At this period of Buonaparte's elevation, when his power seemed best established, and most permanent, it seems proper to take a hasty view, not indeed of the details of his internal government, which is a subject that would exhaust volumes; but at least of its general character, of the means by which his empire was maintained, and the nature of the relations which it established betwixt the sovereign and his subjects.

The ruling, almost the sole principle on which the government of Buonaparte rested, was the simple proposition upon which despotism of every kind has founded itself in every species of society; namely, that the individual who is to exercise the authority and power of the state, shall, on the one hand, dedicate himself and his talents exclusively to the public service of the empire, while, on the other, the nation subjected to his rule shall requite this self-devotion on his part by the most implicit obedience to his will. Some despots have rested this claim to universal submission upon family descent, and upon their right, according to Filmer's doctrine, of representing the original father of the tribe, and becoming the legitimate inheritors of a patriarchal power. Others have strained scripture and abused common sense, to establish in their own favour a right through the especial decree of Providence. To the hereditary title Buonaparte could of course assert no claim; but he founded not a little on the second principle, often holding himself out to others, and no doubt occasionally considering himself, in his own mind, as an individual destined by Heaven to the high station which he held, and one who could not therefore be opposed in his career, without an express struggle being maintained against Destiny, who, leading him by the hand, and at the same time protecting him with her shield, had guided him by paths as strange as perilous, to the post of eminence which he now occupied. No one had been his tutor in the lessons which led the way to his preferment—no one had been his guide in the dangerous ascent to power—scarce any one had been of so much consequence to his promotion, as to claim even the merit of an ally, however humble. It seemed as if Napoleon had been wafted on to this stupendous pitch of grandeur by a power more effectual than that of any human assistance, nay, which surpassed what could have been expected from his own great talents, unassisted by the especial interposition of Destiny in his favour. Yet it was not to this principle alone that the general acquiescence in the unlimited power which he asserted is to be imputed. Buonaparte understood the character of the French nation so well, that he could offer them an acceptable indemnification for servitude; first, in the height to which he proposed to raise their national pre-eminence; secondly, in the municipal establishments, by means of which he administered their government, and which, though miserably defective in all which would have been demanded by a nation accustomed to the administration of equal and just laws, afforded a protection to life and property that was naturally most welcome to those who had been so long, under the republican system, made the victims of cruelty, rapacity, and the most extravagant and unlimited tyranny, rendered yet more odious as exercised under the pretext of liberty.

To the first of these arts of government we have often adverted; and it must be always recalled to mind whenever the sources of Buonaparte's power over the public mind in France come to be treated of. He himself gave the solution in a few words, when censuring the imbecility of the Directors, to whose power he succeeded. "These men," he said, "know not how to work upon the imagination of the French nation." This idea, which, in phraseology, is rather Italian than French, expresses the chief secret of Napoleon's authority. He held himself out as the individual upon whom the fate of France depended—of whose hundred decisive victories France enjoyed the glory. It was he whose sword, hewing down obstacles which her bravest monarchs had accounted insurmountable, had cut the way to her now undeniable supremacy over Europe. He alone could justly claim to be Absolute Monarch of France, who, raising that nation from a perilous condition, had healed her discords, reconciled her factions, turned her defeats into victory, and, from a disunited people, about to become the prey to civil and external war, had elevated her to the situation of Queen of Europe. This had been all accomplished upon one condition; and, as we have stated elsewhere, it was that which the Tempter offered in the wilderness, after his ostentatious display of the kingdoms of the earth—"All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."

Napoleon had completed the boastful promise, and it flattered a people more desirous of glory than of liberty; and so much more pleased with hearing of national conquests in foreign countries, than of enjoying the freedom of their own individual thoughts and actions, that they unreluctantly surrendered the latter in order that their vanity might be flattered by the former.

Thus did Napoleon avail himself of, or, to translate his phrase more literally, play upon the imagination of the French people. He gave them public festivals, victories, and extended dominion; and in return, claimed the right of carrying their children in successive swarms to yet more distant and yet more extended conquests, and of governing, according to his own pleasure, the bulk of the nation which remained behind.

To attain this purpose, one species of idolatry was gradually and ingeniously substituted for another, and the object of the public devotion was changed, while the worship was continued. France had been formerly governed by political maxims—she was now ruled by the name of an individual. Formerly the Republic was every thing—Fayette, Dumouriez, or Pichegru, were nothing. Now, the name of a successful general was of more influence than the whole code of the Rights of Man. France had submitted to murder, spoliation, revolutionary tribunals, and every species of cruelty and oppression, while they were gilded by the then talismanic expressions—"Liberty and Equality—Fraternization—the public welfare, and the happiness of the people." She was now found equally compliant, when the watchword was, "The honour of his Imperial and Royal Majesty—the interests of the Great Empire—the splendours of the Imperial Throne." It must be owned, that the sacrifices under the last form were less enormous; they were limited to taxes at the Imperial pleasure, and a perpetual anticipation of the conscription. The Republican tyrants claimed both life and property, the Emperor was satisfied with a tithe of the latter, and the unlimited disposal of that portion of the family who could best support the burden of arms, for augmenting the conquests of France. Such were the terms on which this long-distracted country attained once more, after its Revolution, the advantage of a steady and effective government.

The character of that government, its means and principles of action, must now be briefly traced.

It cannot be forgotten that Buonaparte, the heir of the Revolution, appropriated to himself the forms and modifications of the Directorial government, altered, in some degree, by the ingenuity of SiÊyes; but they subsisted as forms only, and were carefully divested of all effectual impulse on the government. The Senate and Legislative Bodies became merely passive and pensioned creatures of the Emperor's will, whom he used as a medium for promulgating the laws which he was determined to establish. The Tribunate had been instituted for the protection of the people against all acts of arbitrary power, whether by imprisonment, exile, assaults on the liberty of the press, or otherwise; but after having gradually undermined the rights and authority of this body, after having rendered its meetings partial and secret, and having deprived it of its boldest members, Buonaparte suppressed it entirely, on account, as he alleged, of the expense which it occasioned to the government. It had, indeed, become totally useless;[307] but this was because its character had been altered, and because, originating from the Senate, and not from popular election, the Tribunate never consisted of that class of persons, who are willing to encounter the frown of power when called upon to impeach its aggressions. Yet, as the very name of this body, while it subsisted, recalled some ideas of Republican freedom, the Emperor thought fit altogether to abolish it.

The deliberative Council of the Emperor existed in his own personal Council of State, of whose consultations, in which he himself presided, he made frequent use during the course of his reign. Its functions were of an anomalous character, comprehending political legislation, or judicial business, according to the order of the day. It was, in short, Buonaparte's resource, when he wanted the advice, or opinion, or information, of others in aid of his own; and he often took the assistance of the Council of State, in order to form those resolutions which he afterwards executed by means of his ministers. Monsieur de Las Cases, himself a member of it, has dwelt with complaisance upon the freedom which Buonaparte permitted to their debates, and the good-humour with which he submitted to contradiction, even when expressed with obstinacy or vivacity;[308] and would have us consider the Council as an important barrier afforded to the citizens against the arbitrary will of the Sovereign. What he has said, however, only amounts to this,—that Buonaparte, desirous to have the advice of his counsellors, tolerated their freedom of speech, and even of remonstrance. Mahmoud, or Amurath, seated in their divan, must have done the same, and yet would not have remained the less absolutely masters of the lives of those who stood around them. We have no doubt that Buonaparte, on certain occasions, permitted his counsellors to take considerable freedoms, and that he sometimes yielded up his opinion to theirs without being convinced; in such cases, at least, where his own passions or interest were no way concerned.[309] But we further read of the Emperor's using, to extremely stubborn persons, such language as plainly intimated, that he would not suffer contradiction beyond a certain point, "You are very obstinate," he said to such a disputant; "what if I were to be as much so as you? You are wrong to push the powerful to extremity—you should consider the weakness of humanity." To another he said, after a scene of argumentative violence, "Pray, pay some attention to accommodate yourself a little more to my humour. Yesterday, you carried it so far as to oblige me to scratch my temple. That is a great sign with me—take care in future not to drive me to such an extremity."[310]

