“With the exception of that woman, a few priests, and two or three old Chouan spies, the rest exhibited but a filthy compound of disgusting or extravagant depravity.
“I met with a married man, possessing an annual income of 15,000 livres, evidently confined in consequence of his wife’s intrigues, after the manner of the ancient lettres de cachet; and with prostitutes, who assured me they were detained, not as a punishment for the indiscriminate profusion of their favours, but out of spite at their want of complaisance for a single person. They told me lies, or they did not; but in either case ought they to be honoured with the title of prisoners of state, to be maintained at the expense of two francs a day, and contribute to render the government odious and ridiculous? Finally, I met with an unhappy man in a town of Belgium, who had married one of those girls for whom the municipalities provide marriage portions on great occasions. He was imprisoned on a charge of having stolen the portion, because he had neglected to earn it. He was positively required to discharge that important debt, and he as positively refused. He was, perhaps, required to do what was absolutely impossible for him.
“Immediately upon my return to Paris, I called on M. Réal, prefect of police of the district I had just visited. I considered it my duty, I said, to communicate to him, in a friendly manner, the result of my observations. I must do him justice; for whether he was far from having a bad heart, whether he was impressed with my plain dealing, or affected perhaps, Sire, by the magic influence of your uniform, he thanked me, observed that I was doing him a real service, and assured me that he would take immediate steps for relieving and redressing, such were his words, the cases I had laid before him. Meeting him, however, a few days afterwards at an assembly, he said, with apparent grief, ‘That is an unfortunate business, and very unfavourable to your Amazon (he alluded to General Mallet’s rash enterprise), which I thought myself capable of doing a few days ago of my own accord. I cannot now pretend to undertake it without an order from a superior quarter.’—I do not know how the thing ended.”
The Emperor dwelt some time on the abuses I had pointed out, and then concluded: “In the first place, in order to proceed regularly, it was incumbent upon you to ascertain whether your information was well founded, and to hear the evidence against the persons accused; and then it must be frankly admitted that abuses are inherent in every human establishment. You see that almost every thing, of which you complain, is done by the very persons who were expressly entrusted with the means of prevention. Can a remedy be provided, when it is impossible to see what passes every where? There is, as it were, a net spread over the low places, which envelops the lower classes. A mesh must be broken and discovered by a fortunate observer like you, before any thing of the matter is known in the upper regions. Accordingly, one of my dreams would have been, when the grand events of war were completely terminated, and I returned to the interior in tranquillity and at ease, to look out for half a dozen, or a dozen, of real philanthropists, of those worthy men who live but to do good. I should have distributed them through the empire, which they should have secretly inspected for the purpose of making their report to me. They would have been spies of virtue! They should have addressed themselves directly to me, and should have been my confessors, my spiritual guides, and my decisions with them should have been my good works done in secret. My grand occupation, when at full leisure, and at the height of my power, would have been the amelioration of every class of society. I should have descended to the details of individual comfort; and, had I found no motive for that conduct in my natural disposition, I should have been actuated by the spirit of calculation; for, after the acquisition of so much glory, what other means would have been left me to make any addition to it? It was because I was well aware that that swarm of abuses necessarily existed, because I wished for the preservation of my subjects, and was desirous of throwing every impediment in the way of subordinate and intermediate tyranny, that I conceived my system of state prisons, adapted to any crisis that might occur.”—“Yes, Sire, but it was far from being well received in our saloons, and contributed not a little to make you unpopular. An outcry was every where raised against the new bastiles, against the renewal of lettres de cachet.”—“I know it very well.” said the Emperor, “the outcry was echoed by all Europe, and rendered me odious. And yet, observe how powerful was the influence of words, envenomed by perfidy! The whole of the discontent was principally occasioned by the preposterous title of my decree, which escaped me from distraction, or some other cause; for, in the main, I contend that the law itself was an eminent service, and rendered individual liberty more complete and certain in France than in any other country of Europe.
