of taxation, and to the formation of general laws for the administration of civil affairs.

"A single session of a month or six weeks, once a-year, is quite enough for these purposes. Every thing relating to executive business, public security, or police, is out of their beat; and so are politics, both internal and external. Indeed, the long residence of the deputies in the country unfits them for these matters." -P. 187.

"So long," he continues," as the legislature object to laws merely local, I shall let them pursue their own way; but if there should grow up amongst them such an opposition, as might become strong enough to clog the movements of government, I shall have recourse to the senate to prorogue them; or change them; or dissolve them; and, in case of need, I shall appeal to the nation, which is behind all these. Various opinions will be expressed on this head, but I care not. Tom-foolery (la badauderie) is the characteristic of the nation ever since the days of the Gauls!'

We shall close our extracts from this part of the work, with the following delicious piece of undisguised Machiavelism, which displays at once Bonaparte's impatience of any kind of control, and his utter ignorance of the true spirit of a legislative bodythe very essence of which is a strong sense of independence.

"As far as the good of the nation is concerned, the legislative body cannot be rendered too tractable; (On ne saurait, pour le bien d'une nation, rendre le corps législatif trop maniable); because, if it should be strong enough to inspire any wish to govern, it would in the end either destroy the government, or be itself destroyed." P. 189.

As to Bonaparte's religion, few persons, we presume, will have many doubts; but it is nevertheless not a little curious to hear his "declaration of faith," of which the insolent levity is on a par with the doctrine

"For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from being destroyed by the poor. Religion is indeed a kind of vaccine innoculation, which, by satisfying our natural love for the marvel

*

lous, keeps us out of the hands of charlatans and conjurors. The priests are better than the Cagliostros, the Kants, and all the visionaries of Germany."-P. 258.

He knew right well-nobody better -how to turn what he chose to call fanaticism to account-not to the account of religion indeed, nor of morals, nor of any similar commonplace and vulgar uses, but to the extension of his own power, and the furtherance of his own ambitious objects. We believe it will be allowed by all parties that a more single-hearted set of men, generally speaking, does not exist in the world than the missionaries-yet, sce to what base purposes Bonaparte seeks to turn the sacred character of these devoted servants of their Maker!—

"It is my wish," observed he, "to re-establish the institution for foreign missions, for the religious missionaries may prove very useful to me in Asia, Africa, and America, as I shall make them reconnoitre all the countries they visit. The sanctity of their dress will not only protect them, but serve to conceal their political and commercial investigations. We all know of what great use as diplomatic spies the Lazaristes' of the foreign missions were in China, Japan, and all over Asia, - even in Africa and Syria there were some. They do not cost much money, they are respected by the barbarians-and, as they have no official character, they can never commit the interests of government nor compromise its dignity. The religious zeal which animates a missionary will not only make him undertake expeditions, but carry him through trials which a mere civil agent would never dream of, or would sink under were he to attempt them.

"The missionaries, accordingly, may help to advance my views of colonizing Egypt and the coasts of Africa. I foresee that France must relinquish her maritime colonies. Those on the other side of the Atlantic, before fifty years elapse, must belong to the United States; and, indeed,

it was this consideration which led to the cession of Louisiana. We must therefore manage as well as we can to get up similar establishments in other parts of the world."-P. 243.

The mixture of levity, profound observation, and overweening political arrogance in the concluding sentences of the 19th Chapter, is every way characteristic of the man

66 6

Paradise,' said Napoleon, is the central point towards which the souls of all mankind are travelling, only they follow different roads each sect has a way of its own.'

"On another occasion he said, ' Atheism, and not Fanaticism, is the evil to be dreaded in these days. I have nothing to fear from the priests, whether Catholic or non-Catholic; I am the head of the Protestant ministers, because I nominate them; and as I was consecrated by the Pope, I may well consider myself as chief of the Catholics.'”—P. 245.

Napoleon's notions on the administration of justice are wise enough in those cases where it did not bear on his own authority, which, of course, was paramount to every thing with him. In 1804 he had the prisons of Paris thoroughly examined and put to rights; but in 1809 he felt anxious to establish state prisons for his own particular use, and he submitted his ideas to the Council of State, who, as usual, at once agreed to his wishesbut even he was startled with their "alacrity in sinking" under his despotism.

"Napoleon complained that a project so much calculated to startle the public, should be brought forward in terms so brief, and without any preamble.