Such limits to the freedom of debate in the Imperial Council of State, correspond with those laid down in the festive entertainments of Sans Souci, where the Great Frederick professed to support and encourage every species of familiar raillery, but, when it attained a point that was too personal, used to hint to the facetious guests, that he heard the King's step in the gallery. There were occasions, accordingly, when, not satisfied with calling their attention to the distant murmurs of the Imperial thunder, Napoleon launched its bolts in the midst of his trembling counsellors. Such a scene was that of Portalis. This statesman, a man of talent and virtue, had been eminently useful, as we have seen, in bringing about the Concordat, and had been created, in recompense, minister of religious affairs, and counsellor of state. In the subsequent disputes betwixt the Pope and Buonaparte, a relation of the minister had been accused of circulating the bulls, or spiritual admonitions of the Pope; and Portalis had failed to intimate the circumstance to the Emperor. On this account, Napoleon, in full council, attacked him in the severest terms, as guilty of having broken his oath as a counsellor and minister of state, deprived him of both offices, and expelled him from the assembly, as one who had betrayed his sovereign.[311] If any of the members of the Council of State had ventured, when this sentence rung in their ears, to come betwixt the dragon and his wrath, for the purpose of stating that a hasty charge ought not instantly to be followed with immediate censure and punishment; that it was possible M. Portalis might have been misled by false information, or by a natural desire to screen the offence of his cousin; or, finally, that his conduct might have been influenced by views of religion which, if erroneous, were yet sincere and conscientious—we should then have believed, that the Council of State of Buonaparte formed a body, in which the accused citizen might receive some protection against the despotism of the government. But when, or in what country, could the freedom of the nation be intrusted to the keeping of the immediate counsellors of the throne? It can only be safely lodged in some body, the authority of which emanates directly from the nation, and whom the nation therefore will protect and support, in the existence of their right of opposition or remonstrance.

The deliberations of the Council of State, or such resolutions as Buonaparte chose to adopt without communication with them, (for it may be easily supposed that they were not admitted to share his more secret political discussions,) were, as in other countries, adjusted with and executed by the ostensible ministers.

But, that part of the organisation of the Imperial government, upon which Buonaparte most piqued himself, was the establishment of the Prefectures, which certainly gave facilities for the most effectual agency of despotism that was ever exercised. There is no mistaking the object and tendency of this arrangement, since Buonaparte himself, and his most bitter opponents, hold up the same picture, one to the admiration, the other to the censure, of the world. These prefects, it must be understood, were each the supreme governor of a department, answering to the old lieutenants and governors of counties, and representing the Imperial person within the limits of the several prefectures. The individuals were carefully selected, as persons whose attachment was either to be secured or rewarded. They received large and, in some cases, exorbitant salaries, some amounting to fifteen, twenty, and even thirty thousand francs. This heavy expense Napoleon stated to be the consequence of the depraved state of moral feeling in France, which made it necessary to attach men by their interests rather than their duties; but it was termed by his enemies one of the leading principles of his government, which treated the public good as a chimera, and erected private and personal interest into the paramount motive upon which alone the state was to be served by efficient functionaries. The prefects were chosen in the general case, as men whose birth and condition were totally unconnected with that of the department in which each was to preside; les dÉpayser, to place them in a country to which they were strangers, being an especial point of Napoleon's policy. They were entirely dependent on the will of the Emperor, who removed or cashiered them at pleasure. The administration of the departments was intrusted to these important officers.

"With the authority and local resources placed at their disposal," said Buonaparte, "the prefects were themselves emperors on a limited scale; and as they had no force excepting through the impulse which they received from the throne, as they owed their whole power to their immediate commission, and as they had no authority of a personal character, they were of as much use to the crown as the former high agents of government, without any of the inconveniences which attached to their predecessors."[312] It was by means of the prefects that an impulse, given from the centre of the government, was communicated without delay to the extremities of the kingdom, and that the influence of the crown, and the execution of its commands, were transmitted, as if by magic, through a population of forty millions. It appears that Napoleon, while describing with self-complacency this terrible engine of unlimited power, felt that it might not be entirely in unison with the opinions of those favourers of liberal institutions, whose sympathy at the close of life he thought worthy of soliciting. "My creating that power," he said, "was on my part a case of necessity. I was a dictator, called to that office by force of circumstances. There was a necessity that the filaments of the government which extended over the state, should be in complete harmony with the key-note which was to influence them. The organisation which I had extended over the empire, required to be maintained at a high degree of tension, and to possess a prodigious force of elasticity, to enable it to resist the terrible blows directed against it without cessation."[313] His defence amounts to this—"The men of my time were extravagantly fond of power, exuberantly attached to place and wealth. I therefore bribed them to become my agents by force of places and pensions. But I was educating the succeeding race to be influenced by better motives. My son would have been surrounded by youths sensible to the influence of justice, honour, and virtue; and those who were called to execute public duty, would have considered their doing so as its own reward."

The freedom of France was therefore postponed till the return of a Golden Age, when personal aggrandisement and personal wealth should cease to have any influence upon regenerated humanity. In the meanwhile, she had the dictatorship and the prefects.

The impulse, as Napoleon terms it, by which the crown put in action these subordinate agents in the departments, was usually given by means of a circular letter or proclamation, communicating the particular measure which government desired to be enforced. This was subscribed by the minister to whose department the affair belonged, and concluded with an injunction upon the prefect, to be active in forwarding the matter enjoined, as he valued the favour of the Emperor, or wished to show himself devoted to the interests of the crown.[314] Thus conjured, the prefect transmitted the order to the sub-prefect and mayors of the communities within his department, who, stimulated by the same motives that had actuated their principal, endeavoured each to distinguish himself by his active compliance with the will of the Emperor, and thus merit a favourable report, as the active and unhesitating agent of his pleasure.

It was the further duty of the prefects, to see that all honour was duly performed towards the head of the state, upon the days appointed for public rejoicings, and to remind the municipal authorities of the necessity of occasional addresses to the government, declaring their admiration of the talents, and devotion to the person of the Emperor. These effusions were duly published in the Moniteur, and, if examined closely, would afford some of the most extraordinary specimens of composition which the annals of flattery can produce. It is sufficient to say, that a mayor, we believe of Amiens, affirmed, in his ecstasy of loyal adoration, that the Deity, after making Buonaparte, must have reposed, as after the creation of the universe. This, and similar flights of rhetoric, may appear both impious and ridiculous, and it might have been thought that a person of Napoleon's sense and taste would have softened or suppressed them. But he well knew the influence produced on the public mind, by ringing the changes to different time on the same unvaried subject. The ideas which are often repeated in all variety of language and expression, will at length produce an effect on the public mind, especially if no contradiction is permitted to reach it. A uniform which may look ridiculous on a single individual, has an imposing effect when worn by a large body of men; and the empiric, whose extravagant advertisement we ridicule upon the first perusal, often persuades us, by sheer dint of repeating his own praises, to make trial of his medicine. Those who practise calumny know, according to the vulgar expression, that if they do but throw dirt sufficient, some part of it will adhere; and acting on the same principle, for a contrary purpose, Buonaparte was well aware, that the repetition of his praises in these adulatory addresses was calculated finally to make an impression on the nation at large, and to obtain a degree of credit as an expression of public opinion.

Faber, an author too impassioned to obtain unlimited credit, has given several instances of ignorance amongst the prefects; many of whom, being old generals, were void of the information necessary for the exercise of a civil office, and all of whom, having been, upon principle, nominated to a sphere of action with the local circumstances of which they were previously unacquainted, were sufficiently liable to error. But the same author may be fully trusted, when he allows that the prefects could not be accused of depredation or rapine, and that such of them as improved their fortune during the date of their office, did so by economising upon their legitimate allowances.[315]

Such was the outline of Napoleon's provincial administration, and of the agency by which it was carried on, without check or hesitation, in every province of France at the same moment. The machinery has been in a great measure retained by the royal government, to whom it appeared preferable, doubtless, to the violent alterations which an attempt to restore the old appointments, or create others of a different kind, must necessarily have occasioned.

