CAPITALISTS—MANUFACTURES.
On the other hand, capitalists, who had sums invested in the public funds, or who were concerned with the extensive and beneficial contracts for the equipment and supply of Napoleon's large armies, with all the numerous and influential persons upon whom any part of the gathering in or expenditure of the public money devolved, were necessarily devoted to a government, under which, in spite of the Emperor's vigilance, immense profits were often derived, even after those by whom they were made had rendered to the ministers, or perhaps the generals, by whom they were protected, a due portion of the spoil. Economist and calculator as he was, to a most superior degree of excellence, Napoleon seems to have been utterly unable, if he really sincerely desired, to put an end to the peculations of those whom he trusted with power. He frequently, during his conversations at St. Helena, alludes to the venality and corruption of such as he employed in the highest offices, but whose sordid practices seem never to have occurred to him in the way of objection to his making use of their talents. Fouché, Talleyrand, and others, are thus stigmatized; and as we well know how long, and upon how many different occasions, he employed those statesmen, we cannot but suppose that, whatever may have been his sentiments as to the men, he was perfectly willing to compound with their peculation, in order to have the advantage of their abilities. Even when practices of this kind were too gross to be passed over, Napoleon's mode of censuring and repressing them was not adapted to show a pure sense of morality on his own part, or any desire to use extraordinary rigour in preventing them in future. This conclusion we form from the following anecdote which he communicated to Las Cases:—
Speaking of generals, and praising the disinterestedness of some, he adds, Massena, Augereau, Brune, and others, were undaunted depredators. Upon one occasion, the rapacity of the first of these generals had exceeded the patience of the Emperor. His mode of punishing him was peculiar. He did not dispossess him of the command, of which he had rendered himself unworthy by such an unsoldier-like vice—he did not strip the depredator by judicial sentence of his ill-won gains, and restore them to those from whom they were plundered—but, in order to make the General sensible that he had proceeded too far, Buonaparte drew a bill upon the banker of the delinquent, for the sum of two or three millions of francs, to be placed to Massena's debit, and the credit of the drawer. Great was the embarrassment of the banker, who dared not refuse the Imperial order, while he humbly hesitated, that he could not safely honour it without the authority of his principal. "Pay the money," was the Emperor's reply, "and let Massena refuse to give you credit at his peril." The money was paid accordingly, and placed to that General's debit, without his venturing to start any objections.[321] This was not punishing peculation, but partaking in its gains; and the spirit of the transaction approached nearly to that described by Le Sage, where the Spanish minister of state insists on sharing the bribes given to his secretary.
Junot, in like manner; who, upon his return from Portugal, gave general scandal by the display of diamonds, and other wealth, which he had acquired in that oppressed country, received from Buonaparte a friendly hint to be more cautious in such exhibitions. But his acknowledged rapacity was never thought of as a reason disqualifying him for being presently afterwards sent to the government of Illyria.
We are informed, in another of the Emperor's communications, that his Council of State was of admirable use to him in the severe inquisition which he was desirous of making into the public accounts. The proceedings of this Star Chamber, and the fear of being transmitted to the cognition of the Grand Judge, usually brought the culprits to composition; and when they had disgorged one, two, or three millions, the government was enriched, or, according to Buonaparte's ideas, the laws were satisfied.[322] The truth seems to be, that Buonaparte, though he contemned wealth in his own person, was aware that avarice, which, after all, is but a secondary and sordid species of ambition, is the most powerful motive to mean and vulgar minds; and he willingly advanced gold to those who chose to prey upon it, so long as their efforts facilitated his possessing and retaining the unlimited authority to which he had reached. In a country where distress and disaster of every kind, public and private, had enabled many to raise large fortunes by brokerage and agiotage, a monied interest of a peculiar character was soon formed, whose hopes were of course rested on the wonderful ruler, by whose gigantic ambition new schemes of speculation were opened in constant succession, and whose unrivalled talents seemed to have found the art of crowning the most difficult undertakings with success.
