第54章 NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM(6)

To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a military despotism, to re-establish honors and titles; it was necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of the Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he adds--a truth which one hardly would expect from him,--"At the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve the laws." Of course, and here is the great risk that all revolutionizing people run--they must tend to despotism; "they must personify themselves in a man," is the Prince's phrase; and, according as is his temperament or disposition--according as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the revolution becomes tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.

Somewhere in the St.Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of his to the Pope."Tell the Pope," he says to an archbishop, "to remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi." And this is the legacy of the revolution, the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such a speech as this--one so insolent, and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor's progress, strength, and weakness.The six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so crawling and abject but now, becomes of a sudden endowed with a wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham empress, sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands on, and when the allies appear before Paris, when for courage and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,--where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow king of Rome? Is she going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she.Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds--profligati sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislas Xavier rolls into the palace of his fathers.

With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be disposed to contradict him.Whether the Emperor composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance;but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in France except one.His vast public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting parties.No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance further, and live more at ease than under any other form of government.Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing [Greek text omitted], his natural Anacreontics;but alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilized world is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less capricious.Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it.

"Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of Notre Dame.We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been.

Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II.

"L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!" shouted Prince Lucien.

Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for old Lafayette and his "permanent" representatives, a corporal with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more Louis Stanislas Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.

In like manner Napoleon III.returned from exile, and made his appearance on the frontier.His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose.Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a flight it will take?