But a far more important change, introduced by the Emperor, though not originating with him, was the total alteration of the laws of the kingdom of France, and the introduction of that celebrated code to which Napoleon assigned his name, and on the execution of which his admirers have rested his claim to be considered as a great benefactor to the country which he governed. Bacon has indeed informed us, that when laws have been heaped upon laws, in such a state of confusion as to render it necessary to revise them, and collect their spirit into a new and intelligible system, those who accomplish such an heroic task have a good right to be named amongst the legislators and benefactors of mankind. It had been the reproach of France before the Revolution, and it was one of the great evils which tended to produce that immense and violent change, that the various provinces, towns, and subordinate divisions of the kingdom, having been united in different periods to the general body of the country, had retained in such union the exercise of their own particular laws and usages; to the astonishment, as well as to the great annoyance of the traveller, who, in journeying through France, found that, in many important particulars, the system and character of the laws to which he was subjected, were altered almost as often as he changed his post-horses. It followed, from this discrepancy of laws and subdivision of jurisdiction, that the greatest hardships were sustained by the subjects, more especially when, the district being of small extent, those authorities who acted there were likely neither to have experience, nor character sufficient for exercise of the trust reposed in them.

The evils attending such a state of things had been long felt, and, at various periods before the Revolution, it had been proposed repeatedly to institute a uniform system of legislation for the whole kingdom. But so many different interests were compromised, and such were, besides, the pressing occupations of the successive administrations of Louis XVI., and his grandfather, that the project was never seriously adopted or entered upon. When, however, the whole system of provinces, districts, and feudal jurisdictions, great and small, had fallen at the word of the AbbÉ SiÊyes, like an enchanted castle at the dissolution of a spell, and their various laws, whether written or consuetudinary, were buried in the ruins, all France, now united into one single and integral nation, lay open to receive any legislative code which the National Assembly might dictate. But the revolutionary spirit was more fitted to destroy than to establish; and was more bent upon the pursuit of political objects, than upon affording the nation the protection of just and equal laws. Under the Directory, two or three attempts towards classification of the laws had been made in the Council of Five Hundred, but never had gone farther than a preliminary and general report. CambacÉrÈs, an excellent lawyer and enlightened statesman, was one of the first to solicit the attention of the state to this great and indispensable duty. The various successive authorities had been content with passing such laws as affected popular subjects of the day, and which (like that which licensed universal divorce) partook of the extravagance that gave them origin. The project of CambacÉrÈs, on the contrary, embraced a general classification of jurisprudence through all its branches, although too much tainted, it is said, with the prevailing revolutionary opinions of the period, to admit its being taken for a basis, when Buonaparte, after his elevation, determined to supersede the Republican by Monarchical forms of government.

After the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon saw no way more certain of assuring the popularity of that event, and connecting his own authority with the public interests of France, than to resume a task which former rulers of the Republic had thought too heavy to be undertaken, and thus, at once, show a becoming confidence in the stability of his own power, and a laudable desire of exercising it for the permanent advantage of the nation. An order of the Consuls, dated 24th Thermidor, in the year VIII., directed the minister of justice, with a committee of lawyers of eminence, to examine the several projects, four in number, which had been made towards compiling the civil code of national law, to give their opinion on the plan most desirable for accomplishing its formation, and to discuss the bases upon which legislation in civil matters ought to be rested.

The preliminary discourse upon the first project of the Civil Code, is remarkable for the manner in which the reporters consider and confute the general and illusory views entertained by the uninformed part of the public, upon the nature of the task to which they had been called. It is the common and vulgar idea, that the system of legislation may be reduced and simplified into a few general maxims of equity, sufficient to lead any judge of understanding and integrity, to a just decision of all questions which can possibly occur betwixt man and man. It follows, as a corollary to this proposition, that the various multiplications of authorities, exceptions, particular cases, and especial provisions, which have been introduced among civilized nations, by the address of those of the legal profession, are just so many expedients to embarrass the simple course of justice with arbitrary modifications and refinements, in order to procure wealth and consequence to those educated to the law, whose assistance must be used as its interpreters, and who became rich by serving litigants as guides through the labyrinth of obscurity which had been raised by themselves and their predecessors.

Such were the ideas of the law and its professors, which occurred to the Parliament of Praise-God-Barebones, when they proposed to Cromwell to abrogate the whole common law of England, and dismiss the lawyers, as drones who did but encumber the national hive. Such was also the opinion of many of the French statesmen, who, as rash in judging of jurisprudence as in politics, imagined that a system of maxims, modified on the plan of the Twelve Tables of the ancient Romans, might serve all the purposes of a civil code in modern France. They who thought in this manner had entirely forgotten, how soon the laws of these twelve tables became totally insufficient for Rome herself—how, in the gradual change of manners, some laws became obsolete, some inapplicable—how it became necessary to provide for emerging cases, successively by the decrees of the Senate, the ordinances of the people, the edicts of the Consuls, the regulations of the PrÆtors, the answers or opinions of learned Jurisconsults, and finally, by the rescripts, edicts, and novels of the Emperors, until such a mass of legislative matter was assembled, as scarcely the efforts of Theodosius or Justinian were adequate to bring into order, or reduce to principle. But this, it may be said, was the very subject complained of. The simplicity of the old laws, it may be urged, was gradually corrupted; and hence, by the efforts of interested men, not by the natural progress of society, arose the complicated system, which is the object of such general complaint.

The answer to this is obvious. So long as society remains in a simple state, men have occasion for few and simple laws. But when that society begins to be subdivided into ranks; when duties are incurred, and obligations contracted, of a kind unknown in a ruder or earlier period, these new conditions, new duties, and new obligations, must be regulated by new rules and ordinances, which accordingly are introduced as fast as they are wanted, either by the course of long custom, or by precise legislative enactment. There is, no doubt, one species of society in which legislation may be much simplified; and that is, where the whole law of the country, with the power of enforcing it, is allowed to reside in the bosom of the King, or of the judge who is to administer justice. Such is the system of Turkey, where the Cadi is bound by no laws nor former precedents, save what his conscience may discover from perusing the Koran. But so apt are mankind to abuse unlimited power, and indeed so utterly unfit is human nature to possess it, that in all countries where the judge is possessed of such arbitrary jurisdiction, he is found accessible to bribes, or liable to be moved by threats. He has no distinct course prescribed, no beacon on which to direct his vessel; and trims, therefore, his sails to the pursuit of his own profit.

The French legislative commissioners, with these views, wisely judged it their duty to produce their civil code, upon such a system as might afford, as far as possible, protection to the various kinds of rights known and acknowledged in the existing state of society. Less than this they could not do; nor, in our opinion, is their code as yet adequate to attain that principal object. By the implied social contract, an individual surrenders to the community his right of protecting and avenging himself, under the reserved and indispensable condition that the public law shall defend him, or punish those by whom he has sustained injury. As revenge has been said, by Bacon, to be a species of wild justice, so the individual pursuit of justice is often a modified and legitimate pursuit of revenge, which ought, indeed, to be qualified by the moral and religious sentiments of the party, but to which law is bound to give free way, in requital for the bridle which she imposes on the indulgence of man's natural passions. The course of litigation, therefore, cannot be stopt; it can only be diminished, by providing beforehand as many regulations as will embrace the greater number of cases likely to occur, and trusting to the authority of the judges acting upon the spirit of the law, for the settlement of such as cannot be decided according to its letter.

The organisation of this great national work was proceeded in with the caution and deliberation which the importance of the subject eminently deserved. Dividing the subjects of legislation according to the usual distinctions of jurisconsults, the commissioners commenced by the publication and application of the laws in general; passed from that preliminary subject to the consideration of personal rights under all their various relations; then to rights respecting property; and, lastly, to those legal forms of procedure, by which the rights of citizens, whether arising out of personal circumstances, or as connected with property, are to be followed forth, explicated, and ascertained. Thus adopting the division, and in some degree the forms, of the Institutes of Justinian, the commission proceeded, according to the same model, to consider each subdivision of this general arrangement, and adopt respecting each such maxims or brocards of general law, as were to form the future basis of French jurisprudence. Their general principles being carefully connected and fixed, the ingenuity of the commissioners was exerted in deducing from them such a number of corollaries and subordinate maxims, as might provide, so far as human ingenuity could, for the infinite number of questions that were likely to emerge on the practical application of the general principles to the varied and intricate transactions of human life. It may be easily supposed, that a task so difficult gave rise to much discussion among the commissioners; and as their report, when fully weighed among themselves, was again subjected to the Council of State, before it was proposed to the Legislative Body, it must be allowed, that every means which could be devised were employed in maturely considering and revising the great body of national law, which, finally, under the name of the Code Napoleon, was adopted by France, and continues, under the title of the Civil Code, to be the law by which her subjects still possess and enforce their civil rights.

