famous savants Laplace, Monge, Berthollet, Lagrange, Chaptal, and of jurists such as Treilhard and Tronchet, imparted lustre to what would otherwise have been a very commonplace institution. Bonaparte desired to call out all the faculties of the nation; and when Dumas proposed that the order should be limited to soldiers, the First Consul replied in a brilliant and convincing harangue:

"To do great things nowadays it is not enough to be a man of five feet ten inches. If strength and bravery made the general, every soldier might claim the command. The general who does great things is he who also possesses civil qualities. The soldier knows no law but force, sees nothing but it, and measures everything by it. The civilian, on the other hand, only looks to the general welfare. The characteristic of the soldier is to wish to do everything despotically: that of the civilian is to submit everything to discussion, truth, and reason. The superiority thus unquestionably belongs to the civilian."

In these noble words we can discern the secret of Bonaparte's supremacy both in politics and in warfare. Uniting in his own person the ablest qualities of the statesman and the warrior, he naturally desired that his new order of merit should quicken the vitality of France in every direction, knowing full well that the results would speedily be felt in the army itself. When admitted to its ranks, the new member swore:

"To devote himself to the service of the Republic, to the maintenance of the integrity of its territory, the defence of its government, laws, and of the property which they have consecrated; to fight by all methods authorized by justice, reason, and law, against every attempt to re-establish the feudal regime or to reproduce the titles and qualities thereto belonging; and finally to strive to the uttermost to maintain liberty and equality."

It is not surprising that the Tribunate, despite the recent purging of its most independent members, judged liberty and equality to be endangered by the method of defence now proposed. The members bitterly criticised the scheme as a device of the counter-revolution; but, with the timid inconsequence which was already sapping their virility, they proceeded to pass by fifty-six votes to thirty-eight a measure of which they had so accurately gauged the results. The new institution was, indeed, admirably suited to consolidate Bonaparte's power. Resting on the financial basis of the confiscated lands, it offered some guarantee against the restoration of the old monarchy and feudal nobility; while, by stimulating that love of distinction and brilliance which is inherent in every gifted people, it quietly began to graduate society and to group it around the Paladins of a new Gaulish chivalry. The people had recently cast off the overlordship of the old Frankish nobles, but admiration of merit (the ultimate source of all titles of distinction) was only dormant even in the days of Robespierre; and its insane repression during the Terror now begat a corresponding enthusiasm for all commanding gifts. Of this inevitable reaction Bonaparte now made skillful use. When Berlier, one of the leading jurists of France, objected to the new order as leading France back to aristocracy, and contemptuously said that crosses and ribbons were the toys of monarchy, Bonaparte replied:

"Well: men are led by toys. I would not say that in a rostrum, but in a council of wise men and statesmen one ought to speak one's mind. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality: the French are not at all changed by ten years of revolution: they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one feeling—honour. We must nourish that feeling: they must have distinctions. See how they bow down before the stars of strangers."[161]

After so frank an exposition of motives to his own Council of State, little more need be said. We need not credit Bonaparte or the orators of the Tribunate with any superhuman sagacity when he and they foresaw that such an order would prepare the way for more resplendent titles. The Legion of Honour, at least in its highest grades, was the chrysalis stage of the Imperial noblesse. After all, the new Charlemagne might plead that his new creation satisfied an innate craving of the race, and that its durability was the best answer to hostile critics. Even when, in 1814, his Senators were offering the crown of France to the heir of the Bourbons, they expressly stipulated that the Legion of Honour should not be abolished: it has survived all the shocks of French history, even the vulgarizing associations of the Second Empire.

* * * * *

The same quality of almost pyramidal solidity characterizes another great enterprise of the Napoleonic period, the codification of French law.

The difficulties of this undertaking consisted mainly in the enormous mass of decrees emanating from the National Assemblies, relative to political, civil, and criminal affairs. Many of those decrees, the offspring of a momentary enthusiasm, had found a place in the codes of laws which were then compiled; and yet sagacious observers knew that several of them warred against the instincts of the Gallic race. This conviction was summed up in the trenchant statement of the compilers of the new code, in which they appealed from the ideas of Rousseau to the customs of the past: "New theories are but the maxims of certain individuals: the old maxims represent the sense of centuries." There was much force in this dictum. The overthrow of Feudalism and the old monarchy had not permanently altered the French nature. They were still the same joyous, artistic, clan-loving people whom the Latin historians described: and pride in the nation or the family was as closely linked with respect for a doughty champion of national and family interests as in the days of Caesar. Of this Roman or quasi-Gallic reaction Napoleon was to be the regulator; and no sphere of his activities bespeaks his unerring political sagacity more than his sifting of the old and the new in the great code which was afterwards to bear his name.

Old French law had been an inextricable labyrinth of laws and customs, mainly Roman and Frankish in origin, hopelessly tangled by feudal customs, provincial privileges, ecclesiastical rights, and the later undergrowth of royal decrees; and no part of the legislation of the revolutionists met with so little resistance as their root and branch destruction of this exasperating jungle. Their difficulties only began when they endeavoured to apply the principles of the Rights of Man to political, civil, and criminal affairs. The chief of these principles relating to criminal law were that law can only forbid actions that are harmful to society, and must only impose penalties that are strictly necessary. To these epoch-making pronouncements the Assembly added, in 1790, that crimes should be visited only on the guilty individual, not on the family; and that penalties must be proportioned to the offences. The last two of these principles had of late been flagrantly violated; but the general pacification of France now permitted a calm consideration of the whole question of criminal law, and of its application to normal conditions.

Civil law was to be greatly influenced by the Rights of Man; but those famous declarations were to a large extent contravened in the ensuing civil strifes, and their application to real life was rendered infinitely more difficult by that predominance of the critical over the constructive faculties which marred the efforts of the revolutionary Babel-builders. Indeed, such was the ardour of those enthusiasts that they could scarcely see any difficulties. Thus, the Convention in 1793 allowed its legislative committee just one month for the preparation of a code of civil law. At the close of six weeks Cambaceres, the reporter of the committee, was actually able to announce that it was ready. It was found to be too complex. Another commission was ordered to reconstruct it: this time the Convention discovered that the revised edition was too concise. Two other drafts were drawn up at the orders of the Directory, but neither gave satisfaction. And thus it was reserved for the First Consul to achieve what the revolutionists had only begun, building on the foundations and with the very materials which their ten years' toil had prepared.

He had many other advantages. The Second Consul, Cambaceres, was at his side, with stores of legal experience and habits of complaisance that were of the highest value. Then, too, the principles of personal liberty and social equality were yielding ground before the more autocratic maxims of Roman law. The view of life now dominant was that of the warrior not of the philosopher. Bonaparte named Tronchet, Bigot de Preameneu, and the eloquent and learned Portalis for the redaction of the code. By ceaseless toil they completed their first draft in four months. Then, after receiving the criticisms of the Court of Cassation and the Tribunals of Appeal, it came before the Council of State for the decision of its special committee on legislation. There it was subjected to the scrutiny of several experts, but, above all, to Bonaparte himself. He presided at more than half of the 102 sittings devoted to this criticism; and sittings of eight or nine hours were scarcely long enough to satisfy his eager curiosity, his relentless activity, and his determined practicality.

From the notes of Thibaudeau one of the members of this revising committee, we catch a glimpse of the part there played by the First Consul. We see him listening intently to the discussions of the jurists, taking up and sorting the threads of thought when a tangle seemed imminent, and presenting the result in some striking pattern. We watch his methodizing spirit at work on the cumbrous legal phraseology, hammering it out into clear, ductile French. We feel the unerring sagacity, which acted as a political and social touchstone, testing, approving, or rejecting multifarious details drawn from old French law or from the customs of the Revolution; and finally we wonder at the architectural skill which worked the 2,281 articles of the Code into an almost unassailable pile. To the skill and patience of the three chief redactors that result is, of course, very largely due: yet, in its mingling of strength, simplicity, and symmetry, we may discern the projection of Napoleon's genius over what had hitherto been a legal chaos.