"There ought to be a couple of pages of guarded reasoning, well seasoned with liberal ideas, for we are now coming back for the first time to state prisons, which is a measure of such delicacy, that every word ought to be carefully balanced. The power which it vests in the minister to keep persons in confinement, without bringing them to trial, is so likely to alarm the citizens, that I wish to afford them some guarantee against abuses of this power. For example, the decision of the Privy Council may be transmitted to the Attorney-General, and this officer should be required to visit the prisoners once ayear.'"-P. 218.

He seems to fancy-and probably with reason, that his countrymen would consider an annual visit of the Attorney-General to the prisons, quite as good a guarantee for the liberty of the subject, as we consider the habeas corpus in England. He expressed himself most anxious to establish circuit judges (des juges ambulants), and nothing can be sounder than his reasonings on this subject but still we detect, that while the interests of the public are on his lips, only the interests of his throne are in his head.

VOL. XLI. NO. CCLVIII.

"The circuit judges (des juges ambulants), who hold the assizes, may be rendered more useful instruments in the hands of government than fixed judges can be. Can it be said that there is any government at all in France, when we see justice administered in the midst of a mob of attornies and advocates, who lead the public opinion, and by that means intimidate both judges and witnesses? We have had various remarkable examples of this sort of influence lately.'

(This remark refers to the trials of Moreau, Pichegru, Georges, and others.)

"Do not we see,' continued he, 'the judges even in the Court of Cassation, dining with the lawyers, and falling into intimacies with them quite destructive of that respect which is so essential to the moral influence of a judge? A circuit judge (un préteur ambulant), on coming to any place where the assizes were to be held, would not be so readily influenced, still less intimidated. A small apartment

should be provided for him in the Court House; and he should not be allowed to to go out to

reside any where else, or dinner with any one.

"The great judicial functionaries are now so much scattered, that I have no means of becoming acquainted with the criminal judges, for instance, of Provence or Languedoc, nor can they become acquainted any better with me; and the consequence is, that I possess very little authority over them. If, however, I had thirty pretors, or judges of criminal justice at Paris, I should soon become well acquainted with them, and be enabled to send them to this place or to that, according to their character, or the exigency of circumstances.'"-P. 224.

Although he is against corporal punishment generally, in his fleets and armies, except, he says, "in actual service, and in presence of an enemy," (p. 231), he considers that such sharp discipline may be usefully applied in civil cases; and he entertains the Council with the story of an Italian village, the inhabitants of which having proved faithless, as he calls it, to him, and declared for his enemies, he thus turns them over to the tender mercies of his gen-d armerie !

"I degraded the inhabitants by taking from them the title of Italian citizens, and had their disgrace engraved on a marble slab placed at the gate of the town. An officer of the gen-d'armerie was then put in command, with orders that when any of the inhabitants incurred the penalty of imprisonment, that punishment should be commuted for a certain number

2 M

of stripes, after the manner of their friends the Austrians! And I had reason to know that the effects of this measure were most useful." "—P. 231.

His thoughts at bottom ran always on war. Even in a discussion on funerals he cannot resist a military allusion. "I find," said he, "on reading the report of the number of burials in Paris, that, on an average, fourteen thousand persons die annually. This is a pretty battle indeed! (C'est une belle bataille !)" It is curious to hear Napoleon speak of that fearful measure to which he owed all his strength, and perhaps, essentially, that weakness which enabled his enemies to crush him at last. "The law of the conscription," said he, " is of all laws the most frightful and detestable for individual families; but it ensures the security of the state at large.". P. 262.

. The chapter on the finances and taxes is most instructive-but we must

skip it too for want of room. He dwells on the absolute necessity of keeping up a vast army in France. The following morsel of balderdash is so very characteristic, that, as we read it, we almost fancy we hear the Emperor speaking :—

"The condition of the great European family of nations is not such as may be considered best for the happiness of mankind; but the western portion of it is under the necessity of accommodating itself to the existing order of things. The Roman empire, under Augustus, had not one quarter so many soldiers as France is obliged to maintain.

My wish is to secure the good of my people, and I shall not allow myself to be checked in that course by the murmurs of the tax-payers. I exist for posterity; and as it is necessary for France that immense sums should be raised, they shall be levied accordingly. But my object in these measures is to lay a foundation for the resources of my successors, so secure, that it may serve them, instead of the extraordinary ways and means which I have devised for myself.'"-P. 270.