It would be doing much injustice to Napoleon, to suppress the great personal interest which, amid so many calls upon his time, he nevertheless took in the labours of the commission. He frequently attended their meetings, or those of the Council of State, in which their labours underwent revision; and, though he must be supposed entirely ignorant of the complicated system of jurisprudence as a science, yet his acute, calculating, and argumentative mind enabled him, by the broad views of genius and good sense, often to get rid of those subtleties by which professional persons are occasionally embarrassed, and to treat as cobwebs, difficulties of a technical or metaphysical character, which, to the jurisconsults, had the appearance of bonds and fetters.

There were times, however, on the other hand, when Napoleon was led, by the obvious and vulgar views of a question, to propose alterations which would have been fatal to the administration of justice, and the gradual enlargement and improvement of municipal law. Such was his idea, that advocates and solicitors ought only to be paid in the event of the cause being decided in favour of their client,[316]—a regulation which, had he ever adopted it, would have gone far to close the gates of justice; since, what practitioner would have forfeited at once one large portion of the means of his existence, and consented to rest the other upon the uncertainty of a gambling transaction? A lawyer is no more answerable for not gaining his cause, than a horse-jockey for not winning the race. Neither can foretell, with any certainty, the event of the struggle, and each, in justice, can only be held liable for the utmost exertion of his skill and abilities. Napoleon was not aware that litigation is not to be checked by preventing lawsuits from coming into court, but by a systematic and sage course of trying and deciding points of importance, which, being once settled betwixt two litigants, cannot, in the same shape, or under the same circumstances, be again the subject of dispute among others.

The Civil Code of Napoleon is accompanied by a code of procedure in civil cases, and a code relating to commercial affairs, which may be regarded as supplemental to the main body of municipal law. There is, besides, a Penal Code, and a code respecting the procedure against persons accused under it. The whole forms a grand system of jurisprudence, drawn up by the most enlightened men of the age, having access to all the materials which the past and the present times afford; and it is not surprising that it should have been received as a great boon by a nation who, in some sense, may be said, previous to its establishment, to have been without any fixed or certain municipal law since the date of the Revolution.

But while we admit the full merit of the Civil Code of France, we are under the necessity of observing, that the very symmetry and theoretical consistency, which form, at first view, its principal beauty, render it, when examined closely, less fit for the actual purposes of jurisprudence, than a system of national law, which, having never undergone the same operation of compression, and abridgement, and condensation, to which that of France was necessarily subjected, spreads through a multiplicity of volumes, embraces an immense collection of precedents, and, to the eye of inexperience, seems, in comparison of the compact size and regular form of the French code, a labyrinth to which no clue is afforded. It is of the greater importance to give this subject some consideration, because it has of late been fashionable to draw comparisons between the jurisprudence of England and that of France, and even to urge the necessity of new-modelling the former upon such a concise and systematic plan as the latter exhibits.

In arguing this point, we suppose it will be granted, that that code of institutions is the most perfect, which most effectually provides for every difficult case as it emerges, and therefore averts, as far as possible, the occurrence of doubt, and, of course, of litigation, by giving the most accurate and certain interpretation to the general rule, when applied to cases as they arise. Now, in this point, which comprehends the very essence and end of all jurisprudence—the protection, namely, of the rights of the individual—the English law is preferable to the French in an incalculable degree; because each principle of English law has been the subject of illustration for many ages, by the most learned and wise judges, acting upon pleadings conducted by the most acute and ingenious men of each successive age. This current of legal judgments has been flowing for centuries, deciding, as they occurred, every question of doubt which could arise upon the application of general principles to particular circumstances; and each individual case, so decided, fills up some point which was previously disputable, and, becoming a rule for similar questions, tends to that extent to diminish the debateable ground of doubt and argument with which the law must be surrounded, like an unknown territory when it is first partially discovered.

It is not the fault of the French jurisconsults, that they did not possess the mass of legal authority arising out of a regular course of decisions by a long succession of judges competent to the task, and proceeding, not upon hypothetical cases supposed by themselves, and subject only to the investigation of their own minds, but upon such as then actually occurred in practice and had been fully canvassed and argued in open court. The French lawyers had not the advantage of referring to such a train of decisions; each settling some new point, or ascertaining and confirming some one which had been considered as questionable. By the Revolution, the ancient French courts had been destroyed, together with their records; their proceedings only served as matter of history or tradition, but could not be quoted in support or explanation of a code which had no existence until after their destruction. The commissioners endeavoured, we have seen, to supply this defect in their system, by drawing from their general rules such a number of corollary propositions as might, so far as possible, serve for their application to special and particular cases. But rules, founded in imaginary cases, can never have the same weight with precedents emerging in actual practice, where the previous exertions of the lawyers have put the case in every possible light, and where the judge comes to the decision, not as the theorist, whose opinion relates only to an ideal hypothesis of his own mind, but as the solemn arbiter of justice betwixt man and man, after having attended to, and profited by, the collision and conflict of opposite opinions, urged by those best qualified to state and to illustrate them. The value of such discussion is well known to all who have experience of courts of justice, where it is never thought surprising to hear the wisest judge confess, that he came into court with a view of the case at issue wholly different from that which he was induced to form after having given the requisite attention to the debate before him. But this is an advantage which can never be gained, unless in the discussion of a real case; and therefore the opinion of a judge, given tota re cognita, must always be a more valuable precedent, than that which the same learned individual could form upon an abstract and hypothetical question.

It is, besides, to be considered, that the most fertile ingenuity with which any legislator can be endued, is limited within certain bounds; and that, when he has racked his brain to provide for all the ideal cases which his prolific imagination can supply, it will be found that he has not anticipated or provided for the hundredth part of the questions which are sure to occur in actual practice. To make a practical application of what we have stated, to the relative jurisprudence of France and England, it may be remarked, that the Title V. of the 1st Book of the Civil Code, upon the subject of Marriage, contains only one hundred and sixty-one propositions respecting the rights of parties, arising in different circumstances out of that contract, the most important known in civilized society. If we deduce from this gross amount the great number of rules which are not doctrinal, but have only reference to the forms of procedure, the result will be greatly diminished. The English law, on the other hand, besides its legislative enactments, is guarded, as appears from Roper's Index, by no less than a thousand decided cases, or precedents, each of which affords ground to rule any other case in similar circumstances. In this view, the certainty of the law of England compared to that of France, bears the proportion of ten to one.

It is, therefore, a vulgar, though a natural and pleasing error, to prefer the simplicity of an ingenious and philosophic code of jurisprudence, to a system which has grown up with a nation, augmented with its wants, extended according to its civilisation, and only become cumbrous and complicated, because the state of society to which it applies has itself given rise to a complication of relative situations, to all of which the law is under the necessity of adapting itself. In this point of view, the Code of France may be compared to a warehouse built with much attention to architectural uniformity, showy in the exterior, and pleasing from the simplicity of its plan, but too small to hold the quantity of goods necessary to supply the public demand; while the Common Law of England resembles the vaults of some huge Gothic building—dark, indeed, and ill-arranged, but containing an immense store of commodities, which those acquainted with its recesses seldom fail to be able to produce to such as have occasion for them. The practiques, or adjudged cases, in fact, form a breakwater, as it were, to protect the more formal bulwark of the statute law; and although they cannot be regularly jointed or dovetailed together, each independent decision fills its space on the mound, and offers a degree of resistance to innovation, and protection to the law, in proportion to its own weight and importance.

The certainty of the English jurisprudence, (for, in spite of the ordinary opinion to the contrary, it has acquired a comparative degree of certainty,) rests upon the multitude of its decisions. The views which a man is disposed to entertain of his own rights, under the general provisions of the law, are usually controlled by some previous decision on the case; and a reference to precedents, furnished by a person of skill, saves, in most instances, the expense and trouble of a lawsuit, which is thus stifled in its very birth. If we are rightly informed, the number of actions at common law, tried in England yearly, does not exceed betwixt five-and-twenty and thirty on an average, from each county; an incredibly small number, when the wealth of the kingdom is considered, as well as the various and complicated transactions incident to the advanced and artificial state of society in which we live.

