While Europe was stunned and astonished at the spirit of conquest and accumulation manifested by this insatiable conqueror, France was made aware that he was equally desirous to consolidate and to prolong his power, as to extend it over near and distant regions. He was all, and more than all, that sovereign had ever been; but he still wanted the title and the permanence which royalty requires. To attain these was no difficult matter, when the first consul was the prime mover of each act, whether in the Senate or Tribunate; nor was he long of discovering proper agents eager to gratify his wishes.
Chabot de L'Allier took the lead in the race of adulation.—Arising in the Tribunate, he pronounced a long eulogium on Buonaparte, enhancing the gratitude due to the hero by whom France had been preserved and restored to victory. He therefore proposed that the Tribunate should transmit to the Conservative Senate a resolution, requesting the Senate to consider the manner of bestowing on Napoleon Buonaparte a splendid mark of the national gratitude.
There was no misunderstanding this hint. The motion was unanimously adopted, and transmitted to the Convention, to the Senate, to the Legislative Body, and to the Consuls.
The Senate conceived they should best meet the demand now made upon them, by electing Napoleon first consul for a second space of ten years, to commence when the date of the original period, for which he was named by the Constitution, should expire.
The proposition of the Senate being reduced into the form of a decree, was intimated to Buonaparte, but fell short of his wishes; as it assigned to him, however distant it was, a period at which he must be removed from authority. It is true, that the space of seventeen years, to which the edict of the Senate proposed to extend his power, seemed to guarantee a very ample duration; and in point of fact, before the term of its expiry arrived, he was prisoner at Saint Helena. But still there was a termination, and that was enough to mortify his ambition.
CONSUL FOR LIFE.
He thanked the Senate, therefore, for this fresh mark of their confidence, but eluded accepting it in express terms, by referring to the pleasure of the people. Their suffrages, he said, had invested him with power, and he could not think it right to accept of the prolongation of that power but by their consent. It might have been thought that there was now nothing left but to present the decree of the Senate to the people. But the second and third consuls, Buonaparte's colleagues at a humble distance, took it upon them, though the constitution gave them no warrant for such a manœuvre, to alter the question of the Senate, and to propose to the people one more acceptable to Buonaparte's ambition, requesting their judgment, whether the chief consul should retain his office, not for ten years longer, but for the term of his life. By thus juggling, the proposal of the Senate was set aside, and that assembly soon found it wisest to adopt the more liberal views suggested by the consuls, to whom they returned thanks, for having taught them (we suppose) how to appreciate a hint.
The question was sent down to the departments. The registers were opened with great form, as if the people had really some constitutional right to exercise. As the subscriptions were received at the offices of the various functionaries of government, it is no wonder, considering the nature of the question, that the ministers with whom the registers were finally deposited, were enabled to report a majority of three millions of citizens who gave votes in the affirmative. It was much more surprising, that there should have been an actual minority of a few hundred determined Republicans, with Carnot at their head, who answered the question in the negative. This statesman observed, as he signed his vote, that he was subscribing his sentence of deportation; from which we may conjecture his opinion concerning the fairness of this mode of consulting the people. He was mistaken notwithstanding. Buonaparte found himself so strong, that he could afford to be merciful, and to assume a show of impartiality, by suffering those to go unpunished who had declined to vote for the increase of his power.[643]
He did not, however, venture to propose to the people another innovation, which extended beyond his death the power which their liberal gift had continued during his life. A simple decree of the Senate assigned to Buonaparte the right of nominating his successor, by a testamentary deed. So that Napoleon might call his children or relatives to the succession of the empire of France, as to a private inheritance; or, like Alexander, he might leave it to the most favoured of his lieutenant-generals. To such a pass had the domination of a military chief, for the space of betwixt two and three years, reduced the fierce democracy and stubborn loyalty of the two factions, which seemed before that period to combat for the possession of France. Napoleon had stooped on them both, like the hawk in the fable.
The period at which we close this chapter was a most important one in Napoleon's life, and seemed a crisis on which his fate, and that of France, depended. Britain, his most inveterate and most successful enemy, had seen herself compelled by circumstances to resort to the experiment of a doubtful peace, rather than continue a war which seemed to be waged without an object. The severe checks to national prosperity, which arose from the ruined commerce and blockaded ports of France, might now, under the countenance of the first consul, be exchanged for the wealth that waits upon trade and manufactures. Her navy, of which few vestiges were left save the Brest fleet, might now be recruited, and resume by degrees that acquaintance with the ocean from which they had long been debarred. The restored colonies of France might have added to the sources of her national wealth, and she might have possessed—what Buonaparte on a remarkable occasion declared to be the principal objects he desired for her—ships, colonies, and commerce.