Some blocks of the pyramid were almost entirely his own. He widened the area of French citizenship; above all, he strengthened the structure of the family by enhancing the father's authority. Herein his Corsican instincts and the requirements of statecraft led him to undo much of the legislation of the revolutionists. Their ideal was individual liberty: his aim was to establish public order by autocratic methods. They had sought to make of the family a little republic, founded on the principles of liberty and equality; but in the new code the paternal authority reappeared no less strict, albeit less severe in some details than that of the ancien regime. The family was thenceforth modelled on the idea dominant in the State, that authority and responsible action pertained to a single individual. The father controlled the conduct of his children: his consent was necessary for the marriage of sons up to their twenty-fifth year, for that of daughters up to their twenty-first year; and other regulations were framed in the same spirit.[162] Thus there was rebuilt in France the institution of the family on an almost Roman basis; and these customs, contrasting sharply with the domestic anarchy of the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a mighty influence in fashioning the character of the French, as of the other Latin peoples, to a ductility that yields a ready obedience to local officials, drill-sergeants, and the central Government.

In other respects Bonaparte's influence on the code was equally potent. He raised the age at which marriage could be legally contracted to that of eighteen for men, and fifteen for women, and he prescribed a formula of obedience to be repeated by the bride to her husband; while the latter was bound to protect and support the wife.[163]

And yet, on the question of divorce, Bonaparte's action was sufficiently ambiguous to reawaken Josephine's fears; and the detractors of the great man have some ground for declaring that his action herein was dictated by personal considerations. Others again may point to the declarations of the French National Assemblies that the law regarded marriage merely as a civil contract, and that divorce was to be a logical sequel of individual liberty, "which an indissoluble tie would annul." It is indisputable that extremely lax customs had been the result of the law of 1792, divorce being allowed on a mere declaration of incompatibility of temper.[164] Against these scandals Bonaparte firmly set his face. But he disagreed with the framers of the new Code when they proposed altogether to prohibit divorce, though such a proposition might well have seemed consonant with his zeal for Roman Catholicism. After long debates it was decided to reduce the causes which could render divorce possible from nine to four—adultery, cruelty, condemnation to a degrading penalty, and mutual consent—provided that this last demand should be persistently urged after not less than two years of marriage, and in no case was it to be valid after twenty years of marriage.[165]

We may also notice here that Bonaparte sought to surround the act of adoption with much solemnity, declaring it to be one of the grandest acts imaginable. Yet, lest marriage should thereby be discouraged, celibates were expressly debarred from the privileges of adopting heirs. The precaution shows how keenly this able ruler peered into the future. Doubtless, he surmised that in the future the population of France would cease to expand at the normal rate, owing to the working of the law compelling the equal division of property among all the children of a family. To this law he was certainly opposed. Equality in regard to the bequest of property was one of the sacred maxims of revolutionary jurists, who had limited the right of free disposal by bequest to one-tenth of each estate: nine-tenths being of necessity divided equally among the direct heirs. Yet so strong was the reaction in favour of the Roman principle of paternal authority, that Bonaparte and a majority of the drafters of the new Code scrupled not to assail that maxim, and to claim for the father larger discretionary powers over the disposal of his property. They demanded that the disposable share should vary according to the wealth of the testator—a remarkable proposal, which proves him to be anything but the unflinching champion of revolutionary legal ideas which popular French histories have generally depicted him.

This proposal would have re-established liberty of bequest in its most pernicious form, granting almost limitless discretionary power to the wealthy, while restricting or denying it to the poor.[166] Fortunately for his reputation in France, the suggestion was rejected; and the law, as finally adopted, fixed the disposable share as one-half of the property, if there was but one heir; one-third, if there were two heirs; one-fourth, if there were three; and so on, diminishing as the size of the family increased. This sliding scale, varying inversely with the size of the family, is open to an obvious objection: it granted liberty of bequest only in cases where the family was small, but practically lapsed when the family attained to patriarchal dimensions. The natural result has been that the birth-rate has suffered a serious and prolonged check in France. It seems certain that the First Consul foresaw this result. His experience of peasant life must have warned him that the law, even as now amended, would stunt the population of France and ultimately bring about that [Greek: oliganthropia] which saps all great military enterprises. The great captain did all in his power to prevent the French settling down in a self-contained national life; he strove to stir them up to world-wide undertakings, and for the success of his future imperial schemes a redundant population was an absolute necessity.

The Civil Code became law in 1804: after undergoing some slight modifications and additions, it was, in 1807 renamed the Code Napoleon. Its provisions had already, in 1806, been adopted in Italy. In 1810 Holland, and the newly-annexed coast-line of the North Sea as far as Hamburg, and even Luebeck on the Baltic, received it as the basis of their laws, as did the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1811. Indirectly it has also exerted an immense influence on the legislation of Central and Southern Germany, Prussia, Switzerland, and Spain: while many of the Central and South American States have also borrowed its salient features.

A Code of Civil Procedure was promulgated in France in 1806, one of Commerce in 1807, of "Criminal Instruction" in 1808, and a Penal Code in 1810. Except that they were more reactionary in spirit than the Civil Code, there is little that calls for notice here, the Penal Code especially showing little advance in intelligence or clemency on the older laws of France. Even in 1802, officials favoured severity after the disorders of the preceding years. When Fox and Romilly paid a visit to Talleyrand at Paris, they were informed by his secretary that:

"In his opinion nothing could restore good morals and order in the country but 'la roue et la religion de nos ancetres.' He knew, he said, that the English did not think so, but we knew nothing of the people. Fox was deeply shocked at the idea of restoring the wheel as a punishment in France."[167]

This horrible punishment was not actually restored: but this extract from Romilly's diary shows what was the state of feeling in official circles at Paris, and how strong was the reaction towards older ideas. The reaction was unquestionably emphasized by Bonaparte's influence, and it is noteworthy that the Penal and other Codes, passed during the Empire, were more reactionary than the laws of the Consulate. Yet, even as First Consul, he exerted an influence that began to banish the customs and traditions of the Revolution, except in the single sphere of material interests; and he satisfied the peasants' love of land and money in order that he might the more securely triumph over revolutionary ideals and draw France insensibly back to the age of Louis XIV.

While the legislator must always keep in reserve punishment as the ultima ratio for the lawless, he will turn by preference to education as a more potent moralizing agency; and certainly education urgently needed Bonaparte's attention. The work of carrying into practice the grand educational aims of Condorcet and his coadjutors in the French Convention was enough to tax the energies of a Hercules. Those ardent reformers did little more than clear the ground for future action: they abolished the old monastic and clerical training, and declared for a generous system of national education in primary, secondary, and advanced schools. But amid strifes and bankruptcy their aims remained unfulfilled. In 1799 there were only twenty-four elementary schools open in Paris, with a total attendance of less than 1,000 pupils; and in rural districts matters were equally bad. Indeed, Lucien Bonaparte asserted that scarcely any education was to be found in France. Exaggerated though this statement was, in relation to secondary and advanced education, it was proximately true of the elementary schools. The revolutionists had merely traced the outlines of a scheme: it remained for the First Consul to fill in the details, or to leave it blank.

The result can scarcely be cited as a proof of his educational zeal. Elementary schools were left to the control and supervision of the communes and of the sous-prefets, and naturally made little advance amidst an apathetic population and under officials who cared not to press on an expensive enterprise. The law of April 30th, 1802, however, aimed at improving the secondary education, which the Convention had attempted to give in its ecoles centrales. These were now reconstituted either as ecoles secondaires or as lycees. The former were local or even private institutions intended for the most promising pupils of the commune or group of communes; while the lycees, far fewer in number, were controlled directly by the Government. In both of these schools great prominence was given to the exact and applied sciences. The aim of the instruction was not to awaken thought and develop the faculties, but rather to fashion able breadwinners, obedient citizens, and enthusiastic soldiers. The training was of an almost military type, the pupils being regularly drilled, while the lessons began and ended with the roll of drums. The numbers of the lycees and of their pupils rapidly increased; but the progress of the secondary and primary schools, which could boast no such attractions, was very slow. In 1806 only 25,000 children were attending the public primary schools. But two years later elementary and advanced instruction received a notable impetus from the establishment of the University of France.

There is no institution which better reveals the character of the French Emperor, with its singular combination of greatness and littleness, of wide-sweeping aims with official pedantry. The University, as it existed during the First Empire, offers a striking example of that mania for the control of the general will which philosophers had so attractively taught and Napoleon so profitably practised. It is the first definite outcome of a desire to subject education and learning to wholesale regimental methods, and to break up the old-world bowers of culture by State-worked steam-ploughs. His aims were thus set forth:

"I want a teaching body, because such a body never dies, but transmits its organization and spirit. I want a body whose teaching is far above the fads of the moment, goes straight on even when the government is asleep, and whose administration and statutes become so national that one can never lightly resolve to meddle with them.... There will never be fixity in politics if there is not a teaching body with fixed principles. As long as people do not from their infancy learn whether they ought to be republicans or monarchists, Catholics or sceptics, the State will never form a nation: it will rest on unsafe and shifting foundations, always exposed to changes and disorders."