But we regard the multitude of precedents in English law as eminently favourable, not only to the certainty of the law, but to the liberty of the subject; and especially as a check upon any judge, who might be disposed to innovate either upon the rights or liberties of the lieges. If a general theoretical maxim of law be presented to an unconscientious or partial judge, he may feel himself at liberty, by exerting his ingenuity, to warp the right cause the wrong way. But if he is bound down by the decisions of his wise and learned predecessors, that judge would be venturous indeed, who should attempt to tread a different and more devious path than that which is marked by the venerable traces of their footsteps; especially, as he well knows that the professional persons around him, who might be blinded by the glare of his ingenuity in merely theoretical argument, are perfectly capable of observing and condemning every departure from precedent.[317] In such a case he becomes sensible, that, fettered as he is by previous decisions, the law is in his hands, to be administered indeed, but not to be altered or tampered with; and that if the evidence be read in the court, there are and must be many present, who know as well as himself, what must, according to precedent, be the verdict, or the decision. These are considerations which never can restrain or fetter a judge, who is only called upon to give his own explanation of the general principle briefly expressed in a short code, and susceptible therefore of a variety of interpretations, from which he may at pleasure select that which may be most favourable to his unconscientious or partial purposes.

It follows, also, from the paucity of laws afforded by a code constructed not by the growth of time, but suggested by the ingenuity of theorists suddenly called to the task, and considering its immense importance, executing it in haste, that many provisions, most important for the exercise of justice, must, of course, be neglected in the French Code. For example, the whole law of evidence, the very key and corner-stone of justice between man and man, has been strangely overlooked in the French jurisprudence. It is plain, that litigation may proceed for ever, unless there be some previous adjustment (called technically an issue) betwixt the parties, at the sight of the judge, tending to ascertain their averments in point of fact, as also the relevancy of those averments to the determination of the cause. In England, chiefly during the course of last century, the Law of Evidence has grown up to a degree of perfection, which has tended, perhaps more than any other cause, at once to prevent and to shorten litigation. If we pass from the civil to the penal mode of procedure in France, the British lawyer is yet more shocked by a course, which seems in his view totally to invert and confound every idea which he has received upon the law of evidence. Our law, it is well known, is in nothing so scrupulous as in any conduct towards the prisoner, which may have the most indirect tendency to entrap him into bearing evidence against himself. Law sympathizes in such a case with the frailties of humanity, and, aware of the consequence which judicial inquiries must always have on the mind of the timid and ignorant, never pushes the examination of a suspected person farther than he himself, in the natural hope of giving such an account of himself as may procure his liberty, shall choose to reply to it.

In France, on the contrary, the whole trial sometimes resolves into a continued examination and cross-examination of the prisoner, who is not only under the necessity of giving his original statement of the circumstances on which he founds his defence, but is confronted repeatedly with the witnesses, and repeatedly required to reconcile his own statement of the case with that which these have averred. With respect to the character of evidence, the same looseness of practice exists. No distinction seems to be made between that which is hearsay and that which is direct—that which is spontaneously given, and that which is extracted, or perhaps suggested, by leading questions. All this is contrary to what we are taught to consider as the essence of justice towards the accused. The use of the rack is, indeed, no longer admitted to extort the confession, but the mode of judicial examination seems to us a species of moral torture, under which a timid and ignorant, though innocent man, is very likely to be involved in such contradictions and inextricable confusion, that he may be under the necessity of throwing away his life by not knowing how to frame his defence.

We shall not protract these remarks on the Code Napoleon; the rather that we must frankly confess, that the manners and customs of a country make the greatest difference with respect to its laws, and that a system may work well in France, and answer all the purposes of jurisprudence, which in England would be thought very inadequate to the purpose. The humane institution which allows the accused the benefit of counsel, is a privilege which the English law does not permit to the accused, and may have its own weight in counterbalancing some of the inconveniences to which he is subjected in France. It seems also probable, that the deficiencies in the Code, arising from its recent origin and compressed form, must be gradually remedied, as in England, by the course of decisions pronounced by intelligent and learned judges; and that what we now state as an objection to the system, will gradually disappear under the influence of time.

Considered as a production of human science, and a manual of legislative sagacity, the Code may challenge general admiration for the clear and wise manner in which the axioms are drawn up and expressed. There are but few peculiarities making a difference betwixt its principles and those of the Roman law, which has in most contracts claimed to be considered as the mother of judicial regulation. The most remarkable occurs, perhaps, in the articles regulating what is called the Family Council—a subject which does not seem of importance sufficient to claim much attention.

The Civil Code being thus ascertained, provision was made for its regular administration by suitable courts; the judges of which did not, as before the Revolution, depend for their emoluments upon fees payable by the litigants, but were compensated by suitable salaries at the expense of the public. As France does not supply that class of persons who form what is called in England the unpaid magistracy, the French justices of peace received a small salary of from 800 to 1800 francs. Above them in rank came judges in the first instance, whose salaries amounted to 3000 francs at the utmost. The judges of the supreme tribunals enjoyed about four or five thousand francs; and those of the High Court of Cassation had not more than ten thousand francs, which scarcely enabled them to live and keep some rank in the metropolis. But, though thus underpaid, the situation of the French judges was honourable in the eyes of the country, and they maintained its character by activity and impartiality in their judicial functions.

The system of juries had been introduced in criminal cases, by the acclamation of the Assembly. Buonaparte found them, however, scrupulously restive and troublesome. There may be some truth in the charge, that they were averse from conviction, where a loop-hole remained for acquitting the criminal; and that many audacious crimes remained unpunished, from the punctilious view which the juries took of their duty. But it was from other motives than those of the public weal that Napoleon made an early use of his power, for the purpose of forming special tribunals, invested with a half-military character, to try all such crimes as assumed a political complexion, with power to condemn without the suffrage of a jury.[318] We have already alluded to this infringement of the most valuable political rights of the subject, in giving some account of the trials of Georges, Pichegru, and Moreau. No jury would ever have brought in a verdict against the latter, whose sole crime was his communication with Pichegru; a point of suspicion certainly, but no proof whatever of positive guilt. Political causes being out of the field, the trial by jury was retained in the French Code, so far as regarded criminal questions; and the general administration of justice seems to have been very well calculated for protecting the right, and punishing that which is wrong.

The fiscal operations of Buonaparte were those of which the subjects complained the most, as indeed these are generally the grievances to which the people in every country are the most sensible. High taxes were imposed on the French people, rendered necessary by the expenses of the government, which, with all its accompaniments, were very considerable; and although Buonaparte did all in his power to throw the charge of the eternal wars which he waged upon the countries he overran or subdued, yet so far does the waste of war exceed any emolument which the armed hand can wrest from the sufferers, so imperfect a proportion do the gains of the victor bear to the losses of the vanquished, that after all the revenue which was derived from foreign countries, the continual campaigns of the Emperor proved a constant and severe drain upon the produce of French industry. So rich, however, is the soil of France, such are the extent of her resources, such the patience and activity of her inhabitants, that she is qualified, if not to produce at once the large capitals which England can raise upon her national credit, yet to support the payment of a train of heavy annual imposts for a much longer period, and with less practical inconvenience. The agriculture of France had been extremely improved since the breaking up of the great estates into smaller portions, and the abrogation of those feudal burdens which had pressed upon the cultivators; and it might be considered as flourishing, in spite of war taxes, and, what was worse, the conscription itself.[319] Under a fixed and secure, though a severe and despotic government, property was protected, and agriculture received the best encouragement, namely, the certainty conferred on the cultivator of reaping the crop which he sowed.