The short chapter on the liberty of the press is amusing enough, and we once more see the mighty monarch driven into a fury by the insults lavished upon him by the English papers, or, as our author expresses it, like the lion in the fable stung to madness by a swarm of gnats. Owing to the peculiar circumstances under which he held the government during the busy period known by the name of the" Hundred Days," he was obliged to submit to the liberty of the press. "But," says M.

Pelet, "Napoleon existing in France at the same time with a free press, could be compared to nothing but Gulliver in Lilliput, bound down by a multitude of petty cords, which rendered it impossible to move hand or foot."— P. 309.

In the chapter on the Communes or Townships, we find him appropriating, by his never-failing resource, a decree, a large portion of the municipal revenues of the provinces; and when this exaction was loudly complained of, on the score that no tax could be levied without a law to that effect, he turned round, and said with the cruel mockery of a despot, "You are very right-this is not a tax at all-it is merely an impost established by a decree!". "To use such an argument as this," observes M. Pelet," a man must not only be the master, but the absolute master of those he addresses." P. 311.

From the contemplation of this tissue of tyranny and selfishness, we come with a feeling of relief to the consideration of such light matters as the theatres of Paris, on which Napoleon condescends to legislate with all imaginable solemnity. The opera was manifestly his favourite house; and, considering his Italian descent, this was not surprising. "The opera," exclaims he, "is the very soul of Paris, as Paris is the soul of France! It costs the Government eight hundred thousand francs (or about thirty-two thousand pounds sterling) annually, but it is an establishment which flatters the national vanity, and must be kept up. This can easily be accomplished without laying on any new tax; for we have only to protect the opera by giving it certain privileges at the expense of the other theatres." --P. 325.

In the midst of his minute and meddling sort of legislation for the theatres he seems to have been struck with the ignoble and even mischievous nature of his interference. At least so we inter

pret the following remarkable observa

tions

"At the same time, we must take care in our decree about these matters to leave most of the details quite loose and vague, dwelling rather upon principles, so as to give as much latitude as possible to the citizens themselves. It is any thing but a kindness to show too much solicitude about them, for nothing is more tyrannical than a government which affects to be paternal.' (Il n'y a rien de si tyrannique qu'un gouvernement qui prétend être paternel.")— P. 326.

We wonder whether or not he had his father-in-law's government in his eye when he made this remark? Certain we are that the application is most exact, as we think might readily be shown, had we time and space to digress upon Austria.

After having regulated the numbers and specific duties of the theatres of Paris, he proceeds to decide how many shall be allowed to each of the great towns of the empire; and then, again adverting to Paris, and the choppings and changes he had made in the playhouses there, he says, justly enough—

"I do not conceive the government can fairly be required to pay any thing in the shape of indemnity for the theatres, which are to be suppressed or shifted from one place to another. It is quite enough, I think, to have twelve hundred thousand francs (L.50,000 sterling) to pay annually for the support of the stage! It shall not be said that I spend the people's money on mountebanks (pour des histrions). A decree will be sufficient to effect all these changes.""-P. 327.

This curious book winds up with a remarkable chapter on the laws relating to the gambling-houses of Paris; and we lament to observe how ineffectual all sorts and kinds of legislative interference has proved to mitigate the dreadful rage for play which saturates that capital. We most sincerely rejoice, however, to learn that the government of France has at length resolved to shake off the intolerable dis.. grace of deriving a revenue from the proceeds of these horrid sinks of iniquity, even though, as we too much fear, all the efforts of the Legislature, however cordially backed by the executive, will be unavailing in the task of essentially suppressing the gaming-tables of Paris. The following is the last of the numerous notes which M. Pelet has contributed to this translation

"A law was passed last year (1836) to put down the gambling-houses of Paris-to take effect from the 1st of January, 1838. The person who farmed the gambling-houses paid six millions francs (L.240,000) annually to the Government, which portion of the revenue has of course been given up. P."

We close our extracts with a short sentence, which forcibly shows-what, indeed, the whole volume shows-the withering effects of despotism, which, when long exercised, is sure to destroy that self acting elasticity of action which forms the vital principle in the institutions of a free country, but which (except, perhaps, in the single case of mi

litary enthusiasm) cannot coexist with arbitrary power.

"On every fresh occasion,' sighed the harassed Emperor, or when any thing is to be done, I am constantly told that the judges and the courts require to be stirred up by me. Now, surely, the machinery of public justice ought to go on of itself, even when the Government is asleep!'"-P. 332. And so it will, when people are left to exert their energies in the generous spirit of freedom-never when all their thoughts and actions are regulated by the absolute will of one man.