Such being Napoleon's designs, the new University of France was admirably suited to his purpose. It was not a local university: it was the sum total of all the public teaching bodies of the French Empire, arranged and drilled in one vast instructional array. Elementary schools, secondary schools, lycees, as well as the more advanced colleges, all were absorbed in and controlled by this great teaching corporation, which was to inculcate the precepts of the Catholic religion, fidelity to the Emperor and to his Government, as guarantees for the welfare of the people and the unity of France. For educational purposes, France was now divided into seventeen Academies, which formed the local centres of the new institution. Thus, from Paris and sixteen provincial Academies, instruction was strictly organized and controlled; and within a short time of its institution (March, 1808), instruction of all kinds, including that of the elementary schools, showed some advance. But to all those who look on the unfolding of the mental and moral faculties as the chief aim of true education, the homely experiments of Pestalozzi offer a far more suggestive and important field for observation than the barrack-like methods of the French Emperor. The Swiss reformer sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think; to assist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest expression; and thus to add to the richness and variety of human thought. The French imperial system sought to prune away all mental independence, and to train the young generation in neat and serviceable espalier methods: all aspiring shoots, especially in the sphere of moral and political science, were sharply cut down. Consequently French thought, which had been the most ardently speculative in Europe, speedily became vapid and mechanical.

The same remark is proximately true of the literary life of the First Empire. It soon began to feel the rigorous methods of the Emperor. Poetry and all other modes of expression of lofty thought and rapt feeling require not only a free outlet but natural and unrestrained surroundings. The true poet is at home in the forest or on the mountain rather than in prim parterres. The philosopher sees most clearly and reasons most suggestively, when his faculties are not cramped by the need of observing political rules and police regulations. And the historian, when he is tied down to a mere investigation and recital of facts, without reference to their meaning, is but a sorry fowl flapping helplessly with unequal wings.

Yet such were the conditions under which the literature of France struggled and pined. Her poets, a band sadly thinned already by the guillotine, sang in forced and hollow strains until the return of royalism begat an imperialist fervour in the soul-stirring lyrics of Beranger: her philosophy was dumb; and Napoleonic history limped along on official crutches, until Thiers, a generation later, essayed his monumental work. In the realm of exact and applied science, as might be expected, splendid discoveries adorned the Emperor's reign; but if we are to find any vitality in the literature of that period, we must go to the ranks, not of the panegyrists, but of the opposition. There, in the pages of Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand, we feel the throb of life. Genius will out, of its own native force: but it cannot be pressed out, even at a Napoleon's bidding. In vain did he endeavour to stimulate literature by the reorganization of the Institute, and by granting decennial prizes for the chief works and discoveries of the decade. While science prospered, literature languished: and one of his own remarks, as to the desirability of a public and semi-official criticism of some great literary work, seems to suggest a reason for this intellectual malaise:

"The public will take interest in this criticism; perhaps it will even take sides: it matters not, as its attention will be fixed on these interesting debates: it will talk about grammar and poetry: taste will be improved, and our aim will be fulfilled: out of that will come poets and grammarians."

And so it came to pass that, while he was rescuing a nation from chaos and his eagles winged their flight to Naples, Lisbon, and Moscow, he found no original thinker worthily to hymn his praises; and the chief literary triumphs of his reign came from Chateaubriand, whom he impoverished, and Madame de Stael, whom he drove into exile.

* * * * *

Such are the chief laws and customs which are imperishably associated with the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. In some respects they may be described as making for progress. Their establishment gave to the Revolution that solidity which it had previously lacked. Among so "inflammable" a people as the French—the epithet is Ste. Beuve's—it was quite possible that some of the chief civil conquests of the last decade might have been lost, had not the First Consul, to use his own expressive phrase, "thrown in some blocks of granite." We may intensify his metaphor and assert that out of the shifting shingle of French life he constructed a concrete breakwater, in which his own will acted as the binding cement, defying the storms of revolutionary or royalist passion which had swept the incoherent atoms to and fro, and had carried desolation far inland. Thenceforth France was able to work out her future under the shelter of institutions which unquestionably possess one supreme merit, that of durability. But while the chief civic and material gains of the Revolution were thus perpetuated, the very spirit and life of that great movement were benumbed by the personality and action of Napoleon. The burning enthusiasm for the Rights of Man was quenched, the passion for civic equality survived only as the gibbering ghost of what it had been in 1790, and the consolidation of revolutionary France was effected by a process nearly akin to petrifaction.

And yet this time of political and intellectual reaction in France was marked by the rise of the greatest of her modern institutions. There is the chief paradox of that age. While barren of literary activity and of truly civic developments, yet it was unequalled in the growth of institutions. This is generally the characteristic of epochs when the human faculties, long congealed by untoward restraints, suddenly burst their barriers and run riot in a spring-tide of hope. The time of disillusionment or despair which usually supervenes may, as a rule, be compared with the numbing torpor of winter, necessary doubtless in our human economy, but lacking the charm and vitality of the expansive phase. Often, indeed, it is disgraced by the characteristics of a slavish populace, a mean selfishness, a mad frivolity, and fawning adulation on the ruler who dispenses panem et circenses. Such has been the course of many a political reaction, from the time of degenerate Athens and imperial Rome down to the decay of Medicean Florence and the orgies of the restored Stuarts.

The fruitfulness of the time of monarchical reaction in France may be chiefly attributed to two causes, the one general, the other personal; the one connected with the French Revolution, the other with the exceptional gifts of Bonaparte. In their efforts to create durable institutions the revolutionists had failed: they had attempted too much: they had overthrown the old order, had undertaken crusades against monarchical Europe, and striven to manufacture constitutions and remodel a deeply agitated society. They did scarcely more than trace the outlines of the future social structure. The edifice, which should have been reared by the Directory, was scarcely advanced at all, owing to the singular dullness of the new rulers of France. But the genius was at hand. He restored order, he rallied various classes to his side, he methodized local government, he restored finance and credit, he restored religious peace and yet secured the peasants in their tenure of the confiscated lands, he rewarded merit with social honours, and finally he solidified his polity by a comprehensive code of laws which made him the keystone of the now rounded arch of French life.

His methods in this immense work deserve attention: they were very different from those of the revolutionary parties after the best days of 1789 were past. The followers of Rousseau worked on rigorous a priori methods. If institutions and sentiments did not square with the principles of their master, they were swept away or were forced into conformity with the new evangel. A correct knowledge of the "Contrat Social" and keen critical powers were the prime requisites of Jacobinical statesmanship. Knowledge of the history of France, the faculty of gauging the real strength of popular feelings, tact in conciliating important interests, all were alike despised. Institutions and class interests were as nothing in comparison with that imposing abstraction, the general will. For this alone could philosophers legislate and factions conspire.

From these lofty aims and exasperating methods Bonaparte was speedily weaned. If victorious analysis led to this; if it could only pull down, not reconstruct; if, while legislating for the general will, Jacobins harassed one class after another and produced civil war, then away with their pedantries in favour of the practical statecraft which attempted one task at a time and aimed at winning back in turn the alienated classes. Then, and then alone, after civic peace had been re-established, would he attempt the reconstruction of the civil order in the same tentative manner, taking up only this or that frayed end at once, trusting to time, skill, and patience to transform the tangle into a symmetrical pattern. And thus, where Feuillants, Girondins, and Jacobins had produced chaos, the practical man and his able helpers succeeded in weaving ineffaceable outlines. As to the time when the change took place in Bonaparte's brain from Jacobinism to aims and methods that may be called conservative, we are strangely ignorant. But the results of this mental change will stand forth clear and solid for many a generation in the customs, laws, and institutions of his adopted country. If the Revolution, intellectually considered, began and ended with analysis, Napoleon's faculties supplied the needed synthesis. Together they made modern France.

* * * * *



CHAPTER XIII

THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE

With the view of presenting in clear outlines the chief institutions of Napoleonic France, they have been described in the preceding chapter, detached from their political setting. We now return to consider the events which favoured the consolidation of Bonaparte's power.