It might be thought that the manufacturing interest must have perished in France, from the same reasons which so strongly and unfavourably afflicted the commerce of that country. In ceasing to import, there must indeed have been a corresponding diminution of the demand for goods to be exported, whether these were the growth of the soil, or the productions of French labour. Accordingly, this result had, in a great degree, taken place, and there was a decrease to a large amount in those goods which the French were accustomed to export in exchange for the various commodities supplied to them by British trade. But, though the real and legitimate stimulus to manufactures had thus ceased, Napoleon had substituted an artificial one, which had, to a certain extent, supplied the place of the natural trade. We must remark, that Napoleon, practically and personally frugal, was totally a stranger to the science of Political Economy. He never received or acted upon the idea, that a liberal system of commerce operates most widely in diffusing the productions which are usually the subjects of exchange, and in affording to every country the greatest share of the bounties of nature, or the produce of industry at the easiest rates. On the contrary, he had proceeded to act against the commerce of England, as, in a military capacity, he would have done in regard to the water which supplied a besieged city. He strove to cut it off, and altogether to destroy it, and to supply the absence of its productions, by such substitutes as France could furnish.[323] Hence, the factitious encouragement given to the French manufactures, not by the natural demand of the country, but by the bounties and prohibitions by which they were guarded. Hence, the desperate efforts made to produce a species of sugar from various substances, especially from the beet-root. To this unnatural and unthrifty experiment, Buonaparte used to attach so much consequence, that a piece of the new composition, which, with much time and trouble, had been made to approximate the quality of ordinary loaf-sugar, was preserved in a glass-case over the Imperial mantel-piece; and a pound or two of beet-sugar, highly-refined, was sent to foreign courts, to illustrate the means by which Napoleon consoled his subjects for the evils incumbent on the continental system. No way of flattering or gratifying the Emperor was so certain, as to appear eager in supporting these views; and it is said that one of his generals, when tottering in the Imperial good graces, regained the favour of his master, by planting the whole of a considerable estate with beet-root. In these, and on similar occasions, Napoleon, in his eager desire to produce the commodity desiderated, became regardless of those considerations which a manufacturer first ascertains when about to commence his operations, namely, the expense at which the article can be produced, the price at which it can be disposed of, and its fitness for the market which it is intended to supply. The various encouragements given to the cotton manufacturers, and others, in France, by which it was designed to supply the want of British goods, proceeded upon a system equally illiberal and impolitic. Still, however, the expensive bounties, and forced sales, which the influence of government afforded, enabled these manufacturers to proceed, and furnished employment to a certain number of men, who were naturally grateful for the protection which they received from the Emperor. In the same manner, although no artificial jet-d'eau, upon the grandest scale of expense, can so much refresh the face of nature, as the gentle and general influence of a natural shower, the former will nevertheless have the effect of feeding and nourishing such vegetable productions as are within the reach of its limited influence. It was thus, that the efforts of Napoleon at encouraging arts and manufactures, though proceeding on mistaken principles, produced, in the first instance, results apparently beneficial.[324]
PUBLIC WORKS.
We have already had occasion to observe the immense public works which were undertaken at the expense of Buonaparte's government. Temples, bridges, and aqueducts, are, indeed, the coin with which arbitrary princes, in all ages, have endeavoured to compensate for the liberty of which the people are deprived. Such monuments are popular with the citizens, because the enjoyment of them is common to all, and the monarch is partial to a style of expenditure promising more plausibly than any other, to extend the memory of his present greatness far into the bosom of futurity. Buonaparte was not, and could not be insensible to either of these motives. His mind was too much enlarged to seek enjoyment in any of the ordinary objects of exclusive gratification; and undoubtedly, he who had done so much to distinguish himself during his life above ordinary mortals, must have naturally desired that his public works should preserve his fame to future ages. Accordingly, he undertook and executed some of the most splendid labours of modern times. The road over the Simplon, and the basins at Antwerp, may be always appealed to as gigantic specimens of his public spirit.
On the other hand, as we have before hinted, Napoleon sometimes aimed at producing immediate effect, by proposals and plans hastily adopted, as hastily decreed, and given in full form to the government journal; but which were either abandoned immediately after having been commenced, or perhaps, never advanced farther than the plan announced in the Moniteur. Buonaparte's habits of activity, his powers of deciding with a single glance upon most points of either military or civil engineering, were liberally drawn upon to strike his subjects with wonder and admiration. During the few peaceful intervals of his reign, his impatience of inaction found amusement in traversing, with great rapidity, and often on the shortest notice, the various departments in France. Travelling with incredible celerity, though usually accompanied by the Empress Josephine, he had no sooner visited any town of consequence, than he threw himself on horseback, and, followed only by his aide-de-camp and his Mameluke Rustan, who with difficulty kept him in view, he took a flying survey of the place, its capacities of improvement, or the inconveniences which attached to it. With this local knowledge, thus rapidly acquired, he gave audience to the municipal authorities, and overwhelmed them very often with liberal and long details concerning the place round which he had galloped for the first time, but in which they had spent their days. Amazement at the extent and facility of the Emperor's powers of observation, was thus universally excited, and his hints were recorded in the Moniteur, for the admiration of France. Some public work, solicited by the municipality, or suggested by the enlightened benevolence of the Emperor himself, was then projected, but which, in many, if not most cases, remained unexecuted; the imperial funds not being in all circumstances adequate to the splendour of Napoleon's undertakings, or, which was the more frequent case, some new absorbing war, or project of ambition, occasioning every other object of expenditure to be postponed.