“Considering the crisis from which we had emerged, the factions by which we had been divided, and the plots which had been laid, and were still contriving, imprisonment became indispensable. It was, in fact, a benefit; for it superseded the scaffold. But I was desirous of sanctioning it by legal enactments, and of placing it beyond the reach of caprice, of arbitrary power, of hatred, and of vengeance. Nobody, according to my law, could be imprisoned and detained as a prisoner of state, without the decision of my privy council, which consisted of sixteen persons; the first, the most independent and most distinguished characters of the state. What unworthy feeling would have dared to expose itself to the detection of such a tribunal? Had I not voluntarily deprived myself of the power of consigning individuals to prison? No man could be detained beyond a year, without a fresh decision of the Privy-Council, and four votes out of sixteen were sufficient to effect his release. Two councillors of state were bound to attend to the statements of the prisoners, and became from that moment their zealous advocates with the Privy Council. These prisoners were also under the protection of the Committee of individual liberty, appointed by the Senate, which was the object of public derision, merely because it made no parade of its labours and their results. Its services, however, were great; for it would argue a defective knowledge of mankind to suppose that Senators, who had nothing to expect from ministers, and who were their equals in rank, would not make use of their prerogative to oppose and attack them, whenever the importance of the case called for their interference. It must also be considered that I had assigned the superintendence of the prisoners, and of the police of the prisons, to the tribunals, which, from that instant, paralyzed the exercise of every kind of arbitrary authority by the other branches of administration and their numerous subordinate agents. After such precautions, I do not hesitate to maintain that civil liberty was as effectually secured by that law in France as it could possibly be. The public misconceived, or pretended to misconceive, that truth, for we Frenchmen must murmur at every thing and on every occasion.
“The fact is, that at the time of my downfal the state prisons scarcely contained 250 persons, and I found 9000 in them, when I became Consul. It will appear, from the list of those who were imprisoned, and upon an examination into the causes and motives of their confinement, that almost every one of them deserved death, and would have been sentenced to it by regular process of law; and it consequently follows that their imprisonment was, on my part, a benefit conferred upon them. Why is there nothing published against me on this subject at present? Where are the serious grievances to be found with which I am reproached? There are none in reality. If some of the prisoners afterwards made a merit of their sufferings with the King, on account of their exertions in his favour, did they not by that proceeding pronounce their own sentence and attest my justice? For what may seem a virtuous action in the King’s eye was incontestably a crime under me; and it was only because I was repugnant to the shedding of blood on account of political crimes, and because such trials would have but tended to the continuance of commotion and perplexity in the heart of the country, that I commuted the punishment to mere imprisonment.
“I repeat it, the French were, at my era, the freest people of all Europe, without even excepting the English; for, in England, if any extreme danger causes the suspension of the Habeas Corpus act, every individual may be sent to prison at the mere will of ministers, who are not called upon to justify their motives, or to account for their conduct. My law had very different limits.” He concluded with saying;—“And then, at last, if, in spite of my good intention, and notwithstanding my utmost care, all that you have just said, and no doubt, many other things, were well founded, it must not still be considered so easy a task as it is thought to create a beneficial establishment for a nation. It is a remarkable circumstance that the countries which have been separated from us have regretted the laws with which I governed them. This is an homage paid to their superiority. The real, the only, mode of passing a decisive sentence upon me, with regard to their defects, would be to shew the existence of a better code in any other country. New times are drawing near, it will be seen,” &c.
About five o’clock, I was told by the Grand Marshal, who had just left the Emperor, that he wished to see me. He had staid at home the whole of the day. I found him engaged in examining the new billiard-table. He was apprehensive that the weather was too damp for walking, and he played at chess until dinner. In the evening, he read us Crebillon’s Atrée et Thyeste. That piece seemed horrible to us; we found it disgusting, and by no means of a tragic cast. The Emperor could not finish it.
EGYPT.—ST. JEAN D’ACRE.—THE DESERT.—ANECDOTES.
21st. About three o’clock, the Emperor called for his calash. He sent for me, and we walked together to the bottom of the wood where he had ordered the carriage to take him up. I had some particulars of no great moment to communicate, which personally concerned him. We observed, in the course of our ride, two vessels under sail for the island.