No politician inured to the tricks of statecraft could more firmly have handled public affairs than the man who practically began his political apprenticeship at Brumaire. Without apparent effort he rose to the height whence the five Directors had so ignominiously fallen; and instinctively he chose at once the policy which alone could have insured rest for France, that of balancing interests and parties. His own political views being as yet unknown, dark with the excessive brightness of his encircling glory, he could pose as the conciliator of contending factions. The Jacobins were content when they saw the regicide Cambaceres become Second Consul; and friends of constitutional monarchy remembered that the Third Consul, Lebrun, had leanings towards the Feuillants of 1791. Fouche at the inquisitorial Ministry of Police, and Merlin, Berlier, Real, and Boulay de la Meurthe in the Council of State seemed a barrier to all monarchical schemes; and the Jacobins therefore remained quiet, even while Catholic worship was again publicly celebrated, while Vendean rebels were pardoned, and plotting emigres were entering the public service.

Many, indeed, of the prominent terrorists had settled profitably on the offices which Bonaparte had multiplied throughout France, and were therefore dumb: but some of the less favoured ones, angered by the stealthy advance of autocracy, wove a plot for the overthrow of the First Consul. Chief among them were a braggart named Demerville, a painter, Topino Lebrun, a sculptor, Ceracchi, and Arena, brother of the Corsican deputy who had shaken Bonaparte by the collar at the crisis of Brumaire. These men hit upon the notion that, with the aid of one man of action, they could make away with the new despot. They opened their hearts to a penniless officer named Harel, who had been dismissed from the army; and he straightway took the news to Bonaparte's private secretary, Bourrienne. The First Consul, on hearing of the matter, at once charged Bourrienne to supply Harel with money to buy firearms, but not to tell the secret to Fouche, of whose double dealings with the Jacobins he was already aware. It became needful, however, to inform him of the plot, which was now carefully nursed by the authorities. The arrests were planned to take place at the opera on October 10th. About half an hour after the play had begun, Bonaparte bade his secretary go into the lobby to hear the news. Bourrienne at once heard the noise caused by a number of arrests: he came back, reported the matter to his master, who forthwith returned to the Tuileries. The plot was over.[168]

A more serious attempt was to follow. On the 3rd day of Nivose (December 24th, 1800), as the First Consul was driving to the opera to hear Haydn's oratorio, "The Creation," his carriage was shaken by a terrific explosion. A bomb had burst between his carriage and that of Josephine, which was following. Neither was injured, though many spectators were killed or wounded. "Josephine," he calmly said, as she entered the box, "those rascals wanted to blow me up: send for a copy of the music." But under this cool demeanour he nursed a determination of vengeance against his political foes, the Jacobins. On the next day he appeared at a session of the Council of State along with the Ministers of Police and of the Interior, Fouche and Chaptal. The Arena plot and other recent events seemed to point to wild Jacobins and anarchists as the authors of this outrage: but Fouche ventured to impute it to the royalists and to England.

"There are in it," Bonaparte at once remarked, "neither nobles, nor Chouans, nor priests. They are men of September (Septembriseurs), wretches stained with blood, ever conspiring in solid phalanx against every successive government. We must find a means of prompt redress."

The Councillors at once adopted this opinion, Roederer hotly declaring his open hostility to Fouche for his reputed complicity with the terrorists; and, if we may credit the on dit of Pasquier, Talleyrand urged the execution of Fouche within twenty-four hours. Bonaparte, however, preferred to keep the two cleverest and most questionable schemers of the age, so as mutually to check each other's movements. A day later, when the Council was about to institute special proceedings, Bonaparte again intervened with the remark that the action of the tribunal would be too slow, too restricted: a signal revenge was needed for so foul a crime, rapid as lightning:

"Blood must be shed: as many guilty must be shot as the innocent who had perished—some fifteen or twenty—and two hundred banished, so that the Republic might profit by that event to purge itself."

This was the policy now openly followed. In vain did some members of the usually obsequious Council object to this summary procedure. Roederer, Boulay, even the Second Consul himself, now perceived how trifling was their influence when they attempted to modify Bonaparte's plans, and two sections of the Council speedily decided that there should be a military commission to judge suspects and "deport" dangerous persons, and that the Government should announce this to the Senate, Corps Legislatif, and Tribunate. Public opinion, meanwhile, was carefully trained by the official "Moniteur," which described in detail various so-called anarchist attempts; but an increasing number in official circles veered round to Fouche's belief that the outrage was the work of the royalists abetted by England. The First Consul himself, six days after the event, inclined to this version. Nevertheless, at a full meeting of the Council of State, on the first day of the year 1801, he brought up a list of "130 villains who were troubling the public peace," with a view to inflicting summary punishment on them. Thibaudeau, Boulay, and Roederer haltingly expressed their fears that all the 130 might not be guilty of the recent outrage, and that the Council had no powers to decide on the proscription of individuals. Bonaparte at once assured them that he was not consulting them about the fate of individuals, but merely to know whether they thought an exceptional measure necessary. The Government had only

"Strong presumptions, not proofs, that the terrorists were the authors of this attempt. Chouannerie and emigration are surface ills, terrorism is an internal disease. The measure ought to be taken independently of the event. It is only the occasion of it. We banish them (the terrorists) for the massacres of September 2nd, May 31st, the Babeuf plot, and every subsequent attempt."[169]

The Council thereupon unanimously affirmed the need of an exceptional measure, and adopted a suggestion of Talleyrand (probably emanating from Bonaparte) that the Senate should be invited to declare by a special decision, called a senatus consultum, whether such an act were "preservative of the constitution." This device, which avoided the necessity of passing a law through two less subservient bodies, the Tribunate and Corps Legislatif, was forthwith approved by the guardians of the constitution. It had far-reaching results. The complaisant Senate was brought down from its constitutional watchtower to become the tool of the Consuls; and an easy way for further innovations was thus dextrously opened up through the very portals which were designed to bar them out.

The immediate results of the device were startling. By an act of January 4th, 1801, as many as 130 prominent Jacobins were "placed under special surveillance outside the European territory of the Republic"—a specious phrase for denoting a living death amidst the wastes of French Guiana or the Seychelles. Some of the threatened persons escaped, perhaps owing to the connivance of Fouche; some were sent to the Isle of Oleron; but the others were forthwith despatched to the miseries of captivity in the tropics. Among these were personages so diverse as Rossignol, once the scourge of France with his force of Parisian cut-throats, and Destrem, whose crime was his vehement upbraiding of Bonaparte at St. Cloud. After this measure had taken effect, it was discovered by judicial inquiry that the Jacobins had no connection with the outrage, which was the work of royalists named Saint-Rejant and Carbon. These were captured, and on January 31st, 1801, were executed; but their fate had no influence whatever on the sentence of the transported Jacobins. Of those who were sent to Guiana and the Seychelles, scarce twenty saw France again.[170]



Bonaparte's conduct with respect to plots deserves close attention. Never since the age of the Borgias have conspiracies been so skilfully exploited, so cunningly countermined. Moreover, his conduct with respect to the Arena and Nivose affairs had a wider significance; for he now quietly but firmly exchanged the policy of balancing parties for one which crushed the extreme republicans, and enhanced the importance of all who were likely to approve or condone the establishment of personal rule.

It is now time to consider the effect which Bonaparte's foreign policy had on his position in France. Reserving for a later chapter an examination of the Treaty of Amiens, we may here notice the close connection between Bonaparte's diplomatic successes and the perpetuation of his Consulate. All thoughtful students of history must have observed the warping influence which war and diplomacy have exerted on democratic institutions. The age of Alcibiades, the doom of the Roman Republic, and many other examples might be cited to show that free institutions can with difficulty survive the strain of a vast military organization or the insidious results of an exacting diplomacy. But never has the gulf between democracy and personal rule been so quickly spanned as by the commanding genius of Bonaparte.

The events which disgusted both England and France with war have been described above. Each antagonist had parried the attacks of the other. The blow which Bonaparte had aimed at Britain's commerce by his eastern expedition had been foiled; and a considerable French force was shut up in Egypt. His plan of relieving his starving garrison in Malta, by concluding a maritime truce, had been seen through by us; and after a blockade of two years, Valetta fell (September, 1800). But while Great Britain regained more than all her old power in the Mediterranean, she failed to make any impression on the land-power of France. The First Consul in the year 1801 compelled Naples and Portugal to give up the English alliance and to exclude our vessels and goods. In the north the results of the war had been in favour of the islanders. The Union Jack again waved triumphant on the Baltic, and all attempts of the French to rouse and support an Irish revolt had signally failed. Yet the French preparations for an invasion of England strained the resources of our exchequer and the patience of our people. The weary struggle was evidently about to close in a stalemate.