It was far otherwise with commerce, which the maritime war, carried on so long and with such unmitigated severity, had very much injured, and the utter destruction of which was in a manner perfected by Buonaparte's adherence to the continental system. This, indeed, was the instrument by which, in the long run, he hoped to ruin the commerce of his rival, but the whole weight of which fell in the first instance on that of France, whose seaports showed no other shipping save coasters and fishing vessels; while the trade of Marseilles, Bourdeaux, Nantes, and other great commercial towns, had, in a great measure, ceased to exist. The government of the Emperor was proportionally unpopular in those cities; and although men kept silence, because surrounded by the spies of a jealous and watchful despotism, their dislike to the existing state of things could not entirely be concealed.[320]

On the other hand, capitalists, who had sums invested in the public funds, or who were concerned with the extensive and beneficial contracts for the equipment and supply of Napoleon's large armies, with all the numerous and influential persons upon whom any part of the gathering in or expenditure of the public money devolved, were necessarily devoted to a government, under which, in spite of the Emperor's vigilance, immense profits were often derived, even after those by whom they were made had rendered to the ministers, or perhaps the generals, by whom they were protected, a due portion of the spoil. Economist and calculator as he was, to a most superior degree of excellence, Napoleon seems to have been utterly unable, if he really sincerely desired, to put an end to the peculations of those whom he trusted with power. He frequently, during his conversations at St. Helena, alludes to the venality and corruption of such as he employed in the highest offices, but whose sordid practices seem never to have occurred to him in the way of objection to his making use of their talents. FouchÉ, Talleyrand, and others, are thus stigmatized; and as we well know how long, and upon how many different occasions, he employed those statesmen, we cannot but suppose that, whatever may have been his sentiments as to the men, he was perfectly willing to compound with their peculation, in order to have the advantage of their abilities. Even when practices of this kind were too gross to be passed over, Napoleon's mode of censuring and repressing them was not adapted to show a pure sense of morality on his own part, or any desire to use extraordinary rigour in preventing them in future. This conclusion we form from the following anecdote which he communicated to Las Cases:—

Speaking of generals, and praising the disinterestedness of some, he adds, Massena, Augereau, Brune, and others, were undaunted depredators. Upon one occasion, the rapacity of the first of these generals had exceeded the patience of the Emperor. His mode of punishing him was peculiar. He did not dispossess him of the command, of which he had rendered himself unworthy by such an unsoldier-like vice—he did not strip the depredator by judicial sentence of his ill-won gains, and restore them to those from whom they were plundered—but, in order to make the General sensible that he had proceeded too far, Buonaparte drew a bill upon the banker of the delinquent, for the sum of two or three millions of francs, to be placed to Massena's debit, and the credit of the drawer. Great was the embarrassment of the banker, who dared not refuse the Imperial order, while he humbly hesitated, that he could not safely honour it without the authority of his principal. "Pay the money," was the Emperor's reply, "and let Massena refuse to give you credit at his peril." The money was paid accordingly, and placed to that General's debit, without his venturing to start any objections.[321] This was not punishing peculation, but partaking in its gains; and the spirit of the transaction approached nearly to that described by Le Sage, where the Spanish minister of state insists on sharing the bribes given to his secretary.

Junot, in like manner; who, upon his return from Portugal, gave general scandal by the display of diamonds, and other wealth, which he had acquired in that oppressed country, received from Buonaparte a friendly hint to be more cautious in such exhibitions. But his acknowledged rapacity was never thought of as a reason disqualifying him for being presently afterwards sent to the government of Illyria.

We are informed, in another of the Emperor's communications, that his Council of State was of admirable use to him in the severe inquisition which he was desirous of making into the public accounts. The proceedings of this Star Chamber, and the fear of being transmitted to the cognition of the Grand Judge, usually brought the culprits to composition; and when they had disgorged one, two, or three millions, the government was enriched, or, according to Buonaparte's ideas, the laws were satisfied.[322] The truth seems to be, that Buonaparte, though he contemned wealth in his own person, was aware that avarice, which, after all, is but a secondary and sordid species of ambition, is the most powerful motive to mean and vulgar minds; and he willingly advanced gold to those who chose to prey upon it, so long as their efforts facilitated his possessing and retaining the unlimited authority to which he had reached. In a country where distress and disaster of every kind, public and private, had enabled many to raise large fortunes by brokerage and agiotage, a monied interest of a peculiar character was soon formed, whose hopes were of course rested on the wonderful ruler, by whose gigantic ambition new schemes of speculation were opened in constant succession, and whose unrivalled talents seemed to have found the art of crowning the most difficult undertakings with success.

It might be thought that the manufacturing interest must have perished in France, from the same reasons which so strongly and unfavourably afflicted the commerce of that country. In ceasing to import, there must indeed have been a corresponding diminution of the demand for goods to be exported, whether these were the growth of the soil, or the productions of French labour. Accordingly, this result had, in a great degree, taken place, and there was a decrease to a large amount in those goods which the French were accustomed to export in exchange for the various commodities supplied to them by British trade. But, though the real and legitimate stimulus to manufactures had thus ceased, Napoleon had substituted an artificial one, which had, to a certain extent, supplied the place of the natural trade. We must remark, that Napoleon, practically and personally frugal, was totally a stranger to the science of Political Economy. He never received or acted upon the idea, that a liberal system of commerce operates most widely in diffusing the productions which are usually the subjects of exchange, and in affording to every country the greatest share of the bounties of nature, or the produce of industry at the easiest rates. On the contrary, he had proceeded to act against the commerce of England, as, in a military capacity, he would have done in regard to the water which supplied a besieged city. He strove to cut it off, and altogether to destroy it, and to supply the absence of its productions, by such substitutes as France could furnish.[323] Hence, the factitious encouragement given to the French manufactures, not by the natural demand of the country, but by the bounties and prohibitions by which they were guarded. Hence, the desperate efforts made to produce a species of sugar from various substances, especially from the beet-root. To this unnatural and unthrifty experiment, Buonaparte used to attach so much consequence, that a piece of the new composition, which, with much time and trouble, had been made to approximate the quality of ordinary loaf-sugar, was preserved in a glass-case over the Imperial mantel-piece; and a pound or two of beet-sugar, highly-refined, was sent to foreign courts, to illustrate the means by which Napoleon consoled his subjects for the evils incumbent on the continental system. No way of flattering or gratifying the Emperor was so certain, as to appear eager in supporting these views; and it is said that one of his generals, when tottering in the Imperial good graces, regained the favour of his master, by planting the whole of a considerable estate with beet-root. In these, and on similar occasions, Napoleon, in his eager desire to produce the commodity desiderated, became regardless of those considerations which a manufacturer first ascertains when about to commence his operations, namely, the expense at which the article can be produced, the price at which it can be disposed of, and its fitness for the market which it is intended to supply. The various encouragements given to the cotton manufacturers, and others, in France, by which it was designed to supply the want of British goods, proceeded upon a system equally illiberal and impolitic. Still, however, the expensive bounties, and forced sales, which the influence of government afforded, enabled these manufacturers to proceed, and furnished employment to a certain number of men, who were naturally grateful for the protection which they received from the Emperor. In the same manner, although no artificial jet-d'eau, upon the grandest scale of expense, can so much refresh the face of nature, as the gentle and general influence of a natural shower, the former will nevertheless have the effect of feeding and nourishing such vegetable productions as are within the reach of its limited influence. It was thus, that the efforts of Napoleon at encouraging arts and manufactures, though proceeding on mistaken principles, produced, in the first instance, results apparently beneficial.[324]

We have already had occasion to observe the immense public works which were undertaken at the expense of Buonaparte's government. Temples, bridges, and aqueducts, are, indeed, the coin with which arbitrary princes, in all ages, have endeavoured to compensate for the liberty of which the people are deprived. Such monuments are popular with the citizens, because the enjoyment of them is common to all, and the monarch is partial to a style of expenditure promising more plausibly than any other, to extend the memory of his present greatness far into the bosom of futurity. Buonaparte was not, and could not be insensible to either of these motives. His mind was too much enlarged to seek enjoyment in any of the ordinary objects of exclusive gratification; and undoubtedly, he who had done so much to distinguish himself during his life above ordinary mortals, must have naturally desired that his public works should preserve his fame to future ages. Accordingly, he undertook and executed some of the most splendid labours of modern times. The road over the Simplon, and the basins at Antwerp, may be always appealed to as gigantic specimens of his public spirit.

