The Life of Napoleon I (Volume 1 of 2)

by J. Holland Rose

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CHAPTER XII

THE NEW INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE

"We have done with the romance of the Revolution: we must now commence its history. We must have eyes only for what is real and practicable in the application of principles, and not for the speculative and hypothetical." Such were the memorable words of Bonaparte to his Council of State at one of its early meetings. They strike the keynote of the era of the Consulate. It was a period of intensely practical activity that absorbed all the energies of France and caused the earlier events of the Revolution to fade away into a seemingly remote past. The failures of the civilian rulers and the military triumphs of Bonaparte had exerted a curious influence on the French character, which was in a mood of expectant receptivity. In 1800 everything was in the transitional state that favours the efforts of a master builder; and one was now at hand whose constructive ability in civil affairs equalled his transcendent genius for war.

I propose here briefly to review the most important works of reconstruction which render the Consulate and the early part of the Empire for ever famous. So vast and complex were Bonaparte's efforts in this field that they will be described, not chronologically, but subject by subject. The reader will, however, remember that for the most part they went on side by side, even amidst the distractions caused by war, diplomacy, colonial enterprises, and the myriad details of a vast administration. What here appears as a series of canals was in reality a mighty river of enterprise rolling in undivided volume and fed by the superhuman vitality of the First Consul. It was his inexhaustible curiosity which compelled functionaries to reveal the secrets of their office: it was his intelligence that seized on the salient points of every problem and saw the solution: it was his ardour and mental tenacity which kept his Ministers and committees hard at work, and by toil of sometimes twenty hours a day supervised the results: it was, in fine, his passion for thoroughness, his ambition for France, that nerved every official with something of his own contempt of difficulties, until, as one of them said, "the gigantic entered into our very habits of thought."[149]

The first question of political reconstruction which urgently claimed attention was that of local government. On the very day when it was certain that the nation had accepted the new constitution, the First Consul presented to the Legislature a draft of a law for regulating the affairs of the Departments. It must be admitted that local self-government, as instituted by the men of 1789 in their Departmental System, had proved a failure. In that time of buoyant hope, when every difficulty and abuse seemed about to be charmed away by the magic of universal suffrage, local self-government of a most advanced type had been intrusted to an inexperienced populace. There were elections for the commune or parish, elections for the canton, elections for the district, elections for the Department, and elections for the National Assembly, until the rustic brain, after reeling with excitement, speedily fell back into muddled apathy and left affairs generally to the wire-pullers of the nearest Jacobin club. A time of great confusion ensued. Law went according to local opinion, and the national taxes were often left unpaid. In the Reign of Terror this lax system was replaced by the despotism of the secret committees, and the way was thus paved for a return to organized central control, such as was exercised by the Directory.

The First Consul, as successor to the Directory, therefore found matters ready to his hand for a drastic measure of centralization, and it is curious to notice that the men of 1789 had unwittingly cleared the ground for him. To make way for the "supremacy of the general will," they abolished the Parlements, which had maintained the old laws, customs, and privileges of their several provinces, and had frequently interfered in purely political matters. The abolition of these and other privileged corporations in 1789 unified France and left not a single barrier to withstand either the flood of democracy or the backwash of reaction. Everything therefore favoured the action of the First Consul in drawing all local powers under his own control. France was for the moment weary of elective bodies, that did little except waste the nation's taxes; and though there was some opposition to the new proposal, it passed on February 16th, 1800 (28 Pluviose, an, viii).

It substituted local government by the central power for local self-government. The local divisions remained the same, except that the "districts," abolished by the Convention, were now reconstituted on a somewhat larger scale, and were termed arrondissements, while the smaller communes, which had been merged in the cantons since 1795, were also revived. It is noteworthy that, of all the areas mapped out by the Constituent Assembly in 1789-90, only the Department and canton have had a continuous existence—a fact which seems to show the peril of tampering with well-established boundaries, and of carving out a large number of artificial districts, which speedily become the corpus vile of other experimenters. Indeed, so little was there of effective self-government that France seems to have sighed with relief when order was imposed by Bonaparte in the person of a Prefect. This important official, a miniature First Consul, was to administer the affairs of the Department, while sub-prefects were similarly placed over the new arrondissements, and mayors over the communes. The mayors were appointed by the First Consul in communes of more than 5,000 souls: by the prefects in the smaller communes: all were alike responsible to the central power.

The rebound from the former electoral system, which placed all local authority ultimately in the hands of the voters, was emphasized by Article 75 of the constitution, which virtually raised officials beyond reach of prosecution. It ran thus: "The agents of the Government, other than the Ministers, cannot be prosecuted for facts relating to their duties except by a decision of the Council of State: in that case the prosecution takes place before the ordinary tribunals." Now, as this decision rested with a body composed almost entirely of the higher officials, it will be seen that the chance of a public prosecution of an official became extremely small. France was therefore in the first months of 1800 handed over to a hierarchy of officials closely bound together by interest and esprit de corps; and local administration, after ten years of democratic experiments, practically reverted to what it had been under the old monarchy. In fact, the powers of the Prefects were, on the whole, much greater than those of the royal Intendants: for while the latter were hampered by the provincial Parlements, the nominees of the First Consul had to deal with councils that retained scarce the shadow of power. The real authority in local matters rested with the Prefects. The old elective bodies survived, it is true, but their functions were now mainly advisory; and, lest their advice should be too copious, the sessions of the first two bodies were limited to a fortnight a year. Except for a share in the assessment of taxation, their existence was merely a screen to hide the reality of the new central despotism.[150] Beneficent it may have been; and the choice of Prefects was certainly a proof of Bonaparte's discernment of real merit among men of all shades of opinion; but for all that, it was a despotism, and one that has inextricably entwined itself with the whole life of France.[151]

It seems strange that this law should not have aroused fierce opposition; for it practically gagged democracy in its most appropriate and successful sphere of action, local self-government, and made popular election a mere shadow, except in the single act of the choice of the local juges de paix. This was foreseen by the Liberals in the Tribunate: but their power was small since the regulations passed in January: and though Daunou, as "reporter," sharply criticised this measure, yet he lamely concluded with the advice that it would be dangerous to reject it. The Tribunes therefore passed the proposal by 71 votes to 25: and the Corps Législatif by 217 to 68.