For political and financial reasons the two Powers needed repose. Bonaparte's authority was not as yet so firmly founded that he could afford to neglect the silent longings of France for peace; his institutions had not as yet taken root; and he needed money for public works and colonial enterprises. That he looked on peace as far more desirable for France than for England at the present time is clear from a confidential talk which he had with Roederer at the close of 1800. This bright thinker, to whom he often unbosomed himself, took exception to his remark that England could not wish for peace; whereupon the First Consul uttered these memorable words:

"My dear fellow, England ought not to wish for peace, because we are masters of the world. Spain is ours. We have a foothold in Italy. In Egypt we have the reversion to their tenure. Switzerland, Holland, Belgium—that is a matter irrevocably settled, on which we have declared to Prussia, Russia, and the Emperor that we alone, if it were necessary, would make war on all, namely, that there shall be no Stadholder in Holland, and that we will keep Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. A stadholder in Holland would be as bad as a Bourbon in the St. Antoine suburb."[171]

The passage is remarkable, not only for its frank statement of the terms on which England and the Continent might have peace, but also because it discloses the rank undergrowth of pride and ambition that is beginning to overtop his reasoning faculties. Even before he has heard the news of Moreau's great victory of Hohenlinden, he equates the military strength of France with that of the rest of Europe: nay, he claims without a shadow of doubt the mastery of the world: he will wage, if necessary, a double war, against England for a colonial empire, and against Europe for domination in Holland and the Rhineland. It is naught to him that that double effort has exhausted France in the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. Holland, Switzerland, Italy, shall be French provinces, Egypt and the Indies shall be her satrapies, and la grande nation may then rest on her glories.

Had these aims been known at Westminster, Ministers would have counted peace far more harmful than war. But, while ambition reigned at Paris, dull common sense dictated the policy of Britain. In truth, our people needed rest: we were in the first stages of an industrial revolution: our cotton and woollen industries were passing from the cottage to the factory; and a large part of our folk were beginning to cluster in grimy, ill-organized townships. Population and wealth advanced by leaps and bounds; but with them came the nineteenth-century problems of widening class distinctions and uncertainty of employment. The food-supply was often inadequate, and in 1801 the price of wheat in the London market ranged from L6 to L8 the quarter; the quartern loaf selling at times for as much as 1s. 10-1/2d.[172]

The state of the sister island was even worse. The discontent of Ireland had been crushed by the severe repression which followed the rising of 1798; and the bonds connecting the two countries were forcibly tightened by the Act of Union of 1800. But rest and reform were urgently needed if this political welding was to acquire solid strength, and rest and reform were alike denied. The position of the Ministry at Westminster was also precarious. The opposition of George III. to the proposals for Catholic Emancipation, to which Pitt believed himself in honour bound, led to the resignation in February, 1801, of that able Minister. In the following month Addington, the Speaker of the House of Commons, with the complacence born of bland obtuseness, undertook to fill his place. At first, the Ministry was treated with the tolerance due to the new Premier's urbanity, but it gradually faded away into contempt for his pitiful weakness in face of the dangers that threatened the realm.

Certain unofficial efforts in the cause of peace had been made during the year 1800, by a Frenchman, M. Otto, who had been charged to proceed to London to treat with the British Government for the exchange of prisoners. For various reasons his tentative proposals as to an accommodation between the belligerents had had no issue: but he continued to reside in London, and quietly sought to bring about a good understanding. The accession of the Addington Ministry favoured the opening of negotiations, the new Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Hawkesbury, announcing His Majesty's desire for peace. Indeed, the one hope of the new Ministry, and of the king who supported it as the only alternative to Catholic Emancipation, was bound up with the cause of peace. In the next chapter it will appear how disastrous were the results of that strange political situation, when a morbidly conscientious king clung to the weak Addington, and jeopardised the interests of Britain, rather than accept a strong Minister and a measure of religious equality.

Napoleon received Hawkesbury's first overtures, those of March 21st, 1801, with thinly veiled scorn; but the news of Nelson's victory at Copenhagen and of the assassination of the Czar Paul, the latter of which wrung from him a cry of rage, ended his hopes of crushing us; and negotiations were now formally begun. On the 14th of April, Great Britain demanded that the French should evacuate Egypt, while she herself would give up Minorca, but retain the following conquests: Malta, Tobago, Martinique, Trinidad, Essequibo, Demerara, Berbice, Ceylon, and (a little later) Curacoa; while, if the Cape of Good Hope were restored to the Dutch, it was to be a free port: an indemnity was also to be found for the Prince of Orange for the loss of his Netherlands. These claims were declared by Bonaparte to be inadmissible. He on his side urged the far more impracticable demand of the status quo ante bellum in the East and West Indies and in the Mediterranean; which would imply the surrender, not only of our many naval conquests, but also of our gains in Hindostan at the expense of the late Tippoo Sahib's dominions. In the ensuing five months the British Government gained some noteworthy successes in diplomacy and war. It settled the disputes arising out of the Armed Neutrality League; there was every prospect of our troops defeating those of France in Egypt; and our navy captured St. Eustace and Saba in the West Indies.

As a set-off to our efforts by sea, Bonaparte instigated a war between Spain and Portugal, in order that the latter Power might be held as a "guarantee for the general peace." Spain, however, merely waged a "war of oranges," and came to terms with her neighbour in the Treaty of Badajoz, June 6th, 1801, whereby she gained the small frontier district of Olivenza. This fell far short of the First Consul's intentions. Indeed, such was his annoyance at the conduct of the Court of Madrid and the complaisance of his brother Lucien Bonaparte, who was ambassador there, that he determined to make Spain bear a heavy share of the English demands. On June 22nd, 1801, he wrote to his brother at Madrid:

"I have already caused the English to be informed that I will never depart, as regards Portugal, from the ultimatum addressed to M. d'Araujo, and that the status quo ante bellum for Portugal must amount, for Spain, to the restitution of Trinidad; for France, to the restitution of Martinique and Tobago; and for Batavia [Holland], to that of Curacoa and some other small American isles."[173]

In other words, if Portugal at the close of this whipped-up war retained her present possessions, then England must renounce her claims to Trinidad, Martinique, Tobago, Curacoa, etc.: and he summed up his contention in the statement that "in signing this treaty Charles IV. has consented to the loss of Trinidad." Further pressure on Portugal compelled her to cede part of Northern Brazil to France and to pay her 20,000,000 francs.

A still more striking light is thrown on Bonaparte's diplomatic methods by the following question, addressed to Lord Hawkesbury on June 15th:

"If, supposing that the French Government should accede to the arrangements proposed for the East Indies by England, and should adopt the status quo ante bellum for Portugal, the King of England would consent to the re-establishment of the status quo in the Mediterranean and in America."

The British Minister in his reply of June 25th explained what the phrase status quo ante bellum in regard to the Mediterranean would really imply. It would necessitate, not merely the evacuation of Egypt by the French, but also that of the Kingdom of Sardinia (including Nice), the Duchy of Tuscany, and the independence of the rest of the peninsula. He had already offered that we should evacuate Minorca; but he now stated that, if France retained her influence over Italy, England would claim Malta as a set-off to the vast extension of French territorial influence, and in order to protect English commerce in those seas: for the rest, the British Government could not regard the maintenance of the integrity of Portugal as an equivalent to the surrender by Great Britain of her West Indian conquests, especially as France had acquired further portions of Saint Domingo. Nevertheless he offered to restore Trinidad to Spain, if she would reinstate Portugal in the frontier strip of Olivenza; and, on August 5th, he told Otto that we would give up Malta if it became independent.

Meanwhile events were, on the whole, favourable to Great Britain. She made peace with Russia on favourable terms; and in the Mediterranean, despite a first success gained by the French Admiral Linois at Algesiras, a second battle brought back victory to the Union Jack. An attack made by Nelson on the flotilla at Boulogne was a failure (August 15th). But at the close of August the French commander in Egypt, General Menou, was constrained to agree to the evacuation of Egypt by his troops, which were to be sent back to France on English vessels. This event had been expected by Bonaparte, and the secret instruction which he forwarded to Otto at London shows the nicety of his calculation as to the advantages to be reaped by France owing to her receiving the news while it was still unknown in England. He ordered Otto to fix October the 2nd for the close of the negotiations:

"You will understand the importance of this when you reflect that Menou may possibly not be able to hold out in Alexandria beyond the first of Vendemiaire (September 22nd); that, at this season, the winds are fair to come from Egypt, and ships reach Italy and Trieste in very few days. Thus it is necessary to push them [the negotiations] to a conclusion before Vendemiaire 10."

