To the Addresses which were presented to him by the various public bodies he answered in language which, if sincere, would imply that he had renounced all his former passion for arbitrary powTo the Ministers he said: "All for the er. Napoleon,-(sternly) "Why have "Why have you not obeyed my orders ?" D'Affry," Because I acknowledge only the authority of the King and the Cantons." N.—" Know you to whom you speak ?" D.-"Yes, I am addressing General Buonaparte." N." You are addressing the Emperor of the French, and in that title I order you to repair to the square of the Carousel, with your regiment, that I may review you." D.— General! I have already had the honor to inform you that I will receive the orders of the King alone, to whom I have sworn allegiance." N.-"You took the same oath to me five years ago D." You released me from that oath by your abdication." D." You will have the goodness to recollect that I belong to the Cantons.” N." I will reduce them to submission." D. "You will not easily reduce three hundred thousand men, resolved to lose their lives rather than their liberty." N.-"Yet you were reduced by the Austrians." D.-" And we were relieved by William Tell." Enough," said Napoleon, turning to one of his Ministers, and thus terminated this singular conversation. The Court was astonished at the boldness of the Swiss Colonel, and expected that an order for his immediate arrest, must have been its certain consequence. But this would not have answered Napoleon's present policy. He was permitted to depart, and all attempts to seduce the Swiss troops from their allegiance having failed, they were suffered to return to their native country. nation; all for France !-that is my motto." The Council of State declared in their address, "The Sovereignty rests in the people. The people are the only source of legitimate power;" and they called upon the Emperor to guarantee anew, by fresh institutions, individual liberty, the equality of rights, the liberty of the press, the abolition of the censorship, the freedom of worship, the voting of taxes and laws by the representatives of the nation freely elected, the inviolability of national property of every origin, the independence and irrevocability of the tribunals, with the responsibility of Ministers and all the agents of the government. In the necessity of the firm establishment of these salutary guards of freedom, Napoleon, who a year before had haughtily declared, "I am the throne-the representation of the people is vested in me—the nation is mine," now fully acquiesced. "Princes," said he, "are the first citizens of the state. Their authority is more or less extended according to the interests of the nation, whom they govern. The sovereignty itself is only hereditary, because the welfare of the people requires it. Departing from this principle I know no legitimacy.-I have renounced the idea of the Grand Empire, of which, during fifteen years I had but founded the bases. Henceforth the happiness and the consolidation of the French Empire shall be all my thoughts." The Ministry appointed by Napoleon, like that of Louis, was composed of discordant principles,* Imperialists and Jacobins, who were united only by their mutual hatred of the Bourbons. Numerous disputes are said to have arisen amongst them, for Napoleon, notwithstanding his apparent conversion to the sytem of a popular constitution, frequently urged the necessity, while the country was exposed to peril both foreign and domestic, of investing the Sovereign with temporary authority of an almost despotic character; but this the Jacobins considered as an experiment too dangerous to be hazarded. Mutual jealousies were the consequence, which did not escape the notice of the public, and the Royalists failed not to take advantage of dissensions which augured so ill of the permanence of the new government. agents of Louis gave the most extensive circulation to the proclamations which he issued from Ghent, forbidding the people to pay taxes to the usurped The Cambaceres, Prince Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, held the Seals; Gaudin, (Duke of Gaeta) was named Minister of Finance; Maret, (Duke of Bassano) Secretary of State; the Duke of Decres, Minister of the Marine and Colonies; Count Carnot, Minister of the Interior; Caulaincourt, (Duke of Vicenza) Minister of Foreign Affairs; Fouché, (Duke of Otranto) Minister of Police; Davoust, (Prince of Eckmuhl) Minister of the War Department; Count Mollien was appointed to the Treasury; Savary, (Duke of Rovigo) to the Inspection of the Gendarmerie ; Count de Bondy to the Department of the Seine; and M. Real to the prefecture of the Police. government, and acquainting them with the preparations which were making by united Europe for its overthrow. Lampoons, pasquinades, and pamphlets written with much force and eloquence, were circulated omong the higher orders ;* while *In one of these publications, the character of Napoleon was thus delineated :-"Buonaparte can, henceforth, deceive nobody in France; for of all the parties which have survived our civil discords, the most credulous already perceive his perfidy. A few of those irritable, impassioned, and above all, credulous men, because they are generally generous and sensible; a few of those men, I say, who have been dreaming during twenty years of an imaginary Republic, and have pursued their illusions through all governments and all anarchies, felt their hopes revive at the cry of liberty, which the mob in the train of Buonaparte raised on his passage to Paris.-They forgot that Buonaparte is the sworn enemy to liberty, the assassin of the republic, and the first violator of those sacred rights, of which they had so dearly paid the purchase. They forgot that Buonaparte spoke also of liberty, when he destroyed the national representation of St. Cloud. They forgot that it was in the name of the French Republic, that Buonaparte had established the most insolent despotism, of which mankind had ever supported the yoke.— They forgot that Buonaparte had attempted to suppress all the sentiments which united the citizen to the country, to extinguish all the lights of civilization, to paralyse every means of education. They forgot that Buonaparte had proscribed every Jiberal and philosophic idea, under the title of ideology; that he consecrated the most destructive principles of despotism in books, avowed by his ministers; that he promised feudal privileges to his sbirri, and gave sovereignty to his satraps.They forgot that heaven and hell are not more distant, than those most extremes of all the series of ideas which occupy the human mind-Buonaparte and liberty.-They forgot that the very word liberty, so cruelly proscribed under the iron reign of the usurper, many of the lower classes vociferated in unequivocal language, their anxiety for the King's return. The abolition of the Censorship of the Press, which was one of the first acts of Napoleon, encouraged both the royalist and republican party, to whom he was equally an object of detestation, to express their opinions of the present state of things in no very measured language. The precarious si-' tuation of the new government, rendered it dangerous to adopt any strong measures for the suppres-› sion of the licentiousness of the press, and after a feeble attempt to restrain Le Compte, the Editor of Le Censeur, who said that Buonaparte lovedliberty-but it was after the manner of M. Fouché, all parties were allowed to indulge themselves freely in the expression of their politi cal sentiments. Besides the suppression of the Censorship of the Press, some other measures were adopted by Napoleon, which were calculated to augment his popularity. The Slave Trade was abolished, a measure that was likely to conciliate the feelings of a majority of the British nation :-the obnoxious tax called droits reunis, was rendered less burthensome by some alleviating regulations; the 「 only gladdened our ears for the first time, after twelve years of humiliation and despair, on the happy restoration of Louis XVIII. Ah! miserable impostor, would you have spoken of liberty, had not Louis XVIII. brought back liberty and peace ?" |