Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume III.

by Walter Scott

Such limits to the freedom of debate in the Imperial Council of State, correspond with those laid down in the festive entertainments of Sans Souci, where the Great Frederick professed to support and encourage every species of familiar raillery, but, when it attained a point that was too personal, used to hint to the facetious guests, that he heard the King's step in the gallery. There were occasions, accordingly, when, not satisfied with calling their attention to the distant murmurs of the Imperial thunder, Napoleon launched its bolts in the midst of his trembling counsellors. Such a scene was that of Portalis. This statesman, a man of talent and virtue, had been eminently useful, as we have seen, in bringing about the Concordat, and had been created, in recompense, minister of religious affairs, and counsellor of state. In the subsequent disputes betwixt the Pope and Buonaparte, a relation of the minister had been accused of circulating the bulls, or spiritual admonitions of the Pope; and Portalis had failed to intimate the circumstance to the Emperor. On this account, Napoleon, in full council, attacked him in the severest terms, as guilty of having broken his oath as a counsellor and minister of state, deprived him of both offices, and expelled him from the assembly, as one who had betrayed his sovereign.[311] If any of the members of the Council of State had ventured, when this sentence rung in their ears, to come betwixt the dragon and his wrath, for the purpose of stating that a hasty charge ought not instantly to be followed with immediate censure and punishment; that it was possible M. Portalis might have been misled by false information, or by a natural desire to screen the offence of his cousin; or, finally, that his conduct might have been influenced by views of religion which, if erroneous, were yet sincere and conscientious—we should then have believed, that the Council of State of Buonaparte formed a body, in which the accused citizen might receive some protection against the despotism of the government. But when, or in what country, could the freedom of the nation be intrusted to the keeping of the immediate counsellors of the throne? It can only be safely lodged in some body, the authority of which emanates directly from the nation, and whom the nation therefore will protect and support, in the existence of their right of opposition or remonstrance.

The deliberations of the Council of State, or such resolutions as Buonaparte chose to adopt without communication with them, (for it may be easily supposed that they were not admitted to share his more secret political discussions,) were, as in other countries, adjusted with and executed by the ostensible ministers.

PREFECTURES.

But, that part of the organisation of the Imperial government, upon which Buonaparte most piqued himself, was the establishment of the Prefectures, which certainly gave facilities for the most effectual agency of despotism that was ever exercised. There is no mistaking the object and tendency of this arrangement, since Buonaparte himself, and his most bitter opponents, hold up the same picture, one to the admiration, the other to the censure, of the world. These prefects, it must be understood, were each the supreme governor of a department, answering to the old lieutenants and governors of counties, and representing the Imperial person within the limits of the several prefectures. The individuals were carefully selected, as persons whose attachment was either to be secured or rewarded. They received large and, in some cases, exorbitant salaries, some amounting to fifteen, twenty, and even thirty thousand francs. This heavy expense Napoleon stated to be the consequence of the depraved state of moral feeling in France, which made it necessary to attach men by their interests rather than their duties; but it was termed by his enemies one of the leading principles of his government, which treated the public good as a chimera, and erected private and personal interest into the paramount motive upon which alone the state was to be served by efficient functionaries. The prefects were chosen in the general case, as men whose birth and condition were totally unconnected with that of the department in which each was to preside; les dépayser, to place them in a country to which they were strangers, being an especial point of Napoleon's policy. They were entirely dependent on the will of the Emperor, who removed or cashiered them at pleasure. The administration of the departments was intrusted to these important officers.