The advantages of an irresponsible autocrat in negotiating with a Ministry dependent on Parliament have rarely been more signally shown. Anxious to gain popularity, and unable to stem the popular movement for peace, Addington and Hawkesbury yielded to this request for a fixed limit of time; and the preliminaries of peace were signed at London on October 1st, 1801, the very day before the news arrived there that one of our demands was rendered useless by the actual surrender of the French in Egypt.[174]



The chief conditions of the preliminaries were as follows: Great Britain restored to France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic all their possessions and colonies recently conquered by her except Trinidad and Ceylon. The Cape of Good Hope was given back to the Dutch, but remained open to British and French commerce. Malta was to be restored to the Order of St. John, and placed under the guarantee and protection of a third Power to be agreed on in the definitive treaty. Egypt returned to the control of the Sublime Porte. The existing possessions of Portugal (that is, exclusive of Olivenza) were preserved intact. The French agreed to loose their hold on the Kingdom of Naples and the Roman territory; while the British were also to evacuate Porto Ferrajo (Elba) and the other ports and islands which they held in the Mediterranean and Adriatic. The young Republic of the Seven Islands (Ionian Islands) was recognized by France: and the fisheries on the coasts of Newfoundland and the adjacent isles were placed on their former footing, subject to "such arrangements as shall appear just and reciprocally useful."

It was remarked as significant of the new docility of George III., that the empty title of "King of France," which he and his predecessors had affected, was now formally resigned, and the fleurs de lys ceased to appear on the royal arms.

Thus, with three exceptions, Great Britain had given way on every point of importance since the first declaration of her claims; the three exceptions were Trinidad and Ceylon, which she gained from the allies of France; and Egypt, the recovery of which from the French was already achieved, though it was unknown at London. On every detail but these Bonaparte had gained a signal diplomatic success. His skill and tenacity bade fair to recover for France, Martinique, Tobago, and Santa Lucia, then in British hands, as well as the French stations in India. The only British gains, after nine years of warfare, fruitful in naval triumphs, but entailing an addition of L290,000,000 to the National Debt, were the islands of Trinidad and the Dutch possessions in Ceylon. And yet in the six months spent in negotiations the general course of events had been favourable to the northern Power. What then had been lacking? Certainly not valour to her warriors, nor good fortune to her flag; but merely brain power to her rulers. They had little of that foresight, skill, and intellectual courage, without which even the exploits of a Nelson are of little permanent effect.

Reserving for treatment in the next chapter the questions arising from these preliminaries and the resulting Peace of Amiens, we turn now to consider their bearing on Bonaparte's position as First Consul. The return of peace after an exhausting war is always welcome; yet the patriotic Briton who saw the National Debt more than doubled, with no adequate gain in land or influence, could not but contrast the difference in the fortunes of France. That Power had now gained the Rhine boundary; her troops garrisoned the fortresses of Holland and Northern Italy; her chief dictated his will to German princelings and to the once free Switzers; while the Court of Madrid, nay, the Eternal City herself, obeyed his behests. And all this prodigious expansion had been accomplished at little apparent cost to France herself; for the victors' bill had been very largely met out of the resources of the conquered territories. It is true that her nobles and clergy had suffered fearful losses in lands and treasure, while her trading classes had cruelly felt the headlong fall in value of her paper notes: but in a land endowed with a bounteous soil and climate such losses are soon repaired, and the signature of the peace with England left France comparatively prosperous. In October the First Consul also concluded peace with Russia, and came to a friendly understanding with the Czar on Italian affairs and the question of indemnities for the dispossessed German Princes.[175]

Bonaparte now strove to extend the colonies and commerce of France, a topic to which we shall return later on, and to develop her internal resources. The chief roads were repaired, and ceased to be in the miserable condition in which the abolition of the corvees in 1789 had left them: canals were dug to connect the chief river systems of France, or were greatly improved; and Paris soon benefited from the construction of the Scheldt and Oise canal, which brought the resources of Belgium within easy reach of the centre of France. Ports were deepened and extended; and Marseilles entered on golden vistas of prosperity soon to be closed by the renewal of war with England. Communications with Italy were facilitated by the improvement of the road between Marseilles and Genoa, as also of the tracks leading over the Simplon, Mont Cenis, and Mont Genevre passes: the roads leading to the Rhine and along its left bank also attested the First Consul's desire, not only to extend commerce, but to protect his natural boundary on the east. The results of this road-making were to be seen in the campaign of Ulm, when the French forces marched from Boulogne to the Black Forest at an unparalleled speed.

Paris in particular felt his renovating hand. With the abrupt, determined tones which he assumed more and more on reaching absolute power, he one day said to Chaptal at Malmaison:

"I intend to make Paris the most beautiful capital of the world: I wish that in ten years it should number two millions of inhabitants." "But," replied his Minister of the Interior, "one cannot improvise population; ... as it is, Paris would scarcely support one million"; and he instanced the want of good drinking water. "What are your plans for giving water to Paris?" Chaptal gave two alternatives—artesian wells or the bringing of water from the River Ourcq to Paris. "I adopt the latter plan: go home and order five hundred men to set to work to-morrow at La Villette to dig the canal."

Such was the inception of a great public work which cost more than half a million sterling. The provisioning of Paris also received careful attention, a large reserve of wheat being always kept on hand for the satisfaction of "a populace which is only dangerous when it is hungry." Bonaparte therefore insisted on corn being stored and sold in large quantities and at a very low price, even when considerable loss was thereby entailed.[176] But besides supplying panem he also provided circenses to an extent never known even in the days of Louis XV. State aid was largely granted to the chief theatres, where Bonaparte himself was a frequent attendant, and a willing captive to the charms of the actress Mlle. Georges.

The beautifying of Paris was, however, the chief means employed by Bonaparte for weaning its populace from politics; and his efforts to this end were soon crowned with complete success. Here again the events of the Revolution had left the field clear for vast works of reconstruction such as would have been impossible but for the abolition of the many monastic institutions of old Paris. On or near the sites of the famous Feuillants and Jacobins he now laid down splendid thoroughfares; and where the constitutionals or reds a decade previously had perorated and fought, the fashionable world of Paris now rolled in gilded cabriolets along streets whose names recalled the Italian and Egyptian triumphs of the First Consul. Art and culture bowed down to the ruler who ordered the renovation of the Louvre, which now became the treasure-house of painting and sculpture, enriched by masterpieces taken from many an Italian gallery. No enterprise has more conspicuously helped to assure the position of Paris as the capital of the world's culture than Bonaparte's grouping of the nation's art treasures in a central and magnificent building. In the first year of his Empire Napoleon gave orders for the construction of vast galleries which were to connect the northern pavilion of the Tuileries with the Louvre and form a splendid facade to the new Rue de Rivoli. Despite the expense, the work was pushed on until it was suddenly arrested by the downfall of the Empire, and was left to the great man's nephew to complete. Though it is possible, as Chaptal avers, that the original design aimed at the formation of a central fortress, yet to all lovers of art, above all to the hero-worshipping Heine, the new Louvre was a sure pledge of Napoleon's immortality.

Other works which combined beauty with utility were the prolongation of the quays along the left bank of the Seine, the building of three bridges over that river, the improvement of the Jardin des Plantes, together with that of other parks and open spaces, and the completion of the Conservatoire of Arts and Trades. At a later date, the military spirit of the Empire received signal illustration in the erection of the Vendome column, the Arc de Triomphe, and the consecration, or desecration, of the Madeleine as a temple of glory.

Many of these works were subsequent to the period which we are considering; but the enterprises of the Emperor represent the designs of the First Consul; and the plans for the improvement of Paris formed during the Consulate were sufficient to inspire the Parisians with lively gratitude and to turn them from political speculations to scenes of splendour and gaiety that recalled the days of Louis XIV. If we may believe the testimony of Romilly, who visited Paris in 1802, the new policy had even then attained its end.

"The quiet despotism, which leaves everybody who does not wish to meddle with politics (and few at present have any such wish) in the full and secure enjoyment of their property and of their pleasures, is a sort of paradise, compared with the agitation, the perpetual alarms, the scenes of infamy, of bloodshed, which accompanied the pretended liberties of France."