On the other hand, as we have before hinted, Napoleon sometimes aimed at producing immediate effect, by proposals and plans hastily adopted, as hastily decreed, and given in full form to the government journal; but which were either abandoned immediately after having been commenced, or perhaps, never advanced farther than the plan announced in the Moniteur. Buonaparte's habits of activity, his powers of deciding with a single glance upon most points of either military or civil engineering, were liberally drawn upon to strike his subjects with wonder and admiration. During the few peaceful intervals of his reign, his impatience of inaction found amusement in traversing, with great rapidity, and often on the shortest notice, the various departments in France. Travelling with incredible celerity, though usually accompanied by the Empress Josephine, he had no sooner visited any town of consequence, than he threw himself on horseback, and, followed only by his aide-de-camp and his Mameluke Rustan, who with difficulty kept him in view, he took a flying survey of the place, its capacities of improvement, or the inconveniences which attached to it. With this local knowledge, thus rapidly acquired, he gave audience to the municipal authorities, and overwhelmed them very often with liberal and long details concerning the place round which he had galloped for the first time, but in which they had spent their days. Amazement at the extent and facility of the Emperor's powers of observation, was thus universally excited, and his hints were recorded in the Moniteur, for the admiration of France. Some public work, solicited by the municipality, or suggested by the enlightened benevolence of the Emperor himself, was then projected, but which, in many, if not most cases, remained unexecuted; the imperial funds not being in all circumstances adequate to the splendour of Napoleon's undertakings, or, which was the more frequent case, some new absorbing war, or project of ambition, occasioning every other object of expenditure to be postponed.

Even if some of Buonaparte's most magnificent works of public splendour had been completed, there is room to doubt whether they would have been attended with real advantage to his power, bearing the least proportion to the influence which their grandeur necessarily produces upon the imagination. We look with admiration, and indeed with astonishment, on the splendid dock-yards of the Scheldt; but, had they been accomplished, what availed the building of first-rates, which France could hardly find sailors to man; which being manned, dared not venture out of the river; or, hazarding themselves upon the ocean, were sure to become the prizes of the first British men-of-war with whom they chanced to encounter? Almost all this profuse expense went to the mere purposes of vain glory; for more mischief would have been done to British commerce, which Buonaparte knew well was the assailable point, by six privateers from Dunkirk, than by all the ships of the line which he could build at the new and most expensive dock-yard of Antwerp, with Brest and Toulon to boot.

In such cases as these, Napoleon did, in a most efficient manner, that which he ridiculed the Directory for being unable to do—he wrought on the imagination of the French nation, which indeed had been already so dazzled by the extraordinary things he had accomplished, that, had he promised them still greater prodigies than were implied in the magnificent works which he directed to be founded, they might still have been justified in expecting the performance of his predictions. And it must be admitted, looking around the city of Paris, and travelling through the provinces of France, that Buonaparte has, in the works of peaceful grandeur, left a stamp of magnificence, not unworthy of the soaring and at the same time profound spirit, which accomplished so many wonders in warfare.

The personal and family life of Napoleon was skilfully adapted to his pre-eminent station. If he had foibles connected with pleasure and passion, they were so carefully veiled to remain unknown to the world—at least, they were not manifested by any of those weaknesses which might serve to lower the Emperor to the stamp of common men. His conduct towards the Empress Josephine was regular and exemplary. From their accession to grandeur till the fatal divorce, as Napoleon once termed it, they shared the privacy of the same apartment, and for many years partook the same bed. Josephine is said, indeed, to have given her husband, upon whom she had many claims, some annoyance by her jealousy, to which he patiently submitted, and escaped the reproach thrown on so many heroes and men of genius, that, proof to every thing else, they are not so against the allurements of female seduction. What amours he had were of a passing character. No woman, excepting Josephine and her successor, who exercised their lawful and rightful influence, was ever known to possess any power over him.[325]

The dignity of his throne was splendidly and magnificently maintained, but the expense was still limited by that love of order which arose out of Buonaparte's powers of arithmetical calculation, habitually and constantly employed, and the trusting to which, contributed, it may be, to that external regularity and decorum which he always supported. In speaking of his own peculiar taste, Buonaparte said that his favourite work was a book of logarithms, and his choicest amusement was working out the problems. The individual to whom the Emperor made this singular avowal mentioned it with surprise to an officer near his person, who assured him, that not only did Napoleon amuse himself with arithmetical ciphers, and the theory of computation, but that he frequently brought it to bear on his domestic expenses, and diverted himself with comparing the price at which particular articles were charged to him, with the rate which they ought to have cost at the fair market price, but which, for reasons unnecessary to state, was in general greatly exceeded. Las Cases mentions his detecting such an overcharge in the gold fringe which adorned one of his state apartments. A still more curious anecdote respects a watch, which the most eminent artist of Paris had orders to finish with his utmost skill, in a style which might become a gift from the Emperor of France to his brother the King of Spain. Before the watch was out of the artist's hands, Napoleon received news of the battle of Vittoria. "All is now over with Joseph," were almost his first words after receiving the intelligence. "Send to countermand the order for the watch."[326]

Properly considered, this anecdote indicates no indifference as to his brother's fate, nor anxiety about saving a petty sum; it was the rigid calculation of a professed accountant, whose habits of accuracy induce him to bring every loss to a distinct balance, however trivial the off-set may be. But although the Emperor's economy descended to minute trifles, we are not to suppose that among such was its natural sphere. On the contrary, in the first year of the Consulate, he discovered and rectified an error in the statement of the revenue, to the amount of no less than two millions of francs, to the prejudice of the state. In another instance, with the skill which only a natural taste for calculation brought to excellence by constant practice could have attained, he discovered an enormous overcharge of more than sixty thousand francs in the pay-accounts of the garrison of Paris. Two such discoveries, by the head-magistrate, must have gone far to secure regularity in the departments in which they were made, in future.

Attending to this remarkable peculiarity throws much light on the character of Buonaparte. It was by dint of his rapid and powerful combinations that he succeeded as a general; and the same laws of calculation can be traced through much of his public and private life.

The palace charges, and ordinary expenses of the Emperor, were completely and accurately regulated by his Imperial Majesty's own calculation. He boasted to have so simplified the expenditure of the ancient kings of France, that his hunting establishment, though maintained in the utmost splendour, cost a considerable sum less than that of the Bourbons. But it must be recollected, first, that Napoleon was free from the obligation which subjected the Bourbons to the extravagant expenses which attended the high appointments of their household; secondly, that under the Imperial government, the whole establishment of falconry was abolished; a sport which is, in the opinion of many, more strikingly picturesque and interesting than any other variety of the chase, and which, as it infers a royal expense, belongs properly to sovereign princes.

The Imperial court was distinguished not only by a severe etiquette, but the grandees, by whom its principal duties were discharged, were given to understand, that the utmost magnificence of dress and equipage was required from them upon public occasions. It was, indeed, a subject of complaint amongst the servants of the Crown, that though Buonaparte was in many respects attentive to their interests, gave them opportunities of acquiring wealth, invested them with large dotations and endowments, and frequently assisted them with an influence not easily withstood in the accomplishment of advantageous marriages; yet still the great expenditure at which they were required to support their appearance at the Imperial court, prevented their realizing any fortune which could provide effectually for their family. This expense Buonaparte loved to represent, as a tax which he made his courtiers pay to support the manufactures of France; but it was extended so far as to show plainly, that, determined as he was to establish his nobility on such a scale as to grace his court, it was far from being his purpose to permit them to assume any real power, or to form an existing and influential barrier between the crown and the people. The same inference is to be drawn from the law of France concerning succession in landed property, which is in ordinary cases equally divided amongst the children of the deceased; a circumstance which must effectually prevent the rise of great hereditary influence. And although, for the support of dignities granted by the Crown, and in some other cases; an entail of a portion of the favoured person's estate, called a Majorat, is permitted to follow the title, yet the proportion is so small as to give no considerable weight to those upon whom it devolves.

The composition of Buonaparte's court was singular. Amid his military dukes and mareschals were mingled many descendants of the old noblesse, who had been struck out of the lists of emigration. On these Buonaparte spread the cruel reproach, "I offered them rank in my army—they declined the service;—I opened my antechambers to them—they rushed in and filled them." In this the Emperor did not do justice to the ancient noblesse of France. A great many resumed their natural situation in the military ranks of their country, and a still greater number declined, in any capacity, to bend the knee to him, whom they could only consider as a successful usurper.

