tions-largely paid-and entrusted with such a complete delegation of power that, in Napoleon's own language, each was in his department an Empereur à petit pied. Each of these officers had under his entire controul inferior local magistrates, holding power from him as he did from the Emperor: each had his instructions direct from Paris; each was bound by every motive of interest to serve, to the utmost of his ability, the government from which all things were derived, to be hoped for, and to be dreaded. Wherever the Emperor was, in the midst of his hottest campaigns, he examined the details of administration at home more closely than, perhaps, any other sovereign of half so great an empire did during the profoundest peace. It was said of him that his dearest amusement, when he had nothing else to do, was to solve problems in algebra or geometry. He carried this passion into every department of affairs; and having, with his own eye, detected some errors of importance in the public accounts, shortly after his administration begun, there prevailed thenceforth in all the financial records of the state such clearness and accuracy as are not often exemplified in those of a large private fortune. Nothing was below his attention, and he found time for every thing. The humblest functionary discharged his duty under a lively sense of the Emperor's personal superintendence; and the omnipresence of his police came in lieu, wherever politics were not touched upon, of the guarding powers of a free press, a free senate, and public opinion. Except in political cases the trial by jury was the right of every citizen. The Code Napoleon, that elaborate

system of jurisprudence in the formation of which the Emperor laboured personally along with the most eminent lawyers and enlightened men of the time, was a boon of inestimable value to France. “ I shall go down to posterity (said he, with just pride) with the Code in my hand." It was the first uniform system of laws which the French Monarchy had ever possessed; and being drawn up with consummate skill and wisdom, it at this day forms the code not only of France, but of a great portion of Europe besides. Justice, as between man and man, was administered on sound and fixed principles, and by unimpeached tribunals. The arbitrary Commission Courts of Napoleon interfered with nothing but offences, real or alleged, against his authority.

The Clergy were, as we have seen, appointed universally under the direction of Government: they were also its direct stipendiaries; hence nothing could be more complete than their subjection to its pleasure. Education became a part of the regular business of the state; all the schools and colleges being placed under the immediate care of one of Napoleon's ministers-all prizes and bursaries bestowed by the government-and the whole system so arranged, that it was hardly possible for any youth who exhibited remarkable talents to avoid the temptations to a military career, which on every side surrounded him. The chief distinctions and emoluments were everywhere reserved for those who excelled in accomplishments likely to be serviceable in war; and the Lyceums, or schools set expressly apart for military students, were invested with numberless attractions, scarcely

to be resisted by a young imagination. The army, as it was the sole basis of Napoleon's power, was also at all times the primary object of his thoughts. Every institution of the state was subservient and administered to it, and none more efficaciously than the imperial system of education.

The ranks of the army, however, were filled during the whole reign of Napoleon by compulsion. The conscription-law of 1798 acquired under him the character of a settled and regular part of the national system; and its oppressive influence was such as never before exhausted, through a long term of years, the best energies of a great and civilized people. Every male in France, under the age of twenty-five, was liable to be called on to serve in the ranks; and the regulations as to the procuring of substitutes were so narrow, that young men of the best families were continually forced to comply, in their own persons, with the stern requisition. The first conscription-list for the year included all under the age of twenty; and the result of the ballot within this class amounted to nearly 80,000 names. These were first called on: but if the service of the Emperor demanded further supply, the lists of those aged twenty-two, twentythree, twenty-four, and twenty-five, were successively resorted to. There was no exemption for any one who seemed able to bear arms. The only child of his parents, the young husband and father, were forced, like any others, to abandon fire-side, profession, all the ties and all the hopes of life, on a moment's notice: and there is nothing in the history of modern Europe so remarkable, as that the French people should have submitted, during

sixteen years, to the constant operation of a despotic law, which thus sapped all the foundations of social happiness, and condemned the rising hopes of the nation to bleed and die by millions in distant wars, undertaken solely for the gratification of one man's insatiable ambition. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that the great majority of the conscripts, with whatever reluctance they might enter the ranks, were soon reconciled to their fate. The avenues to promotion, distinction, wealth, honour, nobility, even royal dignity, were all open before the devoted and successful soldiers of Napoleon; and the presence of so many youths of good condition and education, among the ranks of the private soldiery, could not fail, first, to render the situation immeasurably less irksome than it otherwise could have been to each individual of the class, and secondly, to elevate the standard of manners and acquirements among the soldiery generally. There never was an army in whose ranks intelligence so largely abounded; nor in which so many officers of the highest rank had originally carried a musket.

The taxation rendered necessary by the constant wars of Napoleon was great; and the utter destruction of the foreign commerce and marine of France, which the naval supremacy of England effected, made the burden the more intolerable for various important classes of the community. On the other hand the taxes were levied fairly on the whole population, which presented a blessed contrast to the system of the old regime; and the vast extension and improvement of agriculture consequent on the division of the great estates at the Revolution,

enabled the nation at large to meet the calls of the government with much less difficulty than could have been anticipated at any former period of French history. Napoleon's great public works, too, though undertaken chiefly for the purpose of gratifying his own vanity and that of the nation, could not be executed without furnishing subsistence to vast bodies of the labouring poor, and were thus serviceable to more important ends. From his vain attempts to supply the want of English manufactured goods and colonial produce, by new establishments and inventions (such especially as that of manufacturing a substitute for sugar out of beet root), partial good, in like manner, resulted.

The evils of the conscription, of a heavy taxation, of an inquisitorial police, and of a totally enslaved press-these, and all other evils attendant on this elaborate system of military despotism, were endured for so many years chiefly in consequence of the skill with which Napoleon, according to his own favourite language, knew "to play on the imagination,” and gratify the vanity of the French people. In the splendour of his victories, in the magnificence of his roads, bridges, aqueducts, and other monuments, in the general pre-eminence to which the nation seemed to be raised through the genius of its chief, compensation was found for all financial burdens, consolation for domestic calamities, and an equivalent for that liberty in whose name the Tyrant had achieved his first glories. But it must not be omitted that Napoleon, in every department of his government, made it his first rule to employ the men best fitted, in his mind, to do honour to his service by their talents and diligence;