But while acknowledging the material benefits of Bonaparte's rule, the same friend of liberty notes with concern:

"That he [Bonaparte] meditates the gaining fresh laurels in war can hardly be doubted, if the accounts which one hears of his restless and impatient disposition be true."

However much the populace delighted in this new regime, the many ardent souls who had dared and achieved so much in the sacred quest of liberty could not refrain from protesting against the innovations which were restoring personal rule. Though the Press was gagged, though as many as thirty-two Departments were subjected to the scrutiny of special tribunals, which, under the guise of stamping out brigandage, frequently punished opponents of the Government, yet the voice of criticism was not wholly silenced. The project of the Concordat was sharply opposed in the Tribunate, which also ventured to declare that the first sections of the Civil Codes were not conformable to the principles of 1789 and to the first draft of a code presented to the Convention. The Government thereupon refused to send to the Tribunate any important measures, but merely flung them a mass of petty details to discuss, as "bones to gnaw" until the time for the renewal by lot of a fifth of its members should come round. During a discussion at the Council of State, the First Consul hinted with much frankness at the methods which ought to be adopted to quell the factious opposition of the Tribunate:

"One cannot work with an institution so productive of disorder. The constitution has created a legislative power composed of three bodies. None of these branches has any right to organize itself: that must be done by the law. Therefore we must make a body which shall organize the manner of deliberations of these three branches. The Tribunate ought to be divided into five sections. The discussion of laws will take place secretly in each section: one might even introduce a discussion between these sections and those of the Council of State. Only the reporter will speak publicly. Then things will go on reasonably."

Having delivered this opinion, ex cathedra, he departed (January 7th, 1802) for Lyons, there to be invested with supreme authority in the reconstituted Cisalpine, or as it was now termed, Italian Republic[177]

Returning at the close of the month, radiant with the lustre of this new dignity, he was able to bend the Tribunate and the Corps Legislatif to his will. The renewal of their membership by one-fifth served as the opportunity for subjecting them to the more pliable Senate. This august body of highly-paid members holding office for life had the right of nominating the new members; but hitherto the retiring members had been singled out by lot. Roederer, acting on a hint of the time-serving Second Consul, now proposed in the Council of State that the retiring members of those Chambers should thenceforth be appointed by the Senate, and not by lot; for the principle of the lot, he quaintly urged, was hostile to the right of election which belonged to the Senate. Against such conscious sophistry all the bolts of logic were harmless. The question was left undecided, in order that the Senate might forthwith declare in favour of its own right to determine every year not only the elections to, but the exclusions from, the Tribunate and the Corps Legislatif. A senatus consultant of March legalized this monstrous innovation, which led to the exclusion from the Tribunate of zealous republicans like Benjamin Constant, Isnard, Ganilh, Daunou, and Chenier. The infusion of the senatorial nominees served to complete the nullity of these bodies; and the Tribunate, the lineal descendant of the terrible Convention, was gagged and bound within eight years of the stilling of Danton's mighty voice.

In days when civic zeal was the strength of the French Republic, the mere suggestion of such a violation of liberty would have cost the speaker his life. But since the rise of Bonaparte, civic sentiments had yielded place to the military spirit and to boundless pride in the nation's glory. Whenever republican feelings were outraged, there were sufficient distractions to dissipate any of the sombre broodings which Bonaparte so heartily disliked; and an event of international importance now came to still the voice of political criticism.

The signature of the definitive treaty of peace with Great Britain (March 25th, 1802) sufficed to drown the muttered discontent of the old republican party under the paeans of a nation's joy. The jubilation was natural. While Londoners were grumbling at the sacrifices which Addington's timidity had entailed, all France rang with praises of the diplomatic skill which could rescue several islands from England's grip and yet assure French supremacy on the Continent. The event seemed to call for some sign of the nation's thankfulness to the restorer of peace and prosperity. The hint having been given by the tactful Cambaceres to some of the members of the Tribunate, this now docile body expressed a wish that there should be a striking token of the national gratitude; and a motion to that effect was made by the Senate to the Corps Legislatif and to the Government itself.

The form which the national memorial should take was left entirely vague. Under ordinary circumstances the outcome would have been a column or a statue: to a Napoleon it was monarchy.

The Senate was in much doubt as to the fit course of action. The majority desired to extend the Consulate for a second term of ten years, and a formal motion to that effect was made on May 7th. It was opposed by a few, some of whom demanded the prolongation for life. The president, Tronchet, prompted by Fouche and other republicans, held that only the question of prolonging the Consulate for another term of ten years was before the Senate: and the motion was carried by sixty votes against one: the dissentient voice was that of the Girondin Lanjuinais. The report of this vote disconcerted the First Consul, but he replied with some constraint that as the people had invested him with the supreme magistrature, he would not feel assured of its confidence unless the present proposal were also sanctioned by its vote: "You judge that I owe the people another sacrifice: I will give it if the people's voice orders what your vote now authorizes." But before the mass vote of the people was taken, an important change had been made in the proposal itself. It was well known that Bonaparte was dissatisfied with the senatorial offer: and at a special session of the Council of State, at which Ministers were present, the Second Consul urged that they must now decide how, when, and on what question the people were to be consulted. The whole question recently settled by the Senate was thus reopened in a way that illustrated the advantage of multiplying councils and of keeping them under official tutelage. The Ministers present asserted that the people disapproved of the limitations of time imposed by the Senate; and after some discussion Cambaceres procured the decision that the consultation of the people should be on the questions whether the First Consul should hold his power for life, and whether he should nominate his successor.

To the latter part of this proposal the First Consul offered a well-judged refusal. To consult the people on the restoration of monarchy would, as yet, have been as inopportune as it was superfluous. After gaining complete power, Bonaparte could be well assured as to the establishment of an hereditary claim. The former and less offensive part of the proposal was therefore submitted to the people; and to it there could be only one issue amidst the prosperity brought by the peace, and the surveillance exercised by the prefects and the grateful clergy now brought back by the Concordat. The Consulate for Life was voted by the enormous majority of more than 3,500,000 affirmative votes against 8,374 negatives. But among these dissentients were many honoured names: among military men Carnot, Drouot, Mouton, and Bernard opposed the innovation; and Lafayette made the public statement that he could not vote for such a magistracy unless political liberty were guaranteed. A senatus consultum of August 1st forthwith proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Consul for Life and ordered the erection of a Statue of Peace, holding in one hand the victor's laurel and in the other the senatorial decree.

On the following day Napoleon—for henceforth he generally used his Christian name like other monarchs—presented to the Council of State a project of an organic law, which virtually amounted to a new constitution. The mere fact of its presentation at so early a date suffices to prove how completely he had prepared for the recent change and how thoroughly assured he was of success. This important measure was hurried through the Senate, and, without being submitted to the Tribunate or Corps Legislatif, still less to the people, for whose sanction he had recently affected so much concern—was declared to be the fundamental law of the State.

The fifth constitution of revolutionary France may be thus described. It began by altering the methods of election. In place of Sieyes' lists of notabilities, Bonaparte proposed a simpler plan. The adult citizens of each canton were thenceforth to meet, for electoral purposes, in primary assemblies, to name two candidates for the office of juge de paix (i.e., magistrate) and town councillor, and to choose the members of the "electoral colleges" for the arrondissement and for the Department. In the latter case only the 600 most wealthy men of the Department were eligible. An official or aristocratic tinge was to be imparted to these electoral colleges by the infusion of members selected by the First Consul from the members of the Legion of Honour. Fixity of opinion was also assured by members holding office for life; and, as they were elected in the midst of the enthusiasm aroused by the Peace of Amiens, they were decidedly Bonapartist.

The electoral colleges had the following powers: they nominated two candidates for each place vacant in the merely consultative councils of their respective areas, and had the equally barren honour of presenting two candidates for the Tribunate—the final act of selection being decided by the executive, that is, by the First Consul. Corresponding privileges were accorded to the electoral colleges of the Department, save that these plutocratic bodies had the right of presenting candidates for admission to the Senate. The lists of candidates for the Corps Legislatif were to be formed by the joint action of the electoral colleges, namely, those of the Departments and those of the arrondissements. But as the resulting councils and parliamentary bodies had only the shadow of power, the whole apparatus was but an imposing machine for winnowing the air and threshing chaff.