"With the authority and local resources placed at their disposal," said Buonaparte, "the prefects were themselves emperors on a limited scale; and as they had no force excepting through the impulse which they received from the throne, as they owed their whole power to their immediate commission, and as they had no authority of a personal character, they were of as much use to the crown as the former high agents of government, without any of the inconveniences which attached to their predecessors."[312] It was by means of the prefects that an impulse, given from the centre of the government, was communicated without delay to the extremities of the kingdom, and that the influence of the crown, and the execution of its commands, were transmitted, as if by magic, through a population of forty millions. It appears that Napoleon, while describing with self-complacency this terrible engine of unlimited power, felt that it might not be entirely in unison with the opinions of those favourers of liberal institutions, whose sympathy at the close of life he thought worthy of soliciting. "My creating that power," he said, "was on my part a case of necessity. I was a dictator, called to that office by force of circumstances. There was a necessity that the filaments of the government which extended over the state, should be in complete harmony with the key-note which was to influence them. The organisation which I had extended over the empire, required to be maintained at a high degree of tension, and to possess a prodigious force of elasticity, to enable it to resist the terrible blows directed against it without cessation."[313] His defence amounts to this—"The men of my time were extravagantly fond of power, exuberantly attached to place and wealth. I therefore bribed them to become my agents by force of places and pensions. But I was educating the succeeding race to be influenced by better motives. My son would have been surrounded by youths sensible to the influence of justice, honour, and virtue; and those who were called to execute public duty, would have considered their doing so as its own reward."

The freedom of France was therefore postponed till the return of a Golden Age, when personal aggrandisement and personal wealth should cease to have any influence upon regenerated humanity. In the meanwhile, she had the dictatorship and the prefects.

The impulse, as Napoleon terms it, by which the crown put in action these subordinate agents in the departments, was usually given by means of a circular letter or proclamation, communicating the particular measure which government desired to be enforced. This was subscribed by the minister to whose department the affair belonged, and concluded with an injunction upon the prefect, to be active in forwarding the matter enjoined, as he valued the favour of the Emperor, or wished to show himself devoted to the interests of the crown.[314] Thus conjured, the prefect transmitted the order to the sub-prefect and mayors of the communities within his department, who, stimulated by the same motives that had actuated their principal, endeavoured each to distinguish himself by his active compliance with the will of the Emperor, and thus merit a favourable report, as the active and unhesitating agent of his pleasure.

It was the further duty of the prefects, to see that all honour was duly performed towards the head of the state, upon the days appointed for public rejoicings, and to remind the municipal authorities of the necessity of occasional addresses to the government, declaring their admiration of the talents, and devotion to the person of the Emperor. These effusions were duly published in the Moniteur, and, if examined closely, would afford some of the most extraordinary specimens of composition which the annals of flattery can produce. It is sufficient to say, that a mayor, we believe of Amiens, affirmed, in his ecstasy of loyal adoration, that the Deity, after making Buonaparte, must have reposed, as after the creation of the universe. This, and similar flights of rhetoric, may appear both impious and ridiculous, and it might have been thought that a person of Napoleon's sense and taste would have softened or suppressed them. But he well knew the influence produced on the public mind, by ringing the changes to different time on the same unvaried subject. The ideas which are often repeated in all variety of language and expression, will at length produce an effect on the public mind, especially if no contradiction is permitted to reach it. A uniform which may look ridiculous on a single individual, has an imposing effect when worn by a large body of men; and the empiric, whose extravagant advertisement we ridicule upon the first perusal, often persuades us, by sheer dint of repeating his own praises, to make trial of his medicine. Those who practise calumny know, according to the vulgar expression, that if they do but throw dirt sufficient, some part of it will adhere; and acting on the same principle, for a contrary purpose, Buonaparte was well aware, that the repetition of his praises in these adulatory addresses was calculated finally to make an impression on the nation at large, and to obtain a degree of credit as an expression of public opinion.

Faber, an author too impassioned to obtain unlimited credit, has given several instances of ignorance amongst the prefects; many of whom, being old generals, were void of the information necessary for the exercise of a civil office, and all of whom, having been, upon principle, nominated to a sphere of action with the local circumstances of which they were previously unacquainted, were sufficiently liable to error. But the same author may be fully trusted, when he allows that the prefects could not be accused of depredation or rapine, and that such of them as improved their fortune during the date of their office, did so by economising upon their legitimate allowances.[315]