It will strike every one, we imagine, on reading this book, that, while there has seldom existed an individual who enjoyed such extensive opportunities of doing good as Bonaparte, so no one, probably, ever wasted more completely, on the uses of selfishness, those prodigious means which fortune had placed in his hands. M. Pelet is evidently of this opinion, as the following extract will show :

"At the period when Napoleon came to the possession of power, he found himself placed in the most favourable circumstances possible to establish the union of freedom with the monarchical authority. France, in fact, dreaded nothing so much as anarchy, and would have been contented with a very reasonable allowance of freedom. But, unfortunately, that is always the predicament in which despotism is the most tempted to establish itself. Napoleon, accordingly, did establish a despotism; and, in the dread of having to combat republican tendencies at home, he carried abroad all the active spirits of the nation, and precipitated himself into a series of wars and conquests, which could have no other end but a fatal catastrophe. Even he himself was possessed with the notion that he could found nothing permanent. In full council he exclaimed one day

"All this will last as long as I hold out, but when I am gone, my son may call himself a lucky fellow if he has a couple of thousands a-year!""-P. 17.

We bear Napoleon no ill-will, Heaven knows; and as we have here extenuated nothing, so we have set down nought in malice. But we certainly do feel rather anxious to show that the admiration which is still heedlessly lavished by some people on this great adventurer is altogether inconsistent with those feelings which an honest inspection of the truth, as it comes to us authenticated by the most unexceptionable authorities, ought to inspire in the mind of every well-wisher to the cause of virtue, genuine freedom, and practical good government.

WHILE John was shaking hands in this fashion with Arthur and Bobby, and blessing his stars that he had rid the house of Sheepface and his brethren, I leave you to guess what wry faces these gentry were making as they marched down the avenue and out of the gate, casting many a longing eye at the buttery as they past, and thinking how long it might be before they clapt their legs under John's wainscot again. When the gate was fairly shut behind them, and they had got out into the village-green, the villagers came flocking about them, wondering what brought them there in a body, and why they looked so wobegone and discomfited. Whereupon Sheepface, observing Obadiah, the dissenting minister, Dan, and Tipperary, and Radical Dick, and many of his friends among the crowd, got straightway into a dung-cart, and began to harangue them upon the cruel way in which they had been treated. "'Twasn't," he said, "that John hadn't a right to dismiss his servants, as any other squire might; but to turn them out of doors between terms, and without even a month's warning, was a niggardly shame, and what had never happened before in the Bull family, even in the time of John's father, who was pretty peremptory and shortwinded in his dealings with his servants. And then not a farthing of board-wages allowed them while they were seeking another place! Why, at this rate, who would take service? For his part, he cared not a brass farthing for the place; he had always had more kicks than halfpence in it, God knows! and more dirty work to do than he could well manage. It was the bad example he thought of. Besides that, he pitied poor Johnny, who had a young wife and a large family to provide for, and who was really not fit for hard work at his years. So he trusted they would make John feel his mistake, by never giving the new bookkeeper a moment's rest; and

if he dismissed the present servants, as he was likely to do, then to fill the house with a set worse than the first, who were to do nothing but thwart him in every manner of way-to answer him at cross-purposes-when he asked for one thing to hand him anotherif he called for an English beef-steak, for instance, to set before him an Irish stew, which he detested-if he wished to comfort his heart with a drop of Bishop, to fill the tankard, as if by mistake, with Dublin porter; and in short, by fair means or foul, to make the house too hot for him, so as to make him throw up his place of his own accord. Some good-natured bumpkins among the crowd thought this rather hard dealing, and proposed giving the new comer a fair trial, for they had never found any great dif-. ference, so far as they were concerned, whether Arthur, Gaffer Gray, or Sheepface had the books, and they thought it likely they would be just as well off under Bobby as any other. But no sooner was this spoken of than Dan threw his shillelah with a flourish into the air, and Radical Dick and Tipperary bellowed out that that was all gammon; while Obadiah, with a pious snuffle, observed, that the safe course would be that which was usually followed at Jedburgh, to hang him first, and try him afterwards. So right or wrong, they determined to have him out.

Though Bobby had taken the books at poor John's request-seeing him in such a quandary with his former steward, he saw very well that things were not likely to move on smoothly, and indeed had all along great doubts whether he would be able to keep his place till next term. However, he determined to put the best face upon the matter he could, and set to work as boldly as if he had taken a lease of the situation for life. The first thing he did was to send the former servants about their business, for being all hand and glove with the last steward, and a