The First Consul secured few additional rights or attributes, except the exercise of the royal prerogative of granting pardon. But, in truth, his own powers were already so large that they were scarcely susceptible of extension. The three Consuls held office for life, and were ex officio members of the Senate. The second and third Consuls were nominated by the Senate on the presentation of the First Consul: the Senate might reject two names proposed by him for either office, but they must accept his third nominee. The First Consul might deposit in the State archives his proposal as to his successor: if the Senate rejected this proposal, the second and third Consuls made a suggestion; and if it were rejected, one of the two whom they thereupon named must be elected by the Senate. The three legislative bodies lost practically all their powers, those of the Corps Legislatif going to the Senate, those of the Council of State to an official Cabal formed out of it; while the Tribunate was forced to debate secretly in five sections, where, as Bonaparte observed, they might jabber as they liked.

On the other hand, the attributes of the Senate were signally enhanced. It was thenceforth charged, not only with the preservation of the republican constitution, but with its interpretation in disputed points, and its completion wherever it should be found wanting. Furthermore, by means of organic senatus consulta it was empowered to make constitutions for the French colonies, or to suspend trial by jury for five years in any Department, or even to declare it outside the limits of the constitution. It now gained the right of being consulted in regard to the ratification of treaties, previously enjoyed by the Corps Legislatif. Finally, it could dissolve the Corps Legislatif and the Tribunate. But this formidable machinery was kept under the strict control of the chief engineer: all these powers were set in motion on the initiative of the Government; and the proposals for its laws, or senatus consulta, were discussed in the Cabal of the Council of State named by the First Consul. This precaution might have been deemed superfluous by a ruler less careful about details than Napoleon; the composition of the Senate was such as to assure its pliability; for though it continued to renew its ranks by co-optation, yet that privilege was restricted in the following way: from the lists of candidates for the Senate sent up by the electoral colleges of the Departments, Napoleon selected three for each seat vacant; one of those three must be chosen by the Senate. Moreover, the First Consul was to be allowed directly to nominate forty members in addition to the eighty prescribed by the constitution of 1799. Thus, by direct or indirect means, the Senate soon became a strict Napoleonic preserve, to which only the most devoted adherents could aspire. And yet, such is the vanity of human efforts, it was this very body which twelve years later was to vote his deposition.[178]

The victory of action over talk, of the executive over the legislature, of the one supremely able man over the discordant and helpless many, was now complete. The process was startlingly swift; yet its chief stages are not difficult to trace. The orators of the first two National Assemblies of France, after wrecking the old royal authority, were constrained by the pressure of events to intrust the supervision of the executive powers to important committees, whose functions grew with the intensity of the national danger. Amidst the agonies of 1793, when France was menaced by the First Coalition, the Committee of Public Safety leaped forth as the ensanguined champion of democracy; and, as the crisis, developed in intensity, this terrible body and the Committee of General Security virtually governed France.

After the repulse of the invaders and the fall of Robespierre, the return to ordinary methods was marked by the institution of the Directory, when five men, chosen by the legislature, controlled the executive powers and the general policy of the Republic: that compromise was forcibly ended by the stroke of Brumaire. Three Consuls then seized the reins, and two years later a single charioteer gripped the destinies of France. His powers were, in fact, ultimately derived from those of the secret committees of the terrorists. But, unlike the supremacy of Robespierre, that of Napoleon could not be disputed; for the general, while guarding all the material boons which the Revolution had conferred, conciliated the interests and classes whereon the civilian had so brutally trampled. The new autocracy therefore possessed a solid strength which that of the terrorists could never possess. Indeed, it was more absolute than the dictatorial power that Rousseau had outlined. The philosopher had asserted that, while silencing the legislative power, the dictator really made it vocal, and that he could do everything but make laws. But Napoleon, after 1802, did far more: he suppressed debates and yet drew laws from his subservient legislature. Whether, then, we regard its practical importance for France and Europe, or limit our view to the mental sagacity and indomitable will-power required for its accomplishment, the triumph of Napoleon in the three years subsequent to his return from Egypt is the most stupendous recorded in the history of civilized peoples.

The populace consoled itself for the loss of political liberty by the splendour of the fete which heralded the title of First Consul for Life, proclaimed on August 15th: that day was also memorable as being the First Consul's thirty-third birthday, the festival of the Assumption, and the anniversary of the ratification of the Concordat. The decorations and fireworks were worthy of so remarkable a confluence of solemnities. High on one of the towers of Notre Dame glittered an enormous star, and at its centre there shone the sign of the Zodiac which had shed its influence over his first hours of life. The myriads of spectators who gazed at that natal emblem might well have thought that his life's star was now at its zenith. Few could have dared to think that it was to mount far higher into unknown depths of space, blazing as a baleful portent to kings and peoples; still less was there any Cassandra shriek of doom as to its final headlong fall into the wastes of ocean. All was joy and jubilation over a career that had even now surpassed the records of antique heroism, that blended the romance of oriental prowess with the beneficent toils of the legislator, and prospered alike in war and peace.

And yet black care cast one shadow over that jubilant festival. There was a void in the First Consul's life such as saddened but few of the millions of peasants who looked up to him as their saviour. His wife had borne him no heir: and there seemed no prospect that a child of his own would ever succeed to his glorious heritage. Family joys, it seemed, were not for him. Suspicions and bickerings were his lot. His brothers, in their feverish desire for the establishment of a Bonapartist dynasty, ceaselessly urged that he should take means to provide himself with a legitimate heir, in the last resort by divorcing Josephine. With a consideration for her feelings which does him credit, Napoleon refused to countenance such proceedings. Yet it is certain that from this time onwards he kept in view the desirability, on political grounds, of divorcing her, and made this the excuse for indulgence in amours against which Josephine's tears and reproaches were all in vain.

The consolidation of personal rule, the institution of the Legion of Honour, and the return of very many of the emigrant nobles under the terms of the recent amnesty, favoured the growth of luxury in the capital and of Court etiquette at the Tuileries and St. Cloud. At these palaces the pomp of the ancien regime was laboriously copied. General Duroc, stiff republican though he was, received the appointment of Governor of the Palace; under him were chamberlains and prefects of the palace, who enforced a ceremonial that struggled to be monarchical. The gorgeous liveries and sumptuous garments of the reign of Louis XV. speedily replaced the military dress which even civilians had worn under the warlike Republic. High boots, sabres, and regimental headgear gave way to buckled shoes, silk stockings, Court rapiers, and light hats, the last generally held under the arm. Tricolour cockades were discarded, along with the revolutionary jargon which thou'd and citizen'd everyone; and men began to purge their speech of some of the obscene terms which had haunted clubs and camps.

It was remarked, however, that the First Consul still clung to the use of the term citizen, and that amidst the surprising combinations of colours that flecked his Court, he generally wore only the uniform of a colonel of grenadiers or of the light infantry of the consular guard. This conduct resulted partly from his early dislike of luxury, but partly, doubtless, from a conviction that republicans will forgive much in a man who, like Vespasian, discards the grandeur which his prowess has won, and shines by his very plainness. To trifling matters such as these Napoleon always attached great importance; for, as he said to Admiral Malcolm at St. Helena: "In France trifles are great things: reason is nothing."[179] Besides, genius so commanding as his little needed the external trappings wherewith ordinary mortals hide their nullity. If his attire was simple, it but set off the better the play of his mobile features, and the rich, unfailing flow of his conversation. Perhaps no clearer and more pleasing account of his appearance and his conduct at a reception has ever been given to the world than this sketch of the great man in one of his gentler moods by John Leslie Foster, who visited Paris shortly after the Peace of Amiens:

"He is about five feet seven inches high, delicately and gracefully made; his hair a dark brown crop, thin and lank; his complexion smooth, pale, and sallow; his eyes gray, but very animated; his eye-brows light brown, thin and projecting. All his features, particularly his mouth and nose, fine, sharp, defined, and expressive beyond description; expressive of what? Not of anything perce as the prints expressed him, still less of anything mechant; nor has he anything of that eye whose bend doth awe the world. The true expression of his countenance is a pleasing melancholy, which, whenever he speaks, relaxes into the most agreeable and gracious smile you can conceive. To this you must add the appearance of deep and intense thought, but above all the predominating expression a look of calm and tranquil resolution and intrepidity which nothing human could discompose. His address is the finest I have ever seen, and said by those who have travelled to exceed not only every Prince and Potentate now in being, but even all those whose memory has come down to us. He has more unaffected dignity than I could conceive in man. His address is the gentlest and most prepossessing you can conceive, which is seconded by the greatest fund of levee conversation that I suppose any person ever possessed. He speaks deliberately, but very fluently, with particular emphasis, and in a rather low tone of voice. While he speaks, his features are still more expressive than his words."[180]