The ceremonial of the Tuileries was upon the most splendid scale, the public festivals were held with the utmost magnificence, and the etiquette was of the most strict and indefeasible character. To all this Buonaparte himself attached consequence, as ceremonies characterising the spirit and dignity of his government; and he had drilled even his own mind into a veneration for all those outward forms connected with royalty, as accurately as if they had been during his whole life the special subject of his attention. There is a curious example given by Monsieur Las Cases. Buonaparte, in good-humoured trifling, had given his follower the titles of your highness, your lordship, and so forth, amidst which it occurred to him, in a fit of abstraction, to use the phrase, "Your Majesty." The instant that the word, sacred to his own ears, had escaped him, the humour of frolic was ended, and he resumed a serious tone, with the air of one who feels that he has let his pleasantry trespass upon an unbecoming and almost hallowed subject.

There were many of Buonaparte's friends and followers, bred, like himself, under the influence of the Revolution, who doubted the policy of his entering into such a strain of imitation of the ancient courts of Europe, and of his appearing anxious to emulate them in the only points in which he must necessarily fail, antiquity and long observance giving to ancient usages an effect upon the imagination, which could not possibly attach to the same ceremonial introduced into a court of yesterday. These would willingly have seen the dignity of their master's court rested upon its real and pre-eminent importance, and would have desired, that though republican principles were abandoned, something of the severe and manly simplicity of Republican manners should have continued to characterise a throne whose site rested upon the Revolution. The courtiers who held such opinions were at liberty to draw consolation from the personal appearance and habits of Napoleon. Amid the gleam of embroidery, of orders, decorations, and all that the etiquette of a court demands to render ceremonial at once accurate and splendid, the person of the Emperor was to be distinguished by his extreme simplicity of dress and deportment. A plain uniform, with a hat having no other ornament than a small three-coloured cockade, was the dress of him who bestowed all these gorgeous decorations, and in honour of whom these costly robes of ceremonial had been exhibited. Perhaps Napoleon might be of opinion, that a person under the common size, and in his latter days somewhat corpulent, was unfit for the display of rich dresses; or it is more likely he desired to intimate, that although he exacted from others the strict observance of etiquette, he held that the Imperial dignity placed him above any reciprocal obligation towards them.

Perhaps, also, in limiting his personal expenses, and avoiding that of a splendid royal wardrobe, Buonaparte might indulge that love of calculation and order, which we have noticed as a leading point of his character. But his utmost efforts could not carry a similar spirit of economy among the female part of his Imperial family; and it may be a consolation to persons of less consequence to know, that in this respect the Emperor of half the world was nearly as powerless as they may feel themselves to be. Josephine, with all her amiable qualities, was profuse, after the general custom of Creoles, and Pauline de Borghese was no less so. The efforts of Napoleon to limit their expenses, sometimes gave rise to singular scenes. Upon one occasion, the Emperor found in company of Josephine a certain milliner of high reputation and equal expense, with whom he had discharged his wife to have any dealings. Incensed at this breach of his orders, he directed the marchande des modes to be conducted to the BicÈtre; but the number of carriages which brought the wives of his principal courtiers to consult her in captivity, convinced him that the popularity of the milliner was too powerful even for his Imperial authority; so he wisely dropped a contention which must have appeared ludicrous to the public, and the artist was set at liberty, to charm and pillage the gay world of Paris at her own pleasure.[327]

On another occasion, the irregularity of Josephine in the article of expense, led to an incident which reminds us of an anecdote in the history of some Oriental Sultan. A creditor of the Empress, become desperate from delay, stopped the Imperial calÈche, in which the Emperor was leaving St. Cloud, with Josephine by his side, and presented his account, with a request of payment. Buonaparte did as Saladin would have done in similar circumstances—he forgave the man's boldness in consideration of the justice of his claim, and caused the debt to be immediately settled. In fact, while blaming the expense and irregularity which occasioned such demands, his sense of justice, and his family affection, equally inclined him to satisfy the creditor.

The same love of order, as a ruling principle of his government, must have rendered Buonaparte a severe censor of all public breaches of the decencies of society. Public morals are in themselves the accomplishment and fulfilment of all laws; they alone constitute a national code. Accordingly, the manners of the Imperial court were under such regulation as to escape public scandal, if they were not beyond secret suspicion.[328] In the same manner, gambling, the natural and favourite vice of a court, was not practised in that of Buonaparte, who discountenanced high play by every means in his power. But he suffered it to be licensed to an immense and frightful extent, by the minister of police; nor can we give him the least credit when he affirms, that the gambling-houses which paid such immense rents to FouchÉ, existed without his knowledge. Napoleon's own assertion cannot make us believe that he was ignorant of the principal source of revenue which supported his police. He compounded, on this as on other occasions, with a good-will, in consideration of the personal advantage which he derived from it.

In the public amusements of a more general kind, Buonaparte took a deep interest. He often attended the theatre, though commonly in private, and without eclat. His own taste, as well as political circumstances, led him to encourage the amusements of the stage; and the celebrated Talma, whose decided talents placed him at the head of the French performers, received, as well in personal notice from the Emperor, as through the more substantial medium of a pension, an assurance, that the kindness which he had shown in early youth to the little Corsican student had not been forgotten. The strictest care was taken that nothing should be admitted on the stage which could awaken feelings or recollections unfavourable to the Imperial Government. When the acute wit of the Parisian audience seized on some expression or incident which had any analogy to public affairs, the greatest pains were taken, not only to prevent the circumstance from recurring, but even to hinder it from getting into general circulation. This secrecy respecting what occurred in public, could not be attained in a free country, but was easily accomplished in one where the public papers, the general organs of intelligence, were under the strict and unremitted vigilance of the government.

There were periods when Buonaparte, in order to gain the approbation and sympathy of those who claim the exclusive title of lovers of liberty, was not unwilling to be thought the friend of liberal opinions, and was heard to express himself in favour of the liberty of the press, and other checks upon the executive authority. To reconcile his opinions (or rather what he threw out as his opinions) with a practice diametrically opposite, was no easy matter, yet he sometimes attempted it. On observing one or two persons, who had been his silent and surprised auditors on such an occasion, unable to suppress some appearance of incredulity, he immediately entered upon his defence. "I am," he said, "at bottom, and naturally, for a fixed and limited government. You seem not to believe me, perhaps because you conceive my opinions and practice are at variance. But you do not consider the necessity arising out of persons and circumstances. Were I to relax the reins for an instant, you would see a general confusion. Neither you nor I, probably, would spend another night in the Tuileries."

Such declarations have often been found in the mouths of those, who have seized upon an unlawful degree of authority over their species. Cromwell was forced to dissolve the Parliament, though he besought the Lord rather to slay him. State necessity is the usual plea of tyrants, by which they seek to impose on themselves and others; and, by resorting to such an apology, they pay that tribute to truth in their language, to which their practice is in the most decided opposition. But if there are any to whom such an excuse may appear valid, what can be, or must be, their sentiments of the French Revolution, which, instead of leading to national liberty, equality, and general happiness, brought the country into such a condition, that a victorious soldier was obliged, contrary to the conviction of his own conscience, to assume the despotic power, and subject the whole empire to the same arbitrary rules which directed the followers of his camp?

The press, at no time, and in no civilized country, was ever so completely enchained and fettered as at this period it was in France. The public journals were prohibited from inserting any article of public news which had not first appeared in the Moniteur, the organ of Government; and this, on all momentous occasions, was personally examined by Buonaparte himself. Nor were the inferior papers permitted to publish a word, whether in the way of explanation, criticism, or otherwise, which did not accurately correspond with the tone observed in the leading journal. They might, with the best graces of their eloquence, enhance the praise, or deepen the censure, which characterised the leading paragraph; but seizure of their paper, confiscation, imprisonment, and sometimes exile, were the unfailing reward of any attempt to correct what was erroneous in point of fact, or sophistical in point of reasoning. The Moniteur, therefore, was the sole guide of public opinion; and by his constant attention to its contents, it is plain that Napoleon relied as much on its influence to direct the general mind of the people of France, as he did upon the power of his arms, military reputation, and extensive resources, to overawe